Air Quality
June Smog Attack: Day 3
High ozone levels continued to take their toll on people and monitors Wednesday. Grapevine joined the Hinton Street Dallas monitor in recording its fourth "exccedence" of the old 1997 85 ppb smog standard and so establishing an official violaiton of it.
This is an 8-hour standard wherein the average over eight hourly readings must be 85 or above, So we're not talking about short-term spikes. These are day-long spikes.
Monitors in Keller, Eagle Mountain Lake, Arlington, North Dallas and the Redbird area of southwest Dallas saw their third exccedence of the 85 ppb standard, meaning one more day of bad smog could also make them environmental crime scenes. Midlothian, Northwest Ft. Worth, and Frisco all have two exceedences as of yesterday,
We're going to wait until there's a pause in the bad news to look at how off the mark the all powerful and holy TCEQ computer model is so far, but suffice to say that after this week, there's not likely to be any monitor inside the nine-county area that will even be close.
Happy Ozone Non-Attainment Day!
Ozone Non-Attainment Day is a traditional annual DFW event. Every summer there's a day when one or more air quality monitors records its fourth "exceedence" of whatever national ozone standard the region is violating. Then and only then does the monitor officially violate the Clean Air Act and put DFW in "Non-Attainment" of clean air once again.
Gifts of inhalers, oxygen tanks, and emergency room visits are often exchanged by family members and friends on and around the actual day of Non-Attainment.
This year Governor Perry and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality made sure our Ozone Non-Attainment Day arrived extra early. Usually, we don't see it come until August. In fact, ever since ozone monitoring began in 1997, there's only been one other year when it came as early as this year.
In 2006, we had Non-Attainment day on June 14th. Boy, that was a doozy of a summer – 12 out of 19 monitors eventually tripping. Think this one might be as big? It's sure possible.
One sign is that the monitor that triggered this year's Non-Attainment Day is the historic Hinton Street site near Mockingbird and I-35. This particular monitor hasn't even recorded a violation of the Clean Air Act since 2005 – so welcome back Hinton Street! But this site has a long and storied Non-Attainment history. The Hinton Street monitor recorded violations for five years straight during some of the worst smog pollution DFW has ever seen, from 2000 to 2005, with some of those years seeing 14 out of 18 monitoring sites recording violations.
So Hinton Street monitor violations are associated with really bad air. So are Non-Attainment Days that arrive in June. We could have one long hellacious summer ozone pollution episode ahead of us this year. Maybe even a return to double-digit monitors in violation. Isn't it exciting?
You may want to send Non-Attainment Day greetings to Governor Perry and TCEQ Chair Bryan Shaw, since it was their idea of watching people buy newer cars as a pollution control strategy, along with ignoring the large increase in smog-forming pollution from the natural gas industry, that made this June Non-Attainment Day possible. (Downwinders reminds you to please breathe responsibly).
Wastes Waiting to Be Burned in Kiln Ignite Unauthorized Fire
What local news reports called a "massive fire" swept through the piles of industrial wastes waiting to be burned at the Argos Cement Plant in Harleyville South Carolina yesterday. Ten workers escaped injury, but the fire was so intense that it required the assistance of outside fire departments totaling 75 firefighters, three trucks and two aircraft, and lasted all day as crews snuffed out hot spots.
Starting at about 5 in the morning, the fire quickly engulfed the 60 by 100 foot warehouse stuffed with carpet pieces, paper, and rubber ready to be put into the cement kiln as "fuel." Imagine a landfill or tire fire and that's the kind of heat, smoke and toxicity you've got to deal with when your "recycled fuel" goes up in flames.
Of course, health officials denied there was any risk of exposure to toxic fumes even as they were still trying to determine exactly what was in the warehouse. That's the deductive reasoning process in action when it comes to local officials in company towns. Harleyville is home to the second-largest concentration of cement manufacturing in the country, behind only Midlothian. It hosts two large plants – Argos and Giant. It's also been a center of kiln waste-burning since the 1980's
The kinds of wastes that caught fire in South Carolina are among those that TXI now has a permit to burn in its Midlothian cement plant, along with car interiors and plastic garbage. A permit that did not offer any public comment or hearing opportunity. The Ash Grove and Holcim Midlothian cement plants also burn industrial wastes including tires and used oil. In the mid-1990's a tire "recycling" firm in Midlothian connected to the cement plants caught fire and burned for days with the black smoke wafting through downtown Dallas skyscrapers.
