Archive for September 2011

Thanks to the redoubtable Henry Waxman, Congressman from Wisconsin for assembling this comprehensive data base on the current Congress’  torrid, shameful orgy of industry-backed legislation

Because it’s the only way we’re going to be able to significantly cut smog-forming pollution from the gas industry for the foreseeable future.

Gas production laces the air with toxic substances like sulfur dioxide and benzene, a volatile organic compound, or VOC, and emits pollutants that form smog, which blankets many Western gas fields. Ozone — the main component of smog — is created when VOCs and nitrogen oxide interact with sunlight. It can cause respiratory ailments, while VOCs themselves can be carcinogenic.

Because of the high pressure at which fracking fluid is injected into and flows back out of the ground, more pollution initially escapes from fracked wells than from conventional ones. Whether or not wells are fracked, pollutants leak out all along the production chain — from pipelines, storage tanks, diesel trucks and compressor stations. Tens of thousands of new gas wells have been drilled in recent years, and in production hubs, air pollution has simultaneously worsened. Ozone levels spiked above federal limits 26 times in rural Utah’s Uintah Basin in the first three months of 2011.  There, and in Sublette County, Wyo., ozone levels have even exceeded those of famously smoggy Los Angeles.

Yet air-quality standards for oil and gas production haven’t been updated in years; VOC standards have sat untouched since 1985. In late July, however, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed ambitious new air rules for the industry — among the first federal regulations of any kind to cover fracking. “They’re a major milestone,” says Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians, which, with another group, sued the EPA to prompt the new rules. “The emission reductions are just huge.”

The rules would mainly cover VOCs and air toxics, pollutants such as sulfur dioxide that are known or believed to cause cancer and other major illnesses. They aim to cut the industry’s overall VOC emissions by an estimated 25 percent, air toxics by 30 percent, and methane — a super-charged greenhouse gas — by 26 percent. Stricter VOC controls would be required at compressor stations, storage tanks and processing plants. Limits would be set for air toxics emissions, and new and refractured wells would have to be equipped to separate methane and smog-forming VOCs from water when they flow back out of a fracked well, a process known as green completion.

Without a new clean air plan to construct until 2012-2013, these new EPA rules are DFW’s best hope for reducing sources of smog pollution which have gone mostly unregulated at the state and local level. We need to protect them and make sure they’re implemented in full.

In 2008, almost 100 DFW residents spoke at an EPA hearing at DFW Airport on behalf of the new cement plant emission rules that will bring new controls to the Midlothian cement plants by 2013. We filled every speaker slot from 9 am to 9pm. It was an incredible success that demonstrated to industry and EPA that there was widespread popular support for the new rules – even in Texas.

We have to do the same thing on September 29th at the Arlington City Council Chambers. Sign-up for a 5 minute speaking slot – that’s all we’re asking, five minutes to tell the EPA why clean air is important to you and your family; five minutes to tell them your own stories about breathing fumes from drilling pads, or compressors, or processing plants; five minutes to say why you don’t want to breathe poisons, no matter how large or small the levels.  Don’t leave it up to someone else to testify.

EPA Hearing on New Rules for Gas Industry Air Pollution

When: Thursday September 29th, from 9 am to 9 pm
Where: Arlington City Hall Council Chambers

You can register for a five minute time slot between 9am and 9 pm by calling Ms. Joan Rogers at EPA: 919-541-4487.

This way, you only hamper our ability to take a breath

A cynical piece of fallout from yesterday’s ozone standard decision buried in a Washington Post analysis piece.

For the past several years the gas industry in North Texas has repeatedly claimed that they’re not really a significant source of smog-forming pollution, despite official inventories showing a huge rise in emissions from their sources since 2005. This rise was what fueled Downwinders at Risk’s Fair Share Campaign this last spring to include more pollution cuts from gas sources in the official DFW “do-over” clean air plan that attracted the support of seven local North Texas city and county governments.

In words and manner reminiscent of the Midlothian cement plants’ party line in the 1990’s, gas company spokespeople argued that it was all those nasty old cars that you and I drive, and not their facilities, that cause our smog problems. What we emit, they said, was inconsequential, really.

But on page 2 of the Post article, there is this piece of news about what those same gas companies have been saying to the Obama Administration in regard to a lower ozone standard:

“Natural-gas companies, for example, argued to the administration that the rule might hamper their ability to take advantage of newly accessible natural-gas reserves.”

As Kathy Martin, an oil and gas engineer that was one of the citizen expert witnesses for the Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force this past was quoted as saying, “I’m not anti-drilling. I’m just anti-lying. But sometimes they’re the same thing.”

