Morning News Climbs on Fair Share Bandwagon

Although they never actually use our Campaign name (maybe because their news division has done its best to ignore it), the Friday editorial makes the same case we do and calls on the state to respond to the desires of local governments to do more to cut toxic and smog-forming VOCs from the gas industry.

It also issues an important call for area elected officials to come to the July 14th TCEQ hearing in Arlington and directly request those larger cuts:

“While state regulators have sometimes seemed impervious to public comments, this opportunity is North Texas’ best shot to improve yet another lackluster air-pollution plan. If local leaders stay silent, the TCEQ will stick with the laissez-faire approach that has left our area in a smog-filled haze.”

We would only argue with the “sometimes” language. For the last ten years or so, TCEQ has been remarkably consistent in always ignoring the public in North Texas when it comes to clean air plans. Still, the moment we give up challenging the Commission is the moment TCEQ will claim the public must like what it’s breathing.

Belated thanks to the editorial staff and yet another plea to get the paper’s Metro editors on the same page in covering local environmental stories. It’s getting really tiresome to find the only coverage of clean air efforts on the opinion pages.

Landfill Mining for Kiln Fuel

 

How cozy: "Entsorga, a subsidiary of the Tortona, Italy-based Entsorga Italia S.p.A, has proposed to lease 4 acres of the Solid Waste Authority's old landfill property at 870 Grapevine Road for the "waste-to-alternative-fuel" operation. The lease the company proposed is for 20 years, Hogbin said. The fuel produced after the raw waste is separated, shredded, granulated and screened could be used at facilities such as a cement kiln operated by Essroc Italcemente Group, which quarries limestone and produces cement nearby, DEP engineer Steven R. Pursley said Thursday."

2 More Ozone Violations Wednesday – 2 More and It’s Another Failed Year

DFW saw two more ozone violations occur on Wednesday, both at sites that had already tripped once in June. That means that the area has two monitoring sites that are already halfway to the four violations that would render 2011 another official clean air failure. All it takes are four separate eight-hour violations of the ozone standard at any one site for EPA to declare DFW in continuing non-attainment of the old 1997 85 ppb ozone/smog standard.

Fair Share Update: Argyle and Ft. Worth Join the Cause; July 14th to be a Gas

A belated congratulations and thank you to the Argyle Town Council and the Forth Worth City Council, which became the 8th and 9th North Texas cities to vote unanimously in favor of a Fair Share resolution calling for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to include significant cuts of Barnett Shale VOCs in the currently proposed DFW ozone plan. You know, the “do-over” plan to meet the obsolete 1997 ozone/smog standard that we haven’t been able to meet so far.

Maybe They Should Have Aimed for 6-6

Another well-meaning, if empty-calorie, attempt to bring awareness to cleaner air by the regional Powers-That-Be. Unfortunately, our first four violations of the old 1997 ozone standard came on June 6th this year.  Wonder if anyone from COG will show up to testify at the July 14th public hearing on the DFW ozone plan to criticize the Rick Perry TCEQ that keeps us from achieving safe and legal air in DFW? That would be doing something substantive.

Record Chronicles Post-June 8th Status of DFW Air Plan: Not a Pretty Sight

Amazing that it’s now up to “secondary”  outlets like the Denton Record-Chronicle to report air quality stories in the DFW area. In the past, both dailies would have had a story previewing the June 8th vote, and then a post-vote reaction piece. But that would require an environmental staff reporter, which neither the S-T nor the DMN possess right now. Fortunately for us, there are editors and reporters like Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe picking up the slack. No Comment: Commissioners Don’t Even Acknowledge Fair Share

Denton and Southlake pass Fair Share Resolutions

That makes an even half dozen in one month’s time, plus the COG resolution, with interruptions for elections and Memorial Day weekend. For comparison’s sake, we didn’t get to six Green Cement resolutions for at least a year.

We want to thank everyone who made this frantic run successful. With an average of about two resolutions a week, we think we proved our point: DFW residents want the state to cut VOC emissions from the gas industry in this clean air plan.

