Earth Protect Blog

By Noelle Phillips

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Environmentalists and public officials who monitor Suncor Energy’s oil refinery in Commerce City are fuming over a recent announcement that the company will contribute money toward a voucher program to help people buy electric lawnmowers after it sold dirty fuel at local gas stations.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced the settlement with Suncor last month after the company reported it had sold gasoline with too much benzene in it. Suncor will pay a $160,000 penalty and contribute $600,000 to the Regional Air Quality Council’s Mow Down Pollution program, which provides vouchers to replace gas-powered lawn and garden equipment.

It’s a meaningless fine for a company that earns billions of dollars in profit each year and the voucher program is out of touch with the real needs in the community, said Guadalupe Solis, director of environmental justice programs at Cultivando, a Latina-run nonprofit in Adams County that focuses on health equity and has monitored air pollution coming from Suncor.

“The settlement is really just like a slap in the face,” Solis said. “We feel like it’s a mockery of our concerns, of the data we found, of the long-term exposure to the contaminants. These fines continue to bring no real change to pollution. It’s inhumane. It’s disrespectful.”

The deal has caused so much furor in Adams County that when a group of local officials last week took a previously scheduled trip to Washington, D.C., they brought up the settlement with their legislative delegation and during a meeting with EPA leaders.

EPA officials say the deal does help reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions because gas-powered lawn equipment is known to release the gases along with volatile organic compounds, said Ryan Bickmore, an attorney adviser in the EPA’s fuels enforcement branch.

“Really it’s about getting dirtier gas-powered and diesel-powered equipment out of service,” Bickmore said. “The impact of those emissions are felt in the entire air shed. Everyone still benefits.”

The settlement with Suncor was announced on Sept. 6 by the EPA after the company notified air regulators that it had sold the dirty gasoline primarily at stations in Adams County.

The vouchers are designated for residents in specific zip codes in Adams County and north Denver, but the money also will be given via grants to local governments in the nine-county region of the northern Front Range, which is in severe violation of federal air quality standards.

It was the second settlement announced within a month between Suncor and the EPA over environmental violations.

In August, the EPA said Suncor will pay a $60,000 civil penalty and spend $240,030 on equipment for the South Adams County Fire Department.

That agreement was reached after the federal agency found multiple flaws in the refinery’s safety reporting systems during a 2020 inspection — an examination triggered by a 2019 malfunction that caused the refinery to spew ash and a clay-like gunk across the area.

“Kind of shell-shocked”

Suncor’s critics have long said government investigations take too long and then penalties are too light to get company executives’ attention. But the latest settlement involving the lawn and garden equipment has really rankled environmental activists and political leaders in Adams County.

“I was kind of shell-shocked,” said Andrew Klooster, a field advocate for Earthworks, an environmental advocacy group. “It’s as if the air quality problems in Commerce City are people mowing their lawns and using leaf blowers to poison the air.”

Klooster, who is a certified optical gas imaging thermographer and often uses his equipment to record fumes blowing out of Suncor’s smokestacks, said the agreement fails those who breathe the harmful emissions.

“These sorts of actions don’t add up. It feels like you’re setting them up for future violations to occur because no real additions for future oversight or curbing emissions are really being proposed,” he said.

The agreement is known as a supplemental environmental plan, which can be used by a company to mitigate the harm caused by environmental violations. Both of Suncor’s recent settlements with the EPA have involved these plans.

Under a supplemental environmental plan, a violator such as Suncor is allowed to choose how money should be distributed, the EPA’s Bickmore said. The company’s proposal must be in line with the nature of the violation and meet the EPA’s criteria before it is accepted.

The EPA encourages companies to reach out to their communities to ask how they could benefit from a supplemental environmental plan, but Suncor did not do that, Bickmore said.

The environmental plans are not lieu of fines, but they can influence the amount a company pays in penalties, he said.

“It’s a factor we consider. It’s not a diversion of penalty funds,” Bickmore said. “Their commitment to do it was considered when we decided what an appropriate penalty would be.”

Suncor’s money will be given to the Regional Air Quality Council, a state board responsible for helping reduce air pollution along the Front Range. The council did not participate in negotiations over the settlement but was willing to accept the money and oversee its distribution, said David Sabados, a council spokesman.

Details on how the money will be distributed in 2024 are not finalized, he said.

In the past, vouchers distributed through Mow Down Pollution were given in $150 increments, Sabados said.

It’s likely the council will make the vouchers in even higher amounts for people who live in the zip codes specified in the Suncor settlement, Sabados said. Plus, a discount created by the Colorado General Assembly will be available next year to make the equipment even more affordable.

“I can absolutely say, ‘Yes it will be enough to purchase an electric mower,’ but I don’t have the exact amount yet as we just wrapped up the 2023 program,” he said.

However, only $50,000 to $75,000 of Suncor’s $600,000 payment is designated for residential lawn equipment. The bulk of the payment will go toward grants for local governments to buy equipment.

That’s a detail that led Adams County Commissioner Steve O’Dorisio to ask questions during the recent trip to Washington.

O’Dorisio said that although he is thankful the EPA is increasing its oversight of Suncor, he was concerned that communities outside of Adams County and north Denver were included in the settlement when they are not as impacted by Suncor’s pollution.

“In the future, we’d like to see escalation of consequences as well as a more localized focus on remedies,” he said.

Bickmore said other communities will receive some of the Suncor settlement because the dirty gas sold in Adams County likely polluted other parts of the region as motorists drove their cars for work and personal trips. The pollution was not isolated to the neighborhoods surrounding the refinery.

“Still no direct action for health care”

Cultivando’s leaders were disappointed no one from Suncor or the EPA reached out to ask how money should be directed when they know the organization has been recording the refinery’s air pollution output, Solis said.

The people who live near the refinery are working-class families who are disproportionately impacted by the pollution, and while electric lawnmowers are nice they’re not a priority, Solis said.

“There’s so many basic needs — feeding your family, taking care of your children’s schools, accessing health care. There’s all kinds of other needs that come ahead of deciding if you’re going to buy an electric lawnmower,” she said. “It’s way out of touch with what our community needs.”

O’Dorisio said there is a “laundry list of things” that could be done instead, including buying air conditioning for residents in the surrounding neighborhoods who now have to sleep with their windows open and directly breathe the emissions from the Suncor refinery.

Renee Millard-Chacon, who leads the Indigenous environmental group Womxn from the Mountain and serves on Commerce City’s City Council, said the community would be better served if money was spent to address the multitude of health problems that Suncor’s pollution causes.

“It’s nice that the EPA is finally working on Suncor,” Millard-Chacon said. “Environmental justice is still seen as performative. There’s still no direct action for health care and that’s what the community is begging for.”