Magical Mystery Tour: Then vs Now

Magical Mystery Tour BusDallas city staff are trying very hard to persuade the City Plan Commission to reverse their December 20th denial of the three Trinity East gas drilling and production sites.

So hard, they engineered a "reconsideration vote" to overturn that denial, now scheduled for 1:30 pm February 7th – next Thursday.

So hard, they're flip-flopping on established positions, misrepresenting the facts, and fabricating new definitions to avoid the truth.

So hard that they're resorting to the tired and true tactic of polluters and their flunkies everywhere: "Let's Take a Tour of the Site!"

So at 8 am on Thursday morning- tomorrow – members of the Plan Commission, under heavy escort by city staff, will meet at City Hall to board buses and take a tour of the Luna Vista Golf Course drill site, the gun range site near-by, and the refinery site near the Elm Fork soccer complex just west of Walnut Hill. Interested citizens will be along as well, but city staff has told them that they may or may not be able to ride on the tour bus with CPC members and staff. Too risky we suppose – what if someone wants to challenge the staff narrative? Is such a bus ride a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act? Good question. But Dallas City Hall hasn't been in the mood lately to observe the fussy legal niceties.

But the tour does give CPC members the chance to compress all the tricks and untruths of the gas lease controversy into a nice 3-hour package. For example:

Threat of a lawsuit from Trinity East for Not Alllowing Drilling in Parks or the Flood Plain

Then:  "When the city executed its lease with Trinity East, the words “park land” didn’t appear. The lease designated just five sites – none on parkland – as authorized drilling locations. Two sites that were on parkland were listed as ‘possible’ drilling sites, the same two locations now up for review. But city staff made it clear to the council that the company had no assurance that those sites would ever be available.” (Dallas Morning News, 2012).

Now: Trinity East says "prohibiting drilling and production in public parks is a complete reversal of the City's position when the leases were sold. In fact, two of the pending drill sites are on park lands (one adjacent to L.B. Houston Golf Course and one on the Gun Club). Not only were these sites advertised in the original RFP, but they were also specifically identified by city staff before the
leases were purchased. It will result in a breach of agreement. (2011 Trinity East Letter to Gas Task Force.

Surface Drilling on Park Land

Then: “There will be no drilling allowed on the surface of city of Dallas park land.” (2008 City of Dallas staff presentation to City Council)

Now: Dallas city staff say there will not only be surface drilling on city parkland allowed, but that city parkland will be permanently taken out of park use to allow for drilling.  There's a February 13th hearing on doing just that scheduled by the Dallas City Council.

Refineries and Compressor Stations

Then:  Under the current ordinance, compressor stations and refineries “would require a planned development district because no defined use; or must create a use in zoning districts.” (City Staff to Gas Task Force in 2012).

Now: Under the current ordinance, special zoning districts are not required for compressor stations and refineries. These are part of “normal well site production.” There is no definition of a compressor station or refinery that distinguishes it from normal well site production. (City of Dallas Staff, January 2013)

Citizens will be on the tour with fact sheets reminding the press, the CPC, and city staff themselves about these obvious contradictions. But's it up to you breathers, to remind them forcefully enough to keep the permits denied on the 7th. Keep those cards and letters coming in and be sure to show up for the CPC meeting at 1:30 pm next Thursday,

Dallas City Hall: 17 Tons of Air Pollution Too Much for Kids, 75 Tons Just Right

hypocrisy meterIt just keeps getting more ridiculous and indefensible.

Just four short months ago, the City of Dallas staff stood up to the big bad Weir Brothers asphalt and concrete crushing plant across the street from the City's new Elm Fork soccer complex with its 15 playing fields, tracks and concession stands. They told the City Council that the crusher was an "incompatible use" next to such a new jewel in the city's park system. Industrialization in that part of town was not consistent with the goals of the City's Comprehensive Plan. The Parks and Recreation Department weighed in, saying that the facility was "will have a negative impact on the soccer complex and possibly hinder future redevelopment in the area." The Office of Environmental Quality was concerned about the particulate matter pollution and the health of children playing at the complex, and also urged denial of a new operating permit.

After that presentation, Councilmember Sheffie Kadane exclaimed that, by Gosh, "We're gonna have kids from all over the world coming to that complex, and we don't want that next door."

Examination of the permit for the Weir Brothers facility shows that total emissions were estimated to be 16.5 tons per year, including the 3 tons a year of Particulate Matter that the Office of Environmental Quality was so concerned about. There was no testimony by staff that the crusher exceeded its permitted emisisons, or could not meet TCEQ emissions limits, or that meeting those limits was safe or not safe. The city was just doing its duty to protect its kids form pollution. ANY pollution that close to such a huge playground for children was just wrong.

Which is why it's so interesting now to see City of Dallas staff say that 75 tons of air pollution a year from approximately the same site near the soccer complex by way of the proposed Elm Fork Refinery is NO PROBLEM AT ALL.

And that's Trinity East own guesstimate about annual emissions. The permit they get from the state allows them to go up to 600 tons per year.

That's right, the City of Dallas rejected the permit of a concrete crusher next to the soccer fields, but is endorsing the permit for a gas refinery that sits next door to the crusher.

Nothing shows the hypocrisy of City Hall over the Trinity East gas leases like this abuse of power by staff to arbitrarily declare one source of minor pollution a nuisance that must be stopped in 2012, while declaring that a source that will emit more than four times the amount of pollution is fine and dandy. 

Where is staff's claim of the "incompatible use" of a refinery adjacent to a children's soccer field?

Where is staff's opposition based on the City Comprehensive Plan, which calls for office building not refineries, near the soccer fields.

Where is the Parks and Rec department's indignation over imperiling the success of the soccer field?

Where is the Office of Environmental Quality's concern for the health of children over 75 tons of air pollution and much more than 3 tons a year of Particulate Matter?

Where's the concern over not just PM pollution, but carcinoigens like Benzene and Formaldehyde, wafting into the games acrosss the street? What about dangerous Hydrogen Sulfide emissions?

How can it be that Dallas City Hall can get so worked up about 16. 5 tons of air pollution a year, but be so quiet when it comes to 75 tons of air pollution from the same place? That's a really, really good question that nobody at City Hall seems able to want to answer out loud in public.
 

Just Say No to Lead Landfills Left in Frisco

Aerial of Exide Active Haz Landfill  copy copy(This release was sent out at 9 am Monday morning….)

Saying they're frustrated with the ineptitude of Exide's public comment procedures concerning its plans to leave landfills of lead behind in Frisco, residents unveiled a system of their own on Monday that will funnel comments directly to the plant manager.

"Exide said they were interested in hearing from Frisco residents about their plans to leave over 9 million pounds of lead-contaminated waste buried in Frisco forever, but then directed everyone to a website that never worked," claimed Colette McCadden, chair of Frisco Unleaded, the local group that campaigned to close down the lead smelter and is now addressing its toxic leftovers. "So we're setting up our own comment system that will let Exide know exactly how we feel."

McCadden said her group had worked with Downwinders at Risk to establish a "No Lead Landfills Left in Frisco" web page where residents could send a prepared statement of opposition to Exide as well as add their own comments. She said they'd asked the company for an e-mail address where they could send public comments, but Exide never provided one. So they're using the e-mail address of the plant manager instead.

"It's clear that the company wasn't really serious about listening to Frisco residents," said Downwinders at Risk Director Jim Schermbeck. "At least now, they'll be forced to deal with public comments they were trying desperately to avoid."

When residents go to the new page, they can automatically "click n' send" a prepared message to Exide that says:

I'm opposed to Exide's plans to leave landfills full of lead-contaminated wastes on the site of its former lead smelter in central Frisco, including dumps in the Stewart Creek floodplain immediately upstream from the City's proposed Grand Park.

 

I want Exide to permanently remove ALL of its lead-contaminated waste from the Frisco smelter site and send it to a licensed, commercial hazardous waste disposal site – not "treat" it here in Frisco and leave it buried forever in downtown.

 

I also want Exide to apply for a full federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act hazardous waste permit that would require real public comment for its landfill clean-up instead of only comments to the company.

 

Residents can then add their own comment before sending the message directly to the plant manager.

Schermbeck urged everyone interested in sending a strong "No" message to Exide to take advantage of the new comment opportunity as soon as they can.  "Since this isn't an "official" Exide comment process, there's no telling how long the company will allow it to continue, so make sure they get your message today." 

“That Deal is Cut”

An op-ed from today's Dallas Morning News…..

There’s a moment in Woody Allen’s Bananas when the newly empowered dictator goes from deliverer to deranged. “All children under 16 years old are now … 16 years old,” he blithely declares. “The official language is now Swedish.” We laugh because the decrees are at such odds with the facts.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is experiencing his own Bananas moment over old gas drilling leases and having similar luck imposing fantasy on the facts.

But he’s not letting that stop him. The City Plan Commission will hold a do-over vote Feb. 7 on gas permits sought by Trinity East because the first vote, which opposed the permits, wasn’t to the mayor’s liking.

The CPC began hearings on these permits in 2010 but stopped because members were asked to perform tasks — environmental, toxicological and engineering — that were far outside their job description as part-time citizen volunteers.

So City Hall froze all action on the permits, established a task force, let it meet for a year and issue recommendations for a new gas ordinance last spring, and then promptly ignored the results.

In November, the mayor unfroze the process, declaring that the pending gas permits would be decided by the same inadequately equipped CPC, using the same inadequate 2010 rules. After three years, Rawlings has managed to lead us to the same inadequate spot where we started in 2010. Only now, according to him, it’s adequate.

But some things have changed. A Trinity East permit that in 2010 was limited to drilling is now a huge new gas refinery-compressor station that will handle toxic hydrogen sulfide and emit at least 75 tons a year of air pollution — within 600 feet of the city’s largest outdoor recreation center.

How do we know this? Because citizens went to investigate the site plans at City Hall — something no city employee, Plan Commission member or City Council member had done.

That’s a problem because the old, used-to-be-inadequate-but-now-adequate gas ordinance states that such facilities need their own zoning districts. That isn’t part of the current permit request.

It’s also a problem because the chair of the city’s gas task force never wanted compressor stations within the city limits. They emit too much pollution.

Now City Hall is scrambling to solve the problem — linguistically. Staff says that what they defined as processing plants and compressor stations last month are no longer defined as such this month.

In other words, “Everything that was a compressor station … is now not a compressor station.”

There’s also the question of how a proposal sold as involving no surface encroachment on city park land became a policy that allows rigs in the middle of city parks and taking park land out of circulation forever. But there’s method to this madness.

It appears that Dallas City Hall made a deal with Trinity East to drill on city park land and floodplains even though no such thing was possible under current law.

“When we took the lease, we had that discussion with the city,” Trinity East manager Steve Fort told the Dallas Observer. “It was made very clear that adding that as a permitted use would not be an issue.” Or, as Mayor Rawlings later said bluntly to reporters in December, “that deal was cut.”

It’s in service to this seedy deal that the mayor and City Hall are distorting the entire municipal bureaucracy for the benefit of a single gas company.

Rawlings should recognize that he’s abetting, as Allen’s Bananas character says, “a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.” He should withdraw support of the Trinity East permits. He should pass a protective gas ordinance that will process gas permits correctly. And he should demand resignations from anyone at City Hall who sold public assets to the highest bidder when those assets weren’t up for sale.

Ed Meyer is president of the Fox Hollow Homeowners Association and may be contacted at mcnalliance@yahoo.com. Jim Schermbeck is director of Downwinders at Risk and may be contacted at info@downwindersatrisk.org.

