$181,000 Fine for Ethanol Air Pollution in Albany, NY

- by Bri­an Near­ing, Decem­ber 12, 2014, Times Union

An oil ter­mi­nal oper­a­tor at the Port of Albany has been hit with a $181,000 penal­ty by the state Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Con­ser­va­tion for air pol­lu­tion vio­la­tions that last­ed near­ly a year.

Buck­eye Part­ners failed to prop­er­ly con­trol vapor emis­sions from ethanol — a corn-based bio­fu­el used as a gaso­line addi­tive — from trucks being loaded at the port, accord­ing to a DEC news release issued late Fri­day. The vio­la­tions “did not result in any mate­r­i­al air qual­i­ty impacts,” accord­ing to the release.

As part of a con­sent order reached last month, the penal­ty includes a $145,000 “com­mu­ni­ty ben­e­fit project” that Buck­eye will pay for in the neigh­bor­hood around the port. DEC will work with the com­mu­ni­ty to iden­ti­fy the project.

In the con­sent order, Buck­eye admit­ted that it failed to con­trol ethanol vapors by not ignit­ing and burn­ing them off with nat­ur­al gas as required. The fail­ure last­ed from Sep­tem­ber 2013 — just two months after DEC gave the com­pa­ny per­mis­sion to dou­ble ethanol ship­ments — to July 2014.

The prob­lem was found by DEC staffers dur­ing a May 2014 inspec­tion. In Sep­tem­ber, Buck­eye ini­tial­ly told DEC that the ethanol pol­lu­tion con­trol had been improp­er­ly oper­at­ed from Jan­u­ary 2012 to July 2014, but lat­er short­ened that peri­od to Sep­tem­ber 2013 to July 2014.

“DEC con­tin­ues to vig­or­ous­ly enforce New York’s strict envi­ron­men­tal rules and reg­u­la­tions to lim­it air emis­sions and pro­tect pub­lic health and the envi­ron­ment,” accord­ing to a state­ment from com­mis­sion­er Joe Martens. “This enforce­ment action address­es Buck­eye’s fail­ure to com­ply with its air per­mit, and will ensure that the com­pa­ny’s oper­a­tions at the Port of Albany ful­ly meet air pol­lu­tion con­trol requirements.”

The con­sent order did not indi­cate the type or amount of air pol­lu­tion that may have result­ed from ethanol emis­sions. A DEC spokesman did not return a tele­phone call seek­ing fur­ther comment.

In July 2013, DEC gave Buck­eye per­mis­sion to increase the amount of ethanol that it han­dles at the port, from 395 mil­lion gal­lons to 780 mil­lion gallons.

“Buck­eye is work­ing with DEC to ensure com­pli­ance with its air per­mit. Buck­eye became aware that a piece of the air emis­sion con­trol equip­ment was not oper­at­ing at its required effi­cien­cy. The prob­lem has been cor­rect­ed,” said Buck­eye spokesman Kevin Good­win. “Buck­eye has changed its oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures to ensure that it will main­tain com­pli­ance with its per­mit and oth­er envi­ron­men­tal laws.”

Peter Iwanow­icz, exec­u­tive direc­tor of advo­ca­cy group Envi­ron­men­tal Advo­cates of New York, said the near­ly year­long vio­la­tion is an exam­ple of DEC being too short-staffed to do required inspec­tions in a time­ly man­ner. His group has said DEC has been lax in assess­ing poten­tial envi­ron­men­tal risks from a surge in crude oil and ethanol ship­ments at the port by Buck­eye and anoth­er oil ter­mi­nal oper­a­tor, Glob­al Part­ners.

“DEC used to inspect such major facil­i­ties like this once a year, and now it is once every two years. While it is good they iden­ti­fied a prob­lem, it went on far longer than it should have, and could have exposed peo­ple to harm­ful air pol­lu­tants,” he said.

Buck­eye owns and oper­ates an ethanol truck load­ing facil­i­ty on prop­er­ty leased from the Albany Port Dis­trict Com­mis­sion. The truck load­ing rack trans­fers ethanol from stor­age tanks to trucks for distribution.

The load­ing area includes an air pol­lu­tion con­trol device, called a vapor com­bus­tion unit, that reduces hydro­car­bon emis­sions by heat­ing vapors to high tem­per­a­tures, which con­verts emis­sions into car­bon diox­ide and water, accord­ing to DEC.

Buck­eye failed to sup­ple­ment the vapor com­bus­tion unit with nat­ur­al gas, which is nec­es­sary to ensure the break­down of hydrocarbons.

Under the con­sent order, Buck­eye imple­ment­ed oper­a­tional changes to the sys­tem, includ­ing installing a tem­per­a­ture con­trol device that will shut down oper­a­tions unless a min­i­mum tem­per­a­ture is achieved, which ensures effi­cient com­bus­tion of hydrocarbons.

The com­pa­ny also agreed to pro­vide DEC with an inde­pen­dent engi­neer­ing report on the oper­a­tion of the vapor com­bus­tor and to begin con­tin­u­ous­ly record­ing the per­for­mance his­to­ry of the combustor.