Posts by Downwinders At Risk
CDC Recommended Lead Levels Go Down, Exide Lead Numbers Go Up
Behind-the-scenes, many factors are driving the action between the City of Frisco and the owners of the Exide lead smelter that sits in the middle of town. We can only speculate for now. Meanwhile, let's look at some pressure points that entered the public record this last week on a collision course, and make the smelter's exit seem inevitable, no matter how much the state tries to stave it off.
On Wednesday, for the first time in 20 years, the federal government lowered the recommended limit for lead exposure in young children, where it can often do the most harm. And it wasn't just decreased by the Centers for Disease Control – it was slashed by 50%, from 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood to 5.
If those sound like tiny amounts, that's because they are. But the bad news is that the overwhelming consensus of environmental health specialists is that numbers even below this amount are doing cognitive and behavioral harm to children. Even the CDC itself states that there is no known safe level of lead exposure. Not that any amount will do harm necessarily, but that any exposure is statistically capable of doing harm based on the field studies coming in. CDC estimates there are 450,000 kids nationwide that don't meet the new standard for a poison that will not honor it. We don't know how many children in Frisco fall into this category, but we do know, thanks to Dr. Howard Mielke of Tulane University, that the children the state health services agency tested for blood lead showed that 1.6 times more kids living in Frisco had blood lead levels above 2 micrograms per deciliter compared to the state as a whole – 60% above the norm.
Meanwhile, new monitoring results from around the Exide smelter show that it failed for a second month in a row to obtain the new federal standard for lead particles in air of .15 micrograms (Look under "Monitoring Data" and download). In March the three month rolling average for March was.19 and .22 for April. This would mean more if TCEQ had not granted a 13 month free pass to break the standard instead of enforcing a deadline in November of this year.
Did we mention that the new air-lead standard is of course based on the science behind the old blood lead level of 10 micrograms per deciliter, and therefore instantly obsolete even before Exide has to comply with it? The regulations are forever chasing the science. It might take another 4 to 10 years to lower the lead-air standard. And then more research will show even more subtle effects of lead at lower levels of exposure and so on. People who live around facilities like Exide can never win. And sooner or later, Exide lawyers or its insurance companies will be explaining why its a really bad idea to keep operating a lead smelter in a densely populated area that includes gated communities where people can spend a lot of money on attorneys themselves. We hear that things are proceeding apace in some kind of "peace with honor" resolution to this train wreck between the city and he company. Surely this last week's news can't help but spur those discussions.
DPD Needed (Again) to Protect Gas Drilling Proposals
(Cross-posted from the Dallas Resident at Risk website) The last time the Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force met in February, they voted on recommendations so bad—like fracking inside city parklands and within 500 feet of neighborhoods—they actually needed police protection during the deliberations. As the Task Force finally presented those recommendations to Mayor Rawlings and the City Council today, the only thing that changed was the crowd: What had been a small handful of activists became a filled-to-capacity hearing room with more people lined up outside than sitting down inside. Several organizers were forcibly removed yet again as they vocalized their disagreement with the idea that drilling all along the Trinity River floodplain and even inside the levees is somehow “safe and reasonable.” As it turns out, stating the obvious can get you kicked out of City Hall very quickly.Lots of coverage! CBS – NBC – KERA – Dallas Morning News – Dallas ObserverTo their credit, several City Council members pushed back against the worst proposals and even started using some independent thought to come up with better ideas in a few minutes than the Task Force had conceived of in 8 months. Unfortunately, some of the other Council Members fantasized about drilling royalties replacing billions of dollars of tax revenue and improving quality of life in Dallas—as if you can just go out and buy that at the mall. Some seemed convinced that fracking is perfectly safe and that it is going to be allowed in Dallas, regardless of what the pesky residents want. But neighborhood groups representing close to 180 homeowners associations all over the city have endorsed our “five protections” position. The gas-masked protesters were the lead story on the 6 o’clock news tonight. Democracy is on the march, and the police can’t evict us from the streets.Mayor Rawlings announced that there will be two more briefings before the City Council takes any votes, so we’ll see you all at City Hall again in the near future. You’ll get the schedule as soon as we do. Stay tuned for more interruptions of your normally scheduled programming
