PM Follow-Up: the 2005 Spike and the Midlothian Drop

By jim | June 19, 2012 |

(Note: Downwinders sent out an air quality alert on Monday urging folks to send their comments 1) into EPA to support the new PM standard, and 2) the federal ATSDR in regards to its "health consultation" in Midlothian. The correct address for the PM comments is "a-and-r@docket.epa.gov" – the same as the alert, but apparently the the whole address didn't get underlined. Use the complete address and you shouldn't have any problem. The ATSDR address for comments used in the alert is cut and pasted from the agency's own website, but was rejecting comments Monday afternoon for some reason. Complaints have been made and we hope they'll actually be allowing comments on Tuesday.)

In covering the PM 2.5 standard announcement, a lot of attention was paid by the media to the fact that only a handful of counties in the US would not be able to meet the new number by 2020. The Obama Administration worked hard to send that message in order to preempt the kind of backlash that killed last year's new smog standards. But what are the actual levels now and how close or far is DFW from ever having to worry about being in non-attainment for PM pollution?

The new standard is an annual average of 13 micrograms per cubic meter of air, expressed as ug/m3. As far as we can tell from the monitoring records TCEQ keeps online, DFW hasn't come close to exceeding that number. But that's not really as conclusive as it might first sound. There are only two PM 2.5 monitors located in the heart of the DFW metropolitan area. One is on /Hinton Street near Mockingbird and Harry Hines in Dallas and the other is at the Haws Athletic Center location just north of downtown Ft. Worth. All others are in far southern Ellis County, Kaufman County, or Johnson County and act as "background" monitors to track PM pollution coming in or leaving urban DFW.  In contrast, there are at least nine ozone monitors located in urban/Suburban DFW .

Tracking the two central city core monitors over the last ten years shows a slow but steady rise in the average PM 2.5 levels being recorded, staring at a little below 9 ug/m3 in 2002 and ending with an 11.01 last year. That's an increase of almost 2 ug/m3 in a decade. 2011 was a drought year and so there was probably more dust in the air. But records show other years where annual averages were in the high-10 to 11 ug/m3 range. What they also show is that these higher levels all come after 2005. In fact, across the board, at all the DFW monitors recording PM levels from 2004 to 2005, there was a statistically significant jump from annual averages in the high 8 ug/m3 range in 2004 to over 11 ug/m3 by the end of 2005. And while some monitors came back down, the two central city monitors have stayed up – particularly at the Ft. Worth site. So what happened in 2005? There was a Mexican volcano eruption that summer, but it ended. The higher PM averages in North Texas didn't. It was too soon to see the effects of urban drilling, although that may play a part in keeping the Ft. Worth levels higher now. Whatever it was, it makes a clear bright line that separates the pre-2005 lower numbers from the post-2005 higher ones.

Last year's average of 11.58 ug/m3 at the Dallas site was the highest at that monitor, or any other, in the last ten years. It's less than 1.5 ug/m3 away from breaking the brand new PM standard of 13. That same monitor has already seen a 2.25 ug/m3 increase in annual averages since 2002.

EPA says don't worry, but we'd keep our eyes on those long term trends.

The Obama administration is banking on the impact of new power plant rules, cement plant standards, and other emission-affecting regulations to lower PM levels over the next eight years. And that could be a good bet. One of the things that also sticks out from the limited amount of DFW PM data is how much of a drop there's been at the Midlothian monitor located north of the TXI cement plant over the last five years after reaching a peak in 2008. That was the year TXI decided to shut down its four obsolete wet kilns that burned hazardous wastes and rely solely on its newer and generally less polluting dry kiln. In 2008, the Midlothian monitor recorded an annual level of 10.7 ug/m3. Last year it recorded an annual average of 8.0. That's progress.

Posted in Air Quality, Cement, cement industry, EPA, Particulate Matter, Toxicology

Drilling is Bad for Business

By jim | June 18, 2012 |

Via the Fish Creek Monitor out of Arlington comes word of a Chesapeake 5-acre drilling well pad that's seemingly condemned a piece of adjacent property at a potentially lucrative intersection in that city. The entity doing the loudest complaining? The developer whose land Chesapeake is allegedly ruining.

The property is now covered with gas pipelines. It's illegal to build anything on top of gas pipelines for safety reasons. It's not illegal to use your Eminent Domain power as a gas pipeline company to take valuable real estate and make it useless for the purpose the owner intended.

We've seen this before. There's a similar gas pipeline no-man's land in DISH in Denton County that was slated to be an entire sub-division.

