Archive for April 2012
Speakers Line-up for Earth Day Dallas
One of the thrills of last year’s Earth Day Dallas extravaganza was being able to sit across the table from Earth Day co-founder former Congressman Pete McCloskey and have a regular chat with a legend. This year’s shindig at Fair Park doesn’t offer the same kind of historical insight, but it does give you an opportunity to see some speakers whose current work could be of great interest. The entire schedule and speakers list with their bios can be found here, but there are seven we want to highlight in particular – Former CIA Director turned alternative energy guru James Woolsey 11:30 am on Saturday the 21st at the Hall of State. He has a particular greenish perspective from deep in the belly of the Beltway that has some serious capital behind it. If you want to know what’s going to be hot a year or three from now, you might want to hear this. EPA Region Six’ s own Dr. Al Armendariz, 12:30 pm Saturday, Hall of State. We know he’s not going to be breaking any news, but there’s some intelligence-gathering to do just by listening to what’s being said and how it’s being said. Dr. Armendariz has been a target of polluters since his appointment was announced. He’s among the most knowledgable Regional Administrators out there, a real scientist, with practical field experience in many of the most high-profile EPA issues. Listen to how he defends what the agency is, and is not, doing. Listen to the language he uses or doesn’t use. Is there a new party line from DC now that it’s an election year, or is this still Dr. Armendariz being himself? We already know everything is on hold for the rest of the year but you might get a clue as to how far we could roll backwards. Dr. Andrew Dressler, the Texas A&M climate scientist, 3:00 pm Saturday, Hall of State and no, thats not a typo. Dr. Dressler has one of the least enviable jobs in Texas – defending science, and climate change, at Rick Perry’s alma mater. He’s done a good job of holding up so far. Listen to what his take is on the recent drought and how climate change is and will impact the Texas environment and economy. Katherine Hammack is the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment, 4:00 pm Saturday at the Hall of State. Bet you didn’t know such a position even existed. Well it does and because nobody wants to cut defense spending, some of the most advanced and exciting alternative energy research that America is producing right now is coming out of the military. Get a glimpse of the future as if there was real money being spent on it. Dr. Michio Kaku, 5:00 pm Saturday @ the Hall of State is one of the most fascinating and engaged scientists of our time. He’s done a lot of work in advanced physics trying to work out a “Theory of Everything” but he’s also a long-time antinuclear power activist who’s testified at the trials of those arrested as part of large civil disobedience actions at nuclear plant sites. Whatever he says, it’s going to be interesting. Janice Bezanson, Executive Director of the Texas Conservation Alliance, 4 pm Sunday the 22nd is a local legend and a direct link to the state’s first generation of environmentalists in the modern sense. She’s a protege of Ned Fritz, who, along with only a handful of other brave souls helped preserve what was left of The Big Thicket. She’s been in the middle of Trinity River politics for 25 years. She knows how to surive doing the work in Texas, so you know you can learn something. Finally, there’s Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings at the 5:30 pm closing ceremonies on Sunday at the Hall of State. This should be interesting as well, no? He’s only a month or so away from having to deal with the largest indigenous environmental issue to come into Dallas City Hall in an generation – drilling for gas in Dallas. Will he refer to this decision in any way, or ignore it in favor of some Earth Day platitudes? Will he repeat his Texas Theater promise never to jeopardize a Dallas neighborhood for the sake of money? Come and find out what gets said and unsaid.
