Air Quality
Where Were You?
When the City of Dallas Decided
….to either let a vote stand, or steal it
….to defend air quality, or approve a new refinery that will be a top ten polluter
….to protect parks and floodplains, or make them industrial sites
….to listen to its residents, or a single gas company
The City Plan Commission Can Decide All These Things Today
Thursday 1:30 pm 6th Floor City Council Chambers
Dallas City Hall
1500 Marilla
Now is the Time for All Good Breathers to Come to the Aid of Our Air – And Your Rights
Stand Up for the Right to Speak Out
The fight over gas drilling in Dallas is now as much a about the democratic process as it is about pollution:
– Public meetings scheduled five days before Christmas in hopes of lowering turnout
– Hiding a huge compressor station and gas processing plant that will be the 10th largest air polluter in Dallas inside a "drilling permit"
– And now, they want to steal a vote citizens won in December through "reconsideration" of that vote a tomorrow's Plan Commission meeting…without any opportunity for public comment.
But we assure you. There will be public comment.
Help us protect your rights as citizens and breathers
Join us Tomorrow
Because some things just need protesting
Thursday 1:30 pm
6th Floor City Council Chambers Dallas City Hall
And Today… you can send an instant e-mail to the Dallas City Council and the Dallas Plan Commission telling them you don't want them to "reconsider" the gas permits that were denied in December
Do this right now. Please. Thanks
Guess What? That “Drilling” Permit is Really for a Refinery
Under the guise of "gas drilling," Dallas City Hall and industry are pressing for approval of a permit that would locate a gas refinery only 600 feet from the new Elm Fork soccer complex, and immediately give birth to one of the ten largest air polluters in the City of Dallas, as well as one of its most toxic.
"There's a huge toxic Trojan Horse hiding in what the City and Trinity East describe as just a gas drilling permit," charged clean air activist Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk. "In fact, the Elm Fork permit allows for the building of a gas refinery that houses at least three giant compressors as well as an entire acid gas removal unit that strips off hydrogen sulfide, one of the most dangerous substances in the gas patch."
A motion to "reconsider" the Dallas City Plan Commission's 7-5 December 20th rejection of the Elm Fork permit and two other Trinity East gas sites is being advocated by CPC Chair and Mayoral appointee Joe Alcantar at this Thursday's meeting. If successful, the "reconsideration" would require the CPC to hold a second hearing and re-vote on the permits less than a month after denying them.
Opponents say the move is an act of desperation on the part of the Mayor and City Manager to protect a secret deal that was made between the City and Trinity East when the company first paid for mineral rights leases on city owned land. In interviews, the Mayor himself has said that a "deal was cut." Residents say the public was left out of that deal.
But after making calls to City Hall, Schermbeck is convinced that no one in Dallas city government is aware that the "gas drilling permit" being proposed by Trinity East is actually a permit to build a large gas refinery in the Trinity River floodplains.
"They're in way over their heads. City attorneys are still describing this as a drilling permit, but that's not what takes up most of the acreage on this site – it's all about the refinery."
During the December 20th City Plan Commission hearing on the permit, Trinity East representatives stated that the three proposed compressors alone – huge locomotive sized diesel-powered engines that produce thousands of horsepower in order to move gas through pipelines – would release 25 tons of air pollution each every year for an annual total of 75 tons.
That number would immediately place the facility among the city's ten largest air polluters according to the latest state emission totals from 2010. It would join power plants, asphalt and roofing materials manufacturers, and chemical plants as one of the city's biggest "stationary sources" of pollution.
However, Schermbeck thinks Trinity is low-balling their total air pollution impacts by not including other on-site refinery sources like its battery of storage tanks and "acid gas removal" operation that's designed to strip dangerous hydrogen sulfide off of natural gas streams through a series of acid baths and heat.
Hydrogen Sulfide is a harmful and toxic compound. It is a colorless, flammable gas that can be identified by its "rotten egg" odor. This invisible gas is heavier than air, travels easily along the ground, and builds up in low-lying, confined, and poorly ventilated areas. It acts as a chemical asphyxiant through inhalation exposure and its effects are similar to cyanide and carbon monoxide, which prevent the use of oxygen.
The equipment to strip off Hydrogen Sulfide from raw gas is large, complicated and dangerous. Site plans show a 200 foot long "pipe rack" with at least 20 "point sources" or stacks, apart from the compressors, where pollution could be released into the atmosphere.