This is one of those little known, but hugely consequential results of not thinking through what it means to allow gas drilling in your town. You'd think that a practice that ruins perfectly good real estate from becoming the next 7-11 or Taco Bell would be anathema to the usual Powers-That-Be. It tells you something about how much things have changed in the past decade that not even developers outrank gas companies in DFW.

Posted in Drilling in Dallas, Fracking, Gas, Natural Gas

Welcome to our Remodeled Digs

By jim | June 18, 2012 |

We didn't change the dressing on our www window to the world all that much, but we can do a lot more now.

Like write in paragraphs on the front page without a page jump. it feels good just to…

…..stretch. Not sure who invented paragraphs, but there should be a statue to them somewhere.

This is only the fourth iteration of the Downwinders at Risk website that goes back all the way to 1996. In line with our philosophy, each one has been more participatory than the one before. This WordPress version allows for a lot more multi-media options and interactive features on both ends of the site.

Thanks for being patient over the course of this transition, which took much longer than we anticipated. We hope we can now reward you with better online service.

Posted in Downwinders at Risk

EPA Lowers National Particulate Matter Standard, World Doesn’t End

By jim | June 17, 2012 |

In what will probably be one of the most important environmental health decisions of the Obama Administration, the EPA is proposing to reduce the national ambient air standard for what are called "fine particles" of particulate matter, or soot, a pervasive form of air pollution that is linked to an increasing number of ailments ranging from respiratory illnesses, to heart attacks, to Autism, and brain damage.

Particulate Matter 2.5, or tiny bits of soot that are 2.5 microns or less in diameter (a typical human hair is 50 microns) comes from the combustion process – gas-powered cars, diesel trucks, cement plants, utility plants, or boilers or furnaces of any kind.

Sand dust, at 90 microns in size, is much, much larger, so we're not talking about "EPA regulating dust." PM is an industrial pollutant. And study after study has shown that it kills and injures people even at levels that up until Friday were considered legal and "safe."

PM is so insidious because not only is it a toxin in its own right, it also acts as a tiny suitcase for all the by-products of whatever combustion made it. Coal or cement plant soot might contain Mercury or dioxins. Car soot could have Benzene residues. And these hitchhiking pollutants are carried deep inside the lung by the soot, where they stay, doing damage for years. 

In a Boston Globe piece running thursday night, Dr. Albert Rizzo, chairman of the board of the American Lung Association, was quoted as saying that, "The science is clear, and overwhelming evidence shows that particle pollution at levels currently labeled as officially `safe' causes heart attacks, strokes and asthma attacks. 

The new rule would set the maximum allowable standard for soot at range of 12 to 13 micrograms per cubic meter of air. That's the upper level of what the EPA's own panel of scientists recommended (11-13) without breaking the law by disregarding the panel's range as the Bush EPA did in 2006 when it decided to retain the 1997 standard. That annual standard was 15 micrograms per cubic meter. That doesn't sound like much of a reduction (17%), but it's the difference between a standard that embraces the newest science versus a 15-year old one that was not considered protective of human health. It could also mean the difference between metropolitan areas like DFW being given the all clear or classified as "non-attainment" for PM pollution, the same way it's in non-attainment for ozone, or smog pollution.

That would mean the region would have to put together a plan to reduce PM pollution, and of course that could mean opportunities to press for more modern controls on the Midlothian cement plants, east Texas coal plants, and other large PM polluters. One of the first steps will have to be putting more PM monitors in the DFW region – there are only eight now and three or four of those would be considered "background" sites, that is they monitor what's blowing into DFW, but not what residents are breathing.

Since monitoring began in 2000, annual highs in DFW have ranged mostly in the 20 and 30 microgram range, with forays into the 40s and 50's mid-decade. You can use this TCEQ website to track the four highest PM readings in DFW and the rest of the state for each of the last 12 years and this one to track daily readings – although both suffer from an obsolete color-coded alert system that underestimates health damage at lower levels of exposure.

In March, the Dallas Morning News compared DFW's mostly "moderate" levels of PM pollution to the most recent studies and concluded that local populations were at increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. It's not clear yet how EPA will enforce the standard or the timeline it will use but you can be sure it'll be generous since the Administration was forced to release this new standard by court order in an election year. That's because PM pollution is as widespread as ozone pollution and the measures necessary to reduce it could mean a long march toward modernizing many industries. t’s going to be a big step forward,” said Frank O’Donnell, head of the DC-based Clean Air Watch in the Washington Post article the broke the story. “This could help frame the national effort to clean this up for at least a decade.” 

