Here’s a summary of the blog: ICYMI, the EPA and DEQ made Exxon do a sACP for their SEP and things got worse, WTF. After the 2011 Yellowstone River oil spill, Exxon was required to undertake a Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP). This is a bureaucratic term that refers to a situation when a company voluntarily agrees to undertake “an environmentally beneficial project related to the violation in exchange for mitigation of the penalty to be paid.” Guess what Exxon’s SEP project was? They created a Yellowstone River sub-Area Contingency Plan (sACP) and a…
On December 5, 2014 the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) sent Arch Coal a deficiency notice on their air quality permit application for the proposed Otter Creek coal mine. Arch Coal submitted an air quality permit application to DEQ on November 6, 2014. I don’t spend much time with air quality permits so I checked with some folks that do and apparently it is quite common for mining companies to receive deficiency notices on their air quality permit applications and to go back and forth with the permitting…