Front view of the Capitol

Congressman Troy Carter Celebrates EPA Response to Community Calls for Action on Environmental Justice

January 26, 2022
Press Release

 

WASHINGTON, D.C.  – Today, Congressman Troy A. Carter Sr. celebrated announcements from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that will promote environmental justice throughout Louisiana’s Second Congressional District. Among several other initiatives, the agency’s actions respond to his calls for increased air quality monitoring and accountability that were outlined in a letter on August 12, 2021.

“I would like to thank the Administrator for assisting the City of New Orleans with their infrastructure issues, as well as initiating first steps toward accountability, especially regarding air quality enforcement, monitoring, and data collection, which I called for back in August,” said Congressman Troy Carter. “To my constituents, this is their home and it is the primary duty of government to ensure that the people are safe and protected in their communities. The environmental justice actions announced today will allow collection of independent, reliable data that will inform the path forward to improve public health.”

The EPA’s actions range from policy changes to community-driven efforts and will help deliver environmental justice and work towards building a better America. They are part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s wider whole-of-government approach to taking on environmental justice issues in communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution. 

 

The EPA also announced a series of broad, agency-wide policy actions including:  

  • Committing the EPA to aggressively use its authority to conduct unannounced inspections of suspected non-compliant facilities, as needed to protect public health. When facilities are found to be non-compliant, the EPA will use all available tools to hold them accountable.

 

  • Deploying a new program to expand air monitoring capacity called the Pollution Accountability Team (PAT). This program will utilize assets such as the ASPECT airplane, GMAP mobile air monitoring vehicle, and additional air pollution inspectors to enhance enforcement. Combining high-tech air pollution monitoring with boots-on-the-ground inspectors, PAT will address pollution and enhance enforcement at a community scale. This pilot program will also work to develop and/or acquire new instrumentation to measure newly emerging contaminants, such as chloroprene and ethylene oxide. More details on this program will be available in the coming weeks.

 

  • Mobilizing agency resources to invest in community air monitoring to better protect people and public health in vulnerable areas.

 

  • Pressing state and local elected officials to take urgent action to better protect the most overburdened communities.

 

  • Holding companies more accountable for their actions in overburdened communities with increased monitoring and oversight of polluting facilities.

 

  • The EPA will apply the best available science to inform the agency’s policymaking in order to best safeguard public health and protect the environment. 

 

  • To ensure facility compliance with environmental laws, the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) has been directed to aggressively use its authority to conduct unannounced inspections at suspected non-compliant facilities, as needed, to protect public health.

 

  • The Agency is also directing resources to better protect people and public health in overburdened areas across the nation, making $20 million in grants available from the American Rescue Plan to enhance local air monitoring for pollutants of greatest concern in communities facing health disparities.

 

  • The EPA is proposing to reaffirm their peer-reviewed scientific assessment showing that ethylene oxide is significantly more toxic than previously understood, and going forward will use this assessment as a basis in taking regulatory actions to reduce this harmful pollutant. This notice responds to several petitions for reconsideration of a 2020 rule revising emission standards for chemical plants in the Miscellaneous Organic Chemical Manufacturing source category and will be open to public comment.

 

Several of EPA’s announcements today reference actions in several specific regions, including the Second Congressional District that Congressman Carter represents.  They include:

 

 

  • The new Pollution Accountability Team will begin its pilot air monitoring project in Mossville, St. James Parish and St. John the Baptist Parish. The EPA will work with residents and community leaders to determine the routes to be traveled by the mobile monitoring vehicle and the contaminants to be monitored. EPA Region 6 will make this data available to the public.

 

  • The EPA will also invest more than $600,000 to procure mobile air pollution monitoring equipment and will deploy the monitors in Mossville, St. John the Baptist Parish and St. James Parish, among other communities located in the south. This equipment will measure volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including air toxics, and will dramatically improve EPA’s ability to measure pollution quickly and assess situations in real-time. The EPA will work with local organizations to host trainings for community members to introduce them to the technology and the Agency’s process for its air monitoring.   

 

  • In St. John the Baptist Parish, the EPA used its authority to require the Denka facility to install fenceline monitors to identify sources of emissions onsite. These monitors will allow both the EPA and communities to better understand air pollutants through this quick and reliable system. This month, Denka complied with EPA’s request to install these monitors.  

 

 

  • In Mossville, the EPA will assess compliance at facilities that present potentially elevated risks to the community based on recent EPA helicopter flyovers and mobile air monitoring of the area. EPA also provided $38,886 for LDEQ to purchase a NAAQS quality PM 2.5 continuous monitor to be placed across the road from Sasol’s Lake Charles Complex. 

 

  • The EPA will monitor and review the data and conduct an independent assessment to determine if NAAQS standards are exceeded in the Lake Charles area. The EPA will also conduct Technical System Audits on a rotating basis of the State’s monitoring system operations as well as reviewing LDEQ’s annual data certifications and LDEQ’s annual monitoring network plan.

 

  • EPA Region 6 also issued a Notice of Potential Violation and Opportunity to Confer (NOPVOC) Letter to Sasol Chemicals USA, LLC. The Louisiana Sasol facility uses natural gas and by-products from refinery operations to produce specialty chemicals for detergents and cosmetics. The chemical complex uses or produces several regulated flammables such as ethylene, propane, butane, propylene, ethane, butane, hydrogen, methane and pentane. The EPA notice follows a January 2021 Compliance Evaluation conducted by inspectors from EPA Region 6 and LDEQ, and requires Sasol to address potential Risk Management Plan violations found during the inspection.

 

  • In New Orleans’ Gordon Plaza neighborhood, residents have been negatively impacted by living on the former site of the Agriculture Street Landfill. As part of addressing their concerns, the EPA will now expedite a review of the site which was previously slated for review in 2023. Now, the accelerated review will begin in March 2022 and will include 9 homes that were not included in the previous review process. The Agency is taking this step to re-evaluate its previous decision, to communicate the results to the community, as well as consider future community-based solutions.

 

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