Morning News on Frisco: City Must Come Clean

Coming Clean in 2013This editorial ran in Today's Dallas Morning News:

"Environmentalists and Frisco residents have long wondered whether contamination existed beyond the borders of Exide Technologies’ shuttered Frisco plant.

Now they know, thanks to recent open records requests from Frisco Unleaded and Downwinders at Risk to state environmental officials. Waste materials from battery recycling processes exist in the 340-acre Grand Park area, the proposed site of an elaborate regional park.

If you live in Frisco, you should be perturbed that you didn’t hear this sobering news sooner — or hear it from the city, which has known of these findings for a couple of months. Instead, the information comes from environmental groups that stumbled across the test results in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s response to their records request.

Given the lingering controversy over the extent and pace of the cleanup of Exide’s plant site, city officials owed it to residents to disclose everything they knew as soon as they learned it. Governmental transparency and communication are important, especially when health, safety, property values and the credibility of cleanup efforts are at stake. This is important because the new reports detail problems on land outside of Exide’s property that need to be cleaned up.

City officials contend they’ve been open with residents and last Monday filed an application to include the Grand Park area in a state voluntary cleanup program.

The city has done itself no favors by sitting on information. Frustrated with the pace of the cleanup, environmental groups want the Environmental Protection Agency to issue an imminent and substantial endangerment order and take over cleanup from TCEQ, which they allege is moving too slowly. While that is unlikely, the complaint underscores the desire of residents and environmental groups to make sure the cleanup is done properly.

What Frisco residents want is what any resident of any community wants — assurances that land that could house levels of lead, cadmium and arsenic in excess of state benchmarks will be cleaned up. The best way to do that is for Frisco to make sure residents know what’s going on — even steps the city might think are minor and procedural. And if subsequent testing definitively links the broader contamination to Exide, then Frisco has to make sure the battery company, now in bankruptcy proceedings, will pay for the cleanup.

More than a year has passed since Exide and Frisco struck a landmark deal to shutter the battery recycler, a major step toward Frisco reclaiming industrial land for a cleaner environment and recreational purposes. Now Frisco must make sure that the area is free of potentially deadly contaminants and that residents are fully aware of the extent of contamination.

Frisco has an opportunity to use land for a grand community vision, but it has to deal openly and transparently with residents and make sure those responsible for the contamination clean up the mess they’ve made."

“Scant Oversight and Lax Reporting” Doom Federal Right-to-Know Regs

haz mat suitsReuters examines the almost 30-year old Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act and finds that, depending on what state you live in, the information that's supposed to be provided to the public is either semi-correct, or full of holes you can drive tanker trucks through.

One of the provisions of the Act is supposed to be an annual inventory of all hazardous chemicals on site at a particular facility. Some 500,000 different substances are covered under the regs and should be accounted for…

But facilities across the country often misidentify these chemicals or their location, and sometimes fail to report the existence of the substances altogether. And except for a handful of states, neither federal nor local authorities are auditing the reports for errors.

As was demonstrated in West, recently, it's important to know what hazardous materials are stored where and in what quantity. Not only for the sake of surrounding residents, but for the first responders coming to their aid in any kind of accident or incident. Reuters cites several examples where firefighters showed-up and were injured on the scene when they didn't know a hazardous chemical was on-site.

A recent Congressional study estimated 60 deaths, more than 1,300 injuries and more than $1.6 billion in onsite and off-site damages caused by accidents at facilities storing 140 Tier II chemicals that have been deemed most dangerous by the EPA.

These numbers also don't include accidents at oil and gas industry sites, often exempt from the same reporting requirements as other industries. It's another reason why Dallas should include a complete, water-proof disclosure provision in any new gas drilling ordinance its Council passes.

Colorado: Oil and Gas Now the Main Source of Smog-Forming VOCs and Third Largest Source of Nitrogen Oxides

Denver pollutionAt least 600 tons of air pollution a day caused by the oil and gas industry in Colorado is causing a lot of consternation, especially in the Denver Metro area, which, like DFW, is currently out of compliance with the Clean Air Act for ozone, or smog.