Last Rig Standing: the Stakes for February 7th Dallas Vote

Today, DMN Dallas City Hall reporter Rudy Bush wrote that the Exxon-Mobile gas drilling subsidiary XTO has decided to permanently withdraw its requests for gas drilling permits in the city. Previously, the company had said it was "suspending" activity on the permits.

With its decision, XTO becomes the second out of three gas companies to withdraw from drilling leases that were first signed with the City of Dallas in 2007. Chief Oil had already pulled out, apparently complaining that it was too hard to get a permit approved in Dallas.

That leaves only the three sites being pursued by Trinity East as the very last ones left over from the Wild West days of gas leasing in Dallas – the same sites that have been the subject of so much controversy since the Mayor unilaterally decided to push them through after Thanksgiving.

To summarize, Dallas citizens have beat back all but three pre-2008 gas drilling permit requests in order to make sure any drilling done in the city is implemented under a new, more protective, and as yet, unwritten, gas drilling ordinance.

That's why the February 7th "re-do vote" on the Trinity East permits at the City Plan Commission is a decisive one. That's why we keep asking for your help in winning it. We get rid of these three sites and we've managed to avoid the mistakes of just about every city west of Dallas over the past decade. We draw a line in the Shale.

We are three sites and one February 7th vote away from starting with a clean slate. Three sites and one February 7th vote away from not having to worry about "grandfathered" gas facilities. Three sites and one February 7th vote away from keeping Dallas responsible in its drilling.

All that's standing in our way is Dallas City Hall.

In contrast to what seems like a kind of nonchalant attitude by Mayor Rawlings in the DMN article, we know for a fact that he and the City Manager are launching a full court press to make sure the Trinity East permits get approved, despite their locations, pollutants and impact on public health. If the Plan Commission railroad job earlier this month didn't convince you, please look at what kind of legal back flips the city attorneys are doing to cover-up how bad the permits are.

Over this last week we've seen the city change its definition of what a compressor station is in reaction to discovering that it had one hiding in the Trinity East Elm Fork permit. What just last year had required a special zoning district to be built now no longer does. Now, the compressor station and refinery that Trinity East wants to operate are all just part of the "normal well head production" that every pad site has. Honest, that's what Dallas City Hall is saying – that a refinery and compressor station are now part of everyday normal pad site operation. Every well head needs one! But Dallas City Hall also says it has no way to distinguish between normal production equipment and anything bigger, including a miniature Texas City on the Trinity.

This interpretation of the current regulations was simply proclaimed by lawyers, not passed as policy. It has no basis in engineering or science or existing regulation. There are facilities much smaller than the planned Trinity East Elm Fork plant that are regulated as "compressor stations" and "processing plants" by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Dallas thinks it can downsize the pollution from these facilities just by changing what they call them.

That's how desperate they are to approve these Trinity East permits. It'd be laughable  – if these things weren't being said by City of Dallas attorneys with straight faces in meetings with citizens.

It's about the process as much as the pollution now. City Hall is twisting the municipal machinery all out of shape in service to a single gas company. That's why we need you to come and stand with us on the 7th.

Dallas-based Gulf War Illness Study Points to Low Level Chemical Exposure; DMN Ignores

Shortly before Christmas, a long multi-year toxicological investigation of Gulf War Illness headed up by UT Southwestern's Dr. Robert Haley announced its final conclusions. This is a study that's received lots of attention, and many consider it the definitive work on the Illness to date. Because it involved a local Dallas medical institution and a renowned local scientist, the Morning News traced the study's progress year-to-year, with its penultimate update appearing right after Thanksgiving.

Reporting that the study had confirmed that actual physical nerve damage in veterans, and not psychological problems, was the underlying common denominator of the Illness' many different reported symptoms, including breathing difficulties, increased heart rate, decreased sexual function, perspiration and other body functions.

