This story by Chase Woodruff appeared on Colorado Newsline on June 5, 2024.
Three Colorado environmental groups will sue Suncor Energy over an “egregious” pattern of violations of air pollution rules at the company’s oil refinery north of Denver, activists said Wednesday.
Using a process established by the federal Clean Air Act, attorneys for GreenLatinos, the Colorado Sierra Club and 350 Colorado filed a notice of intent to sue in federal district court after a 60-day waiting period has expired.
“We have documented at least 9,209 days of violations of regulations, consent decrees and permit provisions by Suncor in the past five years,” says the notice, filed on the group’s behalf by attorneys with Earthjustice. “Suncor’s violations threaten the health of (community) members who are routinely exposed to the polluted air emitted from the refinery.”
The sprawling Suncor facility in Commerce City is Colorado’s only oil refinery and one of its largest single sources of air pollution. It has been owned and operated by Canada-based Suncor Energy since 2005, and in recent years has been repeatedly cited by state air quality regulators for chronic violations of emissions standards, as well as high-profile incidents like a 2019 “operational upset” that caused school lockdowns and a yellow ash-like substance to fall on nearby neighborhoods.
In February, state regulators announced they had imposed a record $10.5 million penalty on Suncor for past violations, exceeding a $9 million settlement with the company announced in 2020.
Environmental groups say such penalties are simply the cost of doing business for the energy giant, which reported $2 billion in profits in the fourth quarter of 2023 alone. But legislative proposals to expand state regulators’ authority to crack down on polluters like Suncor have mostly stalled in the face of opposition from business groups.
“Suncor is not a good neighbor,” Lucy Molina, an activist with 350 Colorado who lives near the refinery, said in a press release Wednesday. “The health of my friends, family, neighbors and myself should not be sacrificed by allowing Suncor to simply get slaps on the wrist while they ignore permit limits and spew chemicals that can cause cancer, asthma, or nosebleeds, and the stress caused by the lack of enforcement and never knowing if it’s safe to let our kids play outside.”
In their notice, which was also sent to regulators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, environmental advocates group Suncor’s violations into six different categories, including excessive emissions of hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, as well as failing to control emissions of visible smoke and volatile organic compounds from the facility’s prominent gas flares.
The violations, the notice alleges, are “both ongoing and recurring, and almost certain to recur in the future absent intervention, with detrimental health impacts” for nearby residents.
“If someone was given 1,000 speeding tickets, we’d take away their license,” Margaret Kran-Annexstein, director of the Colorado Sierra Club, said in a statement. “When regulators refuse to do their jobs to hold polluting industries accountable, we have no choice but to act.”