Amid ongoing discussions about a potential restart of the St. Croix refinery, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency solicited input from the St. Croix community on Tuesday night regarding the decades-long effort to clean up contamination under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, or RCRA.
During a community workshop held at the University of the Virgin Islands Great Hall on St. Croix, EPA Project Manager Ricardito Vargas acknowledged public anxieties and concerns about a potential restart, which he said the EPA is addressing.
“But also there is the legacy work that has existed for decades, and there’s been a lot of effort at cleaning up what is legacy contamination at the former Hovensa site,” he said, adding that sometimes the initiative got “lost in translation.”
The EPA issued Hovensa an RCRA operating permit in 1999 that required the former refinery owner to investigate and clean up contamination. Environmental contamination that occurred before 1999 also falls under the purview of RCRA, and Hovensa was required to assess and investigate any preexisting contamination as part of its permitting process.
The original investigation found 29 solid waste management units and three areas of concern as potential sources of releases to soil and groundwater, according to the EPA’s presentation on Tuesday. Because of leaks in process and storage areas and an “oily-water” underground sewage system, “extensive phase separated petroleum hydrocarbon (PSPH or ‘oil’) plumes are floating on top of groundwater and dissolved phase hydrocarbon constituent plumes are present within the groundwater itself.”
Under an ongoing “Hydrocarbon Recovery Project,” more than 1,060,481 barrels — or 44.5 million gallons — of PSPH have been recovered since the program began. The recovery represents an estimated 99 percent of the leaked oil.
Hovensa ceased refining in 2012 and declared bankruptcy in 2015. Limetree Bay Terminals became the refinery’s owner and operator before going bankrupt amid a shutdown order from the EPA in 2021, which complained in U.S. District Court that the refinery presented “an imminent and substantial danger to public health and the environment.” Port Hamilton Refining and Transportation bought the refinery at a bankruptcy auction, and the fuel storage and marine terminal are owned by Ocean Point Terminals.
Hovensa’s bankruptcy also created the Environmental Response Trust, or ERT, which is responsible for continuing cleanup efforts. Carey Guilbeau, the trust’s representative and technical program manager, said on Tuesday that the scope of leaks from the former Hovensa site often leads to unfavorable comparisons to the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, which released nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound.
Guilbeau noted that the leaks on St. Croix occurred over years and the volume of oil was never greater than the Valdez spill at any given time, but she did not diminish the impact of the contamination.
The Hovensa ERT has applied for an RCRA permit renewal, which Vargas said the EPA is reviewing. One of the agency’s objectives on Tuesday was to prepare the public for participating in the permit renewal process, which requires separating recent concerns about the refinery with cleanup activities under RCRA.
“Because we don’t want to go into a permit renewal where we have a lot of negative feedback because I believe that’s been the experience before,” he said. “We want the public to be educated on what is ‘legacy’ versus what else is happening currently at the refinery.”