Think about how much effort has been directed at reducing smog in DFW over the last 20 years – HOV lanes, vapor recovery systems at the gas pump (put not necessarily at the gas well) and every paint shop, pollution controls on the Midlothian cement kilns, coal plants and other large industries.

It's probably going to take the same kind of all-inclusive slog to achieve compliance with this new standard, so the Obama Administration isn't gong to rush things. Despite opponents claims that these kinds of standards cost jobs, the opposite is actually true. Capital investment goes up because businesses are modernizing and putting on new control and implementing more efficient processes. Local jobs are created when those are installed. Waste is reduced. Operating costs often decrease. Despite being forced into the 20th Century by federal regs and citizen action, the cement industry in Midlothian has reduced emissions while also increasing manufacturing capacity. The same thing has happened in other industries.

Apparently the EPA is counting on the fact that previous rules aimed at other pollutants and problems have steadily been reducing PM pollution as a beneficial side effect, so the ramping up won't be as dramatic as it might have been. The proposed new standard will get published in the Federal Register and then finalized by next December 14th, so that no matter who wins in November, these rules seem to be on track. For a great primer on PM pollution in general and the history of today's decision, go check out Frank O'Donnel's Clean Air Watch website.  Read More

Posted in EPA, Particulate Matter, Toxicology

Getting Ready to Rumble: Dallas Schedules Gas Drilling Briefings for August 1 and 15th

By jim | June 17, 2012 |

According to the Morning News, Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan sent a memo to staff today laying out the timeline for how the Dallas City Council will get officially "briefed" on the creation of a new gas drilling ordinance. Apparently on August 1, the council will have a kind of staged policy wrestling tag-team match between a spokesperson picked by Council member Scott "Grizzly" Griggs and one picked by Council member Sheffie "Killer" Kadane. Both spokespersons – as yet unnamed or still unchosen – will get 30 minutes to offer their best shot at what a good Dallas drilling ordinance looks like. All of this will be going on out in the open for public consumption. Then on August 15, the Council will be meeting in a closed door session to receive information from their lawyers. No word yet on public hearings that ought to be accompanying this march to a final vote as well.

Posted in Drilling in Dallas, Fracking, Gas, Natural Gas

Public Warming to Climate Change

By jim | June 17, 2012 |

Via Climate Progress, news of a new survey on climate change from the Brookings Institute in DC shows a solid majority of the public accepts the fact of climate change. Although not yet back up to the 70% plus rates seen before 2008, support has increased almost 15 points from its nadir in the Tea Party Spring of 2010. According to the same survey the most influential factor in this shift is not accumulation of scientific evidence but the day-to-day anecdotal experience of most Americans – 68% said recent mild winters had influenced their thinking.

Posted in Climate Change

Looks Like EPA Will Stymie Hard-Won Cement Plant Rules On Friday

By jim | June 17, 2012 |

We don't this very often, but because many of you spent so much time helping us get the first new cement plant emissions rules in 20 years, we thought it was important to reprint the entirety of a Subscription-Only INSIDE EPA article from Tuesday that puts the fate of those rules very much in question:

