Gas
Getting Ready to Rumble: Dallas Schedules Gas Drilling Briefings for August 1 and 15th
According to the Morning News, Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan sent a memo to staff today laying out the timeline for how the Dallas City Council will get officially "briefed" on the creation of a new gas drilling ordinance. Apparently on August 1, the council will have a kind of staged policy wrestling tag-team match between a spokesperson picked by Council member Scott "Grizzly" Griggs and one picked by Council member Sheffie "Killer" Kadane. Both spokespersons – as yet unnamed or still unchosen – will get 30 minutes to offer their best shot at what a good Dallas drilling ordinance looks like. All of this will be going on out in the open for public consumption. Then on August 15, the Council will be meeting in a closed door session to receive information from their lawyers. No word yet on public hearings that ought to be accompanying this march to a final vote as well.
An Article Every North Texas Elected Official Needs to Read
"This is heavy industrial mining. That's what it is," concludes Arlington resident Elizabeth Lane, who lives next door to a natural gas well and is quoted in a new story on North Texas fracking by Shelley Hawes Pate in this month's edition of Dallas Child (p. 26). "DRILLING FOR DOLLARS" is one of the best stories about local fracking you'll read lately because it takes the debate away from the abstractions of academia and government and puts it squarely in the experience of people on the ground. People who were not Sierra Club members before they started feeling sick or their lives disrupted by gas mining. People who have absolutely no motive to go after big business or polluters just for the fun of it. Go out right now and buy a copy and share it with friends. Then put it in an envelope and mail it to one or more members of the Dallas City Council.
Took My Chevy to the Levee, But the Levee…Was Full of Lead
Raymond Crawford of the Dallas Residents for Responsible Drilling group asked for all letters, notes, etc., between the City of Dallas and the Army Corp of Engineers over the issue of drilling near dams or levees. He put in a Texas Open Records Act request nine months ago. It was prompted by the fact that the Corps had asked Grand Prairie to suspend permitting gas wells within 3000 feet of the Joe Pool Lake dam and in a letter to that city had stated it would be contacting Dallas about the same issue since it owned the other side of the Lake.
Only, so far, there's no letter to Dallas that's been produced. That's what Crawford was trying to find with his request.
Monday, the city finally sent him some information, including an e-mail from the Corps to the City referencing the Grand Prairie situation and the 3000 foot "protective zone," along with an internal City e-mail that summarizes (incorrectly) that Dallas doesn't have any potential gas well sites near the Joe Pool Lake dam.
There is no e-mail or correspondence from the City of Dallas back to the Corps reporting any official inventory of sites that might qualify, so as of now, we still don't know what the city told the Corps in response to its inquiry. Did it later acknowledge that there was a site on the Dallas side of the Lake, or talk about how much of the land under and around the Trinity River levees was already leased fro drilling by the City? We don't know. We DO know that nobody at Dallas City Hall communicated this inquiry from the Corps into drilling sties close to dams to the City Council as a whole or the public.
Thanks to Crawford, we also know that the lower Trinity River floodplain near Cadillac Heights is a deeply contaminated area of Dallas that the city and the Corps is trying spin into being not quite so contaminated so it can go forward with a flood control plan that involves building and maintaining wetlands along this corridor. His request came back chock full of paperwork concerning the "Dallas Floodway Extension Project," a decades old plan that now seems to be wrapped up into the city's Trinity Rover improvements agenda.
Soil sampling that was done to explore just how contaminated this land is showed very high levels of lead and worrisome levels of Mercury, Benzene and other pollutants – down to 15 feet in depth, as far as the sampling went. This isn't all that surprising considering the stretch of land saw two lead smelters operating there for decades, as well as variety of other heavy industries. What might be considered shocking is that the Corp and the City want to take a lot of this contaminated soil and build up the existing levees with it. They propose to dig up the "not-so-bad" lead-infested soil from the floodplain, truck it over about 100 yards, dump it, and and pack it right back down back into the levee, leaving it all in South Dallas. Isn't that convenient? Only one problem. What the Corps and the City are saying is "not-so-bad" is worse than they're spinning it because they're using soil clean-up standards based on old blood lead alert levels that are now obsolete – 500 parts per million for residential use and 1600 ppm for industrial use.
