Dallas City Hall Stonewalls Open Records Requests for Mystery Clean Air Fund and Joppa Polluter

The question sounds like the lead-in to a joke, but it’s not: How many months does it take Dallas City Hall to respond to a simple Open Record request? Answer: we don’t know yet, we’re still waiting.

Back in July, you might remember we reported on the establishment of a regional clean air fund to fight coal plants a decade ago that still had over a half million dollars in it.

When we dug a little further, we got a response that the fund had been shut down and the money disbursed – despite the fact nobody could give us the details on how or why that happened, where the money went, and if any of it went to clean air work.

So we filed a Texas Open Records Act request to get any and all files on the fund. On July 16th. Governments have 10 days to respond and provide the files that aren’t attorney-client products. We have yet to get the paperwork we asked for from the City. What we have received is one after another email saying the response has been delayed…again. We’re now going on three months awaiting information for a fund that supposedly doesn’t even exist anymore. And this is after the city already received permission from the State Attorney General’s office to withhold certain files from us because they were “attorney product.” What is it about this fund and that half million dollars that the City of Dallas staff really don’t want their own residents to see?

Just as ridiculous is the city’s response to an Open Records Act request we filed to look at its files on TAMKO in August.

The huge asphalt shingles plant in Joppa had a long sting “upsets” and “accidents” between 2011 and 2015 that released over 7000 pounds of unaccounted for PM pollution. Those are TAMKO’s self-reported numbers and don’t even include fires when there was “100 Opacity” i.e., smoke.  We know this because Downwinders was able to access the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality files on TAMKO way back in the summer. We put in the same request to the State that we submitted to the City of Dallas. Believe it or not, TCEQ was much more responsive and cooperative than the City of Dallas, who we’re still waiting on to release their files on the plant. Two months and counting and still no substantive response. Shouldn’t a resident be able to make an appointment, go down to City Hall and look at the public files on a well-known polluter? So far, the City of Dallas says no.

Dallas City Hall has a notorious reputation for mishandling, losing, or otherwise being non-responsive to Open Records requests. They aren’t know as “citizen-friendly.” But these two cases seem extreme because the delay is all out of proportion to the files being requested – for a fund that was shut down and a polluter in South Dallas. It certainly appears that staff is going out of its way not to hand over anything of import, no matter if its attorney work product or not. One can only guess why that is.

End of Year Report: DFW Smog Goes Up While Going Down; PM is Worst Since ’03

Only in the nonsensical world of EPA air quality regulation could the official regional average for DFW smog actually decrease despite the worst levels of DFW Ozone pollution in five years.

In 2018 a quarter of all North Texas official monitor sites recorded smog levels in the 90-95 ppb range for more than an hour.  2018 was the first time in two years that any DFW monitors have had 8-hour averages of 80 ppb or above, and the first time since 2013 since there been at least six. In fact, this year’s total number of 80-or-above monitors is almost equal to the total number from the last five years combined.

Nevertheless, the regional average for smog pollution that determines government action actually went down from 81 to 76 parts per billion.

How does that happen? Not without a lot of numerical manipulation. EPA’s formula for smog pollution classification  is a two part affair. First EPA only counts the highest 4th highest annual reading from each monitor in DFW. That means every monitor gets three “Mulligans” or “do-overs” before the results are eligible for regulatory use. Then EPA combines the last three year’s worth of those highest 4th highest readings to produce a rolling average. So that 2018 average is actually the results of the highest 4th highest reading from 2016, 2017, and 2018.

High readings from the summer of 2015 are rolling out of that three-year rolling average, while lower readings in ’16 and ’17 remain. While this year’s smog levels were higher, but not so extraordinarily high as to be able to counter the lower numbers making up the rest of the average.

But our smog was bad enough last year and this to once again make sure DFW is in “non-attainment” of the clean Air Act for the pollutant. For the umpteenth time in a row, we missed a deadline for meeting a Clean Air Act smog standard – this time it’s the 2008 75 ppb standard. If EPA follows its own protocol, that means DFW will be go from being “moderately” out of compliance to being in “Serious” non-compliance.

And please remember all of these numbers are based on only 20 smog monitors, half of which are located well-outside the DFW urban core, and none of which are located in Wise County, where Downwinders is doing the job of monitoring ozone pollution that the State and EPA refuse to do.

What are the consequences of this continuing violation of the Clean Air Act that imperils public health? Nada probably. At least while the Trump Administration holds office. In the past such classifications would have triggered a process leading up to some kind of official plan of action that, at least rhetorically, is aimed at correcting the 30-year old problem. But no one expects the State of Texas, or now the EPA, to take that responsibility seriously.

What you can expect is some official TCEQ spin about how it’s been successful in bringing down smog pollution levels. In fact, it was the wettest September on record that brought an abrupt end to what was shaping up to be an even worse smog year than it already was at the end of August. Historically, September is when DFW sees some of its worst bad air days. But not this year.

