Politics & Government

Lehigh on Potential Health Risk Map, Not on EPA Watch List

A National Public Radio report Monday revealed the Environmental Protection Agency has been keeping a confidential list of serious or chronic violators. Lehigh Southwest Cement was not among 464 facilities on that list.

Editor's note as of Nov. 8, at 4 p.m.: The NPR report "Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities" to which this Patch article refers, is a multi-faceted, complex story. This article refers to the first of a four-part series. The NPR map and the EPA watch list are separate. It's important to note that Lehigh Northeast is on the watch list, but not Lehigh Southwest.

Additionally, the map contains data which NPR said it "relied on analysis of four datasets relating to sources of air pollution regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: the Clean Air Act watch list, the Air Facility System (AFS), the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and the Risk Screening Environmental Indicators model (RSEI)."

Lehigh Southwest Cement was not on a secret watch list kept by the Environmental Protection Agency, which was released to National Public Radio and the Center for Public Integrity, according to an NPR report Monday.

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A searchable map on NPR.org shows Lehigh as a “high priority violator” for 58 months and in a high health-risk screening group. The scores “are based on an EPA method of assessing potential health risk in airborne toxins from a given facility,” the NPR article says.

The confidential watch list was created in 2004 as a result of criticism of the EPA for not being tough enough on polluters.

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Some on the list are serious violators, while others do not pose “significant health risks” according to the NPR article.

“According to EPA reports, when regulators don’t crack down within nine months of learning that a facility is a chronic or serious violator of the rules, the facility automatically pops onto the watch list. As a result the agency says, some facilities may end up on the list in error,” the NPR report said.

The list was kept secret in order to “avoid tipping off offenders” Grant Nakayama told NPR. Nakayama headed the EPA’s enforcements under President Bush.

A spokesman for said he was unaware of the list or map, and noted that the state’s air quality regulations are more stringent than the EPA’s and that most of the violations are paperwork-related. The company declined further comment until it could review the EPA report referenced in the NPA story.

Richard Adler, a member of Bay Area for Clean Environment (BACE), which has been critical of Lehigh’s environmental record, said the NPR report was “another confirmation” for reasons of concern.

View the EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online of Lehigh here.


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