WHITING, Ind. -- International oil-and-gas producer BP will pay more than $500,000 to the federal government as part of a legal settlement over air pollution from the company's Indiana plant in Whiting.

The Whiting facility is BP's largest oil refinery worldwide, and overall, the sixth-largest in America.

Sanghyun Lee, an attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said the plant will be required to follow new monitoring and reporting standards.

"The refinery is going to be required to install a number of new continuous analyzers that'll be tracking certain operating parameters related to soot production," Lee explained. "And they'll need to monitor those on an hourly basis going forward."

The company will provide the information to state and federal environmental agencies, and to the environmental advocacy groups behind the lawsuit. In a statement, a BP spokesperson said the company was pleased to resolve the dispute, and is "committed to safe, reliable and compliant operations at the Whiting Refinery."

The settlement was negotiated by the Justice Department, on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The lawsuit alleged in addition to violating legal limits on soot pollution, BP also failed to quickly report and correct pollution from petroleum processing units and did not continuously operate air pollution control equipment.

Lee pointed out the new reporting requirements will provide more transparency about the refinery's emissions.

"You shouldn't just look at it strictly in terms of a monetary penalty," Lee emphasized. "The goal in the citizen groups bringing this action really was to just ensure that, going forward, this facility is going to be meeting its soot limits."

The plant was constructed in 1889 by Standard Oil, and is located about 20 miles southeast of Chicago, along the Lake Michigan Shoreline. According to BP, the facility is able to process about 440,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

Wisconsin has a new Office of Environmental Justice, which is tasked with centering equity and fairness as the state proceeds with a new clean-energy strategy.

The Environmental Protection Agency reports the heaviest impacts of climate change typically fall on underserved communities who are "least able to prepare for and recover from heat waves, poor air quality, flooding and other impacts," a disparity the new office will be tasked with addressing.

Gov. Tony Evers said at a news conference Friday the office will work across state agencies to ensure an equitable response to climate change.

"The cost of doing nothing is far too high," Evers asserted. "We can't ignore the reality facing communities across our state any longer."

A report by the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts found extreme storms and flooding are among the most common cases of extreme weather in Wisconsin. Frequent and extreme flooding can contaminate drinking water and lead to outbreaks of waterborne illnesses.

According to the governor's office, the state's new Clean Energy Plan could create more than 40,000 new jobs in the state by 2030.

Pamela Ritger de la Rosa, Milwaukee program director and staff attorney for Clean Wisconsin, said it is important those jobs are also available to workers from disadvantaged and low-income communities, a goal she said the new Office of Environmental Justice will help achieve.

"Investing in these changes could really help to solve the economic crises that many individuals in our underserved communities are living with every day," Ritger de la Rosa contended. "Because these are jobs that can't be outsourced and that can't be automated."

Evers previously proposed the Office of Environmental Justice in his 2021-2023 state budget, but the proposal was stripped out by Republicans in the Legislature. This time around, the governor bypassed the Legislature by using an executive order to establish the office. According to the governor, the office will be led by a yet-to-be-named director of environmental justice and a chief resilience officer.

The latest American Cancer Society research estimates more than 139,000 Texans will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in 2022. One of the "hot spots" for industrial air pollution is the Port Arthur area, where residents are voicing their health concerns.

Southeast Texas is home to three large oil refineries and other industrial facilities. These businesses are touted as the sources of living-wage jobs.

John Beard Jr., founder and CEO of the Port Arthur Community Action Network (PACAN), said the pollution they emit can be fatal to the residents of the mostly Black community. He calls it a "sacrifice zone."

"We challenge any and all expansions of the industry -- whether it be by pipeline or new petrochemical facilities, or LNG facilities -- we challenge their air permits," Beard explained. "We also challenge them, with regard to their federal permitting on the environmental level and on the environmental justice level, as well as the community impact."

PACAN filed a complaint last August with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency against the Oxbow Carbon plant, which releases as much as 22 million pounds of sulfur dioxide into Jefferson County air. The complaint has not yet been resolved.

A recent ProPublica analysis lists Port Arthur as one of more than 1,000 hot spots in the nation for cancer-causing industrial pollution.

The ProPublica research found pollution levels of each individual facility might be "acceptable," but the combined output of multiple facilities increases cancer risk.

Beard wants the county and state to stop downplaying those risks.

"We were declared a 'cancer cluster' in 2010 by the U.S. EPA," Beard pointed out. "Basically, Port Arthur then was declared a showcase environmental city. Being given this title, we were also told that Port Arthur had more than twice the state and national average of cancer, heart, lung and kidney diseases."

The cancer mortality rate for Black residents of Jefferson County is about 40% higher than for Texans overall, according to the Environmental Integrity Project.

A group of small-town activists who challenged a power company over its plans to use fossil-fuel generators to expand capacity got a win this week. The Arizona Corporation Commission voted 4-1 Tuesday to reject the Salt River Project's plan to add 16 gas-turbine generators to the Coolidge Generating Station in Pinal County.

Residents of the historically Black community of Randolph told regulators that an existing gas power plant near their town already causes dangerously high air-pollution levels, and that adding more gas turbines could only make things worse.

Sandy Bahr, director of the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the coalition of residents and environmental groups swayed the normally utility-friendly panel.

"They heard that it was a significant environmental injustice," she said. "They saw that SRP had not looked at cleaner, cheaper alternatives to this gas plant, and they voted to deny it."

Randolph was formed after World War II to house Black and Native American cotton workers away from the cities. SRP issued a statement saying it would continue to "evaluate what generation and market options" were available to them to meet Arizona's growing need for electricity.

Bahr said it made no sense to put more gas generators onto the grid with the cost of renewable energy steadily dropping.

"No one should be building big gas plants," she said. "We should not be putting more carbon into the atmosphere, more methane into the atmosphere. We need to turn this around."

Bahr said she hopes the ruling will get the attention of other energy producers.

"It's a pretty strong message," she said. "We need to stop burning coal. We need to stop burning gas. We need to move as rapidly as possible to solar and wind, and energy efficiency."


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