Energy & Environment — EPA raises discrimination concerns in ‘Cancer Alley’

The EPA is saying that Louisiana may have discriminated against Black communities facing air pollution, Saudi Arabia is pushing back against the Biden administration’s OPEC+ rhetoric and the city of Washington, D.C., is suing a chemical company.

This is Overnight Energy & Environment, your source for the latest news focused on energy, the environment and beyond. For The Hill, we’re Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk. Subscribe here.

EPA: State of Louisiana may have discriminated

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a Wednesday letter said Louisiana may have discriminated against Black communities who live near air pollution sources in the state.  

The EPA’s probe focuses on residents in the state’s Industrial Corridor, sometimes referred to as “Cancer Alley” due to higher-than-normal cancer rates. EPA Administrator Michael Regan visited the area last year. 

In the letter to the leaders of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) and Department of Health (LDH), the federal agency specifically raised concerns about residents who live near a facility that emits chloroprene, which the agency says is likely to cause cancer.

• The letter said that LDEQ’s “actions and inactions” may have subjected Black residents living or attending school near the facility in question to discrimination.
  
• Specifically, it said that the department didn’t appropriately act on the facility’s permit renewal, failed to appropriately apply nondiscrimination requirements and failed to provide accurate information to impacted residents.  

The takeaway: “There appears to be a causal link between LDEQ’s actions and inactions in administering its air permitting program and the adverse and disproportionate distribution of the cancer and toxicity risks from chloroprene exposure, by race,” the letter said.  

The letter was first reported by The Lens, a local news outlet, but was later circulated by environmental groups.

Responses:  

• “It was a letter of concern, it was not a finding,” said LDEQ spokesperson Greg Langley. “We will continue to engage with the EPA to try to resolve any issues and we remain committed to being protective of human health and the environment.”
  
• “The arrogance of our state agency not to deal with the serious environmental health problems related to this plant, it’s just outrageous,” said Darryl Malek-Wiley, a senior organizing representative with Sierra Club’s Environmental Justice and Community Partnership Program.  

The letter comes as the Biden administration seeks to address disproportionately high levels of pollution faced by communities of color.

Read more here.  

QUOTABLE

“The price of gas is still too high and we need to keep working to bring it down. I’ll have more to say about that next week.”

– President Biden during a speech in Los Angeles, suggesting possible action soon. Gas prices hit $3.91 a gallon on Thursday.

Saudis push back on US’ OPEC statements

Saudi Arabia has dismissed criticism from the U.S. about the OPEC+ decision to cut oil production. 

In a statement on Thursday attributed to the Saudi foreign ministry, an official said the decision to cut oil production was solely based on “economic considerations” and that all members of the OPEC+ coalition unanimously agreed to the decision. 

The statement said U.S. criticism of the decision was “politically motivated.”  

The OPEC+ announcement earlier this month that it will cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day has led to fury among Democratic lawmakers. 

Democrats and some Republicans argue the move will raise gas prices in the U.S. while offering a cushion to Russia, another major oil producer, as it fights a war in Ukraine. 

The White House has signaled it will reexamine the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia given the decision. 

White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Thursday pushed back on the Saudi foreign ministry statement, saying it “can try to spin or deflect, but the facts are simple.” He said that other OPEC+ nations have communicated to the U.S. privately that they disagree with the Saudi decision “but felt coerced to support” it. 

“In recent weeks, the Saudis conveyed to us – privately and publicly – their intention to reduce oil production, which they knew would increase Russian revenues and blunt the effectiveness of sanctions.  That is the wrong direction,” Kirby said in a statement on Thursday. “We presented Saudi Arabia with analysis to show that there was no market basis to cut production targets, and that they could easily wait for the next OPEC meeting to see how things developed.” 

Read more here, from The Hill’s Olafimihan Oshin. 

OPEC+ MOVE MAY MEAN RECESSION, IEA SAYS

Oil supply cuts from a group of nations known as OPEC+ may be the “tipping point” for a global economy nearing recession, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned.

“The OPEC+ bloc’s plan to sharply curtail oil supplies to the market has derailed the growth trajectory of oil supply through the remainder of this year and next, with the resulting higher price levels exacerbating market volatility and heightening energy security concerns,” the organization said in its new oil market report. 