"This isn’t a facility you want near parks or kids," said Schermbeck. "Yet, the City of Dallas seeks to put it just 600 feet away from its new huge soccer complex that’s meant to attract thousands of kids for hours every week."
Such a gas facility also challenges regional smog goals. A 2012 study from the Houston Advanced Research Center found that "routine emissions from a single gas compressor station can raise ozone levels by 3 parts per billion (ppb) as far as five miles downwind, and sometimes by 10 ppb or more as far as 10 miles downwind."
The Trinity East numbers don't reflect the release of greenhouse gas pollution either, which could be enormous from a facility the size of the refinery being proposed. Gas processing plants can release 20 to 80,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. By comparison, the entire inventory of greenhouse pollution from all Dallas industrial sources in 2005 was 25,000 tons a year.
None of this information was brought up at the December 20th CPC hearing on the Elm Fork permit because the permit request in its current form was only a couple of weeks old when it went to the CPC and the compressors were a last-minute addition to an older, pending request.
Citizens were lucky to get a crowd to even show up five days prior to Christmas, and Schermbeck believes no one at Dallas City Hall bothered to notice that one of the so-called drilling permits was a refinery permit.
"Because it had no expertise of its own, and it was ignoring citizens, City Hall was completely reliant on the company's version of what the permit was for, and Trinity East probably didn't want to admit they were stuffing one kind of permit inside of another. The City didn't perform its due diligence. The result is that it's been completely played by the company."
Schermbeck recounted that he could find no one at City Hall who had any idea of how Trinity East arrived at their "25 tons a year" air pollution figure, knew what kind of specific pollutants that tonnage included, or, most importantly, thought it would be good to know this information before the city handed the company a permit to operate an inner-city gas refinery.
"Mayor Rawlings and the City Manager seem content to give Trinity East a blank check to pollute Dallas air," he said.
A closer look at the refinery site plans also reveals equipment that is fundamentally at odds with the way Trinity East and the gas industry has been portraying what kind of gas Dallas has underneath it.
Up to now, gas operators have been saying Dallas gas is "dry" and without a lot of extra hydrocarbons found in "wet gas" further west. But the acid gas removal units and Glycol conductors proposed for the Elm Fork refinery are built for wet gas.
Schermbeck suggests that perhaps either the City has been mislead about the nature of the gas it owns or the nature of the Trinity East site. He theorized that instead of the Dallas refinery being built for dry Dallas gas, it might be aimed at wet gas coming from the west.
"Dallas would get none of the royalties, but all of the pollution."
Mad? Go to this link now and send an e-mail to the Dallas City Council and City Plan Commission that says you oppose these gas permits and the "reconsideration" of their denial by the Commission:
https://www.downwindersatrisk.org/featured-citizen-action
Do it Now.
Another Win for Your Lake of Air
 Late Thursday night Downwinders at Risk, as part of the Dallas Residents at Risk alliance, won a victory that citizens weren't supposed to win.
Immediately after Thanksgiving, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and City Manger Mary Suhm had plotted to speed the approval of the first gas drilling permit in Dallas. One left over from 2008 that would be exempt from the new drilling ordinance now in the works. One that included a compressor station and allowed for the drilling in city parks and flood plains. City Hall believed it had greased the tracks with threats of gas company lawsuits and given the City Plan Commission no choice but to approve the permit. Just to be sure, they scheduled the Plan Commission vote for December 20th, a time guaranteed to result in smaller crowds of opposition at City Hall. But something happened to make things go a little off-script. Responding to calls for help, enough Dallas residents showed up to articulately speak against the permit for more than an hour. They represented hundreds of neighborhood groups, the environmental community and public interest organizations like the League of Women Voters. If the raw numbers didn't match earlier attendance, the people that did show up represented real constituencies numbering in the thousands. When the vote was finally called at 7:30 pm Thursday evening, we won 7 to 5. The "grandfathered" gas drilling permit would not be approved by the Plan commission. To overturn this decision, the City Council must find 12 votes – a super majority – in favor of the permit at its mid-January meeting. This was not the result Dallas City Hall was counting on the Thursday night before Christmas. But thanks to supporters like you, it was the result that happened. Just as we mobilized opposition to Midlothian cement plant pollution, and helped organize Frisco residents to close down an obsolete and dangerous lead smelter, Downwinders is drawing a line in the Shale in Dallas and leading a push back against irresponsible urban drilling. And, against very long odds, we're winning….again. We do this to protect your lake of air. You ingest an average of 200 gallons of water every year, or about five bathtubs' worth. But you inhale approximately two million gallons of air every year – your own small lake of air.
