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Report Finds Thousands Of Petroleum Spill Sites Left Unchecked
The New York Public Interest Research Group and Toxics Targeting have released details regarding oil contamination by Exxon Mobil across the state, including a spill reported in the Port of Albany. Nick Reisman reports.
ALBANY, N.Y. -- A report released on Thursday by the New York Public Interest Research Group and the research firm Toxics Targeting found thousands of petroleum spills from oil storage facilities, pipelines and gasoline stations have not been adequately cleaned up.
The report delved into sites linked to Exxon Mobil, either through facilities the energy giant owns or has acquired through legacy ownership.
But NYPIRG’s Blair Horner insisted the company itself wasn’t being singled out and the real concern was having state lawmakers look into the remediation efforts at the state.
“This certainly underscores the need for public hearings to look into this. We’ve only identified in a sense the tip of the iceberg,” Horner said. “Hopefully it’s a big tip, but we don’t know for sure. Lawmakers should take a look at this program and see what’s going on.”
“The story is bigger than Exxon Mobil,” he added.
The study was conducted by Toxics Targeting, a for-profit environmental research firm.
“We’re not making any assertions. We’re not consultants. We’re simply making this information available,” said Walter Hang of Toxics Targeting.
Hang pointed to one alleged leak along the Olean-Bayonne Crude Oil Pipeline that stretches for 315 miles.
“When we began to compile the data for these oil and gasoline spills, I don’t think we saw any one that was on that level,” he said.
Report finds delays in oil spill clean ups in New York
NYPIRG's Blair Horner and Toxic Targeting's Walter Hang present documents on unfinished oil spill clean ups in New York.
Environmental advocates say that New York State officials could do a better job of cleaning up pollution sites caused by the fossil fuels industry that they say in some cases, have dragged on for decades. Cuomo’s environmental aides defend their record.
An Ithaca based environmental research group analyzed data on dozens of alleged toxic spills for just one company- Exxon Mobil.
Walter Hang, with Toxics Targeting, says he got the idea to file a freedom of information act request for all of the company’s sites being investigated by state officials when he was doing work last year against the proposed expansion of a gas pipeline across wide swaths of the state.
Hang says he discovered the remains of a pipeline first constructed in the 1880’s by Exxon Mobil’s predecessor, Standard Oil Company. It stretches from Olean, across the Southern Tier and into New Jersey. According to Governor Cuomo’s Department of Environmental Conservation records, least half a dozen oil releases have been reported in towns above the ancient pipeline, but according to they have not been cleaned up.
“This is very disquieting,” said Hang. “Many of these problems have been known about literally for decades, and they still haven’t been cleaned up. And that’s what you see time and time again.”
Other un-remediated sites include oil storage plants in Buffalo, Rochester, and Albany, where, in 2011, 28,000 gallons of kerosene were spilled and, according to the documents, never fully cleaned up.
In Brooklyn, one of the nation’s largest oil spills in an almost century old tank site originally owned by Standard Oil, has not yet been fully dealt with.
Toxics Targeting also found in the state environmental agency’s documents that numerous un-remedied spills could threaten groundwater on Long Island, including reports in Sag Harbor that oil was seeping up through asphalt near a boat yard that was once an oil tank farm.
Hang says the state does have strong laws for polluter liability, once it’s determined who is responsible for a spill. But he says there are no deadlines on when the state has to make a decision, and the paper trail shows years and decades of delays in the investigative process, with in some cases, references to key notes being mysteriously “lost”.
“The companies are just dragging their feet,” Hang said. “They are studying everything to death.”
Blair Horner, with the New York Public Interest Research Group, which collaborated on the story, says Governor Cuomo and state lawmakers need to “crack the ship” to get the clean ups finished faster , and should hold public hearings and if necessary, pass new laws to achieve that.
“We’ve only identified, in a sense, the tip of the iceberg,” Horner said. “This is not something that we should sweep under the rug.”
Hang says there is an existing state remediation fund for oil spills, but the money is limited.
“That’s why you see these endless negotiations year after year,” Hang said. He recommends that state government take the lead and preemptively clean up the spills and contamination, then bill they company and seek legal action against the polluters, if necessary.
The groups stress that they are not assessing who is liable here, they are merely reporting what the Department of Environmental Conservation has said in the documents, which assign no penalties to the company. The data is on the website, toxicstargeting.com.
Exxon Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesman for the DEC Sean Mahar, in a statement, defended the agency’s track record.
“DEC rapidly responds to and cleans up thousands of contaminated sites every year in every corner of the state,” Mahar said. “To ensure that the environment and public health are protected at all times while aggressively pursuing and holding those accountable for the contamination”.
Mahar did not specifically explain why the documents appear to show years of delays in some of the incidents, though DEC officials say none of these spills highlighted by Toxics Targeting are immediately threatening public health.
And Mahar personally attacked Horner and Hang, calling them “irresponsible” “headline grabbers” who are promoting “misinformation” .