“With unrelenting inflationary pressures and interest rate hikes taking their toll, higher oil prices may prove the tipping point for a global economy already on the brink of recession,” it continued.

The IEA is made up of 31 member countries and formed in the 1970s to respond to global oil supply disruptions. Earlier this year, member countries including the U.S. coordinated releases from their oil reserves in an attempt to bring down fuel prices. 

Read more about the report here.  

DC alleges water contamination in lawsuit

Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine (D) on Thursday announced a lawsuit against chemical manufacturer Velsicol, alleging the company contaminated waterways in the city and harmed the health of residents in predominantly minority neighborhoods. 

The complaint alleged that no later than 1959, Velsicol was given private lab studies indicating that a chemical called chlordane, included in a pesticide compound the company manufactured, caused birth defects in animals, and by the early ’70s knew that tests linked it to liver cancer. 

The lawsuit argues that despite this internal knowledge, Velsicol conducted an aggressive campaign to assuage concerns about the chemical’s safety, including threatening to sue the publisher of “Silent Spring,” Rachel Carson’s seminal 1962 book on the environmental impact of pesticides. 

The Hill has reached out to Velsicol for comment. 

The company viewed D.C. as a major market due to termite infestations and placed hundreds of ads in local newspapers in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the suit alleged. Research in the late 1980s indicated the Potomac and Anacostia rivers contained triple the amount of chlordane recommended for human consumption, and in 1989 these levels prompted the city to warn against eating carp, catfish or eel caught in the river. 

Chlordane’s persistence in the environment has led its effects to linger for years, and as recently as 2016, about 55 percent of D.C. waterways were “impaired” under water quality standards for chlordane levels, according to the complaint. Racine’s office estimated chlordane monitoring will cost the city about $1.2 million annually “for the foreseeable future 

Read more about the suit here. 

MONUMENTUM

Advocates and lawmakers are hoping to build on momentum from their successful push to get President Biden to designate the former U.S. Army training site at Camp Hale as a national monument.   

It’s the first national monument designated in Biden’s nearly two-year presidency, and those who backed it hope it will lead to the passage of legislation that would protect nearly half a million acres of public Colorado land.    

• The Colorado Outdoor Recreation & Economy (CORE) Act, sponsored by Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet (D) and John Hickenlooper (D) and Rep. Joe Neguse (D), would protect more than 400,000 acres in the state, including about 73,000 as new wilderness and about 80,000 as recreation/conservation management areas.
  
• The measure previously passed the House in 2019 and was added to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, but later removed. Previous versions also included the national monument designation for Camp Hale.   

“Our focus now is on the implementation of this particular designation [in] Colorado, and of course also continuing to pursue our efforts that could get the CORE Act across the finish line in in Congress,” Neguse told The Hill in an interview Thursday.     

Neguse said Colorado lawmakers are also hopeful to continue the work started by the monument designation through funds in the Inflation Reduction Act. In particular, he cited $4 billion in Colorado River drought resiliency funds Bennet helped ensure made it into the final bill. 

“You can feel the energy out here, and I suspect that more folks will, over the coming months and years, be able to appreciate the public land protections that this president working with this Congress has been able to accomplish,” he said.   

Aaron Weiss, deputy director at the Center for Western Priorities, expressed hope the designation will be the first of many in Biden’s presidency.   

“I think the president saw firsthand at Camp Hale the kind of support for various national monuments and for executive actions specifically,” Weiss said. “The welcome that he got in Colorado is what he will get wherever he lands to do the next national monument.”   

Read more about the push here.  

WHAT WE’RE READING

• US law protecting endangered species hampered by poor resources, study says (The Guardian) 
• Inside the industry push to label your yogurt cup ‘recyclable’ (Grist) 
• Amid historic drought, California expected to approve $140 mln desalination plant (Reuters) 
• Wind and Solar Farms Are Hard to Predict. Utilities Are Looking to Change That. (The Wall Street Journal) 
• An ‘almost unheard of’ fall monsoon is driving wet weather in California (The San Francisco Chronicle) 
  
  

ICYMI

• National park animals change behaviors amid just a few humans: study 
• California’s Salton Sea is shrinking because of Colorado River water shortage, research finds 
• NASA suggests new space cooling technology could charge electric cars in 5 minutes 
  
  

🐟 Lighter click: No words

That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s Energy & Environment page for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow.