Louisiana vinyls plant wants to build new hazardous waste incinerators. Activists are concerned.

Westlake Vinyls is proposing to build two new hazardous waste incinerators at its plastics complex in Geismar that the company says would promote efficiency and circular recycling of energy and resources with minimal environmental impact, according to state regulatory papers.

In addition, if the furnaces are built, Westlake Vinyls would no longer have to ship its toxic waste by rail and truck to off-site incinerators, reducing the risk of accidental spills, cutting diesel air emissions from trucks and train locomotives, and reducing traffic delays on the tracks, company officials say.

But the new facilities would boost toxic and other air emissions in a heavily industrialized part of Ascension Parish that already has an elevated lifetime cancer risk from existing pollution, state permit and federal air data show.

The new furnaces could also occasionally receive shipments of similar hazardous waste from sister Westlake facilities “to accommodate occasional equipment outages,” though “under normal circumstances, this project will greatly reduce the hazard” of accidental transportation spills, Westlake officials told state regulators this spring.

Some advocates have questioned whether the beneficial tradeoff Westlake is touting is really worth the environmental cost.

“There’s significant increased emissions for a bunch of stuff. It’s really hard for me to see” how the proposed benefit “outweighs that” increase, said Abel Russ, a senior attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project who previously worked as a toxicologist.

The new acid recovery furnaces, which do not exist at the Geismar plant currently, would incinerate the “liquid heavy ends” left from the manufacture and distillation of ethylene dichloride. The heavy ends are classified as a hazardous waste due to their toxicity, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says.

Ethylene dichloride, a toxic chemical that’s a probable human carcinogen, is an important feedstock for Westlake’s production of vinyl chloride monomer, a key chemical used to make PVC plastic.

Polyvinyl chloride is widely used for industrial, commercial and consumer purposes, including for packaging, plumbing, siding and window frames.

Handling up to 5 million gallons of hazardous waste annually, these new acid recovery furnaces would destroy the heavy ends and several other hazardous wastes. Their combustion with natural gas would produce process heat and recreate hydrochloric acid for future production, permit records say.

In addition to the new furnaces, the expansion would require eight storage tanks. Six new ones would be built 18 feet tall with a diameter of 14 feet to hold the new hydrochloric acid. Two existing tanks would be repurposed to hold more than 1 million gallons of the hazardous heavy ends.

The planned furnaces would be required to meet stringent federal air standards for hazardous waste incinerators that are tougher than more typical U.S. Clean Air Act limits.

The furnaces also are being geared to meet new EPA controls proposed for hazardous incinerators and would destroy emissions routed from existing process vents, the company says.

“This demonstrates Westlake’s ongoing commitment to adhere to regulatory requirements and continuous improvement,” said Chip Swearngan, Westlake’s spokesman.

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality is currently considering permits for the facility and does not comment on pending applications. A public hearing on the facility in February drew little public interest, while letters notifying local officials about the potential for the hazardous incinerators went out last month, agency records show.

Air pollution to increase

Still, the new facilities would boost non-toxic air emissions that affect respiratory and cardiovascular health, sharply increase a few existing toxic emissions and add new heavy metal, dioxin and furans emissions, common toxic byproducts of burning fossil fuels or of hazardous incineration.

Based on the proposed permit limits, the facility would have permission to emit arsenic, chromium and mercury into the air to levels that would have made it among Louisiana’s largest in 2023, federal toxics reporting data show.

Most of those metal emissions would be in the few dozen pounds per year; many other kinds of air emissions are measured in the dozens of tons.

But Corinne Gibb, a research chemist and air monitoring coordinator for the environmental group Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said even small amounts of some metals can be significant because of their high toxicity.

“Typically, one pound of chromium 6 is equivalent to a ton of benzene in toxicity,” Gibb said.

Benzene is a well-known human carcinogen often tied to oil refining and other petroleum-based industrial processes.

Russ, the EIP attorney, noted that hydrochloric acid emissions would rise by as much as 900% and chlorine emissions by as much as 300%.

Those maximum possible increases for the two chemicals would each be more than what was released by all facilities in Ascension Parish in 2023, according to federal toxics reporting data.

Those sharp increases come even after a proposed emissions cap that Westlake expects to meet through new pollution controls, a permit application says.

With that limit, the emissions aren’t estimated to reach minimum thresholds that would have required Westlake to perform new air modeling to see its impact on surrounding areas. Some pollutants, like fine particulates that can carry heavy metals, are estimated to fall just under those triggers.

Formerly the Borden Chemical facility that a predecessor of Westlake bought in bankruptcy in the early 2000s, Westlake’s Ascension Parish operation is located on the southeast corner of La. 30 and La. 73 south of Geismar and Dutchtown and southwest of Gonzales.

Even without the proposed expansion, Westlake’s immediate area has an additional lifetime cancer risk from air pollution that’s three times the minimum that the EPA deems acceptable, the agency’s air toxics data show.

Areas just outside Westlake’s immediate zone, where homes and commercial businesses are located in Geismar, the cancer risk falls to right at or under this EPA minimum.

The EPA air risk information is a national dataset that the agency says should be used to assess broad patterns of lifetime risk, not indications of immediate harm.

Still, when risk levels reach beyond that EPA minimum, they do represent “a concern for increased cancer risk” and air emissions and their sources require further study, EPA and other federal guidance say.

Few jobs, but key role

The hazardous waste furnaces will result in five direct jobs, but Westlake has told state regulators that their addition will play an important role in maintaining production levels at Geismar and continuing to employ several hundred people.

The sister facilities where the Geismar plant currently sends its hazardous waste for incineration are expected to have those furnaces reduced or eliminated because of changing market conditions.

The only other possibility, Westlake says, would be commercial hazardous waste facilities but incineration capacity along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coasts “does not exist at this time.”

Without other options, “Westlake will have to curtail or potentially cease production at the Geismar Plant, resulting in significant negative social and economic benefits of the state,” the company told state regulators.

The proposals for hazardous waste incinerators in Geismar came just months after Westlake suspended its plans to add two of the same kinds of incinerators in Lake Charles.

That proposal ran into opposition from local environmental groups. Swearngan, the Westlake spokesman, said the two proposals aren’t connected, with “each based on business and/or operational needs and strategies.”

“The Lake Charles South project has been suspended, and the scope of that project remains under evaluation due to the evolving business and operational landscape and not as a result of any of the opposition expressed by community groups,” he said.