Racism in our country is pervasive. For many Americans, racism is simply something they watched on PBS in grade school: black and white images of people marching and being beaten and hosed down by police in archival footage. But racism exists in every nook and cranny of our society, from the most obvious police murders of black citizens to the less visible environmental racism perpetuated every day throughout the country. The Denver Post has the disturbing story that Canadian company Suncor Energy’s oil refinery has been “spewing” 8.5 tons a year of hydrogen cyanide gas over the poorer neighborhoods of Denver.
Community groups in Globeville, Swansea and Elyria this week petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to require Colorado health officials to set a limit that protects people and at least require Suncor to disclose emissions of the gas to local emergency responders.
CDPHE air quality control officials in January approved a change to Suncor’s air pollution permit that exempts the company from a federal requirement to disclose hydrogen cyanide emissions. The officials set an emissions limit of 12.8 tons a year — higher than the 8.5 tons Suncor reported it emits — for the purpose of letting Suncor use a legal loophole that lets companies with permitted limits avoid disclosure of those emissions, a state document shows.
The current administration’s EPA is led by a fake God-fearing elitist who lives an unabashedly corrupt lifestyle. He fronts a Republican movement to do away with any and all clear air and clean water regulations. There is mounting evidence, in study after study, that environmental pollution is a catalyst for numerous public health issues, and while we are all inevitably adversely affected by pollutants in our air and waterways, people of color and low-income areas are usually the canaries in the coal mine—and racism makes people blind to these warnings.
Suncor’s refinery is one of the largest sources of air pollution in metro Denver. State air quality regulators since 2013 have begun at least five cases against Suncor seeking penalties for emissions of sulfur dioxide and other toxic gases, and they’ve ordered Suncor to correct deficiencies.
In 2012, state regulators fined Suncor $2.2 million for violations related to benzene air pollution above limits from the refinery. In 2015, state regulators ordered Suncor to fix other pollution problems detected in 2013 and 2014. Suncor at one point negotiated a deal to avoid admitting law violations in return for paying a $214,050 administrative penalty.
Considering that Suncor Energy has been the site of numerous air pollution “mishaps” over the past eight years, it would seem strange that the CDPHE has allowed them the option of hiding the data of their pollution. But Suncor Energy is a powerful fossil fuel business, so powerful it is one of the many interests behind the Keystone XL pipeline. It’s been such a money-maker that people like billionaire Warren Buffet have invested heavily over the years in Suncor, Inc. While these poorer areas are fighting to find out how much they are being poisoned, other Colorado communities are launching lawsuits to make oil and gas interests at least pay their fair share of climate change costs that will be largely shouldered by taxpayers.
The City of Boulder, Boulder County, and San Miguel County announced the lawsuit Tuesday at the Boulder County Courthouse against ExxonMobil and Suncor “for their reckless actions and damages.”
“[T]he Colorado communities of Boulder County, San Miguel County, and the City of Boulder filed a lawsuit against Suncor and ExxonMobil, two oil companies with significant responsibility for climate change,” the governments stated in a joint release. “The communities have demanded that these companies pay their fair share of the costs associated with climate change impacts, so that the costs do not fall disproportionately on taxpayers.”
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They argued that the City of Boulder, Boulder County, and San Miguel would need to “adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change” and that the adaptations estimated going to “local taxpayers will reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars or more.”
As community diarist ian douglas rushlau has written, environmental justice is intertwined with racial and social and economic justice. They are all of one piece in the fight against oppression of the many by the greedy few.