In DFW, chances are your lake of air is going to have smog in it, along with some soot, some Sulfur Dioxide, Volatile Organic Compounds, as well as an assortment of other manufactured If your tap water was dirty brown and had lots of particles in it, you'd probably choose to drink bottled water. But when the air is dirty brown and has lots of particles in it, your lungs don't have a choice about the air they can use. Downwinders at Risk is here for one reason and one reason only: to defend your lake of air. Whether your air is threatened by smelters, gas rigs, cement plants or too-common smog, we're working to clean it up. For our efforts, Downwinders was proud to receive the first-ever GreenSource DFW award for Outstanding Grassroots Group in 2012. Looking ahead to 2013, your lake of air faces new threats, including worsening new permits by the Midlothian cement plants to burn large volumes of industrial garbage, and indiscriminate aerial spraying of pesticides by local governments. Downwinders at Risk will fight these threats with the combination of good science and citizen activism that's made us the foremost clean air group in DFW. But we need your help to do it. Our work depends on contributions from folks like you who appreciate what we do. Our annual budget is usually only around $30-50,000. We do all the work we do with an amount of money larger groups spend annually on office furniture or travel. We don't get money from a parent group in Washington or New York. Our board members are all from DFW. They're ordinary citizens like you, not rich patrons. Small donations make up a very large percentage of what we take in every year. We couldn't do what we do without you. In the time it took you to read this message, you've inhaled a couple of more gallons of air. Don't you think it should be clean air? You keep supporting us; we keep working for you – and surprising the opposition with victories that citizens in Texas just aren't supposed to be able to pull-off. That's our promise. Thanks for your consideration and Please click here to safely and securely donate online, or send checks to Downwinders at Risk, PO Box 763844, Dallas, TX 75376. Your donation is greatly appreciated and will be wisely spent. Thanks.
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Public Health Action Alert – Exide’s “Community Meeting” on Wednesday
Please come and insist that the clean-up of the Exide lead smelter be open to public notice and comment, and not done behind closed doors.
Exide is hosting a hastily called "public meeting" on demolition and dust control plans for its former Frisco lead smelter Wednesday night beginning at 7 pm at the Frisco Depot in the Historical District, 6499 Paige Street.
Among other things, Exide wants to permanently leave a waste landfill in central Frisco with approximately nine million pounds of smelter waste inside, instead of trucking it out.
The city is letting the company have its way, even though this landfill in downtown will be an impediment to economic development and a constant threat to groundwater and air contamination that will demand never-ending monitoring.
All of the decisions about the clean-up of the smelter site are taking place behind closed doors with no public input or notice.
Last Friday the company submitted its plan for the permanent hazardous waste landfill and got it approved the very same day without any public notice or comment.
Wednesday's meeting is about a demolition plan that has already been written by the company without listening to any public concerns. They're only letting residents know about it after the fact.
We know it's the holiday season – that's why Exide scheduled this meeting. The company hopes you've quit paying attention. We hope you haven't.
There's a lot of dangerous material on the Exide site. If it's not disposed of correctly, Frisco could have an economic and public health black hole in the middle of town forever, what USA Today called lead "ghost factories." That's why this is important.
Meanwhile, the city of Frisco is protecting your interests by…being a silent partner to Exide's plans. City Hall has defaulted to the state and the company's judgment and isn't acting as an independent watchdog.
The City is writing press releases with Exide, but it isn't asking hard questions about the clean-up, or hiring its own experts to double-check what Exide and the state are proposing. It isn't demanding public notice or comment on behalf of residents. In fact, the city is keeping information about the clean-up and smelter to itself, refusing to post it online or release it to residents or reporters.
Come to the Wednesday night Exide meeting to express your displeasure with a strategy that's putting the same people responsible for creating the Exide mess in charge of "cleaning it up."
At this point we need the same public pressure that caused the city to change course and close the outlaw smelter to help open the closed doors that are hiding the clean-up process from public view.