Today the Obama Administration signaled its biggest environmental retreat to date, dropping any plans to lower the federal ozone standard to a level that’s actually protective of human health.

Instead, the EPA will stick with the 2008 standard of 75 ppb – a compromise that has no basis in the scientific literature and that ignored the advice of George Bush’s scientists to set a lower one between 60 and 70 ppb to make sure public health was protected.

What does this mean for DFW air quality planning?

1. In the short term – nothing. After two attempts since 2006, we still haven’t meet the old 1997 ozone standard of 85 ppb. When the current TCEQ effort to reach this goal is officially declared dead next year, the wheels will start to turn toward writing A THIRD plan to try and reach it. No matter how much the new federal level goes up or down, DFW still has to keep trying to meet the old 85 ppb standard until we have a three-year running average of 84 ppb or less. Right now we’re at 90 ppb. 

2. The George Bush Administration ozone standard of 75 ppb becomes the target for a brand new, separate clean air plan devoted to meeting it. In implementing it, the EPA must first draw new boundaries for the nation’s “non-attainment areas” – those regions that will be subject to this new standard. In DFW that means that Wise County, and perhaps other outlying counties, will be added to the 9-county existing non-attainment area. But this boundary process might take up to two years because the state will fight it. When that’s settled, then the state, along with the North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee, will once again a have the responsibility to write a plan to meet the new 75 ppb std.

Unlike this year’s “plan” by TCEQ of sitting back and hoping people buy new cars, a plan to get down to 75 ppb will have to have moving parts and affect all sources of ozone pollution – industrial, vehicular, and everything else.  That will be the opportunity to press for state-of-the-art controls for the Midlothian cement plants, the East Texas coal plants, and the gas industry, as well as more mass transit, better energy efficiency standards and a host of other strategies. For example, by 2013, there will be a pilot test completed of SCR technology on a US cement plant in Illinois. Those results can be used to press for SC technology at the Midlothian cement plants.

Because Downwinders at Risk Director Jim Schermbeck serves on the North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee, we go this missive from the North Central Texas Council of Governments about an hour ago

TO:  North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee Members              
DATE:  September 2, 2011
FROM:  Mike Eastland
SUBJECT:  EPA Ozone Standard

The President announced this morning that he has requested EPA to wait until at least 2013 before establishing a standard for ozone in the 60-70 ppm range.  I have made contact with the EPA regional Office in Dallas to get more details on this and how this decision affects us in the meantime.  They had also just read the press release and are waiting to get more information from their colleagues in D.C. and North Carolina.

While not official, the most likely result is that EPA will begin implementation of the 75 ppm standard and the first step will be designation of those areas who will have to meet this standard and, of course, we are one of those.  If normal timelines are followed, the designations take one or two years.  Once they are made, states will have to start development of SIPs.

EPA will keep us updated as more information is made available and we will keep you informed.   When a clearer picture emerges, we will call a meeting of the Steering Committee and have the EPA and TCEQ give us a full report on all of this and how and when they will begin the process.

To read the President’s official statement please use the following link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/02/statement-president-ozone-national-ambient-air-quality-standards.

One day we might actually live to see these decisions based on the science instead of electoral plotting. In the meantime, we have to live with this compromise.

In terms of a timeline, this isn’t any different than what would have happened had EPA announced a 60 to 70 ppb standard today. We’d still have to wait a year or so for the boundaries designations to be settled. All that’s really changed is that we have a standard that is at least 5 ppb higher than it should be based on protecting public health.

So the first order of business is to start making the case of why Wise County should be included in DFW’s non-attainment area. It’s an easy case to make, but one the TCEQ really doesn’t want to hear. Why? Well if you look at a lot of ozone plumes in our area, you’ll often see the air pollution being pushed into Wise County from the rest of the Metromess. TCEQ suspects that ozone levels are going to be high there – that’s why there are NO ozone monitors in Wsie County, even though the state’s own modeling shows it’s a hot spot for ozone pollution. The state is afraid the ozone levels recorded there will be so high as to throw the entire DFW region out of whack in terms of its alleged “progress.”

The news that this president is once again settling for merely extending a policy of his predecessor instead of changing it is disappointing. But that doesn’t mean we twiddle our thumbs for the next 2-3 years. We have a clear course laid out for us now.  We finally have a new, lower standard that will prompt a new, more aggressive clean air plan in DFW, with more of the area’s counties included in it. That’s not a bad thing.