Curtis’ latest bill prioritizes fossil fuel profits over people

Marathon Petroleum Company’s Salt Lake City Refinery in Salt Lake City is pictured on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

Utah Sen. John Curtis has a choice of protecting the health of his constituents, i.e. the people of Utah, or the profitability of the fossil fuel industry. So far he is choosing the latter. 

Oil refineries, petro-chemical plants and pesticide manufacturers commonly emit a long list of 188 toxic chemicals the EPA classifies as HAPs (hazardous air pollutants). Polluters that annually emit more than 25 tons of these deadly compounds in combination, or 10 tons of a single HAP, are classified as “Major Sources” by the EPA. If that seems like a lot for toxins that are dangerous in micrograms, that’s because it is. For example, plutonium and other radionuclides are HAPs and ten tons of plutonium inhaled along the Wasatch Front would kill millions of people many times over, so let’s not get overexcited about how much protection this EPA rule offers. But Sen. Curtis wants even less.

But at least Major Sources must follow rules known as Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards, i.e. they must reduce the amount of each hazardous air pollutant they emit by the “maximum degree achievable,” and comply with monitoring requirements, and make their emissions and compliance data public. 

For the worst of these common 188 HAPs — the “murderers’ row” of lead, mercury, dioxins, furans, hexachlorobenzene and PCBs — manufacturers must use MACT, even if they emit much less than the threshold for a Major Source, because these toxins can cause cancer, birth defects, and brain damage in minute concentrations. Seems reasonable and necessary to protect the public. Sen. Curtis thinks that is unfair to industry, he’s apparently not worried about what’s unfair to you or your children if you end up inhaling more murderers’ row toxins.

So Curtis wants to go back to a time when these Major Sources of toxic chemicals could qualify as lesser “Area Sources” if their emissions fell under those thresholds, and thus would no longer have to comply with MACT and the stricter rules of recordkeeping and public disclosure of emissions for Major Sources. In other words, they would be moved to more of an honor system where the public just trusts the polluters to do the right thing. The refinery or plant could switch to less costly and effective pollution controls, or operate its controls less frequently, releasing more HAPs. 

The U.S. has a long history of what that looks like — unbreathable air and rivers so polluted they catch on fire, which is why the EPA and the Clean Air Act was established in the first place. An EPA analysis concluded that over 1,000 tons of the deadliest HAPs could be released nationwide as a result of Curtis’s bill. Local communities, for example residents of North Salt Lake and South Davis counties along “refinery row,” could be prime targets.

Curtis justifies his bill saying, “The rule put forward under the former administration shut the door on progress. It told companies that no matter how much they invest to reduce harmful emissions, they would still be punished with permanent red tape. That’s not good science, it’s not good governance, and it certainly isn’t good for the environment.”

These companies Curtis is talking about are a fantasy, i.e. big polluters that are just dying to reduce their harmful emissions but were being prevented from doing so by the Biden EPA. 

The fossil fuel industry didn’t run to Curtis to reverse the rule because they were desperate to preserve good science and our environment. This is the same industry that for over 50 years has lied and deceived the public about the climate crisis that their own scientists proved they were causing. They didn’t run to the Trump administration because they had been thwarted in their eternal quest to improve global health. This is the same industry that has fought every pollution rule ever made by the EPA. This is the plastics industry that doesn’t care one iota about how they are drowning the planet in microplastics or that the critical organs of most people on earth are now contaminated with their nanoparticles laden with toxic chemicals. These companies don’t invest in reducing harmful emissions unless they’re forced to. There was no mountain of altruistic investments that were being stymied by the rule Curtis is determined to reverse. 

Sen. Curtis apparently has no idea what good science is and his acting as handmaiden to the fossil fuel industry reveals he has no interest in what is good governance. His bill is a gift to the fossil fuel/petrochemical industry and everyone who lives and breathes along the Wasatch Front will pay for it. Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment joins major national environmental groups in condemning Curtis’s resolution.