Sometime Wednesday, we’ll have a report from the TCEQ meeting in Austin, where the DFW air plan is up for a scheduled vote in the morning. This meeting is a milestone, but it’s not the end of the Fair Share campaign. There’s a public hearing in Arlington on July 14th we have to get ready for, as well as the announcement from EPA of new air regulations for gas field toxics that will need all the help they can get to withstand industry and congressional counter attacks.

These VOCs will get reduced one way or another. Dominoes have begun to fall.

Resolutions on Way to Approving Minimalist DFW Clean Air Plan

Today’s vote on the new DFW clean air plan was likely the least ornamental in history. There was very little discussion or context. Of course, when you’re having to repeat a grade, you probably won’t be caught bragging about it.

There was a short and technical description of what the plan was by TCEQ staff, in which, in a kind of “oh-look-didn’t the neighbors-just-paint-their-house?” way, it was mentioned that the plan would not be able to obtain the 2011 cuts in smog-forming Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) pollution that it should have.

Downwinders at Risk’s Jim Schermbeck was the only speaker from the audience. He cited five chronic TCEQ mistakes from previous plans being repeated in this ozone “do-over”:

1) It started too late. TCEQ knew the 2006 plan failed in the summer of 2009 but didn’t begin building this plan until a year later. TCEQ has repeatedly used “lack of time” as an excuse not to pursue innovative pilot projects like an SCR control tehnology test on one of the Midlothian cement plants. This time it’s being used as the reason the state is walking away from its 2011 obligation to cut a certain percentage of VOC pollution.

2) It aims too low. This plan is only designed to meet an obsolete ozone standard that George Bush’s scientists did not believe was protective of public health. It doesn’t get DFW into compliance with the current standard, much less the new one being announced in two months. It’s the most minimalist air plan ever proposed, basically relying on the persuasive powers of new car salesmen and women, and the weather. And by the way, for an agency that criticizes EPA standards, the TCEQ plan is all about piggy-backing those standards in order to make this plan work.

3) It has no Plan B. There’s no insurance in case market forces and the weather don’t cooperate and behave the way the TCEQ computer model predicted. Since the Commission has never been successful in meeting its deadlines before, a prudent person might want to be especially conservative and seek out extra measures to ensure success. Not these guys.

4) It lacks transparency. For 9/10’s of this current planning process, TCEQ has used one transportation model/software for the required ocomputer modeling. One model that assumes average pollution levels for every car and bus and truck out there in DFW. Now, in only the last two months, the Commission is on record has saying it probably wants to use a new transportation model in this plan.  It’s produced some, but not all of that new modeling summaries. The entire new modeling exercise won’t be over until AFTER the public comment period has ended in July. In effect, the Commission is submitting one air plan for public comment during the summer, and a completely different one for official EPA consideration in December.

5) It denies local input. Six DFW local governments have passed resolutions requesting that TCEQ include Barnett Shale VOC pollution cuts to this air plan. The regional air planning body has done the same. Your response is a tank rule that cuts only 10% of the total VOCs being emitted by the gas industry in DFW, a volume now exceeding vehicular contribution. That’s just not enough. North Texas is united in its call to “formalize” the industry’s best practices into regulations that can cut deeply into the Shale VOC pollution problem. 

Schermbeck asked that the Commission strengthen the plan by:

– Triggering the proposed tank rule at 10 tons per year of VOC pollution emitted instead of 25 tons per year. This change would net 90% + of the total condensate tank emissions in the nine-county DFW “non-attainment area.”

– Begin a retrofitting of valves that could net 50 tons a day of VOC cuts.

– Enforce “green completions”/flaring ban  in the non-attainment area.

And then, well, nothing.

Anticipating possible legal challenges, TCEQ lawyers probably advised Chairman Bryan Shaw and Commissioners Garcia and Rubinstein to keep away from commenting on specifics. But it was kind of odd. Prior to Schermbeck speaking, the TCEQ staff itself had just admitted it wouldn’t be hitting its 2011 VOC reduction goal – the first time that’s ever happened. And you just had six local governments that represent about two and a half million people send you resolutions pleading with you to act, including two just this morning. Did we mention they were all unanimous votes? That’s local intent.