“Animals are the Sentinels”
In the late 1980's Sue Pope became concerned about her horses and cows. Her favorite Arabian was developing "heave" muscles on its torso that Pope's vet said was the result of the horse straining to breathe. Her cattle were acting strangely and not developing as they should. These problems seem to come out of the blue, for no obvious reason Pope could figure out. She also noticed that she and her family didn't feel the same either and wondered if what was affecting her animals was also affecting them. She spoke with her neighbors, some of whom were also noticing strange things among their stock and themselves. They didn't have any answers either. That's when Pope started to look for causes outside the gate of her small Midlothain ranch.
And that was the beginning of what eventually turned into Downwinders at Risk. Because of her own experience it has been Sue Pope's belief that more than expensive monitors or dubious risk assessment studies, "animals are the sentinels" for human health. They are literally the canary furtherest down the coal mine.
When the ATSDR decided to review the monitoring information from Midlothain for it's "health consultation" beginning almost ten years ago, they were in part drawn by the large file of documented cases of animals illness, disease and deformities. There's more than one animal stock breeder who has moved to Midlothian over the last 25 years expecting that elusive "fresh country air" to benefit their animals only to find them suffering weird symptons never experienced before in previous locations.
Animals are sentinels, especially livestock, because they don't go to school or work, but stay in the same place all day and night, they graze exclusivley on local plants grown in the local soil. They drink the local surface and/or well water. Livestock have the most exposure and the most "exposure pathways" to whatever potentially harmful chemicals might be in the environment. If it's harming the animals, it's probaly harming people as well.
That's the context for a new article out in The Nation about animals gettign sick in the gas patch.
"Earlier this year, Michelle Bamberger, an Ithaca veterinarian, and Robert Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, published the first (and, so far, only) peer-reviewed report to suggest a link between fracking and illness in food animals. The authors compiled case studies of twenty-four farmers in six shale-gas states whose livestock experienced neurological, reproductive and acute gastrointestinal problems. Exposed either accidentally or incidentally to fracking chemicals in the water or air, scores of animals have died. The death toll is insignificant when measured against the nation’s livestock population (some 97 million beef cattle go to market each year), but environmental advocates believe these animals constitute an early warning.
Exposed animals “are making their way into the food system, and it’s very worrisome to us,” Bamberger says. “They live in areas that have tested positive for air, water and soil contamination. Some of these chemicals could appear in milk and meat products made from these animals.”
In Louisiana, seventeen cows died after an hour’s exposure to spilled fracking fluid. (Most likely cause of death: respiratory failure.) In north central Pennsylvania, 140 cattle were exposed to fracking wastewater when an impoundment was breached. Approximately seventy cows died; the remainder produced eleven calves, of which only three survived. In western Pennsylvania, an overflowing waste pit sent fracking chemicals into a pond and a pasture where pregnant cows grazed: half their calves were born dead. The following year’s animal births were sexually skewed, with ten females and two males, instead of the usual 50-50 or 60-40 split.
In addition to the cases documented by Bamberger, hair testing of sick cattle that grazed around well pads in New Mexico found petroleum residues in fifty-four of fifty-six animals. In North Dakota, wind-borne fly ash, which is used to solidify the waste from drilling holes and contains heavy metals, settled over a farm: one cow, which either inhaled or ingested the caustic dust, died, and a stock pond was contaminated with arsenic at double the accepted level for drinking water."
People used to ask Downwinders why we decided to take on air pollution from the gas industry. The reason is that all of the red flags we saw over the years in Midlothian are also being raised around gas facilities – individually and/or collectlively. Many of the same chemicals, many of the same health effects from those chemicals, and then the warning from the animals.
Better than TCEQ monitors. Better than out-of-date risk assessments. Animals are some of the best Guinea Pigs we have in the laboratory of chemicals we all swim in. If we would only listen.
A “Solar Happy Hour” Tonight
Because you haven't really partied until you've partied with clean energy advocates.
The Sierra Club, along with the Blue Green Apollo Alliance, and the Clean Energy Works for Texas coalition, is hosting what they're calling a Solar Happy Hour, TONIGHT where everyone concerned with increasing conservation, wind and other renewables can get together informally and listent to the latest.
