Quantcast

Big pollution penalty over Exxon's Baytown emissions affirmed

SOUTHEAST TEXAS RECORD

Saturday, December 21, 2024

Big pollution penalty over Exxon's Baytown emissions affirmed

Appellate Courts
Webp kratkajosh

Kratka | https://www.nelc.org/

NEW ORLEANS - Exxon is ordered to pay a $14.25 million pollution penalty, a federal appeal court recently held in a case over the company's Baytown refinery.

It took 12  years and a full panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for the Dec. 11 ruling to be handed down. In the end, environmental groups like Texas Citizen Lobby and the Sierra Club were victorious, though Exxon still has the option of appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case concerned emissions at Exxon's 3,400-acre Baytown complex, the largest petroleum and petrochemical facility in the United States. The plaintiffs claimed those emissions contained carcinogens, respiratory irritants like sulfur dioxide and ozone-forming chemicals.

“This ruling affirms a bedrock principle of constitutional law that people who live near pollution-spewing industrial facilities have a personal stake in holding polluters accountable for non-compliance with federal air pollution limits, and therefore have a right to sue to enforce the Clean Air Act as Congress intended,” said Josh Kratka, managing attorney at the National Environmental Law Center and one of the lead lawyers on the case.

It was alleged Exxon failed to accurately report its emissions, as required by the Clean Air Act. That law also allows private citizens and groups to bring suit for alleged violations.

The plaintiffs in this case requested penalties for thousands of days of violations be sent to the U.S. Treasury. Exxon stipulated to violations from October 2005 and September 2013 that resulted "in the unlawful emission of nearly ten million pounds of pollutants," the Fifth Circuit wrote.

At first, only a few days' worth of violations were "actionable" under the CAA. The Fifth Circuit reversed that finding and remanded back to the district court, which then assessed a $19.95 million penalty for more than 16,000 days of violations.

Back to the Fifth Circuit the case went, where the appeals court provided a "rubric" to help the district judge find which violations satisfied the "fairly traceable" requirement of standing.

This led to the $14.25 million penalty against Exxon, which is now affirmed by the Fifth Circuit. Exxon again argued the plaintiffs lacked standing, but it was shown that some of their members lived close enough to the Bayview facility to establish it.

Exxon argued because the CAA's seven penalty factors focus on past violation, that standing must be evaluated retrospectively.

"But Exxon's argument relies on the flawed premise that consideration of a defendant's past unlawful conduct alters the forward-looking nature of civil penalties," the ruling says.

"As a general matter, courts often consider past behavior in suits for injunctive relief given that 'past wrongs are evidence bearing on whether there is a real and immediate threat of repeated injury.'

"(I)t makes sense that a defendant's history of noncompliance would be relevant to setting a penalty amount that is sufficient to deter its ongoing or future violations of a specific emissions limit."

ORGANIZATIONS IN THIS STORY

More News