EPA is looking to redo its risk assessment of an oil giant’s plan to turn plastics into fuel, which agency officials originally found could lead to 1 in 4 people in the area getting cancer from air pollution over their lifetimes.
Those “conservative assumptions … led to an overestimate of risk,” Shari Barash, director of EPA’s New Chemicals Division, wrote in a recent D.C. Circuit court filing asking the judge to approve the agency’s request to remand its prior approval order.
If approved, it would nullify the agency’s August 2022 order allowing Chevron to move forward with its plan at the Pascagoula, Mississippi, refinery. EPA then would reassess the risks and issue a new decision on Chevron’s plan.
A court approval would also stop further proceedings in a lawsuit brought earlier this year by Cherokee Concerned Citizens, a Pascagoula environmental health advocacy group.
