Sunoco settles pollution suit

A Southwest Philadelphia community group reached a settlement with Sunoco Inc. over alleged violations of the federal Clean Air Act at Sunoco's Philadelphia oil refinery.

The Community/Labor Refinery Tracking Committee said yesterday that Sunoco agreed to pay up to $630,000 to reduce and monitor air pollution from the 330,000-barrel-per-day refinery on the Schuylkill.

The settlement goes beyond a June consent decree between Sunoco and federal, state and local environmental authorities. That agreement required Sunoco to spend $285 million on pollution-control equipment at four of its five refineries over the next eight years.

The citizens group continued pursuing its lawsuit - originally filed in April - because it was not satisfied with the provisions of the federal agreement reached as part of a national Environmental Protection Agency effort to wrangle environmental compliance from refiners.

"I feel as though we've gotten some added levels of protection," said Joanne Rossi, president of the committee, which represents a coalition of groups from South and Southwest Philadelphia.

Under the agreement filed yesterday in federal court in Philadelphia, Sunoco will spend $500,000 on filtration equipment to reduce toxic emissions from flaring and up to $130,000 for the community group's purchase and operation of sophisticated air-monitoring equipment.

"We will get instant readings on what the community is being exposed to," Rossi said. Currently the group's "bucket brigade" must wait 10 days to get results from samples taken in five-gallon buckets.

Sunoco spokesman Gerald Davis said yesterday: "Our focus has been, and continues to be, the operation of our facilities safely, reliably, and with environmental integrity."

The community group took credit for a provision in the federal consent decree requiring Sunoco to spend at least $1 million on a backup power supply for the fluid catalytic cracking unit in the Girard Point processing area.

Sunoco said last week that it was spending $300 million to boost the capacity of that unit and beef up its ability to break down large molecules from crude oil into valuable products.

Michael D. Fiorentino, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Environmental Law Center and lead attorney for the refinery tracking committee, said the backup power supply was not typically part of EPA settlements with refineries.

Rossi said she pushed for the backup power system because frequent power outages at the refinery resulted in the flaring - or burning off - of pollutants from partially processed crude oil.

Sunoco also agreed to send the community group copies of "root cause analysis" reports about flaring incidents at the refinery, which traces its roots to 1870.

Both settlements, the federal consent decree and the local lawsuit, require the approval of federal Judge Petrese B. Tucker before they go into effect, Fiorentino said.