Ozone
EPA Rejects Texas’ BS and Submits Its Own Air Plan for Parks. Will It Do the Same For People?
As you might have already heard, last week the EPA announced it was rejecting Texas' proposed rapid-response,140-year plan for restoring air quality and visibility in National Parks affected by pollution from the state's largest industrial facilities, primarily coal-fired power plants, aka, "the haze rule."
Instead, the EPA decided to implement its own, slightly more decisive plan for action. Whereas the state concluded it needed no new controls on any coal plants, the EPA is requiring modern Sulfur Dioxide (SOx) scrubbers on 14 different boilers at nine power plant sites across the state it estimates will remove 230,000 tons of the pollutant annually. That's 60% of the state's total SOX pollution, and 7% of the nation's.
These scrubbers not only capture SOx on behalf of more beautiful vistas in Big Bend, they also do a good job of preventing lots of Particulate Matter pollution from reaching the lungs of people that live in between the coal plants and parks. Although computer modeling was used by EPA to determine the effectiveness of the scrubbers it's requiring, it focused on results inside the parks. Getting results for metro areas like DFW involves a lot of data mining nobody has done, but there's no question that if reductions in air pollution are helping Oklahoma and West Texas parks, they're also helping out the air in North Texas. Just one look at the modeling maps produced by our recent UNT study of DFW ozone shows the immense impacts of these plants on DFW air quality.
For residents of DFW, the reductions in pollution are overdue and welcome news (the process leading up to this rule can be traced all the way back to 1977), and it certainly makes it even less likely that the big bad old TXU plants (Big Brown, Monticello and Martin Lake) can escape their obsolescence after bankruptcy proceedings.
But the way the EPA determined to go it alone in this case may be much more important to DFW's own air quality in the long run as the actual reductions it implements.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but EPA called BS on the way Texas was obscuring the data needed to write a good haze rule plan. This M.O. sounds awfully familiar to citizens watching the way the State has drafted its anti-smog plan for DFW, now officially approved by the TCEQ Commissioners and on its way to a public hearing in Arlington on Thursday, January 21st (6 pm, HQ of North Central Texas Council of Governments, 616 Six Flags Road).
And if EPA is willing to stand-up to Texas over air quality in parks, shouldn't it take at least as strong a stand on behalf of seven million souls in DFW?
About the same time EPA was announcing a federal takeover of the haze rule plan, Downwinders released its new video appealing for help from the EPA to reject the State's do-nothing smog plan for DFW. A big part of our case is its reliance on faulty analysis and downplaying or obscuring evidence that contradicts the state's ideological position that no new pollution controls for smog are needed in a region in its third decade of continual violation of the Clean Air Act and after a summer where smog averages increased…twice.
Which makes the language EPA uses to justify this takeover of the haze rule plan all the more relevant, and gives residents some hope should the Agency apply the same logic to the State's pathetic response to DFW's chronic smog problem.
EPA accuses Texas of hiding the most effective control strategies from EPA and Oklahoma (where the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge is affected by Texas-based pollution seven times as much as Oklahoma-based SOx) by flooding its emissions inventory data with both large and small sources of SOx from across the state, washing out the impact of the larger coal plants.
"During the interstate consultation required by the Regional Haze Rule, Oklahoma and Texas discussed the significant contribution of sources in Texas to visibility impairment at the Wichita Mountains, but Texas concluded that no additional controls were warranted for its sources during the first planning period to ensure reasonable progress at the Wichita Mountains, or at its own Class I areas, the Big Bend and the Guadalupe Mountains National Parks.
In reaching this conclusion, Texas relied on an analysis that obscured the benefits of potentially cost-effective controls on those sources or groups of sources with the largest visibility impacts in these Class I areas by inclusion of those controls with little visibility benefit, but which served to increase the total cost figures.
This flawed analysis deprived Oklahoma of the information it needed to properly assess the reasonableness of controls on Texas sources during the consultation process and prevented Texas from properly assessing the reasonableness of controls to remedy visibility at Big Bend and the Guadalupe Mountains.
