President Donald Trump has given dozens of chemical facilities this month – including one in Calvert City and one in Louisville – at least two more years to comply with federal regulations meant to monitor and reduce the amount of certain toxins companies can release from their plants.
This comes after the Biden Administration finalized amendments to the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) in 2024, filed under what many officials call the HON rule.
Under this rule, many chemical manufacturers are required to implement measures to reduce emissions of chloroprene – which is a likely human carcinogen – and ethylene oxide, which can cause cancer if the chemical is inhaled. Facilities that worked with certain toxins – including ethylene oxide; chloroprene; benzene; 1,3-butadiene; ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride – are also required to conduct fenceline monitoring under this rule. All six of those toxins are either likely or known human carcinogens.
Facilities that are subject to the HON rule were supposed to have some measures in place by July 15 to reduce ethylene oxide emissions and monitor for certain air toxins around their properties. However, two days before the EPA’s deadline to comply with those regulations, Trump granted two-year exemptions to Westlake Vinyls Inc. in Calvert City, Zeon Chemicals LP in Louisville and 18 other facilities across the country – granting them extra time to comply with these rules.
Sarah Buckley, senior attorney on the Natural Resources Defense Council’s litigation team, said these Kentucky facilities are instead being held to standards from the last HON rule update in 2006.
“The short story is: Exempted facilities are allowed to pollute more than non-exempted facilities. And what they are polluting – what they are emitting – is the most hazardous toxic air pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act,” Buckley said.
In his proclamation, Trump said the HON rule “imposes substantial burdens on chemical manufacturers already operating under stringent regulations.” The president also argued that the exemptions help the country maintain a “robust domestic chemical industry” and reduce dependence on foreign manufacturers.
As part of his directive, Trump also claimed the technology to implement the HON rule is not available, and that such technology doesn’t exist in a commercially viable form.
Buckley said NRDC has argued otherwise in its legal challenges to prior exemptions to the HON rule Trump granted last year.
“We can demonstrate that many of the facilities have already installed or should already have the technology needed to comply, or are subject to things like the increased leak monitoring or work practice standards, which don't require technology,” Buckley said. “It basically requires being a better steward of the facility and the equipment that you already have.”
Bakelite Synthetic's Louisville facility was granted an exemption to the HON rule last year, pushing back its compliance deadlines two years beyond EPA’s original deadlines.
When the HON rule updates were finalized in 2024, the EPA anticipated 10 facilities in Kentucky would be required to follow the new regulations. Byron Gary, a senior attorney with Kentucky Resources Council, said companies that did not receive exemptions are still expected to comply with the rule – even though the president claimed the technology needed to comply with the federal regulation doesn’t exist in a commercially viable form.
“The fact that several other facilities across Kentucky are apparently ready to comply with the HON requirement without those exemptions because they didn't appear to request one, as far as we're aware, sort of belies the fact that that technology is in fact out there,” Gary said.
The KRC attorney said the EPA has required similar fenceline monitoring efforts at oil refineries for nearly a decade.
The Kentucky facilities Trump granted exemptions to last week have histories of emitting hazardous chemicals into their local environments. Findings from an air quality study the EPA published in 2024 linked 96% of ethylene dichloride emissions detected around the Calvert City Industrial Complex over the course of the study period to Westlake Vinyls. Ethylene dichloride is classified as a probable human carcinogen.
In 2011, Zeon Chemicals settled a class action lawsuit related to its emissions from its Rubbertown plant for $1.5 million. As part of the terms, the company agreed to pay Louisville residents who lived within a mile of the facility up to $750.
According to EPA data, Westlake Vinyls reported releasing thousands of pounds of toxins subject to the HON rule in 2024, the latest year on record. That year, Westlake Vinyls reported the following releases, among other chemicals:
- Ethylene oxide, 1,324.97 lbs of total air emissions, all from the factory’s stacks
- Chloroprene, 104.02 lbs of total air emissions – most of which was considered “fugitive” or unintended
- Benzene, 15,335.49 lbs of total emissions. Of that, 2.47 pounds were discharged into the Tennessee River. The rest was a combination of fugitive and stack air emissions.
- 1,3-butadiene, 4,541.77 lbs of total air emissions. Over 80% of that was stack air emissions, and the rest was fugitive air emissions.
- Ethylene dichloride (also known as 1,2-dicloroethane), 21,106.01 lbs of total air and water emissions. More than two-thirds of that total was considered fugitive air emissions. The company discharged 902 lbs of the chemical into the Tennessee River.
- Vinyl chloride, 6,564.75 lbs of total air emissions. Over three-quarters of that total came from fugitive emissions.
Also in 2024, Zeon Chemicals reported releasing 383.9 pounds of 1,3-butadiene into the air through stack and fugitive emissions.
University of Louisville researchers are working on a study looking into the potential health impacts that could stem from elevated levels of harmful emissions in Calvert City – where Westlake Vinyls and several other chemical manufacturers are based.
It’s not the first time during Trump’s second term that Kentucky facilities that emit dangerous pollutants have received exemptions from federal rules meant to reduce the release of toxic substances into the area around them. Last year, some facilities in the Bluegrass State run by East Kentucky Power Cooperative, Big Rivers Electric Corporation and the Tennessee Valley Authority received two-year exemptions from a federal rule requiring coal plants to lower releases of metals like arsenic, lead and mercury.
