Petroleum Management polluted Baltimore’s air with Volatile Organic Compounds and Hazardous Air Pollutants.

TL;DR:

For nearly a decade, Petroleum Recovery and Remediation Management, Inc. (doing business as Petroleum Management, Inc.) operated a major pollution source in Baltimore, Maryland, without the required federal permits.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that the facility emitted Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) (including known carcinogens) directly into the air of a city already struggling with ozone pollution.

The pollution loving company also failed to properly manage hazardous waste and lacked adequate safeguards to prevent oil spills into nearby waterways.

While a settlement with the federal government has been reached, the details reveal a troubling narrative of profit prioritization over public safety.

Read on to understand how this machinery of corporate impunity functions.

The Machinery of Poison: A “Cost of Doing Business”

If one wishes to understand the true nature of neoliberal capitalism, one need not look further than the industrial corridors of Baltimore, Maryland.

Here, in the shadow of the American empire’s domestic neglect, Petroleum Management, Inc. (PMI) operated for years, treating the air we breathe and the water we drink not as a commons to be protected like how it be, but as a sewer for private profit.

The recent Consent Agreement between the EPA and PMI serves as an important reminder of a system designed to facilitate plunder rather than prevent it.

The claims against PMI are an indictment of a corporate ethos that views public health as a secondary concern to the bottom line.

For eight years, from 2014 to 2022, the facility operated as a “major source” of hazardous pollutants without the requisite Title V permit. That is a fundamental requirement of the Clean Air Act intended to track and limit industrial poisoning.

By failing to obtain these permits, the polluting corporation effectively opted out of the regulatory oversight designed to keep the lungs of Baltimore’s residents free from lesions.

A Timeline of Impunity

The history of this case is a chronology of corporate negligence and regulatory delays. The following timeline illustrates how long this facility operated outside the bounds of safety regulations before facing consequences.

The Toxic Cocktail: Corporate Pollution and Public Health

The specific pollutants identified in this case read like a chemist’s shopping list for a public health disaster. The EPA’s monitoring found the facility was emitting a cocktail of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs), including benzene, styrene, toluene, and ethylbenzene.

Benzene is a known human carcinogen; there is no safe level of exposure. Yet, for years, this facility released these toxins into the air of Baltimore… a city btw that’s already struggling to meet federal ozone standards. By failing to install required vapor control devices, the company allowed these chemicals to evaporate directly into the atmosphere. This is corporate pollution in its rawest form: the privatization of revenue and the socialization of cancer risk.

Furthermore, the facility is located a mere 2,000 feet from Curtis Creek, a tributary to the Patapsco River. Despite this proximity to navigable waters, the company failed to construct adequate secondary containment for its tanks, meaning a significant spill could have been catastrophic for the local ecosystem.

The Illusion of Accountability

The resolution to this saga of corporate greed is a civil penalty of $230,000. In the lexicon of neoliberal capitalism, this is essential a user fee instead of a punishment like how we might hope. It is instead a modest toll paid on the highway of exploitation.

When an evil corporation can operate for nearly a decade without permits, emit carcinogens, and risk contaminating waterways, only to pay a fine that likely represents a fraction of their operating revenue, we must ask: Who is this system actually protecting?

The settlement also mandates the installation of monitors and better record-keeping. While necessary, these are measures that should have been in place from day one. The “compliance” enforced here is merely the baseline of decency that was ignored for years.

Why It Matters: The Erosion of Society

This case matters because it is not unique; it is systemic. It exemplifies the wealth disparity inherent in environmental justice, where working-class communities (often the ones surrounding facilities like PMI) bear the toxic burden of economic fallout. It exposes the fragility of our regulatory state, which often arrives years too late, clipboard in hand, to catalog the damage rather than prevent it.

When we talk about the “well-being of society,” we are talking about the right to breathe air that doesn’t shorten our lives. We are talking about the right to live without the fear that a neighboring facility will catch fire or poison the local river. As long as corporate ethics are voluntary and corporate accountability is purchasable, society remains at the mercy of the financial balance sheet.

You can find the consent agreement with this evil corporation by visiting the EPA’s website: https://yosemite.epa.gov/OA/RHC/EPAAdmin.nsf/Filings/08E13B8ABFCE797085258B09005808BA/$File/Petroleum%20Recovery%20and%20Remediation%20Management%20Inc%20dba%20Petroleum%20Management%20Inc_MM%20CAFO_April%2012%202024.pdf