Oil and gas emissions now are the main source of volatile organic compounds in Colorado and the third-largest source of nitrogen oxides, at a time when a nine-county area around metro Denver is already failing to meet federal clean-air standards, state data show.

The state is home to approximately 50,000 wells with an average of 2000 new ones drilled every year. Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper has put a nine-member Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment air quality control board in charge of making recommendations about how to deal with the large amounts of smog-forming and toxic air pollution being released by the industry.
 
Among the measures being mulled by state regulators are:

• Strengthening emission controls on storage tanks,

• Expanding statewide the existing pollution control requirements that currently apply in the metro Denver and north Front Range areas that fail to meet federal ozone standards,

• Establish leak-detection and repair requirements for oil and gas wellheads and compressor stations,

• Encourage the routing of natural gas into a sales pipeline within six months after new wells are drilled.

All good ideas, but based on our own experience, we're not sure they'll do much to stem the tide.

The Price You Pay to Reveal “environmental degradation for the benefit of powerful and wealthy interests”

Beaten Russian EnviroMidlothian? No, Frisco? No, Barnett Shale? No.

Russia. Where taking samples of illegal toxic contamination can get you fatally beaten by thugs instead of headlines and news coverage.

After three men in this heavily polluted city beat Stepan Chernogubov unconscious, fracturing his skull and knocking out three teeth, criminal investigators took him, still bleeding, to a police station where they questioned him for four hours and then threatened to bring charges against him.

Chernogubov had been set upon as he was trying to document the pollution streaming from a chromium plant here, pollution that occasionally turns a marsh feeding the Chusovaya River dark red, next to a waste pond that’s bright green. At least two of those in the fracas turned out to be plain-clothes police officers, he said in recounting the May incident.

The 26-year-old student knew the risks. Environmental activism in Russia attracts serious trouble. A forest advocate in southern Russia, Suren Gazaryan, criticized a governor, was thrown in jail and has now fled the country. An editor who campaigned against a highway project through a forest near Moscow, Mikhail Beketov, suffered brain damage in a 2008 beating, and recently died from his injuries.

In the southern region of Voronezh, three activists organizing against the opening of a lead and nickel mine were hospitalized in May after private security guards set upon them.

In this case, the environmental movement is fueled by intense nationalism, you know, like a Russian Tea Party, by residents who  consider any modern Moscow-based government just another bunch of tourists passing through the ancient homeland of the Cossacks.

A lot of us have wondered what happened to a similar nationalist strain in environmental politics that motivated Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt to create parks and save natural area in the country. Back then, these ecological marvels were part of "American Exceptionalism" – the country was uniquely blessed with a wide spectrum of climates and topography that should be recognized and enjoyed forever by all Americans. Environmental wonders were seen as symbols of the nation's strength and Providence's bias. Destroying these American treasures was seen as an attack on God's blessing to the country.

But maybe the Koch's have bought all that sentiment out.

New Studies Link Air Pollution to Cancer, Heart Failure and…Appendicitis?

ruptured appendixAccording to CBS News

"A new study published July 10 in The Lancet showed that even breathing low levels of air pollution for a prolonged period of time could raise risk for the often-deadly lung disease. Another study released on the same date showed that short-term exposure to most major air pollutants could increase the risks of hospitalization and death from heart failure."

Lung cancer risks went up 18% with each increase of 5 migrograms of PM 2.5. Researchers noted that they did not find a level of pollution for where there was no risk, and the results indicated "the more the worse, the less the better" when it came to pollution.

"At this stage, we might have to add air pollution, even at current concentrations, to the list of causes of lung cancer and recognize that air pollution has large effects on public health," Takashi Yorifuji from the Okayama University Graduate School of Environmental and Life Science and Saori Kashima from Hiroshima University in Japan…."