New Evidence of Ozone Health Harms in the Air You’re Breathing This Week
As of 10 am on Tuesday, air quality monitors in Grapevine, Midlothian, Frisco and the Redbird area of Dallas had already recorded "Level Orange" concentrations of smog, including a 106 ppb reading in Grapevine. As late as 9 pm last night, ozone levels were still in the 90's in Weatherford. It's going to be another long, hot day of bad air throughout the DFW area. Which means they'll be people suffering form breathing that bad air. Today there's new evidence that that suffering includes heart attacks and strokes caused directly by ozone pollution.
EPA Toxicologists at Research Triangle, North Carolina exposed willing subjects to clean air, or to air containing 0.3 parts per million ozone. On the high-ozone day, volunteers inhaled the same cumulative dose that they would have received over eight hours in a place that exceeded the U.S. federal limit of 75 parts per billion for that length of time. Just like we've been doing here in DFW for the past three days. The results of the study showed ozone is causing acute — and even chronic — risk for heart attacks in the people who breathe it.
Blood levels of inflammatory agents increased, sometimes even doubling, after the subject's ozone exposure, and this increase could last more than a day. High ozone exposure also triggered subtle changes in heart rate variability, indicating a higher risk of arrhythmias. Ozone also altered levels of several proteins involved in blood clotting.
A decade ago the head of the Texas environmental agency stated that Ozone was a "benign pollutant" and argued against lowering the national standard for exposure to it. Last year, Texas state government again fought a lowering of the ozone standard, saying there was no proof of harms at levels below 85 parts per billion despite an independent panel of scientists saying there was. The more we know about how ozone impacts the human body the more we see that even levels considered "safe" a few years ago have far-reaching harmful effects.
75, 85, 105 parts per billion. These are just numbers from monitors. Behind them are real people having asthma attacks, heart attacks, and strokes. This is why it's important to win the battle with DFW's chronic smog. This is why it's a public health issue that's too important to be left up to a group of political appointees in Austin beholden to industry that too often pretends there's not even a problem.
CDC Issues Health Alert on Silica in Fracking
Last Thursday an arm of the Centers for Disease Control issued a "Hazard Alert" concerning exposure to Silica pollution at fracking drilling site. This comes after nationwide tests by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health at 11 well pads showed alarmingly high Silica levels in the air.
Silica is tiny sand particles. Breathe too many of them and you get Silicosis, a disease that literally suffocates you to death by putting down a layer of cement between you and your alveoli.
All the tests were at and around the drilling pad sites, not off-site, so we don't know what kind of hazard Silca pollution poses to surrounding residents. But the levels were so high at the pads that it's hard to believe it's never a factor. Reportedly, the amount of sand being used in fracking has significantly increased over the last decade.
For people west of DFW, that means more sand mining, and sand mining pollution in the Brazos and Red River valleys. For people near drilling sites, it could mean more air pollution nobody was trying to inventory until now.
Silica pollution wasn't even an issue of concern with fracking until somebody at the NIOSH decided to go looking for it. Who knows how many other fracking hazards are waiting to be discovered?
“Air Pollution Warning: Level Red”
Monday turned out to be the single worst day for smog in DFW in 2012. Monitors in Northwest Ft. Worth, Grapevine, North Dallas and Dallas/Hinton Street recorded 8-hour averages of "Level Red" ozone – a level of pollution according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that means,
"The highest measured levels of ozone during the previous hour are considered unhealthy. Everyone, especially children, should limit prolonged outdoor exertion. People with respiratory disease, such as asthma, should avoid prolonged outdoor exertion."
Ten monitors exceeded the old 1997 eight-hour 85 ppb standard and those same three – Ft. Worth Northwest, Hinton and Arlington Airport, averaged over 100 ppb for eight hours or more.
In fact, Arlington saw a one-hour high of 128 ppb – an "exceedence" of a standard more than 20 years old – and it's 107 8-hour average on Monday was the highest at any DFW monitor since 2007.
The Hinton Street monitor recorded it's third exceedence since March. One more and DFW will once again be in non-attainment with the Clean Air Act, for the 21st year in a row. Four others recorded their second exceedence.
Last year it took us into the middle of Summer before that happened. This year it may occur during the first week of Summer. This is what Governor Perry and TCEQ call progress.
Halfway to Failure
(Late Monday evening update: It's clear that the Hinton Street monitor will record its third "exceedence" of the 85 ppb standard this year, putting it just one away from making the entire region non-attainment" in 2012.)
It's a bad sign when there are ozone problems on the weekends. It means that even with less people on the road and many businesses on less than full throttle, there's still enough pollution to cause trouble. And it usually means a rough week ahead. That's what happened on Sunday, when summer finally caught up with DFW in a big way.