If South Dallas residents were looking around for another example of how they always get second-class treatment, they could certainly contrast the language and clean-up strategy used in these e-mails with that of the recent Exide lead smelter settlement agreement in Frisco, some 30 miles and several income brackets away.
Bush EPA Persecuted, er, Prosecuted More Oil and Gas Violations than Obama’s EPA
It would have been nice for Politico or the NYT to have done such a study before a ginned-up manufactured controversy claimed the job of the Best EPA Regional Administrator We Ever Had ™, but instead the Associated Press comes out a month after the fact to conclude that "the EPA went after producers more often in the years of Republican President George W. Bush, a former Texas oilman, than under Obama." Depressing huh? And not at all what you might have expected if you listened to the moaning and groaning of Big Oil and Gas and their supporters on Capitol Hill. To hear them tell it, you'd would have thought he Obama EPA was picking industry names out of hat everyday to decide who to go after. The article uses former EPA Region 6 Administrator Dr. Al Armendariz's railroading by house and Senate Republicans as a jumping off point to examine if there's any meat to the charges that were being made at the time. There isn't. "Armendariz' territory, which also includes Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma, has more oil and gas wells than any of EPA's nine other regions. But the number of enforcement cases against companies working those wells has been lower every year under Obama than any year under Bush. That trend extends to the rest of the country, where the number of enforcement actions against oil and gas producers dropped by 61 percent over the past decade, from 224 in 2002 to 87 last year. The decline came despite an increase in the number of producing wells and despite the EPA's listing of energy extraction as an enforcement priority under Obama. So far this year, the administration has filed 51 formal enforcement cases against energy producers.While there has been an uptick in the average fine against companies producing oil and gas since 2007, when the penalty reached a low in the decade evaluated by the AP, the average is still lower than during some years under Bush, who was viewed as sympathetic to the oil and gas industry. The year 2011 was an exception; the average soared due to a $20.5 million fine against a BP subsidiary in Alaska. That was the largest penalty against an oil and gas producer under Obama, but it was for a pipeline spill that happened five years earlier." Like we said, too bad nobody in the media bothered to check those claims out at the time of the controversy. We bet this study won't be coming up next Wednesday when Dr. Armendariz is once again raked over the coals by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, i.e. Smokey Joe Bartons' gang. Read More
A Deal in Frisco, But Will Anyone See It Before it's a Done Deal?
Word comes with today's Dallas Morning News that the City of Frisco and the Exide lead smelter have reached an agreement wherein the city will pay Exide $45 million to close operations by the end of this year….and leave over 9 million pounds of lead waste in the ground for Exide to clean-up at an undetermined point in the future. Before addressing what little is known about the deal, and the red flags it raises for Frisco residents, let's pause for a moment and praise the efforts of Frisco Uneaded, the local residents group Downwinders helped found and has sponsored for almost a year. Lord knows, the official press releases won't give them any credit. Before their arrival on the scene, Frisco city officials were still talking about what a good neighbor Exide had been, and were negotiating a way to have the smelter remain in town. From its very first meeting, Frisco Unleaded challenged this official stance, reminding the city there was no safe level of lead exposure and calling out the Mayor and Council for their inability to get rid of the smelter through amortization, the same way Dallas got rid of its inner-city lead smelter 30 years ago. In less than 6 months, the work of the group had paid off when the city voted in January to proceed with amortization of Exide. Frisco Unleaded had so completely changed the nature of the discussion that continued operation was no longer a viable alternative. That's successful grassroots organizing. But by then, the council and mayor were already convinced they wanted to engineer their own solution out of the public eye. That's what the press release today is all about. On the surface, it's certainly good news that Exide will not be spewing new lead air pollution out of its stacks and holes in the wall after this year. That's a huge step forward for public health in Frisco that should be celebrated, no question. But there are still many, many questions….. like will Exide still be using the Frisco site to dump its waste? The company is retaining ownership of all the dirtiest most contaminated parts of the operation, including the 9 million pounds plus of waste already sitting there in a floodplain, and the open, currently-in-use landfills. New waste is being deposited there daily. Will Exide be able to continue to use these landfills for disposal of its corporate waste, even after the smelter's smokestacks come down? Even if that dumping also comes to a stop on December 