Downwinders on the March in DC

DC downwindersDownwinders at Risk Chair Gary Stuard and board member Molly Rooke were two of about 40,000 marchers yesterday in what's being billed as the largest rally for climate change action in U.S. history. Aimed primarily at stopping the Keystone Pipeline project that's snaking its way through East Texas, the rally was the culmination of a campaign begun by Bil McKibben and his 350.org effort two years ago. Joining Gary and Molly were busloads of other Texans including Hilton Kelly, a well-known veteran of Port Arthur refinery fights, whose hometown is now the destination point for the pipeline.

Despite the showing yesterday, and the President's pledge to finally act on the issue in his second inaugural address, many observers still expect him to approve the pipeline. Among the most popular scenarios being tossed around in the blogosphere is one where Obama first regulates Greenhouse Gas pollution from coal plants, the largest stationary source of such pollution, and then, after the applause dies down, approves the Keystone pipeline. Today's New York Times lays out the "knotty decision" the President faces in either alienating base support among environmentalists, or making unions and Canada very angry.

“Toxic Smog” in China, India, and….Utah

UtahValleySmog26Jan07Air pollution so bad that local doctors are telling prospective parents to wait to conceive children. Beijing? No. New Deli? No? Try Salt Lake City.

"Try to conceive in mid- to late-spring, after the inversion is over. That probably gives [a woman] the best window of opportunity for the critical first three months [for the fetus] to develop under the least amount of pollution," said physician Brian Moench, an anesthesiologist and president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. Better yet, he says, "get out of Salt Lake City to conceive."

Because of their geography and growth, some western US cities suffer significant smog problems in the wintertime when cold air inversions trap pollution and cause concentrations of pollutants to skyrocket. But this has been a particularly rough year for Utah. Northern Utah valleys have been choked in winter smog almost every day since Christmas. Soon after a storm covered the valley floors with snow two weekends ago, pollution climbed to levels considered "unhealthy" even for the general population. Things are so bad a group of doctors has asked the Governor to declare a medical emergency.

They’re Coming to Burn Your Garbage

barrel fireIt's already happening in the cement industry, including at all three Midlothian cement plants just south of Dallas. Industrial wastes and/or municipal garbage are being bundled up and burned under the ruse of "recycling" or "waste-to-energy."  Next will come the facilities that do nothing but burn garbage for money. Rumors persist that the City of Dallas is pursuing it's fight over "flow control" to McCommas Bluff landfill because it wants to provide enough raw material for a garbage burner. The Daily Climate has a primer on the whole scene that you should read now.

Remember Those East Texas Coal Plants?

TXU coal plantsThe Sierra Club does. Funded by a $50 million donation from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, its Beyond Coal campaign is coming to Dallas-Ft. Worth to take on the old TXU, the operator of some of the most polluting coal plants in the nation, including Martin Lake, the third largest stationary source of Greenhouse Gas pollution in the nation.

Hoping to persuade customers to switch electricity providers, as well as hit the plants as contributors to the chronic regional smog problem, the Club is sending at least two organizers up to North Texas from Austin on a regular basis. They'll be supervised by former Downwinder technical adviser and EPA Regional Administrator Dr. Al Armendariz, who's now heading up the Texas franchise of Beyond Coal.

Although some might argue that gas mining in the Barnett Shale has replaced the threat the coal plants represented seven years ago when Governor Perry attempted to fast track the permitting of over a dozen new ones, the old TXU ones still release formidable amounts of pollution because they're so old. A new Texas Tribune interview with Dr. Armendariz lays out the campaign's strategy for taking them on.

Gas Mining Is Second Largest Source of Greenhouse Gases in US

Global warming- earth fryingFor the first time as part of its annual inventory of pollution that cause global warming from stationary sources, the EPA included oil and natural- gas production. As a result, emissions from drilling, including fracking, and leaks from transmission pipes totaled 225 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalents during 2011, second only to power plants, which emitted about 10 times that amount.