Four area ozone monitors set new annual highs set on Sunday, and many others saw very alarming numbers during the afternoon. There were three "exceedences" of the old 1997 85 parts per billion ozone standard, and one of those was the second time the Dallas Hinton Street site had seen an 8-hour average above 85 this year. Six other monitors have already had their first. And it's only June.
Four such exceedences within a year puts a monitor in official violation of the obsolete standard that DFW is still struggling to meet. So with the Hinton Street results, we're already halfway to being out of compliance with the 1997 standard again. But it's all academic. Everything is now geared toward meeting the new 75 parts per billion ozone standard by 2018. DFW could be in violation of the old standard every year from now until then, and except for the terrible toll on public health, there'd be no penalty from either the EPA or TCEQ.
On the other hand, its going to be pretty hard to meet that new, harder standard when you haven't been meeting the old, easier one.
The state's official response is mostly to sit back and hope that DFW drivers trade in their older, more polluting cars for cleaner, newer ones. That phenomena was supposed to be responsible for making this year the best one for clean air in decades. According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's computer modeling, no DFW monitor will violate the Clean Air Act for ozone pollution in 2012. At least, that's what they told the EPA when they submitted the region's clean air plan to the feds in December. And the EPA bought it. Because the TCEQ computer modeling said everything was hunky-dory.
But reality has a way of rudely intruding on TCEQ's computer modeling. Only six months into the new plan and most of the DFW monitor averages predicted by the state are already underestimates. We had the highest ozone levels ever recorded in March. Maybe there's just not enough of you trading in your cars.
Or maybe it's just that old TCEQ junk science at work. One thing we know the state's computer model didn't consider was how already-dirty air makes the VOC pollution from natural gas operations more easily convert into ozone pollution. Denver officials who are also dealing with new gas operations contributing to long-standing smog problems have considered this factor and think it explains larger than expected ozone readings there.
TCEQ chose to ignore this variable. Supposedly because the gas patch was well west of DFW and "couldn't possibly" affect North Texas ozone levels. But as anyone who's driven I-30 or I-20 over the past ten years can tell you, the gas patch extends all the way from east of Denton to Grand Prairie to Midlothian, encompassing most of the 9 county non-attainment area. In the same December 2011 clean air plan the state predicted record-low ozone levels this year, it also estimated that gas industry sources were emitting 34 tons per day more smog-forming VOC pollution than all the cars and trucks in DFW combined.
It was a political decision not to look at how dirty air from Houston, the East Texas coal plants, the Midlothian cement kilns and everything else east of Weatherford makes gas industry emissions more likely to cause ozone in North Texas. TCEQ's clean air plans are always full of such decisions that drive the final results of its supposedly objective computer modeling. Hard to believe now, but there was a time in the not-so-distant-past that the same computer modeling made it clear that the Midlothian cement plans "couldn't possibly" be affecting DFW ozone levels.
A plan to meet the new 75 ppb standard must be submitted to EPA by 2015 to show three years of compliance by 2018. That's only two-years away. If new cars alone can't get us down below 85, it will be extremely difficult for the state to argue they can get us down to 75. More actual things that work to reduce pollution will be necessary. Including bringing better controls to the cement kilns and coal plants and other industries still putting out way too much pollution. It will be a fight. but so far, the evidence is that more is needed if DFW is ever going to have safe and legal air.
Fracking Call to Action
There are a bunch of grassroots groups endorsing and planning a late July series of actions in Washington DC aimed at countering the surge of fracking going on nationwide. The decentralized nature of the thing reflects the origins of the movement itself – one born inside the gas fields, not the Beltway. This is a good thing. The downside is that none of these groups have the kinds of budgets that allow them to go out and book fleets of buses or floors of hotels on spec. Nevertheless, they're trying to make it easy and cheap for you to do-it-yourself online with advice and listing and a checklist for booking buses and connecting you with housing opportunities in DC. You don't have to be a college kid with a sleeping bag. You can be a middle-aged couple with kids. They'll find spaces with real beds. Here's the FAQ page that can get you started.
The event is more than a rally. Its a four-day extravaganza in which you'll be able to meet your peers from all over the country and receive new ideas and information you can bring home to use in your own fight. Although it's not a Carribbean cruise, you'll more than get your money's worth. Here's the schedule
Wednesday- July 25th
Trainings
6:30pm-8:00pm Evening Lobbying and Marshall Trainings
Location: TBA
These trainings are not required for people who are lobbying, but we highly recommend that you attend. We will discuss how to lobby, what our asks to members are, what to expect from lobbying meetings and more importantly how to get around the Hill! We will also be having a Marshall Training where we will go over conflict resolution and the plan for the march and fracking water drop-off. We’ll also give out some other roles that we need filled to make sure STFA goes off without a hitch.