Accompanying the rise in smog pollution in 2018 was also a dramatic rise in the regional numbers for Particulate Matter (PM) pollution – the highest North Texas has seen since 2003.

After a long spell of annual peaks of between 24 and 28 migrograms per cubic meter of air, the 2018 average for highest daily readings among all sites has risen dramatically as of this month – to almost 40 µg/m3

Before this year, they’d only been four daily peaks above 40 µg/m3 over the last 15 years. In 2018  four out of 6 PM monitoring sties had registered daily readings averaging between 41 an 43 ppb as of October.

The EPA annual standard for PM pollution is 12 µg/m3. The 24 hour standard is 35 µg/m3.

As with smog, these readings are coming from a very small pool of monitors – in this case just six PM monitors scattered over an area only slightly smaller than Rhode Island.

Some of this might be blamed on the drought we we experiencing during the summer and increased dust circulation, but comparing it to 2011 when similar if not worse conditions were in play shows no similar bump then. Fewer coal plants blowing their plumes into DFW this year might lead you to think we were even due for a drop. Instead it’s as if someone turned the key on a couple more.  There’s no obvious reason why PM levels would have jumped so much in a single year.

What’s clear is that local governments are the last refuge for effective and new air pollution control measures. Until political leadership changes in Austin and/or Washington, there’s no expectation of any relief. In fact, every day sees new proposals from the State or EPA that will actually increase smog and PM pollution in DFW. This is why local city and county elections are just as important as state and national ones.

We’ll have to wait until the end of 2019 to see if this rise in pollution averages is a trend or blip, but there’s no question that smog and PM are taking their toll on public health in DFW. Study after study shows harms at levels of exposure well below these annual and daily averages that determine EPA regulations. In the real world, your lungs, heart, brain and immune system don’t seem to be able to distinguish between “safe” and “unsafe” levels of poison as defined by the government.

Al Armendariz, Graham Dodds, and Brett Shipp Take an Electric Bus to a Bar: 2019 Root and Branch Preview

Every year Downwinders at Risk takes a week off and sponsors a floating conference aimed at making North Texas organizers and activists better advocates.

This year’s Root and Branch Revue is again packed with star power and covers new ground. Here’s your first preview of what’s being offered.

Mark you calendars now. These events are for people exactly like you.

 

Wednesday/December 5th

Why Does Green Look So White in DFW?

A Discussion from the South Side of the River

 

7 to 9 pm

African American Museum in Fair Park     Dallas

FREE

Featuring:

Al Armendariz, Former EPA Regional Administrator

Cherelle Blazer, Sierra Club/Beyond Coal

Clarice Criss, Field Manager, Color of Change

…and others

 

Co-sponsor: Sierra Club/Beyond Coal

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Thursday/December 6th

Electric Glide Bus Pub Crawl

How Electric Buses Can Save Profits, People, and the Planet

 

6-8:30 pm

Start: The Green Door in the Farmers Market     Dallas

$25

Price Includes:

Custom Electric Glide Cocktails from The Green Door and Harwood Tavern

Pop-Up restaurant with food by Chef Graham Dodds

Presentation by E-bus manufacturer Proterra founder Don Hill

 

Co-sponsor: Climate 350

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Saturday/December 8th

1-Day University of Change

A Full Day of Workshops to Help You Become a Better Advocate

 

10 am to 5:00 pm

GoodWork Co-Working Space  1808 S. Good Latimer     Dallas

$25 Includes lunch and all these workshops….

“Mapping Injustice” with Robert “The Map” Mundinger

“Build Your Own Air Monitor” with Constant Marks

“Zoning 101” with Paul Cardin

“Investigative Research” with Brett Shipp

“Portable Air Monitor Training with the Downwinders PM Committee

“How to Stop a Batch Plant and Other ‘Standard’ Polluters” with David Frederick and Tamera Bounds

 

WITH MORE TO COME

 

 

Joppa Becomes Citizen Science Case Study; Next Portable Monitor Training Session Oct 28th

Shannon Gribble and Cresanda Allen on a monitoring run in Joppa

You’re Invited to Train on the Same Portable Monitors & Get Access to Our Monitor Lending Library…For FREE

CITIZEN SCIENCE TRAINING SESSION

SUNDAY OCTOBER 28th

1-3 pm

GOODWORK CO-WORKING SPACE

1808 S. GOOD-LATIMER

 

Let us know you’re coming: RSVP  downwindersatrisk@gmail.com

 

Downwinders is proud to announce that our precedent-setting use of portable PM monitors to help Joppa residents defeat two proposed batch plants earlier this year was selected by manufacturer Aeroqual as a case study showing how its new air pollution technology has made a positive difference in the world.

Joppa will join other examples from places like Tanzania, Iraq, India, and Peru on the Aeroqual website. It will be the only success story attributable to a citizens group as opposed to a government agency, university, or business.

“Timing is everything” is a cliche but in this case the banality is on point.