A few pages later EPA reiterates the charge,
Texas’ analysis was deficient and not approvable because the large control set it selected was not appropriately refined, targeted, or focused on those sources having the most significant and potentially cost-effective visibility benefits. We conclude this control set included controls on sources that would increase total cost figures, but would achieve very little visibility benefit…because Texas only estimated the visibility benefit of all the controls together, it was not able to assess the potential benefit of controlling those sources with the greatest visibility impacts, and potentially cost-effective controls. Therefore, the effects of those controls with the greatest visibility benefits were obscured by the inclusion of those controls with little visibility benefit. This only served to increase the total cost figure, making Texas’ potential control set seem less attractive.
In analyzing whether additional controls should be required for some of its sources under the long-term strategy provisions of the Regional Haze Rule, Texas relied on the same flawed analysis discussed above that it relied on to evaluate additional controls under the reasonable progress provisions to address visibility impairment at Texas’ own Class I areas. Texas’ analytical approach obscured the contributions of individual sources that Texas’ own analysis indicated could be cost-effectively controlled.
This deprived Oklahoma of the information it needed to properly assess whether there were reasonable controls for Texas sources and to properly establish reasonable progress goals for the Wichita Mountains that included the resulting emission reductions.
That's just about as plain an outline of a state government conspiracy to avoid complying with the Clean Air Act as the EPA puts in print. And it sets the stage to examine the State's DFW air plan using the same fine-toothed comb for rooting-out analytical crap meant to obscure inconvenient facts on the ground.
For example, the State's conclusion that no new controls for smog are warranted is based on an analysis of what's "reasonably available" that's every bit as flawed as anything dreamed up by Austin for dodging its responsibilities to national parks. It ignores modern controls already operating on cement kilns, gas compressors, and coal plants – to the point of not even mentioning the permitting of these controls by the TCEQ itself.
Moreover, hard as it is to believe, the state's conclusion on smog controls is based on no modeling of the impact of those controls on air quality. That was left up to Downwinders and its UNT study, using the state's own computer modeling. What that effort provided was nothing less than a road map for how to get the most cost-effective cuts in smog by reducing pollution from those kilns, coal plants, and compressors. This is information the state could have gotten if it wanted it, but it didn't want it because it disputed the ideological position that no new pollution controls for industry are justified. It knew if it looked, it would have to release the results. So it just didn't look.
Finally, the state is still claiming that its plan will get DFW "close enough," to the 75 ppb standard, clocking-in at 77.8 ppb. So the plan doesn't even accomplish its goal. That makes it completely indistinguishable from the last five state air plans for DFW. What the State is counting on is EPA giving them credit for a wish list collection of unquantifiable stuff under the regulatory category of "Weight of Evidence." This is exactly the same strategy used in past plans. Ride new changes in federal law as far as you can and convince the EPA that "trends" are in your favor to make up any slack.
Only this time, "trends" may be working against the State. The summer of 2015 saw an increase in regional smog averages, indicating that perhaps its do-nothing approach isn't working. If you combine this information with the fact that smog levels also rose during the last do-noting plan from 2011, you have some "trends" crying out for an EPA takeover.
Since the TCEQ has approved its DFW air plan for submittal to EPA, we won't have to wait long to find out what the Agency's response will be. Public comments are due by January 29th. Let's hope EPA's review of an air plan for people's health in the nation's fourth largest metropolitan area is as rigorous as it was for the one looking out for visitors to the Wichita Mountains.
“Help Us. We Live in Texas.”
(Dallas)— “Help Us: We Live in Texas.”
That’s the plea of a video released today by a local clean air group claiming the state has so intentionally sabotaged Dallas-Fort Worth anti-smog efforts that residents now need EPA to take over the job.
“Texas is as likely to enforce the Clean Air Act in 2015 as Mississippi was to enforce the Voting Rights Act in 1965,” said Downwinders at Risk’s Director Jim Schermbeck, echoing a line in the video.
The group posted the 2:42 minute piece, titled “SOS @EPA” in response to this morning's vote by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to move forward with a new anti-smog plan for DFW that the Commission has already been told by EPA falls short of legal and regulatory requirements.
In the video, footage from a Downwinders’ street action calling for help at EPA Regional Headquarters in downtown Dallas November 5th is spliced with facts about DFW’s 20 years and counting chronic smog problem. Central to the group’s charge is the state’s unwillingness to put new controls on major sources of industrial air pollution like the Midlothian cement kilns, East Texas coal plants, and gas facilities – despite the fact their own air modeling shows those controls could bring smog down enough to comply with the Clean Air Act.
