Taking It To Them

On Monday, Jan. 7, Environment Texas and the Sierra Club filed suit in federal district court against Shell Oil Company and several subsidiaries. Shell has repeatedly violated the Clean Air Act at its Deer Park oil refinery and chemical plant, resulting in the release of millions of pounds of excess air pollutants over the past five years, including toxic chemicals such as benzene and 1,3-butadiene. On average of more than once a week for at least the past five years, Shell has itself reported that it violated its permit limits by spewing a wide range of health-damaging pollutants into the air around the Houston ship channel. Shell is already authorized to emit staggering amounts of pollutants into the air. With Texas’ air as polluted as it is, exceeding those limits is unforgivable.

Pollution from Shell and other gulf coast polluters are linked to a wide range of health problems including aggravating asthma, lung and heart disease. Last year, the UT School of Public Health announced new research that found children living within two miles of the Houston Ship Channel have a 56 percent higher risk for childhood leukemia than those living more than 10 miles away.

Even though Shell, the 2nd largest air polluter in Harris County, has broken the law over and over again, the state of Texas and the U.S. EPA have failed to put a stop to these blatant violations. While the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has issued some fines to Shell for these violations, TCEQ’s enforcement division told our attorneys that they could not “really speak to the effectiveness of our enforcement.”

So ordinary citizens are stepping up to enforce the law themselves. This lawsuit marks the first time in Texas in which citizen groups are suing to stop illegal air emissions arising from so-called “upset” events, and it likely won’t be the last. Until the state of Texas starts enforcing the law and making our air safe to breathe again, the people of Texas will have to do their jobs for them.