Air Products LLC has agreed to pay $1.485 million in civil penalties to resolve hazardous waste mismanagement violations at its Pasadena, Texas, chemical manufacturing facility, according to a joint announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the state of Texas. The settlement resolves Air Products’ Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) violations in transferring spent acid to the neighboring Agrifos Fertilizer Inc. manufacturing plant.
As part of the settlement, Air Products has agreed to continue to manage the spent acid onsite and not ship it to Agrifos or any other facility not authorized to accept it. Air Products is currently in compliance with the RCRA requirements specified in the settlement. Air Products has agreed to notify EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in the event that the spent acid is either disposed of or sent off site.
“This settlement eliminates the disposal of spent-acid waste from the Air Products facility into the environment,” said Ignacia Moreno, DOJ assistant attorney general. “By stopping this source of pollution, this settlement will reduce risks to human health and the environment.”
Air Products, a manufacturer of chemicals used in the manufacture of polyurethane and hydrogen gas, operates its facility on a 105-acre tract of property adjacent to the Agrifos fertilizer plant. For many years, the company purchased sulfuric acid from Agrifos and returned a spent acid stream that Air Products had generated in its operations. In April 2006, inspectors from EPA observed that the return acid stream was a spent acid that was being used in part to make land-applied fertilizer. Agrifos is not authorized to accept hazardous waste from other facilities.
“We are concerned that wastes from mineral processing and associated fertilizer production can pose a serious risk to our nation’s drinking water and the health of families,” said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “And we’re just as concerned when contaminated wastes from other facilities find their way to these operations. EPA is working to minimize or eliminate risks to communities and the environment from illegal hazardous waste operations at phosphoric acid and other high risk facilities.”
Air Products instituted modifications that will reduce the levels of contamination in the spent acid, as well as the construction of a $60 million regeneration plant that will stop the acid waste stream altogether. The regeneration plant construction was part of operational changes that were initiated prior to settlement negotiations and became effective as negotiations progressed.
The proposed settlement agreement, lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, is subject to a 30-day public comment period and approval by the federal court. Air Products acknowledged the settlement and said it would be divided $1.35 million to the U.S. and $135,000 to Texas.
Air Products said it has a 30-year commercial relationship with the neighboring facility whereby both companies exchanged sulfuric acid through dedicated enclosed pipelines as part of an acid exchange process benefiting both companies’ production operations. It believed the acid it exchanged was legitimate product that its Pasadena plant had been designed to produce. The company said in 2008 that the government told it that it did not view the acid as a product, but as a waste, and further discussions led to the settlement with no admission of wrongdoing. Air Products said the acid product status had never been noted before by any regulatory agency in prior facility inspections.
The company said it fully cooperated with the government and believed that it was in full compliance. It said it was in its best interest to settle so as to avoid litigation costs.
Air Products said the long-term viability of the neighboring facility (Agrifos) prompted it to decide to build its own sulfuric acid concentration plant, and that this was prior to receiving any government notification regarding the acid exchange. Air Products says the new plant improves the security of supply of raw materials and services the Pasadena operation by modifying the sulfuric acid use in the plant. The acid exchange arrangement ended when the new plant came up in early September 2009.
This case is part of EPA’s National Enforcement Initiative for Mining and Mineral Processing. Although Air Products does not conduct mining or mineral processing, the DOJ said it sent the spent acid stream to a facility that does – the Agrifos fertilizer plant. Mining and mineral processing facilities generate more toxic and hazardous waste than any other industrial sector, based on EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory. If not properly managed, these facilities pose a high risk to human health and the environment. Since 2003, EPA has been investigating 20 phosphoric acid facilities in seven states.
In a national enforcement effort, EPA has focused on compliance in the phosphoric acid industry because of the high risk of releases of acidic wastewaters at these facilities, which can cause groundwater contamination and fish kills. A 2007 incident at the Agrifos phosphoric acid facility in Houston released 50 million gallons of acidic hazardous wastewater into the Houston Ship Channel, and in 2004, 65 million gallons from the Mosaic Riverview facility were released into Tampa Bay, which led to a massive local fish kill.