Activists Warn Possible EPA Weakening Of Cement MACT Likely Unlawful

EPA appears poised to soften particulate matter (PM) limits in its pending revised air toxics rule for cement plants while separately pursuing an extended compliance deadline for the rule, moves that are major concessions to industry groups that sought a weaker rule but are riling environmentalists who say such changes would be unlawful.
According to an industry source, EPA will propose to soften the rule's PM limits on smokestacks for existing cement plants. New data submitted to EPA by industry shows that the limit of 0.04 pounds per ton of clinker (lbs/ton) set by the final rule prior to reconsideration is not realistically attainable, the source says.
Instead, EPA will probably revert to a higher number, closer to the 0.085 lb/ton limit it offered in its original proposal, the source adds, saying, “it is likely going to be a little less stringent” in the revised rule.
However, environmentalists oppose softening the air toxics rule and recently warned the agency in written comment that “any changes diminishing or replacing the existing standards would be flatly unlawful.”
The likely changes to the rule follow a series of 11th-hour meetings that industry officials and others have held with EPA and White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) staff seeking to the shape the proposal.
EPA faces a June 15 proposed consent decree deadline with industry to propose a revised maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standard for the cement sector. EPA issued a final rule in 2010 that industry challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The court remanded the rule to EPA over the agency's failure to reconsider how a related incinerator air rule may potentially alter the cement rule's emission limits.
Ahead of this week's deadline for a proposal, the Portland Cement Association (PCA) and cement firms Lafarge, Ash Grove Cement Co. and Cemex met with OMB and EPA staff May 22, pushing a weaker PM limit. Industry representatives submitted documents to EPA demonstrating that there is considerable variability in the emissions of cement plants over time and this variation makes the existing 0.04 lbs/ton limit impossible to meet.
“PCA has examined the available data on PM emissions and the variability of PM emissions for the best performing cement plants and believes that the correct PM limit will be in the range of 0.06 to 0.08 lbs/ton of clinker or higher,” the industry group argues in a paper dated April 9 that was presented at the meeting. “Further, in discussion with EPA, PCA has received no information to the contrary,” according to the industry paper.
“The current PM limit of 0.04 lbs/ton of clinker is very stringent. . . . [V]ery few facilities can comply with the 0.04 lbs/ton clinker limit without major investments in new and upgraded PM controls,” the paper says. The industry source says these investments would “come at what is the worst time in this industry in decades,” still striving to recover from the recent crash in the construction sector that depressed demand for cement.
The source says EPA is also likely to help the cement sector through pending revisions to a related emissions rule for commercial and industrial solid waste incinerators (CISWI) and a rule defining what qualifies as “solid waste” that falls under the CISWI regulation. EPA agreed to revise those rules and a MACT for boilers to address industry concerns that the existing versions are unachievable, with final versions of the rules expected soon.
Overlap between the cement MACT and CISWI is a major concern for the cement industry. PCA has long argued that the agency's definition of some cement kilns as CISWI units — those that burn “alternative ingredients” — undermines the agency's process for setting limits in the MACT rule. In MACT rules, the air law largely requires that EPA take the best performing 12 percent of facilities and set standards based on them.
PCA successfully argued to the D.C. Circuit in its lawsuit challenging the cement MACT, PCA v. EPA, that removing plants from that data set would undercut the standards setting process.
“Our first desire is to avoid being labeled an incinerator in the first place,” the industry source says, because the incinerator rule sets tougher controls than the cement rule. The problem of reclassification as an incinerator arises because some cement plants burn items, such as tires, for fuel which fall under the CISWI rule.
Although PCA has made “some progress” in talks with EPA, and fewer cement plants will now fall under the CISWI rule, “a number of plants will still qualify as incinerators,” the source says.
Despite the likely reduction in the number of plants covered by the CISWI rule, the source predicts this will have little impact on the actual MACT floors set in the forthcoming cement proposal.
Rather, the altered PM limits will be more beneficial to industry. Despite the apparent concessions to industry, the source says that the MACT rule will still prove “very costly,” noting that a final reconsidered cement rule is not due until Dec. 20 and industry will reserve its final judgment on the regulation until then.
Compliance Deadline
EPA could also extend the compliance deadline for the revised cement MACT, which would be another win for industry. In the proposed consent decree setting the June 15 deadline for issued proposed changes to the rule, the agency also floated the option of extending the compliance deadline in the MACT for existing cement plants from Sept. 10, 2013 to Sept. 9, 2015, in return for industry's vow not to seek rehearing of the D.C. Circuit's decision in the PCA case. The agency took comment on the proposed consent decree through June 7.
Industry groups including the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, International Brotherhood of Boilermakers and individual cement firms in their comments welcomed the suggested extension.
PCA in its April 9 paper said even with a less stringent PM limit, compliance with the cement MACT will take until at least September 2014, or September 2015 for plants that have to make more extensive retrofits.
Environmentalists, however, strongly criticized the proposed consent decree in their comments, while wondering that an extension or other measures to weaken the MACT would likely be unlawful.
In comments on the proposed consent decree, a coalition of environmentalists including the law firm Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and nine other groups take aim at EPA's concessions to industry. They note that the cement MACT under reconsideration stems originally from a D.C. Circuit remand of air toxics standards for cement plants in 2000, underscoring the lengthy delay for the rule.
“One especially troublesome aspect of the proposed settlement is EPA's commitment to either propose a two-year compliance delay or take comment on such a delay,” the groups say.
The Clean Air Act says that EPA cannot allow more than three years for compliance, “Thus, any delay of the compliance date is presumably premised on a plan by EPA — a plan not mentioned in the settlement or discussed in the proposal — to change the standards” from those issued in 2010, they argue.
“Given that EPA proposes to enter this settlement with industry, it is likely that any such change would weaken the standards,” the groups say, and this would be illegal under the act unless the result of a court order.
The D.C. Circuit granted its remand of the MACT purely on the grounds that industry was not given the required time to comment on the relationship between the CISWI rule and the MACT, they argue. Therefore, “unless EPA finds in responding to the remand in PCA that its standards must be changed to reflect changed CISWI and cement kiln populations, any changes diminishing or replacing the existing standards would be flatly unlawful,” they say.
The groups further argue that EPA has rushed its reconsideration of the rule, undertaken in only six months. They say that in the absence of final rules on CISWI and the definition of solid waste, EPA cannot be any more certain of the number of cement plants that fall under the CISWI rule now, compared to when it issued its final rule in 2010, or submitted its briefs to the D.C. Circuit in litigation on the issue last year. — Stuart Parker
Posted in Cement, cement industry, EPA

