Bruce Ivins is no snowflake.  He’s a 62-year-old welder and lifelong farmer who grew up amid the cattle, chickens, and tractors on his family’s farm near Centreville on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

But then his neighbor built two industrial-sized chicken houses next door, and he filed a complaint with the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) because he could not tolerate the clouds of ammonia, dust, and feathers from the operation’s exhaust fans.  But MDE took any action against the poultry operation next door. “Where were the people from MDE? … Someone dropped the ball on this,” Ivins complained.

He is not alone in being concerned about the lack of enforcement or oversight of the poultry industry by MDE. An investigation by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) of more than 5,000 pages of MDE inspection reports shows that 84 percent of Maryland poultry farms inspected by the state between 2017 and 2020 failed water pollution control permit requirements.  But only about two percent of the poultry operations – or four total facilities, out of the 153 that failed inspections – were ever penalized by the state for breaking the terms of their pollution control permits.

Frequent Pollution Violations by Maryland’s Poultry Industry, But Few Penalties

John Beard is a former Exxon Mobil oil refinery operator and firefighter from Port Arthur, Texas. Like his father before him, he labored his whole life in the refineries that surround this struggling city on the Gulf Coast east of Houston. When Beard finally retired after 38 years in 2017, he decided to make a radical change. He devoted himself, full time, to fighting against the air pollution, chemical threats, climate change and coastal flooding caused by the fossil fuel industry that he saw devastating the lower-income, mostly African-American community where he grew up. Working with the Environmental Integrity Project and Lone Star Legal Aid, he recently succeeded in petitioning the Biden EPA to launch an investigation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for allegedly violating the civil rights of Port Arthur residents by allowing a petroleum processing plant owned by billionaire William Koch to release tons of potentially deadly sulfur dioxide air pollution every year without any modern pollution control equipment.

The Civil Rights Fight Against Deadly Air Pollution

On April 11, 2023, the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) and 12 allied organizations sued EPA over its failure to regulate billions of gallons of water pollution pouring out of oil refineries and petrochemical industry factories across the U.S., as required by the federal Clean Water Act. EIP's Deputy Director, Jen Duggan, explains why we took EPA to court during an online press conference with clean water advocates from across the country, including in Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, and Louisiana.  For more information, visit:  https://environmentalintegrity.org/news/coalition-sues-epa-over-unregulated-water-pollution/

Suing EPA Over Petrochemical Water Pollution

Aluminum is a key component in solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and other projects essential for combating climate change.  As demand for low-carbon products grows, aluminum demand is projected to soar 40 percent by 2030. But production of this lightweight metal is energy-intensive and pollution heavy, including greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, sulfur dioxide from smelters, destructive mining practices, and mercury contamination of rivers. Nadia Steinzor, researcher and policy analyst with the Environmental Integrity Project, talks about her new report,  “The Aluminum Paradox: Vital for Clean Energy, but also a Major Source of Greenhouse Gases, Air and Water Pollution.”  Steinzor explains how the U.S. could boost aluminum production – and create American jobs -- while also cleaning up aluminum production, including by using cleaner fuels and installing air pollution control devices called “scrubbers” on smelting plants. The full text report can be found here at www.environmentalintegrity.org

The Aluminum Paradox

The Biden Administration recently offered leases for sale to oil and gas companies to allow drilling on 67 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. One might think that the oil and gas industry would be thrilled to win access to a vast swath of the Gulf from Texas to Florida. But the industry sued because the administration plans to block drilling on a small percentage of the underwater acres to protect a threatened species of whale: the Rice's whale. Only about 51 of these critically endangered baleen whales are believed to survive in the world. We talk to Brendan Gibbons, Editor and Writer for Oil & Gas Watch News, about the legal battle over drilling and conservation. We also tackle a broader subject:  Why the Biden Administration, which pledged to cut back on drilling to fight climate change, is allowing record levels of oil and gas extraction in the U.S. You can read Brendan’s full article here.

Offshore Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico vs. an Endangered Species of Whale

Next week, Texas voters will be voting on a constitutional amendment that would provide $10 billion in taxpayer funding to build more natural gas-fired power plants in the Lone Star State. The proposal, called “Proposition 7,” would mean a new public subsidy for fossil fuels at a time of climate crisis, in a state with a powerful oil and gas industry that already gets most of its electricity from natural gas. Critics argue that the subsidy would give an unfair market advantage over against cheaper and cleaner power sources, such as solar farms or wind turbines. We interview Adrian Shelley, Texas Director of Public Citizen, about the proposal and why he thinks the new “Texas energy fund” would be wasteful and counter-productive.