A second study shows the risk of dying or going to the hospital because of heart failure increased by 3.52 percent for every 1 part per million increase of carbon monoxide levels; 2.36 percent for every increase of 10 parts per billion of sulfur dioxide; 1.7 percent for ever 10 parts per billion increase in nitrogen dioxide; and about 2 percent for every 10 micrograms per cubic meter increase of particulate matter. Surprisingly, increases in ozone were not linked to heart failure. Unsurprisingly, you're breahting in all of these kinds of air pollution if you live in DFW.

All of that is kind of old news – put stuff in air, see stuff harm your lungs and heart. But here's a new "adverse health effect" being linked to air pollution – appendicitis. While not as lethal as lung cancers and heart attacks, anyone who's had their appendix rupture can tell you it's not a pleasant experience.

And while ozone may not have been linked to heart problems in that previous study, the New York Times reports a Canadian one links it to a slight increase in your chances of having appendicitis.

High ozone levels were associated with an increased number of hospitalizations for appendicitis and were even more strongly associated with cases of burst appendix. For each 16 parts per billion increase in ozone concentration the scientists found an 11 to 22 percent increase in ruptured appendix cases. The study was published in Environmental Health Perspectives. The associations persisted after controlling for age, sex, season of the year and the presence of other air pollutants, like nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter. The reason for the association is unclear, but studies in mice have shown that air pollution can alter the animals’ abdominal bacteria.

Who knew?

PM Pollution From Coal Shortens Lives by 5 Years in China

PM_diagramIt's all over the place on the net, but just in case you missed it, it turns out that increasing the amount of Particulate Matter pollution results in more people getting killed or injured by that pollution. Shocking.

Sources of PM pollution include your car, your local gas well operation, cement plants, and in this particular case in Northern China, coal plants. Northern provinces that got free coal for heating had an average of 55% higher PM concentrations than those living in warmer climes and burning less coal. That resulted in a dramatic loss of life span tha averages just over 5 years, mostly due to cardio-circulatory problems.

This isn't all that hard to understand is it. You breathe air that goes into your lungs. Fill the air with soot, and you fill your lungs with it too. Fill your lungs with soot and your body has a hard time coping with extra crap in your lungs that isn't supposed to be there. When that happens your heart works overtime to compensate. Cause and effect.

Scientists keep telling us that, like lead, ANY exposure to this very fine soot that can lodge in your lungs is potentially harmful. There's no "safe" level of PM. Yet the EPA and the states still issue permits for the release of large quantities of this poison as if that weren't true. It's another depressing example of the science being far ahead of the regulations.

The Most Toxic Place in Frisco? City Hall

Toxic Frisco City HallThere have been times and places when Frisco's official municipal insularity has undoubtedly worked in its favor. It's focused, "go-our-own-way" style is probably a big reason why the city has carved such a high-profile niche among DFW suburbs.

But the last two years of wrestling with the Exide lead smelter has revealed all of the vices of such an approach when it comes to environmental hazards and public health.

Given the rapidity of events, it's easy to forget that only two years ago, the same city officials now in charge of pursuing a clean-up of the Exide site were lauding the smelter as a valuable member of the local business establishment and trying to find ways to keep it operating. Having a lead smelter spewing tons of toxic air pollution near the High School in the middle of town was OK with these folks. They'd overlooked decades of state and federal environmental violations by the smelter. They overlooked the destruction of a city water treatment plant by the smelter. Hey, Exide employed 100 people. And "what could the city do anyway?"

Only the intervention of citizens, campaigning with the well-known idea of the city being able amortize the facility out of existence, forced the city to finally confront the incongruity of the smelter's operation with its 2013 Frisco surroundings.

Frisco parents didn't sign their mortgages in blood to gain entry in a prized school district only to have their kids IQ suffer because of an obsolete lead smelter. To their credit city officials sensed that the curtain had been pulled back too far on their pretense to go on. They did a 180 and got the smelter out of town. But they did it the Frisco Way: the city manager and city attorney wrote a secret, complicated, $45 buy-out agreement with Exide that was passed by the Council without any public hearing and no debate.

