La. Legislative Audit calls for improvements to air quality regulations
15th February 2021 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
A January report from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor said the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) must strengthen its monitoring of air quality regulations and enforce them in a timelier manner, as Louisiana still has the highest toxic air emissions per square mile of any state.
The report analyzed data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and found that the number of good air quality days in Louisiana increased by 20.9 percent from 2008 to 2018. The number of unhealthy air quality days for sensitive groups decreased by 75.1 percent. But data from the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory and its most recent National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) indicated that parts of Louisiana still have high potential cancer risks and/or a high respiratory hazard index.
An 85-mile stretch of Louisiana, dubbed “Cancer Alley,” is known for its oil refineries and petrochemical plants. The EPA has estimated that the cancer risk in Reserve, La., is almost 50 times the national average. In a 2015 NATA map, seven of the 10 highest cancer risk areas were in St. John the Baptist Parish. All of these points were clustered around the Dupont-Denka plant.
The report said the LDEQ must strengthen its monitoring process to identify facilities that fail to submit required self-monitoring reports. These reports must also be reviewed in a timelier manner to address violations. When violations are found, the response is often slow. The report noted that from the fiscal years 2015-2019, the time it took the LDEQ to issue enforcement actions increased by 102.1 percent.
In the same time period, the report noted 46 enforcement actions finalized through settlements. In these cases, it took an average of 4.4 months for the LDEQ to receive a settlement offer after issuing the enforcement action and an additional 2.1 years on average to finalize the agreement.
The report cited low staffing levels, high workloads, frequent staff turnover, and ineffective data systems as causes for these issues. From 2010 to 2019, LDEQ positions dedicated to air regulation decreased from 247 to 211. The audit also suggested that the LDEQ vary its inspection times to make them less predictable.
Greg Langley, press secretary for LDEQ, said he viewed the report as positive for the agency, but that improvements are needed.
“We are happy that the report acknowledges improvements made in air quality in Louisiana, including the achievement of attainment status for all EPA’s criteria pollutants except SO2 – and that is an issue in only two parishes where LDEQ is working on re-designation,” Langley said.
Langley said the agency hopes to speed up the enforcement process in the future. Regulatory processes and legal actions have slowed this down in the past.
“As the agency has grappled with increasing paperwork demands with a static staff, process times have grown. The agency is moving to do more of this work electronically and seek software improvements that will shrink the time it takes to process each action,” Langley said.
Langley objected to the report’s use of the EPA’s 2014 National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA). He said that assessment has not been updated to reflect current emissions levels.
Darryl Malek-Wiley, a senior organizing representative with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Justice and Community Partnership Program, said he was not surprised by the report. He added that the current system of tracking air pollution and issuing fines to violators is not working, pointing to a case where Shintech only recently paid fines from violations that occurred in 2012, 2014 and 2017.
“In my view, the LDEQ has never aggressively punished the petrochemical plants that pollute our air,” Malek-Wiley said. “LDEQ needs to actively enforce the air and water pollution laws and make sure that companies pay their fines in a timely manner. LDEQ should not have needed the Louisiana Legislative Auditor to tell them the system was broken. They should have solved the problem themselves.”
Louisiana pollution made the national news earlier this month when President Joe Biden signed a series of executive orders to address the climate crisis and environmental pollution. He mentioned Cancer Alley in Louisiana and the Route 9 corridor in Delaware as areas especially harmed by pollution.
Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy took offense to President Biden’s comments, telling The Advocate it was “a slam on the state,” pointing to smoking, obesity and other causes as the source of Louisiana’s high cancer rates.
Louisiana State Senator Troy Carter responded to Cassidy’s comments on Twitter saying, “Don’t like ‘Cancer Alley,’ @BillCassidy? I’ll tell you what it really is…environmental racism! We have foreign plastics companies coming to Black parts of our district to build toxic plants, even over gravesites of enslaved people. I won’t stand for it.”
This article originally published in the February 15, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