Taxpayer subsidies for natural gas-fired power plants on the ballot in Texas

This week we interview Judith Enck, President of Beyond Plastics, to learn more about the organization's new report, “Chemical Recycling: A Dangerous Deception,” that takes aim at a growing form of plastics reprocessing called “advanced recycling.” While often portrayed as a climate-smart solution to plastics waste, the truth surrounding “advanced recycling” is that it is an energy-intensive, heavily polluting industry. Despite industry claims, chemical recycling produces a dirty form of fuel and chemical byproducts that require expensive refining processes to convert them into new plastics. It’s more of a public relations campaign designed to prolong the life of fossil fuel-based plastics, according to Beyond Plastics’ latest report.

What is Chemical Plastics Recycling?  It’s a Dangerous Deception, a New Report Reveals

Last month, the Biden Administration’s U.S. Forest Service proposed a regulatory change that would allow companies to bury in national forests carbon dioxide waste captured from petrochemical plants and other industries to keep the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. Critics say the proposal would grant fossil fuel and carbon disposal companies access to public property for decades, possibly forever, in support of flawed technology. It could also put visitors to national forests at risk, if the gas leaks out. This week, we interview Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, who represents a coalition of groups opposing the dumping of industrial waste on public lands. The public can comment on the proposal through this link: https://act.biologicaldiversity.org/Bo6wwRQrtkiwMmq49V9IxA2

Biden Administration proposes to allow disposal of carbon waste beneath national forests

Few people know it, but taxpayer dollars are going to help pay for the manufacture of the single-use plastic that is trashing our planet.  A new report by the Environmental Integrity Project, “Feeding the Plastics Industrial Complex: Taking Public Subsidies, Breaking Pollution Laws,” reveals that two thirds of the 50 plastics manufacturing plants built or expanded in the U.S. since 2012 received a total of $9 billion in state and local government subsidies and tax breaks. These plastics companies often promise to protect the environment to win these government subsidies. But then, 84 percent of them violate their air pollution control permits – including by releasing dangerous chemicals like benzene, a carcinogen. Who pays for these tax breaks for pollution? Two thirds of the people who live around these factories are people of color, and they are being hit twice -- first, by losing out on billions in revenues that could otherwise improve their schools and communities. And second, by having to breathe in hazardous air pollutants, in violation of the law. We interview Erin Hansen, an analyst with a nonprofit advocacy organization, Together Louisiana, about these tax breaks in Louisiana. And we also talk to environmental activists who live in the shadow of Louisiana plastics factories: James Hiatt and Roishetta Ozane.

Investigation reveals billions in taxpayer subsidies to U.S. plastics manufacturers

Louisiana is one of the hotspots in the U.S. for sequestration projects that trap carbon dioxide (CO2) underground to protect the climate. Companies are planning 58 storage wells at 24 sites across the state. However, experts say a century of oil and gas drilling has left thousands of pathways for CO2 to squeeze its way back out into the atmosphere, potentially eroding any climate benefits and creating a safety threat for nearby residents in the event of a massive rupture or leak. Two recent reports examine the threat from the more than 186,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in Louisiana.

Abandoned oil and gas wells pose threat to carbon storage projects

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued several earth-shaking decisions recently – including one that overturned decades of precedent about the authority of the EPA to make decisions about pollution. What will the court’s rejection of the 40-year-old “Chevron deference” mean for organizations fighting for clean air and clean water? And what was the Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council case that started the precedent of deferring to federal agencies on questions left unclear by the law? We interview David Bookbinder, the Environmental Integrity Project’s new director of law and policy and a veteran environmental attorney who formerly served as the Sierra Club’s chief climate counsel. Bookbinder initiated and managed a landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Massachusetts v. EPA, which confirmed the power of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the federal Clean Air Act.

What will the Supreme Court’s Rulings Mean for the Environment?