After the unanimous vote, when someone asked Frisco Councilman John Keating if he'd support a community oversight committee to make sure we got the best clean-up of he smelter site, his response was "We're it." And just like that, it was supposed to all go away. Containment.

But lead smelters are messy places, especially outlaw operations like the one Frisco hosted for so long. Especially when they operate decades before most of the regulations governing them now were implemented or enforced. They're hard to contain unless you know what you're doing. And nobody could tell Frisco it didn't know what it was doing. It was Frisco!

The city didn't feel any obligation to let its residents know how it would handle the clean-up, how extensive the clean-up would be, what kind of technologies or strategies might be used. Perhaps most importantly of all though, city officials never asked themselves or their constituents the most basic of planning questions, "What's going to happen to the Exide site?"

The City's de facto answer seems to be: a toxic waste dump. It appears to be fine with letting Exide hold on to the core of the smelter property, where all the worst contamination is, where tons and tons of lead waste are buried or piled or dumped, all uphill from Stewart Creek that still runs right through the site. So amidst all the million-dollar homes and exclusive shopping malls there will be this large toxic no-man's land with scary warning signs and the need for continued monitoring for decades. City officials meet any skepticism of this plan with a shrug of their shoulders. "What can the City do?" For a town with a reputation for being "can-do." Frisco City Hall has lacked the imagination to see anything but the need for an extensive cover-up – literally and figuratively – when it comes to the Exide situation.

Instead of dealing straight-on with the challenge, officials decided to play a game of misdirection by emphasizing what a great new regional park it was building…..directly downstream of the still-contaminated smelter site. But please, mention of any current or potential contamination problems at these presentations by any city official is strictly prohibited. It's just so uncouth to keep bringing that up.

If you lived outside the bubble of Frisco City Hall, you could see the absurdity in this strategy. Putting a park downstream of a dirty Exide site is like putting puppies on the rail at the end of a roller coaster ride.  You're just waiting for disaster to strike.

And it turns out those city officials knew it too. They just didn't want to tell their residents. 

Six months before they signed that complicated $45 million secret deal, officials were aware there was extensive contamination of the Grand Park area by Exide. Maybe that's one reason they wanted to keep the agreement secret.

We've been told by more than one engineer that the City had a responsibility to turn over that information to the EPA and state when it got the results in November 2011. Instead it just sat on it. How many Frisco children have been needlessly exposed to hazardous material in and around Stewart Creek in the intervening 18 months? How could any Frisco official in good conscience keep this kind of thing from the public?

It took another year and a half for the City to follow-up with its "visual survey" of the entire 5-mile course of Stewart Creek, from the smelter to Lake Lewisville. Then, instead of taking equipment with them on that trip up the Creek that would be able to identify lead waste and give you some idea about its toxicity, including stuff you couldn't necessarily see at first glance, it was merely a sightseeing affair where "suspected" slag and chips that were out in the open were inventoried.

However, even that expedition was enough to confirm that the Creek had been acting as a sluice for Exide waste into the Lake.  The City had those results three months ago.

All of this information was known in early June when Frisco Unleaded and Downwinders released a small report on the threat to Frisco's Grand Park from the smelter site. We did it at one of those Council presentations about the park where all of its virtues are discussed, but none of its environmental problems.

Not one city official spoke to the contamination problems facing the park. And it was clear that most were furious at citizens for once again raining on their Grand Park parade. It's as if Frisco city officials really believe that if you just don't mention the Exide toxic waste problem out loud, it can't hurt you.

It's one thing to apply that kind of magical thinking in denying Open Records Act requests and fluffing-up park presentations, but when it infects your ability to protect public health, it becomes a more serious matter.