How Much Silence Has Chesapeake Bought for Its Lung Association Investment? UPDATED WITH GOOD NEWS
It pains us to have to write about this because the American Lung Association stood with Downwinders throughout the mid-to- late 1990’s and helped us turn the tide against the burning of hazardous wastes in the Midlothian cement plants. And we also understand how hard it is to raise money for non-profits with a recession/depression still going on. But in accepting Chesapeake’s money, totaling at least $500,000 and probably much more, what is the price ALA has to pay as air quality in areas like DFW gets sabotaged by wave after wave of gas production pollution? ALA was a no-show during the EPA and TCEQ summer hearings on new gas emissions regulation. They’ve taken no part in the struggle to write a new Dallas gas drilling ordinance despite their regional HQ being in Dallas and hiring a new “Environmental Health” staff person to take on the job of helping community groups fight for cleaner air. They’ve published no reports on Barnett Shale emissions, despite it being the single largest threat to DFW air quality progress in the last decade. One can’t help but wonder if the group would be more outspoken had it not received Chesapeake’s cash deposits. Big Gas has warped every institution and group it’s touched in North Texas, and here’s one more example of an organization that appears to be letting down it guard over public health in return for contributions from them. Et Tu, ALA? FRIDAY UPDATE: We’re happy to report that the ALA, along with the American Public Health Association, the American Thoracic Society, the Asthma And Allergy Foundation of America, and the Trust for America’s Health sent a very good letter to EPA supporting “the strongest possible standards to reduce harmful emissions from the production wells, processing plants, transmission pipelines and storage units within the oil and gas industry,” because “research has shown that these pollutants can cause cancer, developmental disorders, and premature death.” Moreover the letter supports the demand of citizens in the Shale that want to see the new EPA rules cover EXISTING wells along with new ones that are now targeted. In total, it’s the strongest letter to date from anyone at ALA on fracking and represents a huge step forward in the organization’s articulation of the various public health harms of the practice. We’re relieved to see that Chesapeake didn’t buy the conscience of the ALA when its checks were cashed by the group. Now that the ALA is on the record as supporting tougher air emissions strategies for fracking, we hope the local Lung Association in DFW will find ways to insert staff resources into the numerous manifestations of the national battle going on right here in North Texas, starting with the writing of new Dallas and Denton gas drilling ordinances, and the renewed struggle to obtain safe and legal air for the region.
“Moderate” PM Pollution in DFW Kills and Maims
It’s behind the paywall, but the Morning News and Randy Lee Loftis commit real journalism today in the form of anarticle on the dangers of Particulate Matter pollution, even at so-called “moderate” levels. It’s based on two recent studies, inlcuding one we profiled here last week, but then does the right thing by localizing what the results of those studies mean for DFW air quality. The answer isn’t pretty. It turns out there were an average of 41 days a year from 2007 to 2011when PM readings at one of two monitoring stations in Dallas were in the range that’s associated with increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. By comparison, DFW experienced 38 days last summer when the new 75 parts per billion ozone standard was exceeded. Considering that there are about three times as many ozone monitors as PM monitors in DFW, you can see where some folks might think we have a problem: for more than a month every year, we breathe air that can make us sick or kill us. Unfortunately for future victims, it appears it will take some kind of threat from the federal government, or the courts, or both to make PM pollution as much of a target for control as ozone pollution, even thought the scientific evidence continues to mount that particulates cause much more widespread public health damage. That’s because state and local governments risk losing federal highway dollars if they don’t try and reduce ozone pollution, or smog. There is no such threat driving public policy regarding any other air pollutant. There are almost 40 posts on PM pollution listed in our category directory for this blog. Many of these summarize recent studies showing how pervasive PM pollution is and how insidious its health effects are. It damages you by being both a piece of dirty soot that can make it hard to breathe, and as a carrier of any number of toxic chemicals that attach themselves when the piece of soot is created. PM can have lead or mercury on it. It can have benzene or formaldehyde. It’s a microscopic suitcase for toxins. PM can cross the lung/blood vessel barrier and travel throughout your body, affecting your brain, your reproductive health or your immune system. It’s the most underestimated, and under-regulated pollution. Federal standards for PM pollution are stuck way behind the times and need to be updated, but the Obama Administration decided not to go forward with trying to write a new standard in its first term – probably because of projections about how far-reaching the solutions to PM pollution will have to be – taking in everything from cars to power plants to diesel trucks, to cement plants. You’ve seen the howling from industry over new ozone standards and power plant mercury rules. Imagine the reaction to a tougher PM standard. Yet that is the direction the science is sending us. We’ve often been critical of the dearth of local environmental reporting in DFW, but this piece today is an excellent example of he kind of work a major metropolitan daily needs to be churning out on a regular basis. Kudos to the News and Loftis.
