EPA Enforcement Roundup: Week of 12/30

The EPA Enforcement Roundup gives you insight into how and why US EPA and State partners assess penalties for environmental noncompliance. 

All violations or claims discussed below are alleged only unless we say otherwise, and we withhold the names of organizations and individuals to protect their privacy.

Your EPA Enforcement Roundup for this week:

A seafood processing company paid a $750,000 penalty for allegedly violating state and federal Clean Water Act permit requirements.

According to US EPA, the previous owner of two facilities violated its Clean Water Act permit requirements limiting the amount of waste that seafood processors can discharge into the marine environment.

At its Valdez location, the company allegedly discharged seafood processing waste beyond the one-acre “zone of deposit” allowed by permit. Alaska is the only state where zones of deposit are permitted at seafood processing facilities. At the company's King Cove facility, seafood processing waste was discharged from a broken outfall and at the incorrect depth.

The current owners agreed to implement compliance measures and are obligated to conduct an audit to correct identify and correct non-compliance.

A chemical manufacturer in Missouri agreed to a $750,000 settlement with US EPA to resolve alleged Clean Air Act violations.

The company manufactures choline chloride, which is an animal feed additive and requires ethylene oxide (EtO) in its manufacturing process. The settlement requires the company to pay a $300,000 civil penalty, install a state-of-the-art scrubber system, and provide $350,000 of emergency equipment for local responders.

EPA conducted an inspection after an EtO release at the facility. EPA says the company violated the Clean Air Act by failing to:

• Develop operating procedures and conduct hazard analyses for preventing and/or responding to accidental releases of EtO.
• Fix malfunctioning EtO alarms, which allowed the April 2022 EtO release to continue for over seven hours.
• Conduct required audits of the facility’s compliance with the Clean Air Act and correct deficiencies identified in prior audits.
• Conduct annual coordination with emergency responders.
• Have written safety information for the facility’s ventilation system.
• Update the facility’s Risk Management Plan every five years.

Ethylene oxide (EtO) is a hazardous air pollutant that is associated with potential health risks for acute and long-term exposure, including increased risk of certain cancers.

A Pennsylvania-based oil & gas company agreed to pay $2,000,000 to resolve alleged violations of Federal and State air pollution rules.

Per US EPA, the company violated the Clean Air Act and the Pennsylvania Air Pollution Control Act due to its failure to capture and control air emissions from five of its oil and gas production facilities in western Pennsylvania.

The settlement requires the company to pay a $2 million settlement, ensure that its systems to control pollutants from atmospheric storage tanks are adequately designed and properly operated and maintained at an estimated cost of $2.4 million, and replace no fewer than 217 pollutant-emitting pneumatic devices with non-emitting devices, at an estimated cost of $1.2 million.

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Tags: Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, EPA Enforcement Roundup