WHEN: Thursday, November 29th at 7:00pm
WHERE: Picasso's Pizza (12300 Inwood Rd, Dallas, TX 75244)
FEATURING:
- Dave Cortez, Coordinator from the Blue Green Apollo Alliance, discussing the next steps on our clean energy campaign leading into the P.U.C Sunset Review and the 83rd Legislative Session
- Stephanie Cole, Organizing Representative from the Sierra Club, discussing a new Beyond Coal campaign being in launched in Dallas next spring
If you need more information, contact the intrepid Lisa Trope, one of the Greencorps staffers who've been organizing all fall around energy issues in DFW at Lisa@greencorps.org. As always, drink and think responsibly.
Traffic Pollution Linked to Autism
Along with a higher risk of asthma, children who are born and live their first year closer to major freeways also suffer a significantly elevated risk of autism. That's the conclusion of a new study by the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
"Compared to 245 California children who were not autistic, the researchers found that 279 autistic children were almost twice as likely to have been exposed to the highest levels of pollution while in the womb, and about three times as likely to have been exposed to that level during their first year of life.
They found that children exposed to the highest amount of "particulate matter' – a mixture of acids, metals, soil and dust – had about a two-fold increase in autism risk. That type of regional pollution is tracked by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Volk and her colleagues also saw a similar link between autism and nitrogen dioxide, which is in car, truck and other vehicle emissions.
'This is a risk factor that we can modify and potentially reduce the risk for autism,' wrote Dawson in an email to Reuters Health."
It's been estimated by the Centers for Disease Control that autism affects one in every 88 children born in the United States.
A new federal Particulate Matter standard is under consideration by the EPA and could be announced this year. It's been linked to other neurological diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimers.
UTSW Gulf War Research Yields More Evidence of Cumulative Chemical Harm
The story is behind the DMN's paywall, but there's a new piece of the Gulf War Illness puzzle that's been provided by UT-Southwestern researchers lead by Dr. Robert Haley, and it has some relevance to those who think their own health problems can be traced back to chemical exposure.
Originally dismissed by many to be only a psychological condition, scientists now suspect that the multiple and varied symptoms reported under the Gulf War Illness category are from exposure to one or more toxins at levels that were supposed to be safe. Dr. Haley and his colleagues at UTSW recently published the results of a study that proves that nerve damage is the common denominator that impacts breathing, heart rate, sexual function, perspiration and other body functions associated with the diagnosis.
For the Chemically-Sensitive among you, or those of you living downwind of a polluting facility, see if this doesn't sound familiar:
“Many of these veterans have been told that there is nothing wrong with them,' Haley said Monday in an interview. “
"There can't possibly be anything wrong with you because the levels of poison you were exposed to were so low, we don't estimate that you'd be harmed by them at all." That's the mantra of the State's environmental and health agencies every time someone from Midlothian calls and says cement plant pollution made them sick. Same thing if you live around a gas well or compressor. They start from the smokestack or flare and work their way back to the person.
It's not an epidemiological argument. It's a lazy calculation based on laboratory science that's either old or doesn't exist. As the recent federal ATSDR report on Midlothian air pollution admits, science is still at least a decade away from being able to recreate the effects of being exposed to a multitude of pollutants at the same time, as so many of us are subjected to these days. We don't know, and we still can't calculate what it's like to live in a toxic soup.
Haley's studies and others start with the person and work their way back to the chemicals. They find "physical disorders" in a much higher proportion than a random sampling and seek to explain the cause. In this case, there is a match between those who have Gulf War Illness and a certain kind of pervasive nerve damage that can affect a wide range of bodily functions.
Having established that the symptoms of the Illness are indeed physiological, and not just in the Vet's heads, Haley sounds as if he is on the verge of releasing a much larger, longer-term study on the actual trigger mechanisms that produce the nerve damage he's identified.
"Haley suggested that he may soon address the cause, or causes, of Gulf War illness. 'We’re going to show proof of what causes this,” he said. “It will be a huge study with convincing evidence.”
That will be the headline-maker, because as the DMN article points out, Dr. Haley and the UTSW team have been narrowing the suspects down over the years and have a theory:
"He and other medical experts have repeatedly said they believe Gulf War syndrome was caused by exposure to pesticides and other chemicals in the Persian Gulf."
It's very possible that in the next 12 months we'll see the best study ever done on Gulf War Illness reveal that exposure to a variety of different kinds of environmental contaminants at supposedly "safe" levels has left 200,000 service men and women medically damaged. If that's the case, then it could turn out to be one of the most profound challenges to the toxicology of the status quo in the last 50 years. Stay tuned.