“Cypress Waters” Wacked as Cypress Hill
This map is a layout of the Billingsley-City of Dallas joint “eco-development” by the name of “Cypress Waters” taking shape on North Lake in Northwestern Dallas. The same one the Dallas Morning News wrote about today. Only they didn’t include this perspective of the development – the master plan for the development. Maybe because it makes explicit reference to the fact that there will be gas wells tastefully scattered among the neighborhoods and schools of Cypress Waters, a fact never mentioned in the Morning News story (they’re the green rectangles on the map). Indeed, there’s a drill site that sits directly across the street from TWO schools. This is the completely FUBAR’d world of developers unfamiliar with the messiness of gas drilling, or alternatively don’t care about the impact of that messiness on their residents. On a map, a well pad is a nicely contained rectangle of a different color that just sits there and mingles with the other colored rectangles. On the ground, it’s 24/7 traffic, noise, smells, fumes, health effects, and accidents that don’t stay within the rectangle. Remember that just a month ago the Colorado School of Public Health published a study that concluded that residents living within a half mile of a gas well were exposed to at least five different toxic chemicals at levels above federal regulatory concern and stood a 66% higher chance of getting cancer. Four out of six of the wells in this planned Cypress Waters eco-development are much closer to people than a half-mile. Some look like their as close as a half block. Yeah, that’s real eco of y’all. People who design developments like this should be sentenced to live on their front lines. UPDATE @ 4:30 PM: To its credit the Dallas Morning News is now running a story from their City Hall reporter on its digital front page that talks about the fact that Cypress Hill is also hosting six drilling sites and even posts the same map that we have up here. It’s a good piece and if it’s language would have been inserted into the larger Business Section article this morning, there would have been no basis to complain. Good for citizens howling about this. Good for the Morning News being responsive to reader comments about so obvious an omission and making the correction by putting it on the front page of the web site. Should we credit this reasonableness to the “Wilonsky Effect?”
Something’s Missing in Today’s DMN Story on North Lake, But We Can’t Quite Put Our Fingers On It
For the second time in a row, the “Real Estate Writer” for the Dallas Morning News has written a feature article about a nice, new expensive development where there are gas leases and permits already being requested, and yet failed to mention anything about those pesky gas wells. From what we can tell, the Real Estate Writer seems to be a DMN position paid for by Real Estate developers. Last month it was the West Dallas area surrounding the new Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, where the city has leased its own land out for multiple gas leases. Today it’s the “Cypress Waters” planned community being built by Lucy (Crow) Billingsley around North Lake, where there’s already a gas pad permit in the pipeline, so to speak. But you’d never know it from reading the article. “We have 82 acres on LBJ Freeway that we have saved at the project’s
primary entry point so that we can have retail to service the
development,” Billingsley said. “We will also have restaurants on the
lake.” And if the wells get permitted, those diners will be getting lots of items off the official menu. We know she’s a Crow. We know its a big development. But really? To be this much of a shill is embarrassing. UPDATE 11:30 AM: Dallas Area Residents for Responsible Drilling’s Raymond Crawford e-mailed the DMN writer, Steve Brown and asked him if he knew about the wells slated for this development. Brown’s reply was as enlightening as it was brief: “Yes, they’ve set aside six drill sites on the master plan for the project...I’m thinking that they consider this not a problem for rental housing but of course it would be a factor for people buying homes.” Yes, of course, because homeowners have lungs, whereas we’re not even sure if renters are a higher life form at all. Amazing isn’t it?
Perry Sends Buddy Garcia After the Big Money
Via the Texas Tribune, we see where former Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Chairman Buddy Garcia has been appointed by Governor Perry to fill the seat on the misnomered Railroad Commission vacated by Eizabeth Ames Jones, who’s running for a state Senate seat in South Texas. In his time with TCEQ Garcia distinguished himself by, well, let’s see, how did he stand out? He didn’t. He’s one of a series of inter-changable Rick Perry clones that have inhabited TCEQ Commissioner positions over the last decade and voted in lockstep with whatever their mentor wanted. Now that’s he’s been reassigned to the RRC, Garcia has access to the kind of Oil and Gas money helpful for running for whatever it is that Garcia will be running for after his stint at the candy counter is over. He prepared tirelessly for the job by being a salesman for various energy industry front groups, like “Balanced Energy for Texas,” which you might not be surprised to learn actually is quite heavily lopsided towards oil, gas and coal. Perhaps because its sponsors include Peabody Coal, Luminant Energy, and American Electric Power. among others. Congratulations Commissioner Garcia. We know you’ll like this position much better than your last government job. It’s all about drilling and much, much less concerned about environmental quality.
