Environmental Integrity Project Environmental Integrity Podcast

Aluminum is a key component in solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and other projects essential for combating climate change. As demand for low-carbon products grows, aluminum demand is projected to soar 40 percent by 2030. But production of this lightweight metal is energy-intensive and pollution heavy, including greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, sulfur dioxide from smelters, destructive mining practices, and mercury contamination of rivers. Nadia Steinzor, researcher and policy analyst with the Environmental Integrity Project, talks about her new report, “The Aluminum Paradox: Vital for Clean Energy, but also a Major Source of Greenhouse Gases, Air and Water Pollution.” Steinzor explains how the U.S. could boost aluminum production – and create American jobs -- while also cleaning up aluminum production, including by using cleaner fuels and installing air pollution control devices called “scrubbers” on smelting plants. The full text report can be found here at www.environmentalintegrity.org

A Dallas based company called Cox Oil and partners have received federal taxpayer funding to build a 110-mile carbon dioxide pipeline and dumping ground beneath the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Scott Eustice, Community Science Director of the nonprofit organization Healthy Gulf, and Justin Solet, a fisherman and member of the Native American United Houma Nation, discuss their objections to the "Louisiana Offshore CO2 Hub" near Grand Isle and other carbon capture projects planned for Louisiana. " “Basically, we’re rats in a laboratory,” Solet said. “And they are forcing this carbon waste injection down our throats, trying to see if it’s going to work. The history of indigenous people has always been that we have always been the white rats in the laboratories for the colonizers. Everything has been tested on us and on the Black population here." He criticized the federal government giving federal taxpayer dollars to oil companies to inject carbon into drilling grounds to force out more oil and gas, saying it's a "false solution" to climate change.

On April 11, 2023, the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) and 12 allied organizations sued EPA over its failure to regulate billions of gallons of water pollution pouring out of oil refineries and petrochemical industry factories across the U.S., as required by the federal Clean Water Act. EIP's Deputy Director, Jen Duggan, explains why we took EPA to court during an online press conference with clean water advocates from across the country, including in Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, and Louisiana. For more information, visit: https://environmentalintegrity.org/news/coalition-sues-epa-over-unregulated-water-pollution/

John Beard is a former Exxon Mobil oil refinery operator and firefighter from Port Arthur, Texas. Like his father before him, he labored his whole life in the refineries that surround this struggling city on the Gulf Coast east of Houston. When Beard finally retired after 38 years in 2017, he decided to make a radical change. He devoted himself, full time, to fighting against the air pollution, chemical threats, climate change and coastal flooding caused by the fossil fuel industry that he saw devastating the lower-income, mostly African-American community where he grew up. Working with the Environmental Integrity Project and Lone Star Legal Aid, he recently succeeded in petitioning the Biden EPA to launch an investigation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for allegedly violating the civil rights of Port Arthur residents by allowing a petroleum processing plant owned by billionaire William Koch to release tons of potentially deadly sulfur dioxide air pollution every year without any modern pollution control equipment.

Bruce Ivins is no snowflake. He’s a 62-year-old welder and lifelong farmer who grew up amid the cattle, chickens, and tractors on his family’s farm near Centreville on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

But then his neighbor built two industrial-sized chicken houses next door, and he filed a complaint with the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) because he could not tolerate the clouds of ammonia, dust, and feathers from the operation’s exhaust fans. But MDE took any action against the poultry operation next door. “Where were the people from MDE? … Someone dropped the ball on this,” Ivins complained.

He is not alone in being concerned about the lack of enforcement or oversight of the poultry industry by MDE. An investigation by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) of more than 5,000 pages of MDE inspection reports shows that 84 percent of Maryland poultry farms inspected by the state between 2017 and 2020 failed water pollution control permit requirements. But only about two percent of the poultry operations – or four total facilities, out of the 153 that failed inspections – were ever penalized by the state for breaking the terms of their pollution control permits.

When most people think about greenhouse gas emissions, they think about gas-guzzling vehicles and coal-fired power plants. They don’t talk trash. That’s not the case with Environmental Integrity Project attorneys Ryan Maher and Leah Kelly. They recently authored a ground-breaking investigative report that revealed that Maryland’s landfills are releasing four times more methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the official state estimates. When EIP’s report, “Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Maryland’s Landfills,” was released, the Maryland Department of the Environment immediately issued a statement confirming the report’s conclusions and correcting the state’s greenhouse gas inventory. Across the country, researchers are finding far higher than anticipated methane emissions from municipal landfills and their decaying food waste – and the issue is stirring government action. Maryland is now holding a series of public meetings as it looks to issue new regulations to better control methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from dumps. We take a road trip out to one of Maryland’s largest landfills – Baltimore’s Quarantine Road landfill – with Maher and Kelly to get down into the nitty gritty about calculating greenhouse gas emissions from waste – a major global issue.