The EPA yesterday released details of emissions from about 8,000 factories, power plants and refineries. Will it surprise you to learn that the state with the greatest overall amount of emissions from power plants and refineries was Texas, with a total of 294 million metric tons. The next-highest state was Pennsylvania, with 129 million metric tons. Florida, Ohio and Indiana rounded out the top five. California ranked seventh, with 71 million metric tons of emissions. Idaho and Vermont had the lowest levels of reported emissions.

Ranked by facility, two coal-fired power facilities owned by Atlanta- based Southern Company  topped the list, followed by the Martin Lake plant in East Texas owned by Energy Future Holdings Corp (TXU) of Dallas.

Overall, CO2 from power plants declined over 4% because there was less coal-burning and more gas-burning nationwide. But for areas where gas is mined, like the Barnett Shale in North Texas, GHG pollution is increasing substantially.

Environmental Health News Round-Up

lab-rat1Current events in Dallas and Frisco kept us off our usual Environmental Health beat for awhile. Here's a round-up to get caught-up with some of the most important recent news:

Secondhand Smoke is a Big Source of Lead – Children in families with one smoker had lead levels 14 percent higher than children who live with non-smokers. That number jumped to 24 percent if children lived with two or more smokers according to a new John Hopkins study.  The article is frustrating however because it doesn't say where the lead in cigarettes comes form

Phthalates Linked to Obesity in African-AmericansA new study shows that African-American children who have high levels of an environmental contaminant called phthalates are more likely to be obese.The study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives on Feb. 5, showed that African-American children had higher levels of the chemical compared to white and Hispanic children. Phthalates are found in plastics but also can be found in the gas patch and in the emissions of waste-burning cement plants like the ones in Midlothian.

The Cancer Risk of Fire FightersTony Stefani used to be a firefighter and a cancer patient. The two, he believes, had something to do with each other.Stefani was a firefighter in his native San Francisco for 28 years, nearly half of them as captain of a rescue squad. But the profession he loved may have nearly cost him his health. The job involved breathing all kinds of substances, from the diesel fumes of fire engines to smoke laced with flame retardants in people's homes. That contact, Stefani believes, is the reason for his diagnosis of transitional cell carcinoma, a rare cancer in his pelvis, in 2001. He soon learned that hundreds of active and retired firefighters also had various kinds of cancer.

Pesticides Linked to Type 2 Diabetes – Pesticides in food, air and water may be directly linked with the development of type 2 diabetes, regardless of a person's age, gender or body mass index, a new Spanish research study has found. These substances tend to concentrate in body fat, and they might be one of the reasons why obese people are more likely to develop diabetes, since the greater the fat, the higher the pesticide concentrations in the body, researchers from the University of Granada found.

PAH's Make Cockroach Allergies More Likely – Results from a study published on Feb. 6 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found that exposure to a certain type of air pollution found in diesel exhaust and other combustion-related byproducts can increase the likelihood of developing a cockroach allergy. Researchers studied a common class of combustion byproducts called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are products of combustion.

Another Study Ties Air Pollution to Lower Birth Weights – A pregnant woman's exposure to outdoor air pollution may increase the risk of her baby being born at a lower birth weight, according to a large multinational study. Researchers from 14 sites in nine countries, including Seoul, South Korea; Atlanta; and Vancouver, British Columbia, compiled the average levels of particulate air pollution to which women were exposed during the course of their pregnancy. Sources of particulate air pollution include traffic exhaust, power plants and even dust. The researchers found that for every 10-microgram increase of pollution particles per cubic meter of air, birth weight decreased by 8.9 grams, roughly one-third of an ounce, and infants were 3 percent more likely to be a low birth weight.  An infant is considered low birth weight if he or she weighs less than 5 pounds 8 ounces at birth. Low birth weight is a known risk factor for infant mortality as well as heart, breathing and behavior problems later in life.

A Dallas Drilling Scandal Primer

Garbage piling upThanks to everyone who turned out last Thursday for the (abbreviated) public hearing on the Trinity East "zombie" gas permits before the City Plan Commission. Our apologies to those of you who were not allowed to speak by the arbitrary too-soon ending of the hearing. It was one more example of a process gone off the rails when it comes to these permits.

It's now clear that what began as a neighborhood-based effort to fight off irresponsible urban gas drilling three years ago has now grown into not only a turning point for the entire Dallas environmental movement, but as of last week, into the largest Dallas City Hall scandal in years as well. There are suddenly lots of moving parts. Here's a quick summary of what we know as of today.