Aeroqual’s new 500 series hand held portable PM monitors had only become available in January of this year, at exactly the time Downwinders was looking for a device that was highly reliable but not prohibitively expensive. In offering the 500, New Zealand-based Aeroqual carved its own market niche and met our criteria like a glove – more reliable than the extremely cheap consumer sensors you can buy on Amazon and less expensive than similarly calibrated machines affordable only to universities, industry and government.

Because they were so new, we had to call Aeroqual in New Zealand to order them directly. We were their first US customers. Downwinders ordered two for deployment in our PM Pollution Prevention campaign. When they arrived in late February, they were the only ones being used between New Zealand and the US.

Since then, the company has made huge inroads into the US market, to the point of partnering with the EPA in Los Angles to establish a 100-monitor air network for Particulate Matter and smog pollution, and being considered for the monitor in the City of Dallas/Texas Nature Conservancy Breathe Easy study.

Downwinders’ original plan was to use the monitors to document PM levels along DART routes as research for our Green Streets bus electrification effort and set out for a couple of weeks doing nothing but measuring levels of PM inside and outside of buses.

We were still doing that when we got a call from the Joppa Freedman’s Township Association to request we turn our attention to their fight over two new batch plants.

Aeroqual’s portable machines provided the first, and so far only, air sampling in Joppa. They recorded significantly higher PM levels than the official EPA site some nine miles away. This was the same EPA site Dallas city staff was using to give Joppa the all-clear.  The fact that the Aeroqual monitors came factory-calibrated out of the box and were supervised in their use by a local atmospheric scientist enhanced their credibility.

Their results were widely publicized only days before the City Council vote and combined with opposition on the ground, contributed to the council vote against the batch plant permits. It was the first time in local history, and we’re pretty sure in Texas or even the country, that this new technology became a tool for citizens in a successful permitting battle. And that’s why we’re ending up as the first citizens group case study for Aeroqual. 

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN: MAKE HISTORY

CITIZEN SCIENCE TRAINING SESSION

SUNDAY OCTOBER 28th    1-3 pm

GOODWORK CO-WORKING SPACE

1808 S. GOOD-LATIMER

Let us know you’re coming: RSVP  downwindersatrisk@gmail.com

This training session is a chance to become familiar with this new technology and work your way toward being able to check out these portable monitors on your own. No previous experience required. No math or engineering degrees necessary. If you can push buttons and read numbers, you can do this. It only takes two hours.

Along with first-timers, graduates from our first classes of Apprentice Citizen Scientists are invited back to take a field trip with our PM Committee and step-up to “Researcher” status. After one more outing, they’ll be given permission to check out the monitors for their own purposes or to help with our projects.

We’re entering a new era of Do-It-Yourself Environmental Protection. Learn how you can join it.

Angela Hunt Joins 2019’s College for Constructive Hell-Raising To Teach “Real World Civics”

Applications for Texas’ only “grassroots school for change”
now being accepted: CLICK HERE

Class begins January 15th.

 

Former Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt will take what she’s learned over the last 20 years of public service and teach a lesson in “Real World Civics” as part of the third-year curriculum of The College of Constructive Hell-Raising.

At 33, Hunt was the youngest person ever elected to the Dallas City Council in 2005 and served eight years representing District 14. She’s best known for her lengthy and successful opposition to the Trinity Toll Road, as well as being a New Urbanism pioneer. She’ll use her unique insight taking on the Dallas Establishment to discuss the difference between what we’re often taught about how government should work versus how it actually does.

Hunt will join other well-known troublemakers as a Guest Lecturer at the College, including civil rights icons Peter Johnson, Patti Fink, and John Fullinwider, environmental justice legend Luis Sepulveda, well-known police brutality organizer Sara Mokuria, lifelong anti-nuclear and immigration movement stalwarts Mavis Belisle, Kim Batchelor, and Sister Patricia Ridgley, and Megan Green and Colette McCadden, the two toxic avengers who closed the last lead smelter in Texas.

Complete with crest and Latin motto (“Parva Cumulaverunt”), the College of Constructive Hell-Raising combines traditional community organizing principles with firsthand frontline accounts of local DFW social justice battles. It aims to teach activists of all kinds “to think like an organizer” and approach their fights more strategically. Described as “a school for grassroots change,” it’s the only course of its kind in Texas, and one of the few in nation. It’s a project of DFW-based clean air group Downwinders at Risk.

A growing list of College alumni hold positions at a variety of DFW social change groups, including Texas Campaign for the Environment, Color Of Change, Democratic Socialists of America, and Sierra Coal/Beyond Coal. Part of the mission of the College is to build a new support network for paid and volunteer social justice workers in DFW.

Applications for the 2019 class are being taken online on the Downwinders at Risk web site now through December 15th. Class begins on January 15th and ends May 21st. Classes meet at the Meadows Conference Center at 2900 Live Oak in Old East Dallas. Tuition is $150 but early birders who sign-up in the next two months will only pay $90. Some scholarships are available. There’s a maximum enrollment of 20 students in the seminar-type course, so the interested are encouraged to apply early.

APPLY ONLINE HERE