Exxon Mobile concurs with the DEC's account . In a statement, William Holbrook, Corporate Media Relations Senior Advisor, said "Allegations made by NYPIRG are inaccurate. Where historical impacts exist as a result of its own or its predecessors’ operations, the company works under the oversight of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to address those impacts. Remediation of legacy sites is a broad issue for industry and ExxonMobil is an active participant. ExxonMobil takes its environmental responsibility seriously and is committed to meeting its compliance and remediation obligations."
Expected lawsuits don't follow NY fracking ban
ALBANY - Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his top commissioners braced for lawsuits when they announced plans to ban large-scale hydraulic fracturing in late 2014.
They weren't alone: Advocates on both sides of the years-long debate over natural-gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale had assumed it would be the courts -- not the governor -- that ultimately decided fracking's fate in the Empire State.
So far, they've been wrong.
As of Thursday, only one lawsuit challenging the fracking ban had been filed in the two years since Cuomo and his top commissioners officially put the ban in place.
And that suit -- filed by East Rochester attorney David Morabito -- was dealt a blow last week when a mid-level appeals court dismissed it, ruling Morabito didn't have proper standing to sue.
The lack of litigation has been a surprise to those who spent years closely following New York's highly contentious fracking debate, including Walter Hang, an Ithaca-based environmentalist who helped organize opposition to fracking in the Southern Tier.
"Absolutely, I thought there was going to be litigation," said Hang, who owns an environmental database firm. "It just never happened."
Heated battle
Major natural-gas companies began targeting areas of the Southern Tier in late 2007, aided by advances in fracking technology that made it possible to tap into tight, underground formations like the Marcellus Shale, which covers a wide swath of upstate.
It set off a heated battle between Southern Tier landowners -- many of whom were reeling from years of economic decline -- and anti-fracking advocates, who warned of the potential for damage to the state's land, water and air.
Cuomo's health and environmental conservation commissioners recommended banning high-volume fracking in December 2014, putting an end to the six-year review process that spanned two governors, countless hearings and raucous protests at the state Capitol and beyond.
The ban was officially put into place the following June.
Since then, the gas industry has declined to challenge New York's ban, instead focusing its drilling efforts in Pennsylvania and other states where fracking is allowed and even welcomed.
Previous efforts by the industry and landowners to fight fracking bans at the local-government level were unsuccessful, with the Court of Appeals -- New York's top court -- ruling against them.
Karen Moreau, executive director of API New York, the state chapter of the major gas-industry trade group, said the litigation route is "fraught with challenges."
"The companies that we represent generally are looking to develop where the states are receptive," Moreau said Thursday. "Many of those companies made business decisions at the time to continue developing elsewhere."
Hang said the lack of a challenge from the gas industry is a testament to the strength of the anti-fracking movement.
"I think that the pressure on the governor to prohibit shale fracking was so intense that the people who would normally take legal action have been deterred because they realize it's just an incredible fight," he said.
Only suit
Morabito, meanwhile, first filed his lawsuit in May 2015.
The attorney, who owns land in Allegany County, argued that the state's fracking ban is "arbitrary and capricious" because various drafts of the state’s extensive review of fracking have concluded it’s a “viable and acceptable” method for capturing natural gas.
But a state Supreme Court judge tossed Morabito's suit last year, claiming he didn't have standing to sue because he hadn't officially applied for a drilling permit.
Last week, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court agreed, unanimously upholding the lower court ruling.
Morabito said Thursday he intends to continue his lawsuit. But he will need help from the Court of Appeals.
Since the Appellate Division ruling was unanimous, he will have to seek the Court of Appeals' permission to appeal to the state's top court. Morabito says he intends to do so, and if that doesn't work, he intends to move on to the federal courts.
Morabito expressed frustration with API, questioning why the trade group didn't latch on to his lawsuit. He is representing himself.
"I was offended that API did not intercede on my behalf," Morabito said. "They have the legal ability, they have the knowledge, they have the capability."
Still, Morabito says he plans to exhaust his legal options.
"The ability to conduct high-volume hydofracking on landowner’s private properties will bring economic prosperity to the residents of upstate New York and create enormous tax revenues for the Empire State," he said.
State lax on cleaning up toxic sites left by ExxonMobil, report claims
ALBANY — Thousands of contaminated sites left by oil giant ExxonMobil and its predecessor companies have not been cleaned up because of lax action by state regulators, a new report claims.
The report from the New York Public Interest Research Group found that more than 3,500 ExxonMobil gas stations around the state and dozens of larger terminal and storage facilities have not been adequately cleaned up because the state has not done enough to press the company to do so.
One of the most notorious sites is the former Standard Oil Company facility along the Newtown Creek in Brooklyn which, dating back to the mid 1800s, has spilled an estimated 30 million gallons of oil into the creek and surrounding soil, according to the report.
“It’s long past time for analysis and talking, it’s time for action,” said NYPIRG’s Blair Horner.
Contaminants from the sites pose major threats to drinking water sources and endanger the health of neighboring communities, the report stated.
“These things have to get cleaned up, they don’t get better over time,” he added.