Not only has the city hid information about hazardous materials that it had a duty to make public. It's been caught trying to actually hide the hazardous materials.  When a TCEQ inspector advises the city in 2012 that there's a new pile of battery chips that's washed up, the city's response is to cover it up with "geo-membrane fabric" – even when the TCEQ inspector says that's not going to be sufficient.  They don't want to dig it up. They don't want to do more testing to see the extent of contamination. They don't want to actually remove it. They want to cover it up. That's the city's entire M.O. when it comes to Exide these days. And that's what must change.

Had the city been up front with its own residents in real time about the smelter contamination, there would have been no press in June about how the smelter will impact Grand Park. The public would have already known. There would have been no wave of coverage about these City reports and TCEQ memo all of this last week. It would have been out in the open already. By trying to hide information from the public the city only insures it will always be in a reactive mode and behind the curve. It automatically gives more power to curious citizens to write the narrative, as this past month has shown. When your residents are finding this stuff out from us, instead of the local government that insists it's got everything under control, it's a sure sign that they don't have every thing under control

So far, only Frisco Unleaded and Downwinders have offered anything like a long-term answer to the most important question – what's  going to happen to the Exide site? And we're even on the planning department's payroll.

But the City Manager, City Attorney and Mayor would all rather drink lye than admit they've been wrong about this problem, or that Frisco Unleaded might have a good idea or two. It's the toxic mix of arrogance, lack of vision, and conflict of interest that's doing the most to poison Frisco right now. Exide's messy waste problem is only a symptom of this kind of mind-set. Before the definitive clean-up can happen at Exide, there's got to be one at City Hall.

Population Media Center Opening Dallas Office, Looking for Director

Dallas-Ft. Worth is home to lots and lots of non-profits groups. But most are either large United Fund-size operations with sizable budgets, or run by folks who really don't need to get paid for their time. And almost none work with hardcore environmental or social change issues. Considering how large the region is, it's embarrassing that there's so little infrastructure for the kind of non-profit that does what we do here at Downwinders.

There are some signs of life however. For one thing the emphasis on the "purplization" of Texas means more east and west coast money will be coming to Texas, not only to fund partisan Democratic Party activity, but also to do broader social change work.

Then there are things like this. Apparently some determined people in the DFW are have decided that a lot of the problems they deal with everyday – traffic, pollution, water scarcity – all have a shared root cause. There are just too many people taking up too much room and too many resources for this little Earth to handle. For anyone who's seen the rise of the Metromess over the last 30-40 years, this is a no-brainer. There's the equivalent of a new DFW moving to the state every couple of years. While we have lots of space and welcome visitors, not all that space is suitable for sustainable living, and what we have is becoming less so because of he strain of so many newcomers.

These local folks have teamed up with a national group, the Population Media Center, and raised money to hire a Texas Chapter Director, who they plan on offering a real living wage to do their work for them. What's the Population Media Center you ask?

Population Media Center was founded in 1998 by William Ryerson, with the intention of using the extensive experience of experts in entertainment-education to spread the application of the Sabido methodology in addressing population and reproductive health issues. In the fourteen years since PMC’s inception, the organization has been a pioneer in the use of new methodologies for informing people about reproductive health issues and promoting behavior change.

Even if you don't plan to apply, it's worth checking out how a national group plans to come to the area and establish a presence with what kind of salary and benefits are being offered. To read more about the job, go the group's Carreerbuilder site. Good luck to all the applicants and we welcome the PMC to town and hope they can do some good works here. Lord knows DFW is the poster child of unchecked growth and the environmental problems it can cause.

A Smelter Runs Through It: New Documents Confirm Widespread Lead Smelter Contamination of Frisco’s Stewart Creek, including Grand Park

Battery Chip by WWTP:RRX(FRISCO)—Three new documents, including two reports paid for by the City of Frisco but never publicly released, confirm that the former Exide lead smelter is the source of battery chips and slag waste that line Stewart Creek from Frisco to Lake Lewisville, and concludes the smelter site remains a continuing source of contamination.
 
