The Colorado agency that determines how much pollution companies can send into the air has released a new draft of a permit for Suncor Energy’s Commerce City refinery after the Environmental Protection Agency rejected an earlier version last year.
Most of the revisions to the permit for Suncor’s Plant 2 were highly technical, and none change the amount of pollution Suncor is allowed to send into the air. The revisions — now subject to a 30-day public comment period — amount to about four pages of rules in a 400-page document, said Michael Ogletree, director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Air Pollution Control Division.
“We are excited to get these permits out the door and to have the most effective permits possible,” Ogletree said Monday.
However, the environmental organizations that petitioned the EPA to kick the permit back to the state were lukewarm toward the latest changes. It was unusual for the EPA to agree with the environmental groups that objected to the permit and to basically tell Colorado to try again, said Ian Coghill, senior attorney for Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain office and the lead attorney who represents five groups in the petition.
Some revisions were good, but it appears the Air Pollution Control Division is arguing to defend its original decisions in some areas rather than make the changes environmental advocates wanted, he said.
“I’m still digging through this,” Coghill said of the latest document, which was released Friday afternoon. “Most petitions to the EPA are denied. The fact the EPA granted our petition at all is notable.”
The Commerce City refinery operates under two federal Title V air permits, which are used to regulate the heaviest polluters in the United States. The other permit, which regulates Plants 1 and 3 at the refinery, was approved by the EPA on July 8. The Plant 2 permit has undergone two objections and twice has been sent back for revisions after its initial approval on Sept. 1, 2022.
Both permits were long overdue when the state rewrote them. Plant 2’s permit was supposed to have been renewed 11 years ago, for example. Both are up for renewal five years after their original approval date.
“They are complicated permits,” Ogletree said.
Efforts Monday to reach Suncor officials in Calgary, Canada, where the company is headquartered, were unsuccessful.
Earthjustice, which represents the Elyria-Swansea Neighborhood Association, and Cultivando, GreenLatinos, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club petitioned the EPA last year to reconsider the permit application and to require Colorado to rewrite at least portions of it. 350 Colorado, another environmental advocacy group, also filed a petition for reconsideration.
In July 2023, the EPA agreed with Earthjustice and 350 Colorado. It has taken more than a year for state health department staffers to redo the permit. They were not tasked with rewriting the more than 400-page document wholesale, but were required to revisit several sections of the document.
“It has been a constant source of irritation,” Coghill said of the lengthy permitting process.
Ogletree said the Plant 2 permit was in line behind the Plant 1 and 3 permit after the EPA asked his division to take a second look. The staff adopted the EPA’s recommendations for Plant 2 in the Plant 1 and 3 permit to avoid delays for that one, too, he said.
Coghill said one positive change in the latest permit application is the state agreed to adopt recommendations to prevent pollution violations made by a third-party consultant, who produced a report after a settlement between the state and Suncor several years ago.
“Clearly Suncor needs those requirements because they keep violating their permits,” he said. “The EPA agreed with us.”
One example from the consultant’s recommendations that will be adopted is a requirement to keep a manual for malfunctions online so workers can quickly access it. Previously, there was a hard copy and workers had to go physically locate it to troubleshoot problems, Coghill said.
Many of the required changes are “hyper-technical,” he added.
Ogletree said other revisions reflect changes in Colorado law that address air pollution monitoring and reporting.
The state, however, did not make some changes that environmentalists had hoped to see and instead argued to defend its decisions in earlier versions of the permit.
For example, the environmental groups and the EPA asked the state’s air pollution division to revisit previous modifications made to equipment at the plant and determine whether new requirements should be put in place.
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In the past, the state did not require Suncor to get permits every time it performed maintenance or upgraded equipment at the plant. The Air Pollution Control Division previously has said it did not have the authority to review and approve those plans because it categorized them as minor modifications.
However, the environmental groups argued that a series of minor modifications should be bundled and considered as one major modification project, specifically when it deals with the refinery’s smokestacks that burn off hazardous fumes through flaring.
“The state is continuing to justify that these are separate projects,” Coghill said. “That I don’t really get.”
Earthjustice, Colorado 350 and others in the public have 30 days to comment on the latest revision. They also can request a public hearing before the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission. Once those steps are finished, the permit goes back to the EPA for another 45-day review.
Suncor’s draft permit can be viewed at cdphe.colorado.gov and comments can be sent to cdphe_apcd_airpermitcomments@state.co.us.
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