On Thursday morning, the Dallas Observer broke the story that in 2008 Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm signed a secret side agreement with Trinity East  that essentially turned City Hall into a lobbying machine for the company's gas permits. The first impact of that lobbying was a reversal of the no drill policy in Dallas parks. Only six months after city staff had told the Council and Park Board there would be no surface drilling in Dallas parks allowed, the side agreement Suhm negotiated with Trinity East assured the company that she and her staff were "reasonably confident" they could win permission to drill in parks for the company.

Many Dallas activists have speculated about such an agreement as the only way to explain why city staff seemed to be going out of its way to push through the Trinity East permits, including abruptly re-defining the current gas ordinance on the fly, ignoring or flouting precedents, and declining to bring the usual level of official scrutiny to bear. Suhm and city attorneys kept this document from public view even after years of opposition from neighborhood groups to drilling sites, including Trinity East's. At a time when every city staffer had an obligation to wear the Trinity East agreement on their sleeves, City Hall hid the fact they were working for the company to win its permit. Dallas Councilwoman Angela Hunt has prepared a detailed timeline of Suhm's deception.

Suhm declined to talk directly to the Observer, but instead issued a statement to the Morning News that said, in essence, she was shocked, shocked that anyone could think this side agreement with Trinity was a "back room" deal. Mayor Rawlings is standing by Suhm so far, issuing a statement of support late Thursday that emphasized the "non-binding" nature of the side deal that was "cut," as the Mayor so eloquently put it back in November.  The Observer's Jim Schutze had a take down of both of their official statements on Friday, saying "some stuff just won't spin." 

A growing chorus of groups and individuals are calling for Suhm to resign, as are some Council members like Hunt, and Scott Griggs. Her fate now seems linked to that of the Trinity East permits, since both seem tainted beyond redemption by the disclosure of the side deal. How can any resident or Council member trust what city staff says about the permits? How can any resident or Council member trust that Suhm won't sell them out again?

Meanwhile, the Observer has raised the possibility of Open Records Act violations by the City because it's pretty sure it asked for ALL documents related to the Trinity East permits. Citizens groups and individuals that have been turning in a constant flow of Open Records Act requests for the last three to four years might also have the same gripe.

But they'd have to take a number because four people, including Downwinders Director Jim Schermbeck, Zac Trahan of the Texas Campaign for the Environment, Raymond Crawford of Dallas Residents for Responsible Drilling, and Marc McCord of frackDallas went down to the District Attorney's office and filed a criminal complaint against the City Plan Commission Chair on Wednesday, alleging a violation of the Open Meetings Act prior to the January 10th vote to "reconsider" the Commission's denial of the permits. According to the complaint, Chair Joe Alcantar called members and lobbied them to vote for reconsideration in a practice called "daisy-chaining a quorum" that is explicitly against the law. If the charge is substantiated by an investigation, all subsequent decisions about the permits by the Commission could be invalidated. That would mean reverting back to the original December denial of the permits.

On the political front, John Carona, the Republican State Senator whose district includes the Elm Fork Soccer Complex, sent a letter to Mayor Rawlings, urging him to withdraw his support for the Gas Refinery and Compressor Station proposed for only 600 feet west of the Complex. Democrat State Representative Rep. Lon Burnam of Ft. Worth sent a similar letter, further isolating the Mayor politically.

In all, quite the "goat (act of procreation)", as the Observer's Brantley Hargrove labeled the whole Trinity East controversy last month.

What happens now?

Officially, the City Plan Commission put off any (legitimate or not) vote on the permits until its March 21st meeting. They have now specifically requested the Council deal with changing the current prohibitions against parkland and floodplain drilling before they're asked again to violate the law. So theoretically, the show now moves to the whole City Council, which has scheduled a 1:00 pm Wednesday, February 27th state-mandated public hearing on the city permanently removing park land from the city park system for drilling.