Samples taken in 2011 by a City of Frisco contractor found that 71% of Creek sediment collected had elevated levels of lead, cadmium or arsenic. A “visual survey” done for the City of smelter waste just three months ago found at least 45 “hot spots” of battery chips or slag along the entire five-mile route of the Creek, from the western edge of the smelter site all the way to its mouth at Lake Lewisville. Last year a state environmental inspector warned in an e-mail that she was concerned about the smelter’s battery chips making their way “into Stewart Creek and flowing to Grand Park where a parent who is also a Frisco resident pulls one out of their child’s mouth.”
 
Local group Frisco Unleaded received the documents last week as part of an Open Records Act Request to the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality. Members say the contents prove the public is right to be concerned about the impact of the smelter site on the City’s ambitious new Grand Park development. “These reports show why any activity downstream of the smelter, including the enjoyment of the new Grand Park, will be impossible without a comprehensive clean-up of the entire Exide site. This problem isn't just going to go away or fix itself," stated Meghan Green.
 
Green also called for the EPA to step in and take over a clean up that until now, has been directed by the state and city. "It’s clear that the toxins at the smelter are being washed into Stewart Creek with each rainfall and are surfacing and will continue to surface along the whole length of the Creek, which happens to also be a tributary into Lake Lewisville. To add insult to injury, Lake Lewisville is a source of drinking water for Dallas. To say that I'm concerned is an understatement. It’s time for the EPA to get more aggressive about protecting public health from this site.”
 
Although the smelter ceased operation in 2012 and demolition has taken place to remove most of the structures from the central Frisco site, the land itself is the burial ground for tons of lead waste in the form of pieces of used lead-acid batteries broken up for their contents and the slag waste produced from the smelting process. Frisco has arranged to buy an outer ring of the smelter property, but the core part of the operation remains in the hands of Exide, now going through bankruptcy. It’s that core, as well as the property Frisco is buying, that’s the source of the battery chips and slag migrating to Stewart Creek, which runs right though the middle of the Exide site.
 
That continuing threat to Stewart Creek, along with an assessment of historical contamination, is extensively chronicled in the City and State documents released by Frisco Unleaded today. They include:

1. A November 2011 “Limited Site Investigation” Of Stewart Creek by the City of Frisco

The City of Frisco specifically requested this investigation “to evaluate chemicals of concern in sediment in the vicinity of the Grand Park project.” Samples of sediment were collected at a total of 30 sites, and tested for Lead, Arsenic, Cadmium, Selenium, and Sulfates. 71% of the sediment samples tested for Lead, Cadmium and Arsenic exceeded the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Ecological Benchmark.

2. March-April 2013, of Stewart Creek, Interim Report, City of Frisco

A year and a half after the Creek sediment sampling, contractors for the City of Frisco performed “a walking survey to identify and document the potential presence of visible battery chips and slag in Stewart Creek."
 
Chips and/or slag were observed in at least 45 different spots along the entire five-mile route of Stewart Creek from the smelter site in Frisco to the entrance of the Creek into Lake Lewisville, or an average of every 600 feet. The first sample was found at the mouth of the Creek as it flows into Lake Lewisville, a source of drinking water for the City of Dallas.
 
At least 29 hot spots of battery chips and/or slag were found within the boundaries of Grand Park, from Stonebrook Parkway on the south to the North Dallas Tollway, more than 4 times the number of any other segment along the survey. “Frequent occurrences of concentrated battery chips and potential slag material were observed in the Stewart Creek channel in Grand Park from Stonebrook Parkway to the Dallas North Tollway bridge.”

