Corporate Pollution Case Study: Xpress Natural Gas and Its Impact on Montrose, Pennsylvania

A Cloud of Uncertainty

For the residents of Montrose, a rural borough in Pennsylvania, the Xpress Natural Gas (XNG) facility on North Road is a fact of modern industrial life.

What they likely did not know is that for more than six years, the facility operated two massive, 1680-horsepower natural gas engines without performing the legally required tests to ensure they weren’t pumping illegal levels of hazardous pollutants into the air the community breathes.

This here be a story about a community that was forced to live under a cloud of uncertainty, their health and safety subjected to a prolonged and unnecessary risk by a company that failed to meet its most basic legal obligations. The harm here is not just in what was polluted, but in the years of operating in the dark.

The Corporate Playbook: How the Harm Was Done

An investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reveals a disturbing pattern of delay and non-compliance by Xpress Natural Gas. The facts, laid bare in a legal settlement, paint a picture of a company that treated critical public health regulations as negotiable.

The playbook was one of prolonged inaction:

• Install and Ignore: In February 2017, XNG fired up two powerful spark ignition engines at its Montrose facility. Under the Clean Air Act, the company had exactly one year to perform an initial performance test to prove the engines were compliant with limits on hazardous air pollutants. The deadline—February 2018—came and went. No test was completed.
• Delay and Debate: Instead of complying, XNG entered into a multi-year back-and-forth with the EPA, claiming that due to the “nature of the Facility’s operations,” standard testing methods were not technically feasible. While these negotiations dragged on, the engines continued to run, day after day.
• Miss Another Deadline: The law requires a follow-up test every three years. As the company continued to debate how to conduct the first test, the deadline for the second test—February 2021—also passed in the rearview mirror.
• Operate in the Dark: It was not until June 2024 that the company finally conducted a successful performance test—more than six years after the first one was due. For all that time, the company was operating without the legally required proof that its pollution controls were working, effectively creating a black box around its own emissions.

A Cascade of Consequences: The Real-World Impact

This here be a continuous and conscious decision to operate outside the bounds of laws designed to protect human health and the environment.

Public Health & Safety at Risk

The regulations XNG ignored are in place to control Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs)—a category of substances known to cause cancer, birth defects, respiratory illness, and other serious health problems. By failing to test its engines for years, XNG created an unquantified and ongoing risk for the people of Montrose. No one knew exactly what, or how much, was being released into the air.

The victims here are the families living and breathing in the shadow of the facility.

Erosion of Community Trust

This case represents a profound breach of the social contract. An industrial operator set up shop in a community and then failed for years to abide by a fundamental safety rule. This behavior destroys public trust, leaving residents to wonder what other rules are being bent or broken behind the facility’s walls. It fosters a sense of powerlessness and confirms the suspicion that for some corporations, the well-being of their neighbors is a secondary concern to their operational convenience.

A System Designed for This: Profit, Deregulation, and Power

Analysis: This is a story of how our economic and regulatory systems can enable corporate negligence. For a company like Xpress Natural Gas, the primary motive is profit. Performing complex and costly emissions tests—and potentially having to install expensive new pollution controls if they fail—is a direct threat to the bottom line.

The system allowed the company to use “technical infeasibility” as a shield to delay compliance for years, all while its profitable operations continued uninterrupted.

This process externalizes the risk. The company enjoys the financial benefits of operation, while the community bears the health risk of unregulated pollution. The slow, negotiation-based approach of the regulatory body, while perhaps well-intentioned, allowed this dangerous status quo to persist for more than half a decade.

Dodging Accountability: The Cost of Doing Business

The resolution to this multi-year violation is a case study in weak corporate accountability.

• The Penalty: Xpress Natural Gas has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $92,500. For a company in the natural gas industry, this amount is not a punishment that will alter future behavior; it is a minor, predictable cost of doing business—a fee for getting caught.
• No Admission of Guilt: Crucially, the settlement allows XNG to pay the fine while neither admitting nor denying the factual allegations or that it violated the law. This legal maneuver allows the company to wipe the slate clean without ever having to acknowledge its wrongdoing to the public and the community it put at risk.

Reclaiming Power: Pathways to Real Change

This case makes clear that true accountability requires systemic change. Meaningful solutions must go beyond small fines and strike at the heart of the system that produces these outcomes.

• “No Test, No Operation” Mandates: Regulators should have the authority to issue immediate shutdown orders for facilities that miss critical public health testing deadlines. The burden of proof must be on the company to show they are safe, not on the public to wait years for a test.
• Penalties That Punish: Fines must be tied to a company’s revenue and the duration of the violation, making non-compliance a financially devastating choice.
• End “No-Guilt” Settlements: In cases involving public health, corporations must be required to admit their violations as a condition of settlement, ensuring transparency and providing communities with a clear record of wrongdoing.

Conclusion: A Story of a System, Not an Exception

The story of the Xpress Natural Gas facility in Montrose is a window into a regulatory system where corporate delay is tolerated, and the eventual penalties are too small to serve as a meaningful deterrent. It is the story of how a community’s right to clean, safe air can be suspended for years while bureaucratic and technical debates play out.

This case is at its core a neoliberal system that is designed to accommodate corporate interests at the expense of public health.

All factual claims in this article were derived from the Consent Agreement and Final Order in the matter of Xpress Natural Gas, LLC, U.S. EPA Docket No. CAA-03-2025-0090, filed on July 15, 2025.

Would you kindly click on this EPA link to view the above consent agreement with Xpress Natural Gas>: https://yosemite.epa.gov/OA/RHC/EPAAdmin.nsf/Filings/6F3D2703C171DFDC85258CC8006E6CD6/$File/Xpress%20Natural%20Gas%20LLC__CAA%20CAFO_July%2015%202025.pdf