Today’s vote by the TCEQ is the second in 12 months concerning the same DFW air plan. Its goal is to get from an average of 83 parts per billion (ppb) of smog in 2015 down to the current federal standard of 75 ppb by 2017.
However, the state only estimates a best-case result of almost 78 ppb. Despite that shortfall, there are no new pollution controls required of any major sources. Over the last 20 years, the state has written five anti-smog plans for DFW. None has accomplished its goal on deadline, and regional smog levels actually rose this year.
Besides once again failing to hit is mark overall, the EPA has already told the State its formal assessment of modern pollution controls for those major sources needed revisiting to be legal. TCEQ refused to comply with EPA and today’s plan contains exactly the same assessment as the one EPA has already said isn’t sufficient, making that part of the plan instantly illegal. Although EPA gives state governments authorization to write smog plans for their own metropolitan areas, it still has final approval based on criteria listed in the Clean Air Act.
One of the points made in the group’s video is that studies by local hospitals have shown DFW childhood asthma rates to be as much as four times the state average and over twice the national average, making the need for cleaner air imperative.
“The health of seven million Dallas-Fort Worth residents is being held hostage by a state government hostile to the goal of clean air. Only federal intervention can save us,” said Schermbeck.
The video can be found at Downwinders at Risk’s website (downwindersatrisk.org), it’s Facebook page, twitter account (@cleaner air) and the group’s YouTube channel (Downwinders’ TV).
__________________________________
SEND EPA ADMINISTRATORS A MESSAGE TO REJECT THE STATE'S PLAN AND WRITE ONE OF ITS OWN:
https://www.downwindersatrisk.org/featured-citizen-action/
AND
SIGN THE CHANGE.ORG PETITION:
https://www.change.org/p/ron-curry-and-gina-mccarthy-environmental-protection-agency-reject-texas-smog-plan-for-dallas-ft-worth
________________________________________
LIKE THIS VIDEO? LIKE OUR WORK? THINK IT'S IMPORTANT?
THEN PLEASE MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTABLE CONTRIBUTION TO DOWNWINDERS BEFORE DECEMBER 31st.
DONATE HERE.
________________________________________
WHY?
It might be hard to believe, but despite being the nation’s fourth largest metropolitan area, AND being in constant violation of the Clean Air Act for smog since 1991, AND having higher annual smog numbers than Houston, AND being singled out by EPA as one of only a handful of areas expecting to STILL be in violation of the Clean Air Act in 2025, there’s still only one professional staff person devoted to cleaning up DFW air: the staff person you pay for when you contribute to Downwinders at Risk.
Besides community organizing on the ground, Downwinders also had to go out and build a new committee of local officials concerned about dirty air after the traditional regional air quality planning process broke down. That committee produced a first-ever study showing how new pollution controls on the kilns, coal plants, and compressors could bring smog levels down enough to comply with the Clean Air Act. Our study was used by the Dallas Commissioners Court to pass a resolution requesting new controls on the East Texas coal plants in October. Had it not been for our new committee, there would have been no local officials involved in the DFW air quality planning process at all, and noaccountability for a state government that isn’t interested in our lungs.
Want to get just basic information about DFW air pollution? There are no dedicated environmental beat reporters left in DFW. Downwinders fills this gap as well, providing the only source of reliable and timely information on DFW air quality issues.
Need technical or organizing training? We do that too. Many of you know we just sponsored our first conference – the four-day Root and Branch Revue, featuring a graduating class of 70 grassroots activists from our first “University of Change.”
When you give to Downwinders, you fund the last line of defense between your lungs and a state government that doesn’t believe smog is that bad for you.
And when you give to Downwinders, you know you’re giving to a group with a two decade proven track record of getting results.
That’s our pitch. We get your donation. You get our best effort at protecting your lungs.
On behalf of myself, and the Downwinders at Risk board, thank you for your consideration.
Jim Schermbeck
Director, Downwinders at Risk
“Help: We Live in Texas.” Our Response to Today’s TCEQ Vote on the DFW Air Plan
(Dallas)— “Help Us: We Live in Texas.”
That’s the plea of a video released today by a local clean air group claiming the state has so intentionally sabotaged Dallas-Fort Worth anti-smog efforts that residents now need EPA to take over the job.