Thursday- July 26th
Lobby Day
9:00am-5:00pm Lobbying at the US Capitol
Location: US Capitol Visitor Center (we will have a space there all day)
After being trained the night before, we will hit the pavement of Capitol Hill and bring our message to our members of Congress. Lobbying is a tactic that is as old as government itself, and is a great way to create the pressure needed to close the loopholes in the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts. We will also take a group photo at noon on the steps of the Capitol!
More questions? Concerns? Shoot us an email: info@stopthefrackattack.org
Friday- July 27th
Stop the Frack Attack Gathering
10:00am- Noon: Trainings
Location: St. Stephens Church, 1525 Newton St. NW Washington, DC 20006
You’ve told us you want training before our day of action. Please fill out this survey to help us decide the topic of our fourth training! Check out the survey here!
1:00pm- 5:00pm: Strategy Session
Fracktivists from far and wide are coming to DC, and it’s time to figure out how we are actually going to win. We will break up by geographic regions, with a separate youth group, and talk strategy. What’s working? What’s not? What can we do better? These are the questions we hope to answer.
6:30-8:30: Town hall
We are working hard to get this event off the ground and we are gaining some traction, consider this the pre-rally. Our goal is to get someone from the Obama Administration here to talk to us about fracking and then have an open Q&A session… word on the street is it might be someone big, we’ll keep you posted!
Saturday- July 28th
Rally and March
2:00pm Rally
Location: The West Lawn of the Capitol
This is the big day, we are organizing to get as many people as possible! We have people coming from Texas, West Virginia, New York, Vermont, and even Australia. If you want to help get people there you can organize a bus! This rally will give us the energy needed to take our demands to the corporate powers pushing fracking onto our communities.
3:30 pm March
Location: The Streets of DC
After getting pumped up by our awesome speakers, it’s time to hit the streets. We will make a special delivery to the American Petroleum Institute and American Natural Gas Association. They say fracking is good for our water, we say nay and have the water to prove it!
And here's the mission statement for the action:
A rush to drill is sweeping the United States. Across the country, the oil and gas industry is surging into new areas as quickly and cheaply as possible.
And they have been using techniques like hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) long before we fully understand the extent of the negative impacts on the health of the local people, communities, water, air, climate, and other critical resources.
Landowners and communities are struggling to cope: Existing laws are outdated and loophole-riddled, and enforcement is universally inadequate and underfunded. We battle a persistent myth that gas is a “clean” energy – which is not only false, but keeps us from moving towards truly clean energy and ending our reliance on fossil fuels.
The result: as industry rakes in record profits from fracking-enabled drilling, it passes on drilling’s heaviest costs to landowners, local communities and future generations. That’s because elected leaders (sometimes influenced by dirty energy money) too often refuse to hold the industry accountable for the damage they cause, or require them to prevent it.
The rush to drill, and the tragic consequences that follow, has made fracking a household word. In the process it has made “fracktivists” out of thousands of ordinary citizens — including some who regard “environmentalist” as a dirty word. Some are working to prevent fracking in their communities. Those already affected are fighting to protect their air, water, and health.
We all want to STOP THE FRACK ATTACK – the out-of-control rush to drill that is putting oil and gas industry profits over our health, our families, our property, our communities, and our futures.
Now is the time for us all to unite and demand that decisionmakers inside the Beltway hear our voice and take action to change the way the oil and gas industry operates in this country.
On July 28th, 2012, we invite community members and organizations everywhere to join us in Washington, D.C. for a rally at the Capitol to demand no more drilling that harms public health, water, and air. Instead of pushing for the increased use of oil and gas, elected officials and public agencies must insist that the industry stop all drilling that is dirty and dangerous, and put communities and the environment first, starting by removing special exemptions and subsidies for the oil and gas industry.
Join community leaders, celebrities and policymakers and add your voice to the call for a clean, fossil fuel free energy future.
Won’t you join us?
Signed,
Advisory Council:
Julie Archer, West Virginia
Stephen Cleghorn, Pennsylvania
John Fenton, Wyoming
Robert Finne, Arkansas
Rick Humphreys, West Virginia
Jenny Lisak, Pennsylvania
Kari Matsko, Ohio
Jill Morrison, Wyoming
Calvin Tillman, Texas
Matia Vanderbilt, Maryland
Jill Wiener, New York
Partners in Crime: TCEQ Lets Exide Lead Smelter Air Plan Deadline Pass
Yeah, it's supposed to close by the end of the year. But that shouldn't mean the Exide lead smelter gets an even larger free pass to keep breaking the law on its way out the door.