US Asthma Rate Reaches All Time High
From the LA Times: "The proportion of Americans with asthma increased from 7.3% in 2001 to 8.4% in 2010, marking the highest level ever, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. In 2010, an estimated 18.7 million adults and 7 million children had the disease — one in every 12 Americans. Overall, about 29.1 million adults have been diagnosed with asthma at some point in their lives, but many of those were misdiagnosed or have apparently recovered, leading to the current figure of 18.7 million. Children (9.5%) had a higher asthma prevalence than adults (7.7%), suggesting that the disease will become a bigger problem in the future. Females (9.2%) had a higher prevalence than males (7%). People of multiple race had an incidence of 14.1%, while Asians had the lowest (5.2%). Blacks were at 11.2%, while whites were at 7.7%. Hispanics of Puerto Rican descent had the highest prevalence, 16.1%. Death rates were highest for women, blacks and people over the age of 65. In 2009, the most recent year for which data are available, asthma accounted for 3,388 deaths in the United States, 479,300 hospitalizations, 1.9 million ER visits and 8.9 million visits to physicians' offices, the CDC said. The estimated costs to society were $50.1 billion per year due to medical expenses, $3.8 billion resulting from missing work and school, and $2.1 billion from premature deaths."
Judge Strikes Down TCEQ Permit for Corpus Coal Plant
Example Number Too Many to Count of why you just can't trust the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to be the watchdog they're supposed to be. Last year the state agency awarded a permit to the $3 billion Las Brisas coal-fired power plant in Corpus Christi last year over the objections of the EPA, AND two of its own Administrative Law Judges. When that happened, the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense sued. Yesterday they won when a District Court Judge issued a ruling that will send the plant back to TCEQ for an new air quality review. "Here, the worst-case scenarios factually and legally were not modeled," the Judge wrote.The opinion letter concludes by stating that the ruling may require an additional hearing or briefing to determine whether a permit reversal, or reversal and remand is appropriate. It's not surprising the TCEQ gave the plant a permit. They'll give a permit to just about anyone or thing that asks for it. But they usually don't get slapped down for it these days. Good for Sierra and EDF to call them out and win
State Gives Frisco the Finger, Grants Exide Another Year to Violate Law
Instead of enforcing a November 1st, 2012 deadline for lower levels of lead pollution, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality will allow the Exide lead smelter in Frisco to violate the more protective air quality standard until January 6th 2014 as part of a plan for the facility the state agency is submitting to EPA later this month.
The decision is a reversal of policy in place as recently as last summer, and came with no opportunity for public hearing. It also makes it clear that TCEQ is siding with Exide in its on-going battle over zoning regulations with the city of Frisco.
In pushing back the compliance date, the TCEQ specifically noted Exide's lack of building permits from the City of Frisco, an unresolved zoning battle that might have kept the smelter from meeting the November 1st deadline, and eventually forcing its closure. In giving the extension at the last minute, the state is allowing the smelter regulatory breathing room it didn't have before.
Frisco Unleaded, the residents group devoted to closing the 50-year old smelter that Downwinders is sponsoring is calling for its supporters to be at Tuesday's city council meeting to demand City Hall protest the extension and help persuade EPA not to endorse it. Once the new deadline passes, Exide will still be getting a break.
Despite assurances from Frisco's Mayor and City Council that the smelter's new permit would be "first class" or they wouldn't support it, the TCEQ will also allow Exide to spew ten times as much lead as a similar Exide smelter operating in Vernon, Californianot require that Exide spend money to install pollution control equipment could reduce emissions from 1-3 tons to 1-3 pounds of lead a year because it's "unnecessary" to meet the new standard.