“Texas is as likely to enforce the Clean Air Act in 2015 as Mississippi was to enforce the Voting Rights Act in 1965,” said Downwinders at Risk’s Director Jim Schermbeck, echoing a line in the video.
The group posted the 2:42 minute piece, titled “SOS @EPA” in response to this morning's vote by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to move forward with a new anti-smog plan for DFW that the Commission has already been told by EPA falls short of legal and regulatory requirements.
In the video, footage from a Downwinders’ street action calling for help at EPA Regional Headquarters in downtown Dallas November 5th is spliced with facts about DFW’s 20 years and counting chronic smog problem. Central to the group’s charge is the state’s unwillingness to put new controls on major sources of industrial air pollution like the Midlothian cement kilns, East Texas coal plants, and gas facilities – despite the fact their own air modeling shows those controls could bring smog down enough to comply with the Clean Air Act.
Today’s vote by the TCEQ is the second in 12 months concerning the same DFW air plan. Its goal is to get from an average of 83 parts per billion (ppb) of smog in 2015 down to the current federal standard of 75 ppb by 2017. However, the state only estimates a best-case result of almost 78 ppb. Despite that shortfall, there are no new pollution controls required of any major sources. Over the last 20 years, the state has written five anti-smog plans for DFW. None has accomplished its goal on deadline, and regional smog levels actually rose this year.
Besides once again failing to hit is mark overall, the EPA has already told the State its formal assessment of modern pollution controls for those major sources needed revisiting to be legal. TCEQ refused to comply with EPA and today’s plan contains exactly the same assessment as the one EPA has already said isn’t sufficient, making that part of the plan instantly illegal. Although EPA gives state governments authorization to write smog plans for their own metropolitan areas, it still has final approval based on criteria listed in the Clean Air Act.
One of the points made in the group’s video is that studies by local hospitals have shown DFW childhood asthma rates to be as much as four times the state average and over twice the national average, making the need for cleaner air imperative.
“The health of seven million Dallas-Fort Worth residents is being held hostage by a state government hostile to the goal of clean air. Only federal intervention can save us,” said Schermbeck.
The video can be found at Downwinders at Risk’s website (downwindersatrisk.org), it’s Facebook page, twitter account (@cleaner air) and the group’s YouTube channel (Downwinders’ TV).
__________________________________________________________________________________________
SEND EPA ADMINISTRATORS A MESSAGE TO REJECT THE STATE'S PLAN AND WRITE ONE OF ITS OWN:
https://www.downwindersatrisk.org/featured-citizen-action/
SIGN THE CHANGE.ORG PETITION:
____________________________________________________________________________________
LIKE THIS VIDEO? LIKE OUR WORK? THINK IT'S IMPORTANT?
THEN PLEASE MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTABLE CONTRIBUTION TO DOWNWINDERS BEFORE DECEMBER 31st.
________________________________________________________________________________________
WHY?
It might be hard to believe, but despite being the nation’s fourth largest metropolitan area, and being in constant violation of the Clean Air Act for smog since 1991, and having higher annual smog numbers than Houston, and being singled out by EPA as one of only a handful of areas expecting to STILL be in violation of the Clean Air Act in 2025, there’s still only one professional staff person devoted to cleaning up DFW air: the staff person you pay for when you contribute to Downwinders at Risk.
Besides community organizing on the ground, Downwinders also had to go out and build a new committee of local officials concerned about dirty air after the traditional regional air quality planning process broke down. That committee produced a first-ever study showing how new pollution controls on the kilns, coal plants, and compressors could bring smog levels down enough to comply with the Clean Air Act. Our study was used by the Dallas Commissioners Court to pass a resolution requesting new controls on the East Texas coal plants in October. Had it not been for our new committee, there would have been no local officials involved in the DFW air quality planning process at all, and noaccountability for a state government that isn’t interested in our lungs.
Want to get just basic information about DFW air pollution? There are no dedicated environmental beat reporters left in DFW. Downwinders fills this gap as well, providing the only source of reliable and timely information on DFW air quality issues.
Need technical or organizing training? We do that too. Many of you know we just sponsored our first conference – the four-day Root and Branch Revue, featuring a graduating class of 70 grassroots activists from our first “University of Change.”