31st, what happens to all that waste in the Stewart Creek floodplain? It sits there indefinitely until Exide decides to clean it up. There can be no downstream development of the City's Grand Park as long as that contamination remains just upstream. Where is the buy-out figure of $45 million figure from? Where did the "$1 million" clean-up figure stated by the City Manager in the Morning News come from? We haven't seen any evidence that there's been any comprehensive testing of the area the city is buying, so how do they know it will only cost a million? The city pretends like it's doing residents a favor by cleaning up to 250 parts per million of lead in soil with the property it's buying. But what is that level of clean-up based on? California uses a 100 ppm clean-up level to protect human health. Why not use that? Lots of questions. But Frisco City Hall isn't releasing the agreement language, because according to one source, the details are still being worked out. Good enough for a press release but not good enough for public release. Moreover the Council is now scheduled to vote on this package on Monday beginning at 5:30 pm – without anyone seeing the actual document or being able to analyze it. That's not good Democracy or public policy. If they had confidence the agreement would stand up to public scrutiny, the council would let the public dig into it for a week or two and then hold a hearing and vote. Press releases are no substitute for the real thing and it's insulting for the Council to rush this important agreement through without more time to study it. You have to wonder if in fact the Council knows this agreement is not the best that could be won, that it leaves huge holes and questions about continued lead contamination in Frisco, and so doesn't want any public oversight of it for fear it would collapse from the weight. Frisco City Hall keeps vowing that they're committed to transparency, but when push comes to shove, they always retreat behind closed doors. We're cautiously optimistic that this agreement is the end of the beginning, but we don't for a minute believe it's the end. Stay tuned.
Yes, We Know
The Dallas Morning News finally decided to ask the Army Corps of Engineers about Dallas' plans to drill for natural gas in the Trinity River floodplain, some five years after the City leased land for that very purpose, and three months after the City's gas drilling task force voted to allow such drilling.
The Corps's response? We're sticking with our 3000 foot buffer zone we've already failed to enforce at Joe Pool Lake! For the most part, the DMN story doesn't present any new information about the hazards posed by drilling too close to dams. But there is one piece of news. A nationwide team of Corps members is "searching for what’s known and unknown about possible risks from mineral extraction near dams.The goal is to create a system that will let corps managers set a site-specific buffer zone around a dam or other structure, said Anita Branch, a geotechnical engineering specialist with the corps’ Fort Worth district.
The distance between a dam and drilling in different places might be bigger or smaller depending on local geology, geography and other factors, she said. Although the corps is looking first at its own operations, any local government would be able to use the system to make its own decisions on safety zones around non-corps dams and levees, Branch said.
Until such a system is in place, the corps’ Southwestern division, which includes Texas and surrounding states, is keeping a 3,000-foot buffer around its dams and levees.'The 3,000 feet was based largely on geology in the Southwestern district,' Branch said." In other words, don't look for this number to change any time soon since it originated in the Barnett Shale.
Unfortunately, the Corp can only enforce the 3000 buffer zone on land it owns. Otherwise, it can only "advise" and "recommend" that local governments don't act like idiots by putting active wells where they shouldn't be any. But of course in Dallas' case, they have the additional leverage of overseeing the Trinity River levees that must not only protect Dallas from flooding, but will also have to hold up to the impacts of the proposed Trinity toll road going by or through them.
So Dallas might be more interested in listening to the Corps' advice. What's the larger story missing from this one? That in 2007, without any public hearings or debate the City of Dallas decided to sell off a huge chunk of open space that also serves as flood control for gas drilling. And then, citing the "undesirable uses" already occurring in the flood plain the city's own drilling task force decided those same floodplains would be a great place for drilling – and left themselves the out that any such drilling would have to be done with the Corps' permission. Only it doesn't. It can only recommend when it comes to the city-owned property that's already been leased. So it will have to be up to the Dallas City Council if it wants to be sure no drilling takes place in the Trinity River floodplain. They'll have to make the Corp's recommendation official policy.
Are there at least eight council members who will take the Corp's advice? Don't take it for granted. And one more thing. If 3000 feet is the appropriate structural buffer zones for dams, what's the appropriate structural buffer zone for underground pipelines, bridge supports, and even home foundations?