According to Jim Schermbeck of local clean air group Downwinders at Risk, "The TCEQ is telling Frisco residents that the "first class" controls they want are too good for them; that they're too effective at getting rid of lead, a poison we know is capable of doing harm at any level of exposure. These controls work. TCEQ just doesn't think Frisco residents are worth the cost."
Released late last Friday, the TCEQ plan, called a State Implementation Plan, or SIP, will be voted on by the agency's three Commissioners at their May 30th meeting. EPA will then have six months to accept, modify or reject the plan. Green noted thatFrisco Unleaded is calling on residents to let their city council members they don't want Exide to get any extra time to further pollute their city. Tuesday's council meeting is the last one scheduled before the TCEQ vote on May 30th.
Schermbeck said the law states that Exide must comply with the new standard "as expeditiously as practicable," and no later than the end of 2015. "This extension is the opposite of that language. It delays the implementation of the standard, and does so by taking sides in a local zoning fight the TCEQ has no business in. For a state government that likes to exalt the virtues of local control, it just did a pretty good job of undermining Frisco's."
Four Years After Kiln Waste-Burning Ends, ATSDR’s “Evaluation” of Midlothian Keeps Going
Although on any given day there's a lot of competition, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry might be the most irrelevant government bureaucracy going. Thursday it announced that the latest installment of its years-long "health consultation" of Midlothian will be the subject of yet another community meeting in that town on Thursday May 24th from 7 to 8:30 at the Midlothian Conference Center. The ATSDR evaluation started in 2005 at the request of Midlothian Citizens when TXI was still burning hazardous waste. It then was the subject of a 2010 Congressional investigation that revealed how the Agency mostly neglected to do any real science in the course of its evaluation. This new meeting concerns an analysis of air monitoring information that "will support public health evaluations for many of the pollutants of concern." Of that we have no doubt. Since ATSDR does no monitoring of its own, it's completely reliant on the monitoring done by theTexas Commission on Environmental Quality. Does anyone know of any instance where TCEQ monitoring has shown anything to be concerned about? If citizens complain about getting sick from industrial pollution, it's TCEQ position that it's the fault of anything but the pollution itself. No amount of empirical evidence collected by citizens in the field from their own sampling or experience can convince Austin otherwise. TXI quit burning waste in 2008. ASTDR's evaluation of Midlothian? It just might outlast the plant itself.
Texas Fracking “Disclosure” Law So Industry Friendly Industry Adopting It
One of the reasons Dallas Residents at Risk has made full disclosure of fracking chemicals one of its five basic protections to be included in Big D's new gas drilling is because the Texas law passed last year by the legislature is so inadequate. Besides allowing for "trade secrets" that mean there's no real disclosure, the law doesn't even allow physicians or first-responders to know what's behind those trade secrets before they respond to an emergency situation involving them. Now we know that the law is so industry-friendly that Exxon and its gas drilling subsidiary XTO sponsored it as a nationwide model within the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council which received a lot of publicity over its controversial "Stand Your Ground" legislation
Study: Low Levels of Hydrogen Sulfide Linked to Asthma
You may not know the name of the chemical, but you know it by smell. "Rotten eggs" is the olfactory indication you're being exposed to Hydrogen Sulfide. There's a reason it smells like that. Biological sources can emit it. Certain bacteria produce hydrogen sulfide as they decompose waste – like rotten eggs. It also occurs in geothermal situations. Hot water, steam and magma from inside the Earth carry heat, minerals and gases – like Hydrogen Sulfide – to the surface, liberating them in springs, geysers and volcanic lava. If you've ever been to Yellowstone, you know the smell. Industrial sources of hydrogen sulfide include oil and gas drilling, refineries, paper mills, large scale livestock production, waste water treatment and landfills. At high levels of exposure, Hydrogen Sulfide is linked with serious neurologic damage – including death. Lower levels can trigger eye irritation, fatigue and headaches…and asthma according to a new three-year study out of Iceland. Measuring levels of Hydrogen Sulfide near major intersections and power plants in the capital city of Reykjavik that turn geothermal energy into electricity and heating steam, researchers found a weak but constant association between the pollutant and asthma medication rates. It's one of the first studies to find respiratory ailments at low levels of Hydrogen Sulfide – much like you'd find in the Barnett Shale or any gas or oil patch. The fact that oil drilling has been around for over a century, and yet only now are we actually studying what happens when people are exposed ti it at exposure levels found in real life, tells you all you need to know about the risks of allowing drilling so close to people.