Red Alert for Dec 20th: Dallas Wants to Drill Like It’s 2009
This is a heads-up to all Dallas residents: Dallas City Hall – the building, the people, everything – has climbed into a time machine and traveled all the way back to 2010.
This has allowed the City council and staff to ignore citizen demands for a more protective gas drilling ordinance, the defeat of a council member who advocated drilling, the creation and conclusion of a task force for helping write a new ordinance, and a bunch of public hearings over the last two years – all so that Dallas City Hall can now just go ahead and do what the gas operators originally asked it to do at the beginning.
The first Special Use Permit request from a gas well operator to allow drilling in Dallas since 2010 will be on the agenda at the December 20th Dallas Plan Commission meeting at City Hall. It concerns a new request to drill by XTO (Exxon-Mobil) at the old Navel Air Station in southwest Dallas, near the Grand Prairie line, that was submitted on November 16th.
Time it's taken the City of Dallas to write a new drilling ordinance in Dallas: 24 months and counting
Time it took XTO to get its new drilling request heard despite not having that new ordinance yet: 20 days
You can read about the sudden jump into municipal action here behind the DMN paywall.
"XTO’s latest requests are apparently on a fast track, headed to the City Plan Commission….
A new, tougher Dallas drilling ordinance is in the works but has not been approved or even published for review, so the existing ordinance would govern the XTO applications, based on the city’s legal view that one set of rules should apply throughout the process."
Every Dallas City Council member appoints a representative to the City Plan Commission. Dallas residents should call their own City Council member (info here), or their Plan Commission appointee (download a list and contact info here) and tell them to reject this XTO request and any others that try to get processed before a new drilling ordinance is in place.
Here's the media release that Dallas Residents at Risk put out this morning about the sudden turn around:
Dallas Officials Consider Throwing Away Years of Work on New Gas Drilling Ordinance and Simply Let Fracking Begin
Have Mayor Rawlings and the Dallas City Council made a decision to move ahead with existing, pending and even new gas drilling applications without taking any action on the new “fracking” ordinance that has been in the works since 2010?
Two weeks ago, Exxon-owned gas company XTO filed a new gas drilling application—because their previous bid to drill at Hensley Field was denied by the Dallas City Plan Commission two years ago. Then the City Council appointed a special Gas Drilling Task Force, whose members met every week for eight months to consider proposals for a new ordinance. They finished their work in February of this year and issued their official recommendations, yet the City Council has not even begun drafting a new ordinance. The only rumored exception: City officials may consider simply changing the existing ordinance to allow fracking in floodplains, which would be necessary for gas company Trinity East to move ahead with its plans to drill in floodplain areas along the Trinity River. Neighborhood groups and environmental advocates say that’s unacceptable.
"This is the largest retreat of leadership that I can ever remember on such an important public health and environmental issue,” said Jim Schermbeck, Downwinders at Risk. “After three years of citizen complaints, a task force created, convened and concluded, expert and public testimony, and all Dallas residents get is a pair of shrugged shoulders from Mayor Rawlings and the Council? It's a bad joke."
There have been several major scientific studies surrounding the risks of fracking since Dallas officials began debating the new ordinance. Community leaders worry that new evidence pointing to health and safety risks for residents living near drilling sites will simply be ignored.
“So what if there's a 66% higher cancer risk within a half mile of a gas well; so what if already bad Dallas smog is made worse; so what if we still have no idea what chemicals will be used for fracking in Dallas,” said Claudia Meyer of the Mountain Creek Neighborhood Alliance. “It's as if the Mayor and Council are closing their eyes, plugging their ears, and desperately hoping to make all these new facts go away by just pretending they never happened.”
The new drilling applications leave Dallas officials exactly where they started, with the City Plan Commission being asked to shoulder the responsibility of deciding on whether to allow fracking to go forward. Advocates say the Commission should decline this offer and let the City Council do what it said it was going to do: Draft and pass a new gas drilling ordinance first.
“If we were only going to end up where we started, what was the point of a task force, or public hearings or anything that's happened since permitting stopped because the City wanted a new drilling ordinance,” said Zac Trahan with Texas Campaign for the Environment. “This is complete and utter dereliction of duty and public trust by the elected officials of this city on one of the most important public health and environmental questions to face Dallas in decades."