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Cook Inletkeeper Energy
Campaign
Oil & Gas
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December 15, 2008
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Justin Massey, Trustees for Alaska
907.276.4244 x114
Bob
Shavelson, Cook Inletkeeper 907.299.3277
Villages,
Fishermen and Cook Inletkeeper Challenge EPA for Allowing Oil
Companies’ Toxic Discharges
Trustees for Alaska Asks Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals to Overturn Permit
Trustees for Alaska,
representing coastal Native villages, commercial fishermen, and
Cook Inletkeeper, charged in court today that the Environmental
Protection Agency repeatedly manipulated and sometimes falsified
pollution data to support its decision to allow the operators of
19 aging oil and gas facilities to dump increasing amounts of
polluted wastewater into Cook Inlet.
In a brief filed in the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Trustees for Alaska argued that
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson violated the Clean Water
Act in June of 2007 when he reissued a permit allowing Union Oil
Company of California (Unocal) and other operators to dump,
among other toxic pollutants, 279 tons of oil and grease into
Cook Inlet every year. Unocal’s Trading Bay Production Facility
discharges about 95% of the pollution coming from the Cook Inlet
facilities.
“EPA is bending the rules
to let the oil companies extract the last penny of profit from
these aging facilities,” said Trustees for Alaska attorney
Justin Massey. “And Cook Inlet is paying the price.
"Chevron raked in record
profits in 2008 and they shouldn't treat Cook Inlet fisheries as
their private dumping grounds," said Bob Shavelson, Executive
Director of Cook Inletkeeper.
The facilities began pumping
oil – and discharging pollution – in the 1960s. Most of the
pollution comes from millions of gallons of seawater that is
injected into the subterranean oil reservoir to maintain
pressure but becomes contaminated in the process. As oil and
gas are pumped to the surface, they are separated from the
seawater, which is left with a toxic mixture of oil, grease,
heavy metals, and other pollutants. At offshore wells elsewhere
in Alaska and
throughout the country, EPA
requires operators to reinject this toxic soup back into the
reservoir, achieving “zero discharge” of pollution. Only in Cook
Inlet does EPA allow the contaminated brew to be dumped directly
into coastal waters.
As the oil reservoirs
beneath the Inlet have been pumped nearly dry, more and more
seawater is required to keep up the pressure – and more
pollution is being dumped into Cook Inlet. Today’s filing by
Trustees for Alaska cites EPA documents showing that the waste
stream has doubled since 1999, and is projected to grow to
nearly 10 million gallons per day during the
5-year life of the challenged
permit.
To accommodate the growing
torrents of pollution, EPA has relied on vastly larger “mixing
zones” – areas of Cook Inlet at the end of each discharge pipe
where high concentrations of pollution are allowed. The theory
is that by the time the contamination reaches the edge of a
“mixing zone,” enough dilution has occurred to render the water
outside the mixing zone clean enough to comply with water
quality standards.
The new mixing zones are as
much as 10 times larger than those approved by EPA in 1999 –
extending more than 2 miles from an outfall in any direction.
“Instead of telling the
operators to recycle their wastewater – like they do everywhere
else in the U.S. – EPA has labeled more and more of Cook Inlet
as a waste dump for the exclusive use of these oil companies,”
said Massey.
Today’s court filing
charges that allowing the increased pollution violates
“antibacksliding” provisions of the Clean Water Act, which is
aimed at reducing and eventually eliminating water pollution.
The brief also charges that
EPA cooked the books when it assembled the technical
justification for the permit. For example, the brief says:
• Although required to
use “all available information” to evaluate pollution
levels from current discharges,
EPA ignored “hundreds of effluent samples”,
including three years of the
most recent data.
• EPA in at least one
instance “fabricated” a pollution concentration, inflating a
copper concentration by a factor of 10. The inflated
concentration was one justification for relaxing pollution
limits and expanding the mixing zones.
