By: Cynthia Palmer, Petrochemical Strategy Advisor, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: November 30, 2022
About: Petrochemical pollution risk to environmental justice communities
To: White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council
I recently got home from Port Arthur, Texas. The petrochemical buildout I observed there was horrific. The miles-long plumes of ethylene oxide and sulfur dioxide. The giant flares burning plastics chemicals. The ethane cracker plants right next to homes!
The concentration of toxic air pollution in Port Arthur is second only to that in Cancer Alley, Louisiana. The cancer risk in these frontline communities is hundreds of times the national average, according to EPA’s own data.
What’s more, the fossil fuel industry is on target to triple plastics production by 2060—not because we need all that extra plastic, but because single-use plastics are a lifeline for oil and gas companies determined not to let climate change and the promise of renewable energy cut into their profits.
The judges’ ruling cancelling the air permits for the $9 billion Formosa Plastics Plant in St. James Parish, Louisiana, is good news, to be sure, but 2022 has nonetheless been the biggest year in US history for the construction of other ethane cracker plastics-making facilities.
Moms Clean Air Force is calling on the White House to halt this vast plastics buildout and to stop siting these gigantic fortresses amid some of the nation’s most underserved, overburdened communities, many built on former slave plantations.
I’ll also mention three low-hanging fruit:
1. Do not allow plastics-burning pyrolysis incinerators to operate without pollution controls. Most of these plants are situated in EJ communities, and EPA is on the verge of exempting plastics burning from Section 129 of the Clean Air Act. This precedent-setting decision to deregulate plastics incineration would be environmental injustice at its worst.
2. Control the PFAS emissions from solid waste incinerators under Section 129 of the Clean Air Act. Rather than break down the PFAS, studies have found that incinerators are releasing it through the stacks into the surrounding low-income communities.
3. Ban the use of PFAS as a fracking fluid. PFAS is toxic even in the most minute quantities. In 2011, EPA brushed aside the grave concerns of its own scientists and approved the use of PFAS chemicals as fracking fluids. At least 120 companies have been using PFAS in more than 1,000 fracking wells, threatening the surrounding environmental justice communities.
Thank you.
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