An Article Every North Texas Elected Official Needs to Read

By jim | June 17, 2012 |

"This is heavy industrial mining. That's what it is," concludes Arlington resident Elizabeth Lane, who lives next door to a natural gas well and is quoted in a new story on North Texas fracking by Shelley Hawes Pate in this month's edition of Dallas Child (p. 26). "DRILLING FOR DOLLARS" is one of the best stories about local fracking you'll read lately because it takes the debate away from the abstractions of academia and government and puts it squarely in the experience of people on the ground. People who were not Sierra Club members before they started feeling sick or their lives disrupted by gas mining. People who have absolutely no motive to go after big business or polluters just for the fun of it. Go out right now and buy a copy and share it with friends. Then put it in an envelope and mail it to one or more members of the Dallas City Council.

Posted in Drilling in Dallas, Fracking, Gas, Natural Gas

Took My Chevy to the Levee, But the Levee…Was Full of Lead

By jim | June 17, 2012 |

Raymond Crawford of the Dallas Residents for Responsible Drilling group asked for all letters, notes, etc., between the City of Dallas and the Army Corp of Engineers over the issue of drilling near dams or levees. He put in a Texas Open Records Act request nine months ago. It was prompted by the fact that the Corps had asked Grand Prairie to suspend permitting gas wells within 3000 feet of the Joe Pool Lake dam and in a letter to that city had stated it would be contacting Dallas about the same issue since it owned the other side of the Lake.

Only, so far, there's no letter to Dallas that's been produced. That's what Crawford was trying to find with his request.

Monday, the city finally sent him some information, including an e-mail from the Corps to the City referencing the Grand Prairie situation and the 3000 foot "protective zone," along with an internal City e-mail that summarizes (incorrectly) that Dallas doesn't have any potential gas well sites near the Joe Pool Lake dam.

There is no e-mail or correspondence from the City of Dallas back to the Corps reporting any official inventory of sites that might qualify, so as of now, we still don't know what the city told the Corps in response to its inquiry. Did it later acknowledge that there was a site on the Dallas side of the Lake, or talk about how much of the land under and around the Trinity River levees was already leased fro drilling by the City? We don't know. We DO know that nobody at Dallas City Hall communicated this inquiry from the Corps into drilling sties close to dams to the City Council as a whole or the public.

Thanks to Crawford, we also know that the lower Trinity River floodplain near Cadillac Heights is a deeply contaminated area of Dallas that the city and the Corps is trying spin into being not quite so contaminated so it can go forward with a flood control plan that involves building and maintaining wetlands along this corridor. His request came back chock full of paperwork concerning the "Dallas Floodway Extension Project," a decades old plan that now seems to be wrapped up into the city's Trinity Rover improvements agenda.

Soil sampling that was done to explore just how contaminated this land is showed very high levels of lead and worrisome levels of Mercury, Benzene and other pollutants – down to 15 feet in depth, as far as the sampling went. This isn't all that surprising considering the stretch of land saw two lead smelters operating there for decades, as well as variety of other heavy industries. What might be considered shocking is that the Corp and the City want to take a lot of this contaminated soil and build up the existing levees with it. They propose to dig up the "not-so-bad" lead-infested soil from the floodplain, truck it over about 100 yards, dump it, and and pack it right back down back into the levee, leaving it all in South Dallas. Isn't that convenient? Only one problem. What the Corps and the City are saying is "not-so-bad" is worse than they're spinning it because they're using soil clean-up standards based on old blood lead alert levels that are now obsolete – 500 parts per million for residential use and 1600 ppm for industrial use.

If South Dallas residents were looking around for another example of how they always get second-class treatment, they could certainly contrast the language and clean-up strategy used in these e-mails with that of the recent Exide lead smelter settlement agreement in Frisco, some 30 miles and several income brackets away.

Posted in Drilling in Dallas, Gas, Lead, Natural Gas