The report, which used government data compiled by the research firm Toxics Targeting, focused on ExxonMobil because it is one of the biggest oil companies in the world and appeared to have the most contaminated sites in New York but the state needs to get tough with all polluters, Horner said.
A spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation defended the agency and blasted NYPIRG’s report.
"DEC rapidly responds to and cleans up thousands of contaminated sites every year in every corner of the state to ensure that the environment and public health are protected at all times while aggressively pursuing and holding those accountable for the contamination,” said spokesman Sean Mahar. “Our dedicated field staff and first responders will continue their daily response to spills to keep New Yorkers safe and to suggest otherwise or discredit our staff's commitment, is an irresponsible act by a few headline grabbers to shamefully feed New Yorkers with misinformation."
NYPIRG’s Blair Horner said too much time has passed and now "it's time for action."
(NYPIRG/TWITTER)
ExxonMobil, in a statement, also slammed the report as inaccurate.
“Where historical impacts exist as a result of its own or its predecessors' operations, the company works under the oversight of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to address those impacts,” the company said in a statement. “Remediation of legacy sites is a broad issue for the industry and ExxonMobil is an active participant. ExxonMobil takes its environmental responsibility seriously and is committed to meeting its compliance and remediation obligations.”
Horner and Walter Hang of Toxics Targeting said state law requires polluters clean up contaminated sites but often the process gets bogged down in “endless negotiations” and disputes over how to do it and how much it will cost.
“Many of these problems have been known about for decades and they still haven’t been cleaned up,” Hang said.
Hang said another notorious example of contamination is a 315-mile abandoned oil pipeline built by Standard Oil that stretches from Bayonne, N.J., to Olean, N.Y., Oil releases from the abandoned line have been reported in at least a half-dozen different locations.
Regulators: Dominion may begin pipeline expansion
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted a wetland, waterbody variances and a notice to proceed to Dominion for its pipeline expansion project on Friday, a move opposed by some environmentalists who claim it will harm wetlands.
In a letter to Sara White, regulatory and certificates analyst at Dominion Transmission, David Swearingen, chief of the Gas Division at FERC, said Dominion could start construction. FERC based its decision on its review of Dominion’s Implementation Plan, filed May 12, 2016, which Swearingen said included information necessary to meet FERC's environmental conditions and pre-construction conditions.
"Dominion Transmission will begin staking limits of disturbance areas at various project locations, and will begin construction as soon as weather allows," said Frank Mack, a spokesman for Dominion Transmission.
Walter Hang, of Toxics Targeting, who opposes the Dominion pipeline expansion, says the stormwater pollution prevention plan Dominion sent to the state and Dryden is "incomplete, inadequate and factually incorrect for regulatory compliance purposes."
The pipeline traverses Tompkins and Chemung, among other New York counties. The company wants to increase capacity and add new compressor stations along the existing pipeline route.
Hang claims Dominion's New Market Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan failed to identify multiple wetlands, waterways and buffer zones within the approved and proposed revised limits of disturbance for the expansion of the Borger Compressor Station facility at 219 Ellis Hollow Creek Road. Hang showed one specific wetland area — wetland 10 — as an example of a location that may be inside a limit of disturbance and at risk of being exposed to contaminants even though maps created for Dominion did not show the two areas converging.
Hang also said the Town of Dryden earlier approved Dominion's Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan and failed to require a Special Use Permit (SUP) for the proposed expansion of the Borger Compressor Station even though earlier facility expansions required a SUP.
"We are fighting tooth and nail to require Dryden to revoke the stormwater pollution prevention plan," Hang said.
Some local officials said they consider Hang's claims to be legitimate and say more reviews should be conducted.
On March 6, Dryden Town Supervisor Jason Leifer wrote a letter to Kimberly Bose, Secretary of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, asking Dominion to revise its Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan and address pollution concerns if any inaccuracies about the pipeline project are discovered. Leifer requested FERC deny the variances Dominion requested and asked FERC to withhold further approvals for the proposed project until Dominion's data could be compared with the data from Toxics Targeting.
Frank Mack, a spokesman for Dominion, stands by the company's mapping of the Borger Compressor Station Site. He also said the company will leave wetlands untouched.
"Under the FERC’s Wetland and Waterbody Construction and Mitigation Procedures, there is no requiremen' to remain outside the 50-foot buffer of any wetland or waterbody. We are not in violation of anything, so there is either a misunderstanding or someone was misinformed," Mack said. "FERC has a process as part of the procedures. The expectation is to have a 50-foot buffer between any wetland or waterbody and any limits of disturbance. If we cannot, we ask for a variance and can obtain permission as long as we can justify it. In this case, we made our case, the FERC agreed and it approved our requested variances for workspace placement. We simply got permission to do work a little closer than the suggested 50 feet. None of the variances for this project will impact any wetland or waterbody."
Mack also dismissed Hang's claims.
"The wetland and streams were delineated by independent professional wetland scientists," Mack said. "We designed our workspace around the wetlands and presented the plan to the FERC, which approved the wetland and work limits and agreed that we would not be impacting any wetland at Borger Station."