Under the Clean Air Act, the facility is still subject to a clean-up plan for lead emissions that are violating the new federal lead-in-air standards passed in 2008. It's called a "State Implementation Plan," or SIP, because the state environmental agency, in this case the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, is supposed to submit it to EPA for approval. The deadline for submitting Exide's SIP is July 1st, so the EPA has the required six months for public comment and processing through the Federal Register by the time the standard takes effect in December. As of today, the agenda for the last TCEQ Commissioners meeting in June did not have the Exide SIP on it.
It's true that the smelter doesn't have to start meeting that new standard until less than a month before it's scheduled closing via the agreement Exide and the City of Frisco announced in late May (and it's been exeeding that standard pretty regulalry since Spring began). But the adoption of a SIP could have put a nice regulatory bow on the package that the company and city have already prepared, and given the state the chance to tie up lots of loose enforcement ends.
By not submitting the SIP to EPA on time, the TCEQ is in violation of the law. What EPA will do about that is unknown, although its advocacy on behalf of Frisco residents over the long history of the smelter has been less than comprehensive and enthusiastic. Even now, neither it nor TCEQ have announced any fines or enforcement measures despite finding plenty of evidence of violations over the last three years' worth of inspections, much less the documented 30-year history of chronic abuses found in the agencies' files.
What might be some of the real world consequences of TCEQ lawbreaking this time? More lead air pollution and lead exposure to Frisco residents in the next six months than would otherwise have been allowed and more contamination of the land the City of Frisco has already bought and must pay to clean-up. A good thing to remember is how the company phased-out its Dixie Metals smelter in Dallas when it was forced to close by a December 31st 1990 deadline by the city. There was full production at the smelter until 12 Midnight, December 31st.
The official apathy of the state and federal agencies regarding Exide's criminal past and present has been breathtaking at times. So far, this missed SIP deadline seems to be one more yawnfest for them. Which is all the more reason citizens have to keep a vigilant eye on things even after the hoopla is over and the important work of cleaning-up a half-century's worth of poisons begins. Environmental protection is a do-it-yourself proposition.
Clean Air As Political Football
Yesterday's Senate vote on rolling back the new EPA Mercury rules for power plants is a great example of how both sides use fake controversies to puff-up their political bone fides and financial support.
At issue is another move by Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma to gut the widely popular regulations that would establish limits for mercury pollution from power plants – the largest source of the air-borne poison in the US.
Inhofe's motives are pretty clear – this is just one more run at trying to deconstruct the EPA and the last 40 years of government-mandated clean air provisions. This is what the Senator does. Even when he knows he doesn't have the votes to win weeks in advance, as was the case with this vote. Why? Because it's a presidential election year and the EPA is red-meat to the Republican Party core constituency. After a week of publicity about the rules and the chance to demagogue against them, the vote itself is a mere formality. In fact, losing the vote gives the Senator a chance to say that the only way to permanently get rid of these kinds of awful business-killing EPA regulations is to elect a Republican president and Senate. Get those fundraising letters out. Mission accomplished.
Likewise, many of you probably received urgent appeals from large national environmental groups to e-mail your Senators about this power plant vote or risk losing the rules. This too was political posturing. If you'd been keeping track of the debate, you knew Senator Inhofe did not have the votes to win in the Senate. And even if he had somehow won, the President still would have vetoed the bill. The rules themselves were never in any danger. So why send out urgent appeals? Because it's a presidential election year and the Republican threat to EPA is a red meat issue to a core Democratic/Environmental constituency. After a week of scaring people into believing the rules were in jeopardy, the vote itself was a mere formality. And the "closeness" of the vote means that the only way we can protect rules like these is to keep a Democratic president and Senate. Cue those fundraising appeals. Mission accomplished.
Tomorrow, it's very likely that the Obama Administration will begin the self-inflicted process of dismantling parts of the EPA's new emission rules for cement plants that Downwinders and others have worked almost two decades to see implemented. These rules govern Mercury emissions too – cement plants are also a major source. For no reason that anyone in the environmental establishment in DC can understand, the EPA is going out of its way to weaken and delay these rules. This is not a drill. This is actually happening. And it's not the fault of Senator Inhofe this time. It's the Obama EPA. But the Senator won't be crowing about it because it doesn't conform to his own popular narrative about an anti-business EPA. We'll wait and see, but we also imagine there won't be any urgent national calls from Washington environmental groups next week to stop the EPA from eating its own and save the cement plant rules. That's not the narrative they're trying to sell either.
But it's the one taking place on the ground in Midlothian and another two dozen or so communities across the country that were depending on these rules to make their lives less miserable.