• EPA used a
“fictional scenario” to model the discharge plume from the
Trading Bay Production Facility,
the source of most of the pollution governed
by the permit. The Trading Bay
facility has two discharge outlets. EPA –
confronted by its own computer
model demonstrating that pollutants sank to
the bottom and put
bottom-dwelling organisms and the rest of the food chain
at risk – “simply changed the
outfall configuration [on the computer model] to
a single-port outfall with a
smaller port than the size of the two actual ports,
thereby changing the trajectory
of the discharge, increasing its velocity, and
making the bottom contact and
its attendant environmental risks disappear.”
• EPA repeatedly
manipulated the data it entered into its computer model,
entering six platforms’
above-water outfalls as underwater discharges;
modeling toxic discharges as
non-toxic; and even relying on an imaginary 48-
hour tidal cycle for Cook Inlet
– that is, telling the computer that tides in Cook
Inlet go in and out once every
two days, instead of twice a day.
• EPA “fabricated or
omitted” values that were essential to calculating
appropriate pollution limits.
The brief alleges that EPA made “deliberate
errors” in the computer modeling
and setting the permit limits.
Trustees for Alaska filed
the challenge on behalf of Cook Inletkeeper, Cook Inlet
Fishermen’s Fund, United Cook Inlet Drift Association, the
Native Village of Nanwalek, and the Native Village of Port
Graham.
Press Release (PDF)
Legal Brief Submitted by
Trustees for Alaska
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
August 12, 2008
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Bob
Shavelson 907.299.3277
Bobby Kennedy 913.422.4343
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Calls
on
Chevron to Stop Toxic Dumping
in
Cook Inlet Fisheries
Larry King Live Appearance Sparks Offshore Oil & Gas Debate
ANCHORAGE, AK: Cook Inletkeeper and the Waterkeeper
Alliance today released a letter from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to
Chevron CEO David O’Reilly, calling on the Chevron Corporation
to stop dumping toxic oil and gas wastes into the fisheries of
Cook Inlet, Alaska. Mr. Kennedy’s August 5, 2008, letter came
in response to correspondence from Chevron after Mr. Kennedy and
Mr. O’Reilly debated energy issues on Larry King Live
recently. The Cook Inlet toxic dumping debate provides an
important perspective on offshore oil and gas development as
Congress and the presidential candidates debate ways to address
rising fuel prices.
In his letter, Mr. Kennedy notes that Chevron dumps
billions of gallons of toxic oil and gas wastes into Cook
Inlet’s rich coastal fisheries each year. Chevron could
properly treat these wastes by reinjecting them back into the
formation, but the corporation – which reported net profits over
$5 billion in the first three months of 2008 – has balked due to
high costs. An EPA study around Cook Inlet Native villages in
2001 found a broad array of toxics in subsistence fish and
shellfish, including the same types of contaminants found in
industry waste streams.
Mr. Kennedy is the Chairman of the Board of the
Waterkeeper Alliance (www.waterkeeper.org);
Cook Inletkeeper is a member of the Waterkeeper Alliance. To
read Chevron’s July 14, 2008, letter to Mr. Kennedy, as well as
Mr. Kennedy’s August 5, 2008, response, go to
www.inletkeeper.org.
# # #
Read Mr. Kennedy's Letter to Chevron
here
Read Chevron's Letter to Mr. Kennedy
here
Get a PDF copy of this Press Release
here
See BELOW FOR ADDITIONAL NEWS & INFORMATION
ON COOK INLET DUMPING ISSUES
Cook Inletkeeper
●
Cook Inlet Fishermen’s Fund
Native Village of Port Graham
●
Native Village of Nanwalek
●
United Cook Inlet Drift AssoC.
Press Release
For Immediate Release:
June 18, 2007
For More Information:
Bob Shavelson 907.299.3277
Justin Massey, Esq.
907.276.4244 x114
Chief Patrick Norman
907.284.2227
Dave Martin 907.252.2752
UCIDA 907.260.9436
Tribes, Fishermen & INLETKEEPER
challenge toxic oil & gas dumping in Cook Inlet Fisheries
New EPA Permit Would
Increase Toxic Pollution
ANCHORAGE, AK – Alaska Native Tribes and commercial fishing
groups joined Cook Inletkeeper in a lawsuit challenging the
Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act permit for oil
and gas discharges in Cook Inlet, Alaska. The groups contend
EPA ignored hundreds of public comments and violated the Clean
Water Act by issuing a permit that will almost triple the amount
of toxic wastes dumped annually by industry into Cook Inlet’s
rich and productive fisheries.
