Environmental groups are calling on EPA to crack down on water pollution from petroleum coke plants, a major source of heavy metals and cancer-causing compounds that advocates say have evaded federal standards.
Mostly concentrated in Louisiana and Texas, the petroleum-processing plants make petcoke, a “dense, rock-like” substance used to make metals, cement and other industrial products, according to the petition to EPA. Although some petcoke plants in the U.S. were built before World War II, the federal agency has not put in place national standards to control their water pollution, the petition said.
Filed by the Environmental Integrity Project, the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups, the petition asks EPA to establish standards — known as effluent limitation guidelines — requiring plant owners to install treatment technologies for major pollutants.
“This is the only industry I know of that was a large industry in the ‘70s that didn’t receive national pollutant limits,” said Meg Parish, senior water quality attorney at the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit watchdog organization. “For some reason, the industry was overlooked.”