Grand_Park_chips and slag map

Stewart_Creek_Survey_Map 5 mi

A Smelter Runs Thru It-Summary


3. TCEQ_battery_chip_emails from Texas Commission On Environmental Quality Staff on Recurring Battery Chip Contamination

In June of last year a TCEQ inspector wrote her supervisors that new concentrations of battery chips had shown up in previously clean-up areas of the smelter site. “These battery chips were believed to have washed up this year and accumulated down gradient along the tree line. Some of these chips were observed making their way down towards Stewart Creek. It looks like they’re being carried toward the trees and the creek with the rainwater. (Exide and City representatives) stated that the area was tested (prior to this new accumulation of battery chips) and it was below 250 ppm. I pointed out that there also wasn’t as many battery chips in those areas when the APAR was submitted. In the report, it states that the area would be covered with the geomembrane fabric and it sounded like this is what they want to do with these new battery chips as well (cover them with fabric). I pointed out that if I were to collect a sample that it would most likely exceed 250 ppm and there were just too many that had accumulated to be covered up with the fabric. As we all know, these chips move under rainy conditions. I told (the City representative) that our concern and I’m sure the city’s concern as well is if these battery chips made it into Stewart Creek and flowed to Grand Park where a parent who is also a Frisco resident pulls one out of their child’s mouth.”
 
One of her supervisors responds that chips will always come up with a rain: “Based on my experience from working on site contaminated with battery chips and slag, rubber battery chips that are buried will float to the surface (just tires in landfills). While working on sites associated with the West Dallas RSR lead smelter, with the exception of where chips were used as road based, every site that had surface chips on the surface were located over areas where slag and battery chips have been deposited in the past. Were subsurface investigations conducted in the areas of concern to determine the extent of contamination? Or did they only conduct surface investigations.”
 

Critics of the City’s approach to the smelter site clean-up cited the e-mail as a stunning example of Frisco’s caviler attitude about the contamination problem posed by the Creek. “We’ve often said the City is trying to figuratively cover-up the problem of Stewart Creek, but here’s an example of where they’re doing it literally,” said Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk, the regional clean air group assisting Frisco Unleaded.
 
Along with the City and State documents, Frisco Unleaded released the results of its own small sampling of battery chips members collected only last week from the public Right-of-Way on the BNSF railroad tracks leading into the smelter site.  One of the chips had over 100 ppm of lead on it and 8.5 ppm of Arsenic. The Lead level is above the TCEQ Ecological Benchmark and the Arsenic level is just below it. Schermbeck said it was easy to collect the chips because they’re lying on the open ground.
 
Besides demanding that the EPA issue a “Imminent and Substantial Endangerment” order to begin addressing the Creek’s clean up, Frisco Unleaded and Downwinders called for the City of Frisco to release all of its Exide-related documents to the public and for the City of Dallas to begin interceding on behalf of its residents, whose drinking water is under threat from the smelter waste.
 
Green said that despite the City’s rhetorical promise to its residents to be transparent with them about the site, “that obviously hasn’t been the case since we had to get these city documents from the state. We deserve all the information the City Manager and Mayor have about this site. It’s our families, it’s our town, and it’s our tax money. The Mayor and Council need to make a commitment to residents that they’ll share everything they have about the site with the public. ”
 
Addressing the issue that could pull in Dallas and other cities, Schermbeck noted, “There’s now clear evidence that the Exide smelter has been a constant source of toxic contamination in Lake Lewisville for decades. The City of Dallas needs to wake-up and begin to lobby for the kind of environmental clean up that can put a stop to that contamination to its water supply.”
 
According to Schermbeck, it’s the new-found evidence of a continuing threat to the Creek and Lake that make this more than just another effort to clean up a past environmental mess, and warrants a serious escalation of regulatory responses.  He noted that most toxicologists agree that there is no safe level of exposure to lead, especially for children, whose minds and bodies are still developing. “And yet, here’s this property on Creek’s edge, that’s proven to be a fountain of constant lead contamination flowing downstream through the middle of densely populated neighborhoods, and ending up in a source of municipal drinking water. It’s a clear and present danger to public health that deserves an immediate and potent remedy.”

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If you want to let Mayor Maso and the Frisco City Council know how you feel about their sitting on this inforamtion for almost two years, please send a qucik "Click N Send" e-mail to them via our "Featured Citizen Action of the Week." Thanks.