When you give to Downwinders, you fund the last line of defense between your lungs and a state government that doesn’t believe smog is that bad for you.
And when you give to Downwinders, you know you’re giving to a group with a two decade proven track record of getting results.
That’s our pitch. We get your donation. You get our best effort at protecting your lungs.
On behalf of myself, and the Downwinders at Risk board, thank you for your consideration.
Jim Schermbeck
Director, Downwinders at Risk
DFW One of Only Ten Areas Nationwide Not Expected to Meet New Smog Standard by 2025
There was a lot of coverage of last week's announcment of a new, more protective national smog standard by EPA. Most of it centered on the reaction by both sides that it was either not enough progress (public health advocates), or Western Civilization was about to collapse under the weight of all the controls necessary to meet the standard (National Chamber of Commerce, et al.).
But if you read deeper into the articles, many of them mentioned computer modeling EPA had already done that demonstrated, given current trends, only 14 counties, representing 10 separate areas, wouldn't be able to meet the new standard by the target year of 2025. Unfortutantely, none of those articles mentioned which 14 counties, or which 10 areas.
Now, given all that you already know about our state and regional track record for meeting clean air deadlines, your first question might be: how many of those are in Texas? We'll give you a minute or two to start a pool and pick a number….
And the answer is: Three. Brazoria and Harris Counties in the Houston "non-attainment area" for smog, and Tarrant in DFW's non-attainment area. (The ten areas are: Baltimore, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Fort Collins, Houston, Louisville, Milwaukee, New Haven, New York, and Pittsburgh).
Of course, for the purposes of regional smog record-keeping, EPA doesn't separate Tarrant County numbers from Dallas County, or Denton County, or any of the other nine counties in the non-attainment area. If one monitor is out of compliance in the area, the whole region is considered in violation. So EPA is conceeding that both DFW and Houston will still continue to be in continual violation of the Clean Air Act for another decade.
This is discouraging but not surprising. The State refuses to put new-generation controls on large major polluters like the Midlothian cement plants, East Texas coal plants, and gas production facilities, while painting the rosiest scenarios with its own modeling.
But this new revelation means it's that much more important to get EPA to override the state and act now to include controls on those major polluters, while the current smog plan is in the pipeline. It may be the only chance we have in the next 5-10 years to adequately address these sources. This can only be done if the EPA decides to revoke Texas' authority to write and implement these plans – to commit to a Federal Implementation Plan of its own.
PLEASE….
1) Sign our Change.Org petition urging the EPA to reject the state's clean air plan for DFW and substitute one of its own, and
2) Send an e-mail to the Chief EPA administrator in Washington and the Regional Administrator here in Dallas saying you want them to take responsibility for a new DFW air plan.
Thanks.
EPA Lowers New Ozone Standard for Rest of the Country from 75 to 70 ppb. Texas? Not so Much.
(Dallas)—Although they’re happy the Obama Administration is finally following its own scientists’ advice in lowering the national smog standard, local clean air activists say it won’t do North Texas residents much good as long as the state is charged with meeting it.
“When you have a state government that doesn’t believe smog is even a health problem, you’re not going to get effective enforcement of smog standards,” warned Jim Schermbeck, Director of Downwinders at Risk, the two-decade old local clean air group.
EPA officials have scheduled a Thursday afternoon briefing to announce the Agency is lowering the smog standard from the current 75 parts per billion (ppb) to 70 ppb. Although that doesn’t seem like a large change, it’s enough to prevent an additional 325,000 cases of childhood asthma and 1,440 premature deaths every year according to EPA estimates. But those numbers assume nationwide attainment of the standard. Lungs of Texas residents are routinely denied equal protection under the Clean Air Act by a state government that over 20 years has never drafted a successful smog clean-up plan for two of the most chronically-polluted metro areas in the country.
Until only a year ago, DFW was struggling just to meet the obsolete 1997 smog standard. After a mild summer in 2014, smog actually got worse this past summer, with the regional average going up. DFW officially has the worst air in the state, with a higher smog average and more monitors out of compliance. Air quality progress is stagnating. In 2010, the regional average was at 86 ppb. Today, it’s at 83.