Meet a “Minor Source” of Air Pollution in the Natural Gas Mining Cycle
Despite overwhelming community opposition, Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) is getting its very first compressor station this month. It's tastefully located near a mall in order to process gas being extracted from near-by Marcellus Shale wells. Not considered a great hot spot for the gas itself, the county nevertheless finds itself in close-enough proximity to the gas patch to be of use to operators as a repository for some of its other facilities along their fuel cycle. Along with five compressor engines there will also be three dehydrators, and reboilers, and two 6.500 gallon storage tanks. It will release 35 tons of smog-forming Nitrogen Oxide (NOx), 17 tons of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), 7 tons of formaldehyde (a known carcinogen), and 11 tons of soot/Particulate Matter pollution. The NOx figure alone is the equivalent of something like 2500-3000 cars worth of pollution alone. No mention in the article how much CO2 is being emitted. This facility is considered a "minor source" of air pollution by the Allegheny County Health Department. Everything is relative of course. Compared to the steel mill smokestacks that made up the skyline of Pittsburgh for most of its existence 70 tons of crud a year might strike you as smallish. But when you stick that same 70 tons of crud as close as 500 feet away from a neighborhood or school that's not used to having heavy industry located so close, it doesn't look all that minor. And that's why the Dallas City Council's task force recommendation to allow compressors on the gas well pad itself, restricted only by the same zoning requirements of a drilling rig that produces a lot less pollution, is so nonsensical. Compressors are giant polluters. Their engines can be the size of locomotives. Imagine five of these only 500 feet from your yard or child's school. That's what's being endorsed by the task force and that's what citizens are rejecting out of hand. One of the major issues the Dallas City Council will have to decide as part of its new gas drilling ordinance is how and where these huge, necessary parts of the gas industry infrastructure will be allowed to locate.
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
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
Wise County in, Hood Left Out: EPA Declares New Non-Attainment Area for Smog in North Texas
At around closing time came news that the EPA had finalized the boundaries of the new “non-attainment area” for smog in North Texas that corresponds to enforcement of the “new” 75 ppb ozone standard approved last year. The 9 counties that were already in violation of the older standard are still there: Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, and Tarrant. The only new addition is Wise County, but it’s a huge one given its prodigious amount of gas industry pollution and commuter traffic to Tarrant and Denton Counties. It also means that Wise County will be getting an ozone monitor. If it’s placed correctly by TCEQ – and that’s a big if – it could be giving us a much truer understanding of how high or low ozone levels are really going. Since predominant winds during “ozone season” (April -November) are from the southeast to northwest, much of DFW’s dirty air gets pushed into Wise County, where it then officially falls off the map because there’s no air monitors there to record it. TCEQ likes it that way because ozone readings in Wise – where DFW dirty air meets gas patch emissions – could be significantly higher than in most of the rest of DFW. And that would dampen the Austin happy talk about improving DFW air quality. Also coming to Wise are things like those Vapor Recovery units on gasoline pumps, and other stricter pollution control requirements – although the impact on the entrenched gas industry infrastructure already there is unclear. Hood County was also singled out by EPA for inclusion in the non-attainment area but is left off this final order. It also has a number of gas industry facilities, including compressor stations, although most have shown up over the last ten years as opposed to Wise, which has seen decades of oil and gas production. There was no explanation for Hood exclusion in EPA’s letter. DFW wil be classified as a “Moderate” non-attainment area under the new standard while Houston will get a more severe “Marginal” classification. Why? Because the EPA uses a formula based on percentage above the new standard and Houston has traditionally had higher readings – think Ship Channel “upsets” and belches, even if DFW had just as many. Dallas and Houston remain Texas’ only non-attainmenta areas for smog, although that could certainly change over time. Next up is EPA’s determination of the compliance timeline for all non-attainment areas. The good news is that DFW’s deadline should be sooner than Houston’s because it’s not as severely ranked. The worse the air, the more time a region has to clean it up. The bad news is that it could still mean officials don’t have to get serious about cleaner air until around 2015 for a 2017-18 deadline. That”s been the pattern up to now – keep waiting until the last minute to think about how to dig yourself out of a multi-decade deep hole. And believe us, with this process, 2 years is “the last minute.” There could be all kinds of useful planning and researching going on right now but they’ll be none of that. Because insuring receipt of federal highway dollars, not protecting public health, has been the primary motivating factor behind the clean air machinery in North Texas. Until those priorities are reversed and clean air is sought for its own worth, we’re likely to always be behind the curve, chasing “unattainable” smog standards.