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Colorado air quality regulators Thursday issued a renewed operating permit for two of Suncor’s three refining plants, touting a series of new orders for training, control equipment and real-time monitoring, though environmental watchdogs said the rules still fall short.
In renewing the Commerce City refinery’s ability to refine gas, jet fuel and other products at Plants 1 and 3 under the federal Clean Air Act, Colorado’s Air Pollution Control Division said it responded to public comments with added protections:
- Demanding real-time pollution emissions data delivered straight to the air division
- Adding at least six air pollution monitoring systems in surrounding neighborhoods
- New Suncor employee training that includes creating a training simulator for the troublesome fluidized catalytic cracking unit
- Tightening operating and maintenance plans for an automated shutdown system for the catalytic cracking unit
An independent review commissioned by Suncor in 2021 looked closely at the refinery’s fluid catalytic cracking units for producing gasoline, and sulfur recovery units, which transform poisonous gases into usable sulfur. High pressure in those units can contribute to leaks and cause the kind of white dust and flakes falling on the surrounding neighborhoods of Globeville and Elyria-Swansea that have infuriated residents. Suncor has said that dust is a nonhazardous catalyst.
The implementation plan from that report called for updated automatic shutdown equipment at Suncor’s Plant 1 and Plant 2, at a cost of $12 million.
In announcing the permit renewal, Colorado officials also touted previous agreements they’d made with Suncor that are now written into the enforceable permit, including monitoring of air quality at the plant’s fenceline and providing real-time data to the community, advanced emergency notifications, and using the best technology available to cut emissions.
“We know that Suncor operations produce various sources of emission, which is why it is one of the most highly regulated entities in Colorado,” said Michael Ogletree, director of the Air Pollution Control Division. The permits, called Title V for the section of the Clean Air Act, “are one of several tools we use to protect clean air. Importantly, this permit expands requirements for measuring air pollution at the refinery and in the community to enhance transparency for community members and help ensure accountability for Suncor.”
“Suncor is committed to continuous improvement and meeting our regulatory requirements,” a refinery spokesperson said, in an email response to the permit news.
Suncor, the only refinery in Colorado, emits hundreds of thousands of tons a year of greenhouse gases as well as local pollutants such as the volatile organic compounds that contribute to ozone. The refinery has been repeatedly fined and disciplined by state regulators for excess releases of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrogen sulfide. All of these compounds can be toxic to human lungs.
In February, Colorado issued a $10.5 million penalty on Suncor refinery for three years of air pollution violations, calling it the largest-ever action against a single facility. The announcement also included settling a lawsuit through an agreement to double monitoring of air pollution at the fenceline.
That agreement surpassed a $9 million deal in 2020 for similar, previous violations.
Environmental groups say the state should have cracked down harder, given Suncor’s history of violations and fines and its impact on neighborhoods that are disproportionately low-income and minority.
Monitors detecting pollutants as they leave the fence line of industrial locations like Suncor and other Colorado companies, as part of a state law taking effect in 2023, will look like this. (Suncor photo)
Suncor’s poor record undermines an EPA requirement that states are confident a business will follow the rules, said Ian Coghill, an attorney with Earthjustice.
“The state can only issue a permit if it concludes that Suncor will comply with the permit, and it needs to justify why this permit is sufficient when prior permitting and enforcement has failed to make Suncor comply” before, Coghill said.
Colorado continues to rely on estimates of what toxins Suncor will emit, rather than requiring reliable measurement of what happens at the refinery, he added. “Without reliable emissions data, community members have no insight into the actual levels of pollution coming from the refinery,” Coghill said.
Some elements of the new permit are positive, Coghill said. The state incorporated much of the third party’s report from 2021 about better training and how to better operate the cracking unit. Fenceline monitoring is also a good win for the community, he said.
The issuance of the permit now opens new windows for community members and environmental groups to object to the terms as the EPA reviews the state’s language.
Suncor was previously issued a permit renewal for Plant 2 at the Commerce City compound, though that renewal is also still in dispute with some environmental groups. The EPA objected to the initial draft of the Plant 2 permit, then approved a rewrite. But groups like the Center for Biological Diversity used a regulatory window to seek more objections from the EPA, and Colorado is currently drafting those latest permit revisions, according to the center.
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