You see, a lot of Very Serious People didn't believe the Gulf War Vets who reported being Ill because they didn't exhibit any of the classic signs of any specific diseases or condition. As it turns out, those same Very Serious People thought the same thing about citizens who were regularly getting shat on by industrial pollution and experienced many of the same kinds of symptoms as the Vets.

Doesn't this sound awfully familiar to some of you?

“Many of these veterans have been told that there is nothing wrong with them,” Haley said Monday in an interview. “Our hope is that the physicians treating our veterans will read this study and recognize the symptoms, and that this will lead to better treatments.”

In the last sentence of the November DMN piece, Haley assured the reporter that the upcoming final chapter of his study would be decisive. Having shown that the Illness was in fact based in physiology and not psychology, Haley was ready now to point the finger at the trigger mechanism itself – what thing or things were causing this physiological response in so many Vets.

“We’re going to show proof of what causes this,” he said. “It will be a huge study with convincing evidence.”

In December, that final chapter was published in a peer-reviewed paper for a respected journal. The New York Times ran an article. And the conclusions were very controversial indeed.

"The paper, published in the journal Neuroepidemiology, tries to rebut the longstanding Pentagon position, supported by many scientists, that neurotoxins, particularly sarin gas, could not have carried far enough to sicken American forces.

The authors are James J. Tuite and Dr. Robert Haley, who has written several papers asserting links between chemical exposures and gulf war illnesses. They assembled data from meteorological and intelligence reports to support their thesis that American bombs were powerful enough to propel sarin from depots in Muthanna and Falluja high into the atmosphere, where winds whisked it hundreds of miles south to the Saudi border.

Once over the American encampments, the toxic plume could have stalled and fallen back to the surface because of weather conditions, the paper says. Though troops would have been exposed to low levels of the agent, the authors assert that the exposures may have continued for several days, increasing their impact."

So the Gulf War Vets not only suffered from some of the same symptoms as downwinders, but they get exposed in the same way downwinders do – a little bit every day.  This is the insidious conclusion of the report – that amounts of poison that the regulatory agencies (in this case, the Pentagon) tell you should result in no harm, actually cause harm.

Some scientists studying Gulf War Illness disagree with Dr. Haley. They still hold fast that stress or other psychological conditions cause the Illness. But it's the conclusion of one of the best and most thorough studies of Gulf War Illness ever conducted.

However, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything about it in the Morning News. Unbelievably, the paper didn't cover the final, headline-making conclusion of a study it's been following meticulously for years now. We don't know if the challenge to the status quo was the reason, but it seems like a strange time for the News to wig out.

But taking Dr. Haley's conclusions and overlaying them with what we know about the toxic soup that downwinders often end up being exposed to on a routine basis, one can't help but see the similarities, right down to the "they must be imagining their symptoms" response of the Powers-That-Be. Whether it's the Pentagon, the TCEQ, or EPA, Dr. Haley's research challenges the way we diagnose and protect human health from low-level chemical invasions.

Thank You for Helping Us Show Some Green Muscle Last Thursday

Regardless of what else might transpire on the way to resolving the Trinity East gas permits, there is now one unintended, but indisputable, result. The environmental movement in Dallas is growing up.

Almost 100 of you came out during the middle of a weekday and made sure your public comments were heard, even as the City of Dallas used police to try and stifle them.

Tired of the Banana Republic abuse of government, the Orwellian hypocrisy, and the bold-faced lies used to explain the raw political power plays, you used your own bodies and voices to say enough is enough. You made your own raw political power play. You dared to push back. You publicly shamed the City. Out loud. You were so rude you had to be asked to leave the premises. Imagine!

That wasn't very Dallas of you.

Or was it?

You may or may not know that the Civil Rights movement came late to Dallas, and then not as a part of any national campaign, but from the grassroots up. There's a reason the late Rev. Wright has a freeway named after him. It's because he, along with other members of the black establishment, kept MLK and the national movement from coming to town during the 1960's.