“Texas just isn’t serious about doing what it takes to get cleaner air,” said Tamera Bounds of Mansfield Gas Well Awareness. “That’s why we need the EPA to take over the job of writing these plans so they stand a chance of actually working.”
Bounds referred to the state’s proposed clean air plan for getting to the current 75 ppb smog standard as nothing but watching a new federal gasoline mix be implemented and piggybacking its impacts. It requires no reductions from any major pollution sources. “They know it’s not going to work, and they don’t care.”
Schermbeck said Texas residents can expect more of the same when it comes to meeting a lower, more protective smog standard of 70 ppb. “If they weren’t concerned about meeting a standard of 85 or 75 in a timely way, it’s hard to imagine they’ll suddenly get religion for one at 70 ppb,” said Schermbeck, “…especially when they’re fighting it in court.”
Although EPA has final approval over any such plan, it’s usually left up to the states to draft them. Downwinders is sponsoring a campaign urging EPA to assume responsibility for writing a new clean air plan for DFW itself. Such a rebuke to a state is rare, but it’s an option under the Clean Air Act. “Breathers in North Texas who need cleaner air don’t have any confidence the state can, or even wants to do the job,” sighed Bounds. “Our only hope is EPA.”
US Cement Plant Using SCR Pollution Control Device Achieves 80% Reduction. Texas Says It’s Still Not Feasible.
EPA has released the results of the first test of a full-scale Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) unit on a US cement plant and the numbers look good.
As many of you know, SCR is just an industrial-sized version of the catalytic converter in your car. It can capture up to 90% or more of the smog-forming pollution from a cement plant. In use on cement kilns since 2001, there are at least a half a dozen cement plants in Europe that use SCR successfully, but the technology has been slow to arrive in the US because of regulatory laziness and industry resistance.
But after 15 years, that's finally changing.
in 2013, LaFarge Cement entered into a consent decree with the EPA and the US Justice Department as part of a settlement over a string of environmental violations, including excessive smog-forming Nitrogen Oxide (NOX) emissions. As part of that settlement, Lafarge was to retrofit its Joppa, Illinois "dry process" cement kiln with an SCR unit, record its effectiveness during stack testing, and report on the results of those tests by 2015.
This last week, those results were finally made available by EPA and they show SCR was able to reduce NOx by 80%.
That's approximately twice as effective as SNCR technology, (Selective NON-Catalytic Reduction), the current pollution control device for NOx most often used in U.S. cement plants.
Moreover, according to LaFarge, "the SCR control technology performed well and no operational problem was encountered."
In fact, the control technology worked so well, LaFarge is now getting a permit from the Illinois state environmental agency to operate SCR past the EPA-mandated settlement period.
But while LaFarge is getting its SCR permit, Holcim's Midlothian cement plant has already applied and been granted one by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for construction and operation of its own SCR unit. It should be up and running by this time next year.
So that makes two U.S. cement plants with permits to run full-scale SCR units. One that was forced into the choice by EPA and now wants to keep using it, and another voluntarily adding it.
But according to the TCEQ, even though it gave a permit to Holcim to install SCR, and even though Holcim's SCR unit will be operational in a year, and even though the LaFarge test was a success, and even though SCR has been used for 15 years by European cement companies – SCR is "not economically or technically feasible." That's exactly what the Commission said in response to comments from both citizens and the EPA in its new clean air plan for DFW a couple of months ago.
That's right. One the one hand the Commission has granted a permit to Holcim to build an SCR unit in its own backyard, and on the other it's still calling the technology infeasible. It's the stuff of Monty Python sketches.
And that's not all. There is no mention of the Holcim Cement SCR permit in the TCEQ's own official arguments against SCR in its DFW clean air plan. Not one. Since Holcim's building of an SCR unit would tend to empirically disprove TCEQ's contention that the technology wasn't practical, the state just pretends it's not happening. As with climate change and smog, any facts that conflict with the pre-determined ideologically-correct premise must be ignored.
Presumably, Holcim is building the SCR unit because it's made the business judgment that the technology is not only both economically and technologically feasible, but beneficial to the company's bottom line. Presumably LaFarge is pursuing a permit for its SCR unit because it has made the same practical decision. Yet, in a strange role reversal, a Texas state government agency is now telling business it's making the wrong choices. It's overruling the industry's decision to reduce pollution through SCR use by saying "not so fast."
