Suncor Energy’s Commerce City oil refinery repeatedly violated the conditions of the company’s federal pollution permits over the past five years and governmental attempts to regulate the refinery are failing people whose health is threatened by toxins being released into the air, a new lawsuit filed by three environmental groups alleges.
Lawyers with Earthjustice, which is representing GreenLatinos, 350 Colorado and the Sierra Club, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Colorado on Tuesday morning. The groups sent a notice of intent to sue to the Environmental Protection Agency in early June and there was a 60-day waiting period before the lawsuit could be filed. During that 60 days, the EPA or the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment could have filed a lawsuit to override the environmental groups’ intent.
Earthjustice and its clients documented at least 9,209 violations of the Clean Air Act by Suncor over the past five years, according to the complaint. The refinery exceeded the amount of emissions of hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, benzene, formaldehyde and particulate matter that it is allowed to release under its federal air permit.
In 2020, Suncor released approximately 20 tons of hazardous air pollutants, 500 tons of carbon monoxide, 50 tons of nitrogen oxides, 125 tons of particulate matter, 450 tons of volatile organic compounds, and 230 tons of sulfur dioxide into the air, the lawsuit alleges.
The ongoing pollution makes people in the surrounding neighborhoods sick with asthma, headaches and stomach ailments. And it interferes with their ability to exercise outdoors and let their children play in nearby parks, the lawsuit said.
The refinery, which processes about 98,000 barrels of crude oil per day and supplies about one-third of the gasoline used in Colorado, is located in a disproportionately impacted community, meaning the majority of residents are Latino, Black or Indigenous and fall into lower-income brackets that the rest of the state but bear the burden of the pollution.
The refinery’s pollutants also contribute to the region’s smog, which develops on hot summer days when volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides react with each other in sunlight.
People who live in north Denver and Commerce City, along with environmentalists, have been critical in recent years of the state’s enforcement of Suncor. They say recent settlements have not been harsh enough to force Suncor into compliance.
In February, the state health department announced a $10.5 million settlement with Suncor — the largest in state history — for repeated air permit violations between July 2019 and June 2021. Under the agreement, Suncor paid $2.5 million to the state and agreed to spend $8 million to repair its power supply system, which state regulators believe caused multiple violations.
In September, the EPA signed a consent agreement with Suncor after the refinery sold dirty fuel to Colorado gas stations. Suncor paid a $160,000 penalty for the violations, plus an additional $600,000 to fund a program to buy electric lawn equipment for local governments, schools and residents in Commerce City and north Denver.
In 2020, the company and the state reached a $9 million settlement over violations that occurred during the previous three years.
The Canadian company remains under investigation for a December 2022 shutdown that released excessive amounts of pollutants into the air and for a string of exceedances in December and January. Under the Clean Air Act, a judge could impose a maximum fine of $121,000 per day per violation.
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