Six refineries in Houston are dumping millions of gallons of polluted wastewater without much fine, the report says.

Lauren Elliott/REUTERS

A new report shows that 6 refineries in the Houston area are dumping a total of 55 million gallons of wastewater containing harmful chemicals into local waterways with little to no regulation from the EPA.

The Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization, released a report stating that 81 refineries across the country are dumping about 500 million gallons of polluted sewage every day.

“That’s the equivalent of about 700 Olympic swimming pools,” said Kira Dunham, the organization’s research manager. “This wastewater is full of contaminants that can corrode drinking water systems and can also be very harmful to fish.” Some of the pollutants found in wastewater include benzene, cyanide, selenium, and mercury.

Six specific refineries in the Houston area release about 55 million gallons of sewage into local waterways daily. These refineries include ExxonMobil Baytown, Pemex Deer Park, Valero Houston, Chevron Pasadena, LyondellBasell-Houston and Kinder Morgan Galena Park. The pollution is dumped into the Houston Shipping Channel, which drains into Galveston Bay and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite the danger posed by this pollution, there are very few regulations and they are rarely followed. “A significant portion of water pollution from refineries is largely unregulated by the Environmental Protection Agency,” said Tom Pelton, co-director of the Environmental Integrity Project Research Center. “The Environmental Protection Agency has never set any limits on the release of pollutants such as selenium, cyanide, benzene, mercury and many others, which are very harmful.”

When it comes to the rules set by the EPA, companies that exceed these limits rarely face financial sanctions. Of the 81 refineries included in the report, 67 reported enough pollution in 2019-2021 to exceed their pollution control permits. Of those 67, only 15 were actually fined for water pollution violations during that time period.

When they are punished, Pelton said it was nothing more than a “slap in the face”. The Phillips 66 refinery in Sweeney, Texas, about an hour south of Houston, reportedly exceeded pollution limits 44 times between 2019 and 2021. Most of these violations are related to the release of cyanide into the Brazos River. However, the company was only fined $30,000.

Pelton said he thinks a step forward for the Environmental Protection Agency would be to update its technology standards for wastewater treatment systems. Despite the Clean Water Act requiring these rules to be updated every five years, the EPA has not updated them since 1985. “We have much better wastewater treatment technology since the Reagan administration, and we think the EPA needs these better systems in our refineries,” Pelton said.

As important as the oil and gas industry is to Houston’s local economy, Dunham said she believes companies can still perform at a high level by doing their part to protect waterways, upgrade their technology and comply with regulations. “Some of these companies are making record profits,” she said. “And if they exist in our communities, I think it’s their duty to make sure they clean up [their pollution] up.”