Drilling is to Dallas what Keystone is to Canada
Word comes today that the recent updating of a national Canadian Greenhouse Gas emissions inventory shows all industrial and commercial sectors holding steady or making progress in 2010, save one: Oil and Gas. Canada had to perform the inventory under the terms of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Unfortunately, the dramatic rise in emissions from oilsands (Re: Keystone) and gas development more than off-set the progress in the rest of the economy. This is the money quote from the Canada.Com article: “Canada’s official report last year generated controversy because of a decision to exclude a breakdown of oilsands emissions from the inventory, even though this emissions breakdown was included in the previous year’s inventory. The missing details eventually revealed that the booming sector’s pollution was dramatically rising to levels that would make it difficult for the federal government to meet its own annual emissions target of 607 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2020.” Now, come south to Dallas. We know City Hall is sitting on a similar updating of Greenhouse Gas pollution emissions being emitted by both City of Dallas operations, and the metropolis as a whole. This pollution inventory was required by the 2005 Mayor’s Climate Change Agreement, of which Dallas is a signatory. Cities pledged to cut 2012 GHG pollution to 1990 levels. We’ll see how close or far Dallas is to accomplishing that goal when the numbers are released. But here’s the real number you need to keep an eye on – the amount of Greenhouse Gas pollution emitted by industrial sources in Dallas. The last time the city did such a survey, it totaled only 25,000 tons a year from all large industrial facilities combined. By contrast, a single gas compressor can easily spew 25,000 tons a year of the same kind of pollution. Gas fields have multiple compressors. It’s not unusual for large compressors to emit up to 50,000, 75,000, even 90,000 tons or more of air pollution every single year. Without mitigating or off-setting this tidal wave of air pollution from gas drilling, Dallas will never be able to meet its obligations to reduce its Greenhouse Gas pollution, and in fact, it will be responsible for making local air quality much worse. A vote to allow unfettered drilling is a vote for immediately doubling the industrial GHG pollution coming from Dallas, and in the long run, a vote to increase it by probably a magnitude or two. Why should you care if climate change doesn’t get you excited? The same GHG pollution making it impossible for Dallas to reduce its carbon footprint is the same air pollution that makes our smog worse, and its the same air pollution that makes it 66% more likely for you to contract cancer if you live within a half-mile of a gas well. It’s all inter-connected. Dallas is poised to reverse years of air quality progress if it doesn’t do something to address the large increases in air pollution caused by gas drilling.
As Big Gas Battles EPA over New Air Rules, Local Control Looks Better and Better
The new oil and gas air toxics rules that over a hundred people came out to support this last summer at an EPA hearing in Arlington are under heavy fire as they’re getting closer to getting implemented. These are rules, that for the first time would clamp down on the Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) released by gas drilling that cause smog, toxic air pollution and make global warming worse. EPA recently announced a two-week delay in their being brought on line and there’s a campaign by industry to gut the rules entirely by limiting their scope in a ridiculous way. Sharon has all the details in how you can urge the EPA to get a backbone and go through with their modest reforms, and The Hill has a good article explaining the effort to roll back the rules. Whether these rules are implemented in their original form or not, the struggle over their creation and scope argues for why more local governments should be looking at regulating these emissions through the lens of Greenhouse Gas pollution (GHG), as Downwinders and others are suggesting Dallas do in its new gas drilling ordinance. Lack of federal and state action on GHG pollution allows local governments to fill in the gap and level the playing field to reduce air pollution that would otherwise fall through the cracks and loopholes of current law. Even if the new EPA rules were to come on stream in their original form, they still wouldn’t cover 70-75% of the VOC emissions causing so many problems. This is why local governments must act out of self-defense. In this case, no other level of government is making sure that new gas pollution doesn’t contribute to already bad regional ozone problems, doesn’t blow open a city’s commitment to reducing its carbon footprint, as Dallas has pledged to do under the 2005 Mayor’s Climate Change Agreement, and doesn’t poison a city’s neighborhoods. If the as industry was treated like other industrial polluters, it would have to mitigate or “off-set” these air pollution increase with air pollution decreases elsewhere in the same area. Gas operators do not have to do this. Local regulation could make them. It could force gas operators to decrease air pollution as much as they increase it in Dallas by paying for projects that reduce the same kind of GHG pollution as they emit. It would also act as a automatic incentive for the gas operators not to release as much air pollution to begin with – stopping it before it starts. EPA is not going to save the residents of the Shale from the gas industry. They’e got to do that themselves. Here’s a way that could help.
