This week Waterkeeper Alliance filed a federal lawsuit with a coalition of environmental groups against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to set limits on harmful chemicals like cyanide, benzene, mercury, and chlorides in the billions of gallons of wastewater pouring out of U.S. oil refineries, chemical plants, and factories that manufacture fertilizer, plastics, pesticides, and nonferrous metals.

The Clean Water Act requires the EPA to limit discharges of industrial pollutants based on the best available wastewater treatment methods and to tighten those limits at least once every five years when data show treatment technologies have improved. But EPA has never set limits for many pollutants and has failed to update the few decades-old limits that exist – including limits set almost 40 years ago for oil refineries (1985), plastics manufacturers (1984), and fertilizer plants (1986).

Outdated pollution control technology standards meant that, for example, 81 oil refineries across the U.S. dumped 15.7 million pounds of nitrogen and 1.6 billion pounds of chlorides, sulfates, and other dissolved solids (which can be harmful to aquatic life) into waterways in 2021. Twenty-one nitrogen fertilizer plants discharged 7.7 million pounds of total nitrogen, which causes algae blooms and fish-killing “dead-zones” and proposed new plants will add millions of additional pounds to that load. The EPA estimates that 229 inorganic chemical plants dumped over 2 billion pounds of pollution into waterways in 2019.

Waterkeeper Alliance v. EPA  was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco by the Environmental Integrity Project, the Center for Biological Diversity, Clean Water Action, Food & Water Watch, Environment America, Bayou City Waterkeeper, Black Warrior Riverkeeper, Healthy Gulf, San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper, San Francisco Baykeeper, the Surfrider Foundation, Tennessee Riverkeeper, and Waterkeeper Alliance.  Waterkeeper Alliance is represented by the Environmental Integrity Project.

The lawsuit challenges EPA’s decision on January 31 not to update outdated and weak water pollution control technology standards (called “effluent limitation guidelines” or ELGs and pretreatment standards) for seven key industrial sectors: petroleum refineries, inorganic and organic chemical manufacturers, and factories that manufacture plastics, fertilizer, pesticide, and nonferrous metals.

Please continue to support our work to update pollution standards consistent with modern technologies that can reduce or even eliminate the discharge of hazardous pollutants like heavy metals, benzene, and mercury by donating today.  

We appreciate your support and dedication to drinkable, swimmable, and fishable water.