This same hearing has been scheduled twice before however, only to be canceled when the City Plan Commission didn't get around to doing what the Council couldn't bring itself to do first. Up to now the Mayor's strategy was to push the permits through the Plan Commission and Park Board to provide a cover for Council approval of drilling activity in parks and flood plains that's still not allowed. Apparently there's enough resentment about that among Plan Commission members for them to toss the hot potato back to the Mayor and Council. But it does so exactly as the Suhm memo hits and makes political support for the permits more tenuous.

We'll know soon whether the February 27th City Council hearing on turning over park lands to drilling is really on or not. Stay tuned.

Open Meetings Act Violation Filed Against Dallas Plan Commission Chair

(Dragnet(This release was sent out Wednesday afternoon…..)

(Dallas)—In the latest twist over the ordeal of what to do with old gas leases in Dallas, citizens have accused the Mayor’s appointee to the City Plan Commission of taking actions that may have resulted in a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act while trying to reverse a denial of gas drilling permits for the last of those leases.

A group of four individuals representing themselves and various citizen and environmental organizations filed an official complaint with the District Attorney’s office alleging that CPC Chair Joe Alcantar individually lobbied Plan Commissioners over the phone prior to the CPC’s January 10th meeting in order to win a rare “reconsideration” vote to grant permits for Trinity East’s three controversial gas drilling and production sites in Northwest Dallas.

Lawyers familiar with the statute say if that’s what happened, it could be a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act known as “daisy-chaining.” Not only would the January 10th reconsideration vote itself be illegal, but any action resulting from that vote – like Thursday’s scheduled public hearing on the reconsideration – could also be illegal.

In a letter to Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, City Manager Mary Suhm and City Attorney Tom Perkins, the group referred to the complaint, noting that at least three different Commissioners had independently confirmed that Mr. Alcantar, appointed by the Mayor, systematically called each of them to lobby for the favorable reconsideration vote.

“In this instance, we believe there’s a prima facie case that Mr. Alcantar met (via telephone) with members of the Plan Commission in number more than a quorum to discuss public business in private, the letter reads. “We believe this may constitute a criminal violation of the Open Meetings Act.”

The letter asks Mayor Rawlings to join the group in requesting a full investigation by the District Attorney’s office of the circumstances surrounding the January 10th vote. 

“As a result of our concerns, an official complaint, enclosed, has been filed with the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. We want this matter fully investigated by an objective and independent third party. We ask that you join us in that call for a full investigation by the District Attorney.”

Members of the groups said that while they don’t know for certain if illegal activity took place, the allegations fit the profile of a City Hall that’s twisting the machinery of municipal government in order to get the result it wants.

“There’s no question that someone at City Hall has been tightening the screws on the City Plan Commission,” said Jim Schermbeck of the local clean air group Downwinders at Risk. “Whether that degenerated into the criminal behavior outlined in our complaint is for the District Attorney to discover.”

Besides Schermbeck, Zac Trahan of the Texas Campaign for the Environment, Raymond Crawford of Dallas Residents for Responsible Drilling, and Marc McCord of FracDallas all signed the complaint and the letter. They also all criticized the lack of transparency that has marked Dallas City Hall’s push for gas permits.

 “Ever since the original gas leases were signed in Dallas, City officials have retreated behind closed doors,” said Molly Rooke of the Dallas Sierra Club. “This is just another example of a back-room deal’ that affects every Dallas resident, but that no one sees until after the fact.”

Others in the group cited recent legal backflips by the City in what to call a proposed gas processing and compressor station facility just a few hundred feet from the new Elm Fork Soccer Complex. Last year it was a processing plant that would have required a special zoning district. This year, city attorneys say it’s only routine drilling equipment.

“The City is desperately pulling out all the stops in trying to get Trinity East’s gas permits approved,” said Zac Trahan of Texas Campaign for the Environment. “They’ve taken ridiculous positions and attempted parliamentary trickery, but this time their tactics may have gone too far.

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Addendum:

Reporters have asked why we're not naming the Commissioners who described the Chair's actions. Here's why:

We don't believe anyone but the Chair is responsible for the illegal conduct and we don't want anyone else implicated. We'll talk about what we know under oath as part of an official investigation. If individual Commissioners want to speak to reporters on their own, that's their business, but we're not going to drag them into this just for publicity's sake.