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Environmental groups, oil industry appeal Cook Inlet permit Both groups recently filed appeals of the Environmental Protection Agency’s updated Final Cook Inlet General National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit Tracy Wilson PNA Staff Writer
Oil companies and environmental groups have found unusual common ground in their opposition to an Environmental Protection Agency permit that allows discharges into Cook Inlet.
Both groups recently filed appeals of the EPA’s updated Final Cook Inlet General National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit for discharges from oil and gas operations in Cook Inlet, which was signed Feb. 25 and became effective April 1.
Trustees for Alaska, an environmental legal firm representing the Kachemak Bay Conservation Society, Cook Inlet Keeper and the Alaska Center for the Environment, filed an appeal on behalf of the groups with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, while the oil industry filed its lawsuit in the Sixth District Court in Texas.
The oil industry argues the permit’s new restrictions on the area’s 15 drilling platforms are too tough, that its added sampling and monitoring requirements for such things as toxicity will be costly and that the practice of releasing treated waste into Cook Inlet has not contaminated the water.
Is Cook Inlet polluted? The environmental groups say Cook Inlet is — but shouldn’t be — the only place in the nation where drillers can pressurize wells with pumped-in salt water and then dump the oil-tinged platform waste into the sea. They say oil companies should pump, or reinject, the contaminated waste water underground instead.
Environmental groups also reject oil industry claims that the Inlet is clean, saying elevated levels of cadmium, a heavy metal, have been found in some subsistence foods.
The Alaska Center for the Environment would not comment about the permit or appeal, referring PNA to Bob Shavelson, director of Cook Inlet Keeper. Shavelson also refused to discuss the matter and referred PNA to a Trustees for Alaska attorney, who could not be reached for comment. A phone message left at Kachemak Bay Conservation Society was not returned.
Unocal spokeswoman Roxanne Sinz said numerous studies have shown the oil industry has not polluted the Inlet in the years of its presence there.
“We do put very clean water back in the Inlet,” she said. “The water we discharge back is basically cleaner than the water we bring up.”
Sinz said a no-discharge requirement would be impractical for the Inlet because it is constantly flushed clean by the ocean.
“Based on the fact that Cook Inlet is such a dynamic piece of water, it’s something the industry has chosen to take exception with,” she said.
Sinz said the more stringent permit requirements will be burdensome both in terms of added manpower and time devoted to meeting the extra requirements.
One new requirement is that the industry must regularly test for toxicity, in addition to monitoring for metals and hydrocarbons. Sinz said toxicity testing alone would cost about $5,000 each time at each facility.
“It’s going to be costly incorporating some of the sampling and monitoring,” she said. “It’s so much more than we had to do.”
Before the new permit was issued, toxicity testing was required one time per well. Now it is required quarterly at Trading Bay and one time per year at all of Unocal’s other facilities, Sinz said.
Metals and hydrocarbon monitoring now must take place monthly at all facilities and weekly at Trading Bay.
Sinz said that pending a decision on the lawsuit, Unocal will comply with the new permit requirements.
No longer one-size-fits-all Richard Albright, director of EPA’s Region 10 Alaska operations office, said the Cook Inlet permit was first issued in 1986 and expired five years ago. It was extended administratively for awhile, but new facilities could not come online in the Inlet until an updated permit was in place, he said.
Discharges into the Inlet were allowed both because of the high volume of water flowing into and out of the Inlet and because efforts to reinject hadn’t worked, Albright said, adding that alternatives such as barging oil-platform wastes out of the Inlet were prohibitively expensive.
“It would have shut down the platforms,” he said.
Albright said toxicity requirements were added to the permit because the EPA’s previous required testing for individual contaminants did not give an accurate picture of the cumulative effect of chemicals combined in the water.
Overall monitoring requirements had to be revamped as well, Albright said.
“The old permit was one-size-fits-all,” he said. “The new permit has a tiered monitoring program tied to the waste volumes of each facility.”
Albright said the new permit covers a smaller area, has cut the allowable concentrations of oil and grease by 40 percent and tightened limits on chlorine discharges.
As far as concerns about the levels of cadmium, Albright said there is no way of knowing how much of the cadmium comes from discharges and how much originates naturally in glacial silt. He added that the cadmium showed up in snails and octopi — not in important food sources such as salmon.
“The health concern with cadmium is marginal at best and only when eaten on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “One of the questions we’re asking ourselves is how to find a way to find out how much is natural.”
Albright said a court will now have to decide just where both appeals will be heard before setting a hearing date.
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