Why Casper's Pollution Affects All of Wyoming

by Steff Kessler

Casper’s current battle against massive pollution from Amoco’s defunct oil refinery has been brewing for decades. Since the early 1900’s, the city has been Wyoming’s hub of oil refining and production. In 1913, three separate refineries were established on the present-day BP-Amoco properties along the North Platte River. By 1928, they had been consolidated into one refinery. The town grew up around and down-gradient of the facility, adding new industries and neighborhoods, nearly all located on the alluvial flood plain.

Even before the refinery closed in 1991, residents of North Casper believed that something was terribly wrong with the health of their community: adults and children were experiencing abnormally high levels of birth defects, cancers, rashes, leukemias, multiple sclerosis and other illnesses.

Studies conducted in the last decade reveal shocking levels of soil, air, surface and ground water contamination throughout downtown Casper, and the picture is still far from complete. (See map.) The Amoco refinery alone has spilled an estimated 32 million gallons of pollutants — three times the size of Alaska’s Exxon Valdez oil spill. There are many other sources of industrial pollution, and huge hazardous waste plumes in shallow aquifers underlie homes.

In spite of these frightening levels of air, soil and water pollution, local officials have turned a deaf ear to residents’ complaints about serious illnesses and plummeting property values. Instead, the City of Casper and Natrona County are busy trying to relieve the area’s largest polluter of the responsibility to clean up its toxic mess.

In September of last year, local and county governments signed a deal with Amoco. In exchange for $60 million, they agreed to support Amoco’s cleanup wishes in the court-ordered cleanup under our federal hazardous waste law (RCRA): they want to leave as much as possible of the company’s contamination in place by capping it, fencing it and zoning it industrial, enabling Amoco to walk away and never look back. Incredibly, the city and county agreed to this plan without even knowing what kind of carcinogens and toxic soup were percolating out of the Amoco properties. They obviously didn’t care.

These local officials also couldn’t be bothered to check whether or not their Amoco deal was possible under Wyoming law — and it is not. Our Wyoming Environmental Quality Act’s mission is to prevent the degradation of Wyoming’s resources, and to protect our air, land and water for future uses and generations.

But now Amoco and Casper officials want to change all that. In the 1999 General Session of the State Legislature, they launched a successful effort to change our laws by passing SF 147, the so-called "brownfields" bill. That bill, now law, is so vastly different from legitimate brownfields legislation and so blatantly designed to relieve polluters of their cleanup responsibilities that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now questioning Wyoming’s compliance with federal laws. Amoco’s successful lobbying effort may cost the state its right to administer the federal hazardous waste law, and the state may lose major federal funding contributions to our Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ’s) budget.

The ramifications of the Casper story go far beyond the borders of that city. In addition to possibly depriving the state of primacy over the administration of federal mandates, the brownfields concept promoted by Amoco could be applied to other potentially hazardous operations in Wyoming: high and low level radioactive waste facilities, industrial hog factories, uranium mill tailing sites, toxic spill sites, small mines and all sorts of other industrial operations. As a result, Wyoming may lose its enforcement ability to require pollution prevention and cleanup — especially of its groundwater — even though about 80% of our population depends on this valuable resource for drinking water.

What is even more frightening is that our state’s elected officials appear to care more about BP-Amoco’s corporate bottom line than the health and welfare of our residents and our state’s future prosperity. The Amoco site is probably the most contaminated property in Wyoming, and it sits in the midst of a large residential area on the banks of one of our state’s most important rivers. If officials allow this multinational corporation to walk away from its public health and environmental protection responsibilities, then we can be sure that the rest of Wyoming faces similar risks.

WOC remembers well former Governor Ed Herschler’s creed that Wyoming should control industrial development and growth "on Wyoming’s terms." Now our state laws may be rewritten instead on polluters’ terms. Other articles in this special edition of Frontline Report describe North Casper pollution problems, the Amoco refinery cleanup and legislative wrangling over brownfields. We also outline what citizens can do to help. Casper’s plight isn’t limited to its own backyard. Please help us ensure that it doesn’t end up in yours.
 

What You Can Do (Click Here)