This is how bad its gotten: the Texas approach to clean air is now so backwards that the cement industry is more aggressive about reducing pollution than Austin.
So how many U.S. cement plants have to be operating with SCR before the State of Texas concludes it's a feasible technology? Two? Four? A Dozen?
Fortunately, the TCEQ isn't the last word on this. The Clean Air Act says any and all reasonably available technology must be used on major pollution sources like the Midlothian cement plants when a clean air plan is being drafted. TCEQ hasn't done that. We think they're breaking the law. There are signs that EPA thinks so as well.
EPA is ultimately in charge of enforcing the Clean Air Act, and if it doesn't do it correctly, then the courts step in.
The best hope for safe and legal air in DFW is for EPA to rigorously enforce the law. The State of Texas will not do so. If you agree then please take a minute to:
1) sign this petition to EPA
2) Send this e-mail to EPA
Thanks.
The Impact of the EPA’s New Methane Rules on the Barnett Shale? TBD
Despite all the gnashing of teeth by industry and hallelujah choruses from the Big Green groups, the new methane rules proposed by the Obama Administration this last week have no immediate impact on facts on the ground in the Barnett Shale.
That’s because, like the recent coal CO2 rules, they regulate future facilities, not the 17,000 or so wells, plus infrastructure, already operating in the Barnett.
They do bring a welcome spotlight to “downstream” facilities like gathering lines and compressors, which is where most of the methane in the gas fuel cycle escapes. They also concede the connection between methane releases and smog (“…reduction of VOC emissions will be very beneficial in areas where ozone levels approach or exceed the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone”), as well as methane and more toxic Volatile Organic Compounds such as Benzene and Toluene (“The measures proposed in this action achieve methane and VOC reductions through direct regulation. The hazardous air pollutant (HAP) reductions from these proposed standards will be meaningful in local communities.”)
EPA’s new rules set a floor for emissions that the industry, over time, will eventually get closer to meeting as a while with the turnover of equipment. But that could take decades. Meanwhile, the agency is only offering “guidelines” to states with smog problems – like Texas – for new pollution controls to reduce methane at existing facilities.
Under this part of the regulation, areas like DFW that host large concentrations of gas pollution sources and are officially categorized as “non-attainment” for smog, or ozone, standards will supposedly be the beneficiaries of new EPA-written “Control Technique Guidelines.”
According to EPA, these CTGs “provide an analysis of the available, cost-effective technologies for controlling VOC emissions from covered oil and gas sources. States would have to address these sources as part of state plans for meeting EPA’s ozone health standards.”
If you live in Texas, you’ve already chortled at that last sentence. Really? The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) would have to use these new technologies on gas sources in their new clean air plans for DFW? Something they’ve refused to do for the last two clean air plan cycles dating back to 2010?
Well, they have to address them at least. And a lawsuit aimed at gutting the new rules is a form of addressing isn’t it?
These are guidelines only, up to the state to enforce – as the EPA admits. “States have some discretion in applying these guidelines to individual sources.” The leverage EPA has is that it still needs to approve these state-generated clean air plans and it can make an official determination that a state didn’t follow the guidelines and send it back to be amended.
This might not be all that important except that the State of Texas is going to have to write a new air plan for DFW in the next year or face the prospect of a federal plan being written in its stead. The one Austin submitted in July is already falling apart on several fronts, and TCEQ has to submit a whole new version or face an EPA-imposed one.
Will the state at least have to acknowledge these guidelines in this current air plan controversy? No. The states have two years to fold the proposed CTGs into their SIPs. So they don’t even have to come into play until this current state plan fails, and Austin or the EPA begin to write a replacement. And why might this plan fail? In part, because it doesn’t apply modern controls to major sources like oil and gas facilities.
You might remember in July, a total of 11 studies were collectively released that concluded the Barnett Shale was leaking 50 percent more methane than previously thought. The day before the EPA made its announcement this week, a national version of those studies estimated US methane pollution from oil and gas was being underestimated by 30%. That’s important because many models of air pollution used by the EPA and the states use those standard emissions estimates that now look obsolete. If you increase the amount of methane, and associated pollutants, by 30-50% in those models, the results might look very different.
