EPA denies air pollution permit renewal for south Alabama factory near Africatown

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency struck down an air pollution permit for a chemical plant near the economically distressed area of Africatown in Mobile County, saying that the state of Alabama needed to do a better job responding to public questions about the permit.

Th EPA also noted the potential impact on Africatown, a community just north of Mobile originally founded by the survivors of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to import enslaved Africans to the United States long after the practice was outlawed.

Many families of Clotilda descendants have remained in Africatown for more than a century, but the area is now under stress from numerous sources of industrial pollution and high levels of poverty.

The EPA formally objected to a permit issued by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management last year for the UOP LLC chemical manufacturing plant in Mobile County, which is owned by Honeywell International.

Birmingham-based environmental group GASP had filed public comments challenging the permit with ADEM last year, expressing concerns about pollution in the economically distressed area of Africatown and stating that the monitoring and documentation required in the permit would not be enough to ensure compliance with the Clean Air Act.

“Permitting decisions are technically complex and already challenging for communities to understand,” said Jonathan Skinner-Thompson, an associate clinical professor at the University of Colorado’s Environmental Law Clinic. “But as EPA’s order shows, even the experts can’t decipher ADEM’s permit record.”

Skinner-Thompson, who assisted GASP in drafting the petition, said the EPA order was a step toward environmental justice for Mobile County.

In the decision rendered by EPA Administrator Michael Regan, the EPA granted parts of GASP’s petition, saying that ADEM had “failed to adequately respond to significant public comments” raising concerns about the facility, as it is required to do by law.

Regan’s decision included several directives to ADEM about responding to public comments and documenting its rationale for permitting decisions.

Lynn Battle, external affairs chief for ADEM, noted that the EPA’s objections were not related to the amount of air pollution emitted or other health hazards associated with the facility.

“The technical aspects of the permit and the permit’s ability to protect the air quality in the area were not questioned by EPA,” Battle said via email. “All of the bases for EPA’s granting of the petition required more detailed explanations and clarification in the permit and permit record.

“ADEM will address the concerns noted in the petition granted by the EPA Administrator.”

Battle said the UOP facility will continue to operate under its previous permit until the issues with the new permit are resolved.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan visits Alabama Black Belt

EPA Administrator Michael Regan visits Lowndes County, Ala. on March 5, 2022. Regan and the EPA rejected an air pollution permit for a factory in Mobile County, saying the Alabama Department of Environmental Management had not sufficiently responded to public comments on the permit.Dennis Pillion

GASP senior staff attorney Haley Lewis said the group was able to identify deficiencies in the permit by working with frontline partners in Mobile such as the Mobile Environmental Justice Action Coalition, Africatown-CHESS (Clean, Healthy, Educated, Safe, Sustainable), and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.

“We were able to identify serious problems in ADEM’s proposed decision to issue the air permit for the UOP facility,” Lewis said in a news release. “The parts of our Petition that EPA granted that are most impactful are EPA requiring ADEM to adequately respond to comments.”

The EPA cited multiple instances in ADEM’s response to public comments on the permit renewal process where documentation or rationale for ADEM’s decisions were cited as being “in the permit record,” meaning that explanations could be found by searching the Department’s collection of documents relating to the facility on its web site.

The EPA said ADEM should cite or quote specific documents when explaining its rationale when responding to public comments.

“[T]he public and the EPA cannot be expected to locate an unidentified NSR permitting decision in a permit record spanning hundreds of documents when the permit does not provide any citation to the actual NSR permitting decision,” the Agency said.

The EPA also said that “the permit record is inadequate to explain the rationale for the monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting,” of pollution coming from the facility.

UOP Honeywell did not respond to messages left seeking comment on the EPA’s decision.

The company is owned by Honeywell International and manufactures synthetic materials that are used as adsorbents and catalysts in various industrial applications, including petrochemical production and refining. According to GASP, possible pollutants of concern from the facility include particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide (CO), and nitrogen oxides (NOx).

Africatown is one of many communities in Alabama where environmental justice is a growing concern, after decades of heavily polluting industries being located in or around populations with low incomes and high percentages of minorities.

The EPA noted that according to its environmental justice database, approximately 26,711 people live within 5 kilometers of the UOP plant, of which 81 percent are people of color and 64 percent are considered low-income.

Ruth Ballard, a lifelong resident of Africatown, said she is hopeful that the decision will spark a change for her community.

“I’m happy that the EPA is providing a second look at these sorts of permits that are detrimental to public health,” Ballard said in a news release. “The status quo hasn’t been acceptable for us who live near these plants. We’ve had no say. We’ve just been dumped on for so long. This gives me hope for the future of my neighborhood.”

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