President Trump won election this month in part by convincing voters that he could bring down consumer prices for groceries, gasoline, and other products by expanding oil production. We interview an expert on the oil industry and climate change, Professor Robert Kaufmann of Boston University, who debunks this claim. Petroleum is traded on a global market, Kaufmann explains, and so one president of any one nation cannot unilaterally bring down oil and gasoline prices – because other countries, like Saudi Arabia, could cut back production even if U.S. companies boosted oil production. Kaufmann also argues that President Biden’s signature legislation on the climate, the Inflation Reduction Act, could survive Trump’s regulatory rollbacks and attacks on green programs because so many of the clean energy projects the law funds are located in Republican districts, whose representatives won’t want to lose local funding and jobs.

Debunking Trump’s Claims That “Drill Baby Drill” Will Lower Consumer Prices

Last year, environmentalists criticized the Biden Administration’s decision to approve the Willow Project, a proposal by ConocoPhillips to produce up to 600 million barrels of oil on the North Slope over 30 years. Not far away, Australian company Santos is planning a similar proposal called the Pikka Project, which would produce about 400 million barrels over 30 years. That project has gotten much less attention than Willow in the Lower 48. Philip Wight, an environmental historian at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, explains the context behind these projects and explains why companies are still drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, even as oil production has boomed in other states. He also details how climate change is affecting the industry and Alaska as a whole, including causing some bizarre issues for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which delivers oil from the North Slope to refineries and export terminals.

Why Drilling For Oil in the Alaskan Arctic is So Controversial

One of President Biden’s signature achievements to combat climate change has been the approval of billions of dollars in federal subsidies to encourage carbon capture and storage. It sounds good: capturing carbon dioxide from industry, then piping it underground so it can’t heat the planet. But most of these projects don’t really help the climate. They provide taxpayer money to oil and gas companies, who use captured carbon to force more oil and gas out of the ground. We interview an expert on carbon capture, MIT Professor Charles Harvey, who was the scientific advisor to a pioneering carbon capture company who discovered, firsthand, that the technology was not economically viable. We ask Professor Harvey: What would happen if the incoming president, Donald Trump, a climate change denier, followed the advice of his allies at Project 2025 and killed all federal funding for carbon capture?

Billions of Dollars in Taxpayer Subsidies Support Carbon Capture. Is it a Massive Waste?

When President Trump takes office, one of the first things he is expected to do is to accelerate the approval of permits to drill for oil and gas on federal land.  But this is likely to have little to no impact on the production of fuel from federal lands. Why? Because there are already more than 6,000 approved drilling permits and millions of acres of leases owned by oil and gas companies on public lands that are not being used. We explore this curious phenomenon with an oil industry veteran: Mark Finley, former chief U.S. economist with BP who is now an independent expert and fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

Oil Veteran is Skeptical of Republican Plans to Produce More Oil by Fast-Tracking Permit Approvals

Although he did not mention it during his campaign, since taking office, President Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested the U.S. should buy or seize Greenland – the largest island in the world, and part of the Kingdom of Denmark. A U.S. Geological Survey study estimates that there are 31 billion barrels of oil in eastern Greenland, and beneath the ice are also rare earth metals needed for electric cars, batteries, and computers, as well as uranium. We talk to two Greenland experts, Paul Bierman, a professor at the University of Vermont (pictured) and Anne Merrild, who grew up on the island and is now a professor at Aalborg University in Denmark, about what role minerals and oil are playing in the politics – and potential take-over – of Greenland. Local elections on March 11 may help decide whether prohibitions remain on the extraction of oil and gas and uranium on the island. 

The Role of Minerals and Oil in President Trump’s Desire to Seize Greenland

President Trump won election to his second term promising an “American Energy Dominance” agenda that would stimulate more oil drilling and cut the price of energy in half for consumers.  Despite pledges of dramatic regulatory cuts, after his first quarter in office, neither is happening. Drilling is down compared to the first quarter of 2024 and gasoline prices are up, according to data from the Trump Administration. Why is “Drill, Baby, Drill” backfiring?  We ask Boston University professor and oil industry expert Robert Kaufmann about the impact of Trump’s tariffs and economic slowdown on the oil industry.

Why Trump’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” Agenda is Backfiring, with Less Drilling but Pricier Gas

State legislatures are seeing a wave of industry-backed bills that would ban or restrict the public’s ability to test for air pollution in local communities. Last year, the Louisiana legislature effectively banned community groups from using their own air monitoring to warn residents about pollution or publicly advocate for cleanups. Violators can face penalties of up to $32,500 per day, plus $1 million for intentional violations. Earlier this year, Kentucky passed legislation that attempts to restrict what evidence state and local environmental regulators can use when enforcing pollution regulations. Morgan King, climate and energy program manager with the West Virginia Citizen Action Group, joins us to discuss her work building up an air monitoring network around West Virginia, where industry-backed legislation to restrict monitoring has failed twice over the last two years.

