Residents report smoke and sirens, Chevron calling it an “Upset Unit Incident”
“Upset” emissions – which often occur when equipment breaks down or due to “unavoidable” accidents – are occurring more often than government reports reflect, impacting residents on the fence line of industry, The Center for Public Integrity found.
Over the last five years in Texas, the nation’s refinery hub, upset events have yielded almost four million pounds of toxic air pollutants.
From 2007-11, the largest facilities across Texas spewed almost 180 million pounds of upset emissions, contamination on top of the 14.8 billion pounds of routine air emissions.
Frequently, state regulators — the primary enforcers of the Clean Air Act — fail to investigate the thousands of reports of emissions events they receive. When regulators do act, punishment is often light.
Pollution from upsets is likely even greater than the data suggests. Regulators rely on an honor system easily exploited by companies, which report their incidents.