Not If, But How?
Frisco Unleaded's meet and greet turned into an impromptu town hall with Mayor Maso, at least two council members and City Manager George Purefoy showing up and fielding questions from a sometimes skeptical, sometimes supportive crowd of 50 or so residents who turned out to get an update on the fight over the Exide lead smelter.
The official topic was the city's start and stop amortization efforts that began with a January vote by the Council to send the matter to the city's Board of Adjustment, then seemingly stalled, and then got jump-started by Frisco Unleaded's massive mailing to residents around Earth Day that prompted the city to announce a June 18th public hearing date. Local municipal attorney Jim Schnurr gave a presentation on the amortization process and how citizens should prepare for the June hearing. He also mapped out a strategy to plug any holes in the city's amortization case against Exide between now and June.
But the discussion turned to other ways to get Exide out when Council Members Pat Fallon and Bob Allen spoke about the city's position. Although circumspect, from the language the councilmen were using, it seems the City is indeed exploring an aggressive "buy-out" of the lead smelter using a combination of bond money and economic development funding that would result in Exide ceasing operations within the next 12-24 months. That would probably be sooner than an amortization proceeding could close the smelter because of the length of time to hear appeals. But it would also cost more. With the rumor that the state and EPA have found a lot more hazardous wastes illegally buried at Exide, the expense of clean-up are still unknown but they're not going down. Purefoy did say that residents should see something happen within the next 60-90 days. The message residents sent the council on Monday night was that it was past due for a definitive resolution to get Exide out, and that they want all means of doing that aggressively pursued.
If you're a Frisco resident, it's very important to keep the pressure on and show up on June 18th at the Board of Adjustment hearing and testify why you believe Exide's operations are a public nuisance to your health and/or property. This time last year the City of Frisco was negotiating with Exide over the conditions under which it would remain open. Now, it's haggling with citizens over which mechanisms to use to close it. That's progress and that's happened because of a determined group of people in Frisco Unleaded who haven't taken no for an answer. Stay tuned.
Good Luck With That
Two separate stories about President Obama underscore the shotgun-wedding feeling a lot of environmentalists have when it comes to this November's election. For The Guardian comes news that the President's campaign has launched a new "Environmentalists for Obama" green re-election website. Among the obstacles such an effort has to overcome are Obama's blocking of more protective ozone standards, allowing Arctic drilling, encouraging fracking for oil and natural gas, and advancing the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Locally, throwing the best Regional EPA Administrator We Ever Had under the bus will also leave a lot of us holding a grudge. The Campaign site is selling the positives, like increasing gas mileage standards, cracking down on coal plants and investing heavily in alternative energy. But it's stories like this one in a recent Washington Post that undercut the sincerity of that pro-green message. Responding to a trumped-up request from House Republicans for a list of all EPA regulations expected to cost more than one billion dollars, the President mistakenly included an air pollution standard he shouldn't have and undervalued the health and economic benefits of others. This happened because the EPA didn't help draft the response to an inquiry over its own regulations. Instead, it as written from inside the White House, most probably by the Office of Management and Budget, where environmental regulations go to die these days. To anyone looking for cynical motives, the exchange of e-mails between EPA and the White House over this matter that the Post story illuminates gives them plenty of ammunition. Besides being blindsided, EPA officials accuse the White house of trying to placate critics of the Agency and undermine its mission. When push comes to shove, it's still economics, and perhaps campaign economics, driving policy, not public health.