So even though the state isn’t officially required to include this new approach to decreasing VOC pollution until 2017 or later, it’d be nice to see it adopted now and have an immediate impact on a region that has a longstanding chronic smog problem. But as long as Texas is in charge of writing DFW’s air plans, that’s just not gong to happen.
Expect Obama’s New CO2 Plan to Close Those Nasty East Texas Coal Plants? Don’t.
By this point, most of you will have been inundated with opinions and factoids about what President Obama's new "Clean Power Plan" will and won't do about climate change. Bottom Line: while it sets a precedent and an emissions floor for the largest sources of CO2, it does so in a way which turns out to be not so challenging for most states – including Kentucky deep in Coal County.
That's also true for Texas, where besides being Ground Zero for the fracking boom, we also have plenty of wind power and some solar. According to the EPA, the state must cut an annual average of 51 million tons of carbon to reach its target, a reduction of about 21 percent from 2012 emissions. We're well on our way to achieving most of that reduction with current or planned wind, gas, hydro, and solar. (In what might be a first concession that natural gas shouldn't be a long-term "bridge fuel," some analysts think tweaks performed by EPA prior to the Plan's release give more incentives to adopt real renewables earlier rather than leaning on gas in the interim.)
This is mostly good news. We want the wind and solar economies to grow. The trade-off is that, under Obama's Clean Power Plan, the rise of these technologies and their emissions reductions lets the obsolete East Texas coal plants off the hook because you don't need them to close to meet your CO2-cutting goals.
Five of those obsolete coal-fired power plants surround DFW's eastern side in a half circle (Big Brown, Martin Lake, Monticello, Limestone, and Welsh). They are, without a doubt, the worst examples of fossil fuel-generated pollution in Texas. They're huge emitters of Mercury, Particulate Matter (PM), Sulfur Dioxide (SOx), and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx).
These five East Texas coal plants are projected by the state to still be releasing 150 tons a day of smog-forming NOx pollution in 2018. Because of wind direction and volume, that pollution has a very large impact on DFW air quality – probably more than any other single phenomenon. We need those coal plants to either modernize or close ASAP to help solve our chronic smog problem. But from the initial survey of the policy, the Clean Power Plan is not going to force that outcome.
While the Plan probably signals the end of any new coal plants any time soon, or at least none without CO2 solutions like sequestration or capture, the fate of existing coal plants, especially in a state like Texas, is more ambiguous. More likely, they'll continue to linger on, beneficiaries of friendly state-created policies designed to nullify the requirements of the Clean Air Act, like loosening their PM limits by magnitudes.
Now, you might think that a federal goal that's been mostly accomplished without doing anything new would be a no brainer in Austin, but there are increasingly fewer and fewer brains in Austin. Because the state's environmental agencies are now completely ideologically driven, common sense just isn't a factor anymore. Instead of asking "how can we best solve this problem?" the response is now to deny there's a problem at all and go about ginning up anti-federal hyperbole to better position yourself in the Republican Primary.
Consequently, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is seriously considering not turning in a required state plan of how to get the reductions needed by the deadline of 2030. If the state doesn't submit one of its own, then the EPA would write one for them. This has the business community in Texas a little nervous, since they have a lot more influence here than in DC. But citizens, which kind of anti-climate change plan would you rather have Texas abide by – one written by a state agency that denies climate change is happening and is doing everything it can to obstruct policies to prevent it, or one written by a federal agency that's actually acknowledging the obvious and doing something about it?
Regardless of whose plan does what by when, the East Texas coal plants look to be able to ride this federal policy out thanks to an almost two-decade homegrown drive to open up the state to renewables. If we want these coal plants to stop causing problems for us, we're probably going to have to find other leverage points.
One of these leverage points is demanding the state of Texas follow the law and require the coal plants install modern Selective Catalytic Reduction controls as part of the new DFW clean air plan it submitted to EPA this summer for approval. SCR could reduce smog pollution from these plants by 90%. So far, Texas has refused to even acknowledge the need to do so. EPA has requested the state change its mind – without success.
If it wants to, EPA can reject the state's plan for not including these new controls on the coal plants. But we have to encourage them to do so – by petition, and by e-mail.
Consider the five East Texas coal plants the energy sector equivalent of the obsolete "wet" kilns in Midlothian that burned hazardous waste for 20 years. They're technological dinosaurs, on their last legs, but still