The Attack on Community Air Monitoring in State Legislatures

The $4 trillion Republican spending bill, signed by President Trump on July Fourth, is packed with giveaways to the oil and gas industry. These include tax breaks, opening more public lands and offshore acres to drilling, and a lowering of royalty rates that oil and gas companies must pay for extracting fuel from government lands. Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful” bill is also full of ugly ironies, including this one: While Trump campaigned on lowering energy prices for consumers, his spending bill is expected to raise average household energy costs by about $280 per year, in part because it slashes support for wind and solar, which are some of the cheapest forms of energy.  To break down all the handouts to the fossil fuel industry, we interview Josh Axelrod, senior program advocate at NRDC. (Photo by iStock)

Breaking Down the Fossil Fuel Handouts in Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill”

On this week's podcast we interviewed EIP's visiting scientist, Dr. Kimberly Terrell. Facing a gag order imposed on her by Tulane University leadership because her study on racial discrimination in petrochemical industry jobs reportedly angered Louisiana’s governor, Dr. Terrell faced a new decision - remain silent and sacrifice her scientific integrity, or resign in protest, speaking out publicly about an important issue and shining a light on the pressure campaign to keep her silent.

Louisiana Scientist Stands up to Censorship of Her Study Critical of the Petrochemical Industry

What is the environmental impact of the food you eat?  We investigate the water pollution produced by the meat processing industry.  The nonprofit, nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project examined federal records for 98 large slaughterhouses across the U.S. that discharge into rivers and streams and found that 75 percent of them violate the federal Clean Water Act by dumping illegal amounts of fecal bacteria, nitrogen and other pollutants -- with little enforcement and few penalties.

Water Pollution from Slaughterhouses

The Environmental Integrity Project examined two decades of EPA data and concluded that environmental enforcement under the Trump Administration in 2018 set record lows for civil penalties against polluters, inspections, and people charged with environmental crimes.  In our report, “Less Enforcement: Communities at Risk,” we give 10 examples across the U.S., from Louisiana to Minnesota, of well-documented, major environmental violations that the administration has so far failed to crack down on that threaten the health of local communities.

EIP Executive Director Eric Schaeffer, former Director of Civil Enforcement at EPA, offers his analysis of the trend. He also discusses his testimony on February 26, 2019, before a U.S. House oversight committee investigating the drop. 

You can find a text version of our full report here: http://www.environmentalintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/EIP-Enforcement-Report.pdf

(Photo from Karen Kasmauski/International League of Conservation Photographers)

Environmental Enforcement under the Trump Administration

Environmental Enforcement Under the Trump Administration

Coal's Poisonous Legacy

One of the biggest sources of water pollution in the U.S. is runoff pollution from farms and livestock operations. But a new Environmental Integrity Project study found that only 19 percent of livestock farmers in Virginia's two largest agricultural counties are fencing their animals out of waterways, creating unhealthy bacteria levels and algal blooms in the Shenandoah River and Chesapeake Bay.

Livestock Fencing and Water Pollution

Juan Flores grew up near Houston, the son of a refinery worker who repeatedly warned his children of the risks of going into his profession...and then died on the job. Juan became a community coordinator for nonprofit Air Alliance Houston, and now works to protect the people of Baytown and other neighborhoods from air pollution, fires, and explosions. A new report by the Environmental Integrity Project reveals that minority neighborhoods like this one are put at greater risk by severe budget cuts to pollution control programs at state environmental agencies in Texas and across the U.S.

Living with Chemical Plant Death. One Family's Story.

The poultry industry is growing in the Chesapeake Bay region, with a new generation of mega-sized chicken houses and more ammonia air pollution.  On Virginia’s Eastern Shore, Carlene Zach, a 60-year-old retired postmaster, and her husband Peter Zach, 62, a lineman for an electric company, were in good health until a poultry farm opened next door with 24 airplane hangar-sized buildings holding a million chickens. Since then, the ammonia and fecal dust blown from the exhaust fans has drifted their windows, triggering incessant coughing, sneezing, and sore throats. After struggling to find a solution, they decided they had no option but to abandon their dream house. They sold their home for a $40,000 loss and moved to the mountains, feeling  betrayed and abused by the industry's march over America's farmland.