It was only after folks like Peter Johnson, Domingo Garcia, Al Libscomb, the Medranos, and Diane Ragsdale started raising hell, and started getting thrown out of the same City Council Chambers Dallas environmentalists were thrown out of last Thursday that progress came in the form of single-member council districts and city projects in minority neighborhoods. Closed off from the power structure and negotiated change, they didn't have anything to lose in engaging in confrontational tactics with the City. Indeed the city didn't take them seriously until they started doing so – and suing in federal court.

Very few out of the hundreds that came down to City Hall to protest were tossed out. But the hundreds that came supported those being tossed out. Because they knew they had to finally stand up for themselves. 

Last Thursday's police escorts out of the City Council Chambers were only the latest in along line of such escorts for people who feel like they didn't have any choice left. But it was the first time environmentalists had been the escortees. It felt like the first time the they'd said "we're not going to take it anymore." Thanks for helping us show some muscle as a community. While we may have lost the actual reconsideration vote last Thursday, your actions made sure that we won the battle over public opinion.  If you don't believe us, take a look:

Dallas Morning News : Amid Cries of Shame, Dallas Reconsiders Gas Permits

Dallas Observer: Chaos as City Plan Commission Votes to Give Trinity River floodplain Fracking Another Look

Channel 11: Protesters Oppose New Life for Drilling Fracking Project

Channel 5: Neighborhood Association President Callas City Un-democratic and Un-American

KERA: Dallas "Re-do" on Gas Drilling Permits OK'd

Last Thursday's outcry should spur more public acts of indignation, as well as a new focus on city politics. There are city council elections this May. There are pro-drilling incumbents running. There's a chance to send them a message that's even louder than the one chanted last Thursday: "You lost."

Thursday's vote means that the City Plan Commission will now "reconsider" it's December 20th rejection of the Trinity East gas permits at its Thursday, February 7th 1:30 meeting back at City Hall.

Citizens won that December vote 7-5 with two members absent. We lost the reconsideration vote 6-5 with three members absent. Two members who voted against the permits in December voted for reconsideration. Two members who voted for the permits in December voted against reconsideration because the politics were now so rank.

What does it mean? Anything could happen on the 7th.

A second rejection of the Trinity East gas permits by the Plan Commission would kill the Trinity East gas permits permanently because it would then take 12 Council members to override such a rejection and there are not 12 members willing to approve them.

An approval of the permits by the Plan Commission would give a green light to gas drilling in parks, flood plains and near schools, overrule its December rejection, and send the requests to the City Council, where it would only take 8 votes to approve them, not 12.

So – everything is at stake on the 7th. Please mark it on your calendar now. And yes, we'll be sending out reminders. Because this is where we're we're drawing a line in the sand. This is where the abuse stops. This is where we stand up for ourselves and say "enough is enough."

Was Lead Contamination the Major Cause of 20th Century American Crime?

That's the hypothesis that Kevin Drum makes in the latest issue of Mother Jones, and he has a lot of evidence to back it up.

For years, scientists have known about the link between lead exposure in children and decreasing IQ levels. More recently, researchers have discovered more subtle effects in terms of anti-social behavior and AHHD diagnosis. Now, modern toxicology is to the point where most leading researchers say there is no level of lead a child can be exposed to that doesn't have the potential to effect his or her personality.

What if you were to use what we know now about the effects of lead contamination on young minds and playback the last 70 years of American history?

The biggest source of lead in the postwar era, it turns out, wasn't paint. It was leaded gasoline. And if you chart the rise and fall of atmospheric lead caused by the rise and fall of leaded gasoline consumption, you get a pretty simple upside-down U: Lead emissions from tailpipes rose steadily from the early '40s through the early '70s, nearly quadrupling over that period. Then, as unleaded gasoline began to replace leaded gasoline, emissions plummeted.

