El Paso County for the first time will fight the renewal of a permit for Marathon Petroleum’s midtown refinery – setting the stage for a fight over the industrial facility that produces much of the region’s gasoline but remains a major source of pollution in El Paso.
The County Commissioners Court on Monday unanimously voted to spend up to $40,000 to hire an environmental expert and an outside lawyer, who will request from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality a trial-like hearing over the renewal of a 10-year permit that allows the refinery to emit air pollutants.
Despite the refinery’s big role in El Paso’s economy, the push to challenge its permit stems from the perception among activists that elected officials and business leaders for decades have powered economic growth throughout the Borderland by funneling polluting industrial activity into neighborhoods south of Interstate 10.
“It’s always a balance between what some may consider the greater good, and the impact of that on specific populations and areas,” Precinct 2 County Commissioner David Stout said. “For far too long, in my opinion, the approach has been deeply unbalanced, and El Paso leaders have been willing to sacrifice the health of certain communities. The area surrounding the refinery represents one of those.”
Marathon declined to comment on the county’s challenge, instead the company sent a statement to El Paso Matters saying, “We are not requesting an increase in currently permitted emissions with this application.”
The company said its permit renewal application “consolidates several prior (emissions) authorizations into” a single permit. VJ Smith, a manager of government and public affairs for Marathon, told the El Paso County Commissioners Court on Monday that current pollution from Marathon’s El Paso refinery is “below the allowable emissions threshold” set by the TCEQ.
Now, the county is under a tight timeline: It must hire a consultant and lawyer, have them review the case and submit a request for a contested case hearing by Jan. 19 to meet the TCEQ’s deadline. Marathon on Jan. 4 published a notice of its renewal application in the El Paso Times, and parties have 15 days after such a notice to request a hearing, according to the TCEQ.
“We need to have our attorneys help us understand and explain the process,” Stout said. “I don’t think anybody else is going to do it.”
The 96-year-old refinery that Marathon took over in 2018 converts crude oil into different products such as gasoline, diesel and asphalt. The refinery is situated just south of Interstate-10 in the Trowbridge neighborhood near Ascarate Park in City Council District 2.
The refinery emitted more than 800,000 tons of carbon dioxide and methane in 2022, two of the major greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Annual CO2 emissions from the facility previously topped 1 million tons annually, but have remained around 800,000 tons per year since 2020.
The refinery is seeking to renew the permit that allows the facility to emit 14 different pollutants, including about 3 tons of benzene annually – which the Centers for Disease Control says can cause leukemia – and hundreds of tons of nitrous oxide and volatile organic compounds, which react to form harmful ground-level ozone, among other pollutants.
TCEQ commissioners will review the county’s request in a public meeting and decide whether or not to schedule a contested hearing, according to a TCEQ spokesperson. The hearing is where El Paso County and Marathon would be able to present evidence and argue their positions in front of an administrative law judge.
Environmental organizers want the hearing in order to secure “concessions – not closure” of the refinery, said Kathleen Staudt, a professor emeritus at UTEP and a leader of the local advocacy group Community First Coalition.
“Concessions negotiated to, for example, require Marathon to employ the best available control technologies to reduce emissions, or mandate for no growth in pollution in the future,” Staudt said.
Holding a contested hearing would allow for a “battle of experts” between Marathon and El Paso County’s environmental consultant about the refinery’s impacts, she said.
A study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston that was published in 2020 found that Texas residents living within 10 miles of an oil refinery had markedly higher rates of cancer than people living further away from a refinery do. The study relied on figures from the Texas Cancer Registry and from the U.S. Census to study cancer rates near all 28 refineries operating in the state.
“We observed that proximity to an oil refinery was associated with a statistically significantly increased risk of incident cancer diagnosis across all cancer types,” the study read. “Mass industrial production and exposure to potential carcinogenic compounds including pollutants from nearby oil refineries present a public health concern.”
The study also found residents who live near refineries tend to be poorer, while higher-earning households typically live further from industrial refineries. Just over 30% of the 2.2 million Texans who live within 10 miles of a refinery had an annual household income below $37,000, according to the study. By comparison, among Texas residents living between 11 miles and 30 miles from a refinery, only 11% had household income below $37,000, according to the study.
“We really think about this as the beginning of justice for this community that has dealt with environmental injustice and racism for far too long,” said Veronica Carbajal, an environmental lawyer in El Paso who’s running in the run-off election for the District 2 seat on the El Paso City Council.
Her opponent, Josh Acevedo, on Monday urged County Commissioners to request a hearing about the permit.
“I have heard directly from residents on the health effects they have experienced from this pollution,” Acevedo said. A public hearing that highlights the health impacts of the refinery could “begin righting many of the wrongs that those living south of the freeway have suffered for many years.”
In order to request a hearing, TCEQ’s policy says a person “must be personally affected by the permit decision and that granting the permit would specifically affect the requester in ways not shared by the general public.”
Carbajal said El Paso County and residents living within one mile of the refinery have “automatic standing” to request a contested case hearing. TCEQ declined to comment on the hearing request or whether the county has standing in the case.
“If you live near, or if you work near the refinery, you have to live with what comes out of the stacks every single day,” Carbajal said.
Marathon Petroleum, which is publicly-traded, operates 13 refineries across the U.S. and employs nearly 18,000 people. The company generated a profit of $3.2 billion during the three-month period from July through September last year, according to its most recent earnings report.
Even though Marathon in its permit renewal application appears to ask the TCEQ to increase the amount of annual pollution the facility can emit by several tons, the application “is not seeking and will not result in an increase in actual allowable emissions,” Smith told county commissioners.
To be sure, the refinery is a crucial part of the Borderland’s energy infrastructure. The facility employs nearly 400 people, and it can process up to 133,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Marathon’s refinery supplies much of the fuel sold at gas stations throughout El Paso, and when an unexplained breakdown knocked the refinery offline last August, gasoline prices surged across El Paso to nearly $4 per gallon.
Meanwhile, there are fewer than 4,000 electric vehicles registered in El Paso County, which represents about half of 1% of the more than 700,000 total vehicles registered locally. And the average El Paso driver uses about 400 gallons of gasoline annually, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
For Fred Borrego, president of the San Juan Neighborhood Improvement Association – which represents the residents just west of the refinery – pushing to shut down Marathon’s facility isn’t the goal. He said he’s tried unsuccessfully in the past to have Marathon test soil samples from the neighborhoods adjacent to the refinery to see if there are any major contaminants underground after the facility has operated for nearly a century.
For now, Borrego wants to ensure Marathon will not increase pollution emitted from the refinery. Better yet, he said, Marathon will try to slash the refinery’s pollution bit-by-bit in the years ahead.
“Bring those emissions down – 3%, 5%, 10% – that’s great,” said Borrego, who runs a machine shop near Alameda and El Paso Street a few hundred yards from the refinery.
“I don’t want to see (the refinery) close. They support a bunch of employees – well paid,” he said, adding that he has friends and relatives who work at the facility. “But it’s supposed to be a win-win situation for everybody, especially the residents that live there.”