TCEQ’s War on Public Hearings
You already know how much the current Perry-fueled Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has stripped the right of citizens to contest permits being issued like candy to polluters in Austin. In Texas, you can decide to change your entire fuel regimen, from coal to coal and tires, and plastics, and car interiors, as the TXI cement plant in Midlothian recently did, and not face any public questioning at all. Or say you want to tear down your old plant and put up a new one. You don’t need any public comment or hearing for that either, as Ash Grove found out when it applied for its “permit amendment” to rebuild its Midlothian cement plant. There has been a very premeditated and methodical campaign to make it impossible for any member of the public to interfere in the least bit with the right of the polluter to do any damn thing they want. Today, TCEQ is voting to go after other state agencies’ ability to interfere as well, making it impossible, for example, for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to intervene in a case where the state parks might be impacted by a polluter. The proposed rules would “have a significant impact on the TPWD’s ability to carry out its statutory and regulatory obligations and its ability to protect the shared public resources of the State of Texas that are under TPWD’s jurisdiction,” the agency wrote TCEQ in protest. It’s just another effort to destroy the checks and balances of a regulatory system that was already gamed toward industry in the first place. By the time this Governor leaves office, it may well be criminal offense to even ask for a public hearing.
As Big Gas Battles EPA over New Air Rules, Local Control Looks Better and Better
The new oil and gas air toxics rules that over a hundred people came out to support this last summer at an EPA hearing in Arlington are under heavy fire as they’re getting closer to getting implemented. These are rules, that for the first time would clamp down on the Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) released by gas drilling that cause smog, toxic air pollution and make global warming worse. EPA recently announced a two-week delay in their being brought on line and there’s a campaign by industry to gut the rules entirely by limiting their scope in a ridiculous way. Sharon has all the details in how you can urge the EPA to get a backbone and go through with their modest reforms, and The Hill has a good article explaining the effort to roll back the rules. Whether these rules are implemented in their original form or not, the struggle over their creation and scope argues for why more local governments should be looking at regulating these emissions through the lens of Greenhouse Gas pollution (GHG), as Downwinders and others are suggesting Dallas do in its new gas drilling ordinance. Lack of federal and state action on GHG pollution allows local governments to fill in the gap and level the playing field to reduce air pollution that would otherwise fall through the cracks and loopholes of current law. Even if the new EPA rules were to come on stream in their original form, they still wouldn’t cover 70-75% of the VOC emissions causing so many problems. This is why local governments must act out of self-defense. In this case, no other level of government is making sure that new gas pollution doesn’t contribute to already bad regional ozone problems, doesn’t blow open a city’s commitment to reducing its carbon footprint, as Dallas has pledged to do under the 2005 Mayor’s Climate Change Agreement, and doesn’t poison a city’s neighborhoods. If the as industry was treated like other industrial polluters, it would have to mitigate or “off-set” these air pollution increase with air pollution decreases elsewhere in the same area. Gas operators do not have to do this. Local regulation could make them. It could force gas operators to decrease air pollution as much as they increase it in Dallas by paying for projects that reduce the same kind of GHG pollution as they emit. It would also act as a automatic incentive for the gas operators not to release as much air pollution to begin with – stopping it before it starts. EPA is not going to save the residents of the Shale from the gas industry. They’e got to do that themselves. Here’s a way that could help.