Gasoline lead may explain as much as 90 percent of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century.

Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the '60s through the '80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early '90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.

So Nevin dove in further, digging up detailed data on lead emissions and crime rates to see if the similarity of the curves was as good as it seemed. It turned out to be even better: In a 2000 paper (PDF) he concluded that if you add a lag time of 23 years, lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the '40s and '50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.

Dr. Howard Mielke of Tulane, who's analyzed the blood lead data collected from Frisco and found the samples higher than the state average, makes an appearance in Drum's article because of a large new study overlaying neighborhood lead exposure to neighborhood crime in six American cities. They match up precisely.

Read the short version of the article here.  Here's an interview with Dr. Mielke.

No one knew a lead additive in gasoline would produce such an impact. Because we didn't do the toxicology. Lead was introduced in gasoline in the 1920's when the modern industrial age was just hitting its stride. Now there are some 80,000 chemicals in the marketplace, only a handful of which have been tested thoroughly, including lead, because we're still not doing the toxicology BEFORE the chemical is used in widespread commerce.

Cancer. Birth Defects. Endocrine Disruptors. Why is it so inconceivable to some that the thousands of untested chemicals coursing through the veins of our economy can't have unintended consequences just like leaded gasoline, on their own or in combination with each other? What new epidemics are we instigating even now?

 

The Chinese and Texas Governments Respond the Same Way to Bad Air News: They Lie

For those following the worsening air quality trends in DFW over the last two years, nothing is more frustrating than having the TCEQ PR department follow up from the rear and try to explain in their best George Orwell impersonations how everything is still just hunky-dory.

You see, there was this nice little meme that started to take hold that even though DFW hadn't yet met a 1997 smog standard, that the number of bad air days and severity of those days was slowly but surely declining. And that was, more or less true right-up until 2011. For the past two summers, however, both the number of monitors violating that standard, and the severity of those violations have increased.

But TCEQ, and for that matter, many local officials, just can't let go of those pre-2011 numbers. And so instead of acknowledging that the region is experiencing a rollback in air quality, they simply keep showing you the same charts that start out in 1997 with high smog numbers, and end up in 2012 with smaller smog numbers. So you can see! We're improving! We're much better than we were 15 years ago.

That's a point nobody is arguing. More critical is whether we're doing better than we were in 2010 when the last DFW clean air plan was being put together. And there's no question, We're worse. But don't tell TCEQ that, or the unknowing reporters they get to carry their water.

Here's an example from a ridiculous Fort Worth Star-Telegram story….

"…ozone measurements have generally been declining in North Texas in the past decade. That progress is attributed to stronger vehicle emission rules and pollution control requirements for power plants as well as businesses ranging from dry cleaners and service stations to big "point sources" like factories.

In 2000-02, North Texas' average peak ozone was 99 parts per billion, well over the EPA's National Ambient Air Quality Standard of 85 ppb, set in 1997."

See what they did there? They steered the story and reporter away from recent bad news and toward old good news.  They ignored two facts – that DFW has yet to meet the 1998 smog standard, even though the state has written and implemented two plans to do so, and that in the last two years, the trend has been in the opposite direction from the one they cite that stops in 2002 – more than a decade ago.

In this respect, Texas is a lot like China these days. That government is also a bit reluctant to admit it hasn't met its air quality goals the way it promised it would. Just this past weekend, soot levels in Beijing got "crazy bad" according to independent air monitors, but didn't get quite so out of control according to the official Chinese government version….

"Xinhua, the state news agency, reported on Dec. 31 that Beijing’s air quality had improved for 14 years straight, and the level of major pollutants had decreased. A municipal government spokesman told Xinhua that the annual average concentration of PM 10, or particles 10 microns in diameter or smaller, had dropped by 4 percent in 2012, compared with one year earlier."

See what they did there? They steered the story and reporter away from recent bad news and toward old good news.

Government propagandists work the same way the whole world over.