Fleeing From The March Of Industrial Agriculture

Anne Rolfes is the Founding Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a nonprofit group that, for the last two decades, has been campaigning for public health protections for mostly lower-income families living just beyond the fences of chemical factories.  Her advocacy for air pollution controls has long made her a target for Louisiana’s powerful chemical industry. But recently, her protests against what would be North America’s largest plastics factory, proposed by the Formosa Plastics company atop a site with an historic slave burial ground in the African American community of St. James, Louisiana, provoked more than just the irritation of the political establishment.  The Baton Rouge Police Department charged Rolfes with terrorism – a felony – for placing, as part of a peaceful protest of plastics industry pollution, a box with plastic waste from a Formosa plastics plant on the porch of a plastics industry lobbyist.  Civil liberties experts say the charges are part of a national pattern of law-enforcement agencies and even the Trump Administration attempting to criminalize dissent and peaceful protests.

Terrorism Charges Against Protester Part Of A National Pattern

Charlie Reeves grew up in public housing in South Philadelphia near the oldest and largest oil refinery on the East Coast, the Point Breeze Refinery, later owned by Sunoco and then Philadelphia Energy Solutions. Back in the 1970s, his father led public protests at City Hall and Sunoco headquarters over what he was convinced was toxic air pollution from the plant that was harming his family’s health. But authorities dismissed the protests and assured the neighborhood that everything was fine. Those reassurances didn’t ring true – especially when Charlie, his mother, and several neighbors were diagnosed with cancer, and Charlie’s mother died.  But the neighborhood could not do anything to stop the refinery, because they had no evidence.  Finally, the refinery closed on June 21, 2019, when a massive explosion and fire at the plant sent a fireball into the sky and rattled windows for miles around.

To Charlie Reeves, the most devastating fact was what he learned six months later, when the Environmental Integrity Project, working with NBC National News, revealed that air pollution monitors ringing the refinery had registered benzene – a known carcinogen — at the plant’s fence lines at concentrations averaging more than five times the federal limit (EPA’s “action level” for benzene) for an entire year. That meant that local residents like the Reeves family could have been exposed to excessive cancer risks for a long time – including months after the explosion, and potentially months or years before the fire. Charlie is determined to use the new benzene air monitoring data collected by the Environmental Integrity Project to fight for environmental justice for his lower-income neighborhood. Southwest Philadelphia is one of 13 communities across the country that face potential cancer risks from excessive benzene air pollution detected at the fencelines of nearby oil refineries, according to EPA data produced for the first time in 2019 because of a lawsuit filed by the Environmental Integrity Project and allies to help protect communities in Texas and Louisiana.

A Family's Battle for Life Against an Oil Refinery

As the incoming Biden Administration makes plans for its environmental agenda over the next four years, we interview a national leader in the environmental justice movement about how the White House can prioritize protecting minority and lower-income communities that have long been neglected.  Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali, a Vice President the National Wildlife Federation, worked for 24 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency until March of 2017, when he resigned because the Trump Administration wanted to eliminate EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, which Dr. Ali helped to create. He started working on social justice issues at the age of 16, joining EPA’s efforts as a student. Dr. Ali talks about the need to tackle COVID-19 as a justice issue and broadly expand the scope of federal efforts to reduce air pollution and improve water quality not only in urban neighborhoods, but also rural areas across the U.S. According to news reports, Dr. Ali is among those being considered for a high-level environmental role in the Biden Administration, perhaps directing the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Talking Covid and the Future of Environmental Justice with Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali

President-Elect Joe Biden has picked North Carolina’s top environmental regulator, Michael Regan, as his choice to run the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. How has Regan performed in his job as Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality?  And what challenges will he face rebuilding an EPA devastated by deregulation, staffing cuts, and control by industry lobbyists during the Trump Administration?  We interview three experts:  Derb Carter, Director of the North Carolina office of the Southern Environmental Law Center, who has extensive first-hand knowledge of Regan’s track record in North Carolina; Eric Schaeffer, Executive Director of the Environmental Integrity Project and former Director of Civil Enforcement at EPA, who has insights into how to get the EPA back on track; and Betsy Southerland, former Director of Science and Technology in EPA’s Office of Water.

A Look at Biden's Pick to Run EPA, Michael Regan, and the Challenges he Faces

We discuss important environmental issues in the news and investigative reports by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project.

Environmental Integrity Podcast

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