“EPA is happy to slap a small fish processor with a
big fine, but they bend over backwards to let the oil and gas
industry dump millions of gallons of toxics into our fisheries,”
said Dave Martin of the Cook Inlet Fishermen’s Fund, a
commercial fishing organization. “It’s discouraging EPA would
issue a permit that will increase toxic pollution in our
fisheries. The technology exists for the oil and gas industry
to protect our fisheries, and it’s EPA’s job to make sure our
waters are clean. How can we market our Cook Inlet fish as
clean and healthy if EPA allows industry to pollute our water?”
Cook Inlet is the only coastal waterbody in the
United States where EPA allows the oil and gas industry to dump
toxic drilling and production wastes into important subsistence,
commercial and recreational fisheries. When Congress passed the
Clean Water Act in 1972, it established five year terms for
discharge permits, with the intent that technology would improve
over time and pollution eventually would be eliminated.
However, EPA’s new permit will
nearly triple the amount of toxic dumping in Cook Inlet compared
to the previous permit, with industry authorized to discharge
approximately 100,000 gallons of oil and over 835,000 pounds of
toxic metals each year.
In 2006, Inletkeeper released a report, entitled “Dishonorable
Discharges: How To Shift Cook Inlet’s Offshore Oil & Gas
Operations to Zero Discharge,” that provides practical
alternatives for safe industry waste disposal.
“Litigation is a last resort,
but this dumping is damaging our
culture and our subsistence lifestyle and resources,”
said Chief Patrick Norman of the Native Village of Port Graham.
“We commend EPA for the new monitoring requirements in the
permit. But EPA’s own tests on our subsistence foods found the
same types of pollutants discharged by the industry, and
EPA continues to disregard
Tribal calls for a halt to the toxic dumping.”
Despite lenient permit conditions for oil and gas
operations in Cook Inlet, industry has routinely violated its
permit. In 1995, industry paid over $2 million dollars to
settle a lawsuit that alleged over 4,200 Clean Water Act
violations in Cook Inlet, and between 2000-2003, industry
reported over 1000 similar violations. Between 1996 and 2006,
EPA conducted only four inspections of Cook Inlet oil and gas
facilities, and no independent monitoring on waste discharges.
As a result, water quality penalties have simply become the cost
of doing business for oil and gas corporations in Cook Inlet,
and lax oversight by governmental agencies virtually ensures
future violations.
“The toxic dumping loophole in Cook Inlet is a
massive subsidy for the oil and gas industry, and at a time of
record industry profits, industry can afford to do it right,”
said Bob Shavelson, Executive Director of Cook Inletkeeper.
“Anyone else intentionally dumping that much oil into Cook Inlet
would be arrested.”
“If the oil and gas industry can’t keep Cook Inlet
clean, it can’t operate here,” said Justin Massey, an attorney
with Trustees for Alaska. “And if EPA doesn’t play by the rules,
we have no choice but to sue them.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Cook Inletkeeper,
United Cook Inlet Drift Association, Cook Inlet Fishermen’s
Fund, the Native Village of Port Graham, and the Native Village
of Nanwalek. The nonprofit law firm Trustees for Alaska is
representing the plaintiffs. For more information, including
Inletkeeper’s permit comments and the report showing why
zero-discharge is feasible in Cook Inlet, see:
www.inletkeeper.org.
-- ### --
To download the press release (above),
click here.
DISHONORABLE
DISCHARGES:
How To Shift Cook
Inlet’s
Offshore Oil & Gas
Operations to
Zero Discharge
... an important new report by Inletkeeper's Senior
Engineer, Lois Epstein,P.E., showing why
the ongoing discharge
of toxic oil and gas wastes into Cook Inlet fisheries no longer makes sense
on economic, technical, or
scientific grounds.
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