But there were no comments from the Commissioners at all on any of these facts. No acknowledgement that local governments might have a legitimate concern, or that the resolutions passed might have merit. No acknowledgment at all that a large part of the non-attainment area it was attempting to regulate was disagreeing with the way it was doing it. Instead there was a generic comment from the Chairman instructing staff to make sure they were using the “best science” and had “reasonable expectations” about their modeling. And then a 3-0 vote, and the next stops are public hearings on this “plan” July 14th at Arlington City Hall.

If you think about it, the lack of pretense is pure Rick Perry, and all three Commissioners are Perry appointees. There’s a ruthless political calculation that concludes you don’t have to respond to criticism if you completely control the outcome. But we wonder if any of them will be coming to Arlington on July 14th?

WEBCAST
A video of the TCEQ meeting will be available in the next day ro so online at this site. The discussion on the DFW air plan begins about 15 or so minutes from the end of the meeting.

Level Orange Warnings on Eve of TCEQ Air Plan Vote – Updated/final

At 1:15 pm today, the TCEQ issued a “LEVEL ORANGE” warning for the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Ozone air pollution levels are rated as UNHEALTHY FOR SENSITIVE GROUPS based on measurements at the following monitoring site(s)*:

Denton Airport South
Keller
Grapevine Fairway

There’s something familiar about those monitor sites. Oh yeah, they’re some of the same ones, along with Eagle Mountain Lake and Meacham Field, located in the NW quadrant of the Metromess, that traditionally record the most, and the most severe, ozone violations in the entire region. They’re downwind of the central Texas coal plants and the Midlothian cement plants. They also happen to be located in the middle of the Barnett Shale in Tarrant, and Denton Counties.

TCEQ is scheduled to vote on the proposed DFW air plan this coming Wednesday. That plan doesn’t address any of those major sources of smog-forming pollution except for the token application of controls on condensate tanks that emit more than 25 tons of Volatile Organic Compounds a year that nets the Commission a whole 14 tons per year in reductions. That’s compared to 114 tons per day of VOCs emitted by the gas industry in the area – more than all the cars and trucks in DFW.

Instead, the TCEQ mostly just sits as a spectator while it takes credit for the federal government’s auto emissions reductions, which the state says will allow us to meet the obsolete 1997 ozone standard of 85 ppb by 2013. So many DFW residents will be trading older more polluting cars for newer, less polluting ones, that no other anti-pollution measures are necessary, says the TCEQ. 

Just a reminder that the TCEQ has never gotten any prediction about DFW air quality right in the past 20 years. The air plan to be voted on Wednesday in Austin is a do-over for the failed plan of 2006. Might we need a do-over for the do-over?  The next three summers will tell.

Meanwhile, science marches on, and a new federal ozone standard is due out in July, probably somewhere in the 65 to 70 ppb range. That’s what most experts believe to be a safer level of exposure to smog. That’s 16 parts per billion, at least another whole new air plan, and a lot of pollution cuts away from the DFW status quo in 2011.

Update 1 at 2:00 pm: 

You can track the individual monitors mentioned in this warning, but it’s not easy because most of the maps TCEQ uses are not updated in real time and lag by hours. You have to go to each individual monitor description and then click for current readings.

For example, in Grapevine, you had an 11 am reading of 93 ppb of ozone with the next two hours 11am to 12pm and 12pm to 1pm “not available” which is TCEQ for “Wow, those numbers are high, let’s see if we can find a way to downplay them or make them go away.”

Same thing at the Denton Airport. There you had an 11 am ozone level of 91ppb, with the next hour’s readings unavailable because of the “lack of valid data,” or they’re simply “not available.” See a pattern here?

In Keller, ozone levels reached 100 ppb at 11 am – the highest level recorded this ozone season by far, with the next two hours also MIA as of 2pm.

Remember, it takes an 8-hour average of 85 or above to constitute a violation, so every hourly number counts a lot toward the final end-of-day average. Missing two hours of what could be very high numbers could throw the average off by a lot – below violation levels for example.

What’s also interesting is that while the TCEQ website says “The latest images available are for Monday June 6, 2011 12-13:00 CDT,” in fact, the latest images and readings on its map are from the 9 to 10 am hour – before the high 11 am ozone readings occurred. That is, even though the individual monitoring sites show high levels of ozone being recorded at 11am this morning, none of the TCEQ maps reflect these high readings because they’re still frozen at 10am.

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2:18 pm screen grab

Update 2 at 2:30:

New numbers up, although TCEQ is still 2 hours behind in their reporting.

101 ppb of ozone at Keller at the 12 noon reading, still no info for the following two hours.
101 ppb of ozone at Denton airport at 12 noon.
103 ppb at Grapevine at 12 noon.
98 ppb in Pilot Point at 12 noon.
96 ppb at Frisco at 12 noon.
91 ppb at North Dallas at 12 noon.
91 ppb at Hinton St in Dallas at 12 noon.

Based on these numbers and the weather, we’ll probably have our first violation of the ozone season today. Congratulations to everyone in Austin who made this possible.

Update at 3:30:

92 ppb in Keller at 1 pm. Strange that the ozone is decreasing even as temperature increases. Four hour average of almost 93 ppb.
98 ppb at the Denton Airport site at 1pm, with a four hour average of 91 ppb.
96 ppb at Grapevine at 1pm, with a four-hour average of over 92 ppb.
91 ppb at Pilot Point at 1pm, with a four hour average of 86 ppb.
110 ppb  at Frisco at 1pm – highest reading of the day so far, and already a four-hour average of 90 ppb.
91 ppb at North Dallas at 1pm, four hour average of 81ppb
88 ppb at Hinton in Central Dallas at 1pm, four hour average of 84 ppb.

It takes an 8-hour average of 85 or above for a violation of the 1997 ozone standard – the one DFW hasn’t met yet.
And the TCEQ map remains frozen at 10 am this morning.

Update at 5:00:

Keller is suddenly at 84 ppb at 2pm but still has a five hour average of 91. Potential violation still occurring.
Denton is at 90 pbb at 2pm, with a five hour avg of 91. 4 and a six hour avg of 86.6. Potential violation still occurring.
Grapevine is 98 ppb at 2pm, five hour avg of 93, six hour avg of 87. Unless something drastically good happens, this will be a violation day for this monitor.
Pilot Point is at 89 ppb at 2pm with a five hour average of 87. Potential violation still occurring.
Frisco is at 105 ppb at 2 pm with a six hour avg of 87 already. Also looks to be a violation at this site today.
North Dallas is at 79 ppb at 2 pm with a five hour avg just above 85. Probably not a violation day.
Dallas Hinton is at 75 with a four hour avg of 85. Probably not a violation day.

Doesn’t appear to be any other DFW monitors in range for a violation besides these seven. Higher winds are forecast for tomorrow and if they’re high enough, it may save DFW from consecutive ozone violation days.

Update at 6:00 :

All TCEQ monitor readings are still three hours behind. The following are from 3 pm:
Keller – back up to 86 ppb. Six hour avg of 90 ppb.
Denton Airport – 102 ppb. Seven hour avg of 88 ppb. This now looks like a probable violation.
Grapevine – 103 ppb. Seven hour avg of 89.5 ppb. One more high reading away from the season’s first ozone violation.
Pilot Point – 98 ppb. Six hour avg of 89 ppb.
Frisco – 86 ppb (something must have blown in big time and out again). Even so, it has a seven hour avg. of 86.8, so the next hour or two will be the difference.
North Dallas – down to 71 ppb. Definitely not a violation at this site today.
Dallas Hinton – down to 66 ppb. Ditto.

And of course the map TCEQ sends out with the 6pm readings that are really 3 pm readings is still frozen at 10 am readings.

Update at 7:30: First two ozone violations of 2011.

All TCEQ ozone monitors still three hours behind. The following are for 4 pm.

Keller – 90 ppb. Right now it has a 85.7 eight hour avg. that includes a 55 from 9 am. The next hour should bring an official violation.
Denton Airport – 109 ppb. Eight hour avg. of 91.3 – the first definite ozone violation of 2011. That average will go up as the numbers for 5 and 6 pm come in.
Grapevine – down to 88 ppb, but not in time to save it from the second definite ozone violation of 2012, with an eight hour avg of 89.3 ppb.
Pilot Point – 91 ppb with a seven hour avg of 89 ppb.
Frisco – 64, but with a seven hour avg. of 88 ppb.

And of course, no better symbol than the never-changing TCEQ map that you click onto with each new warning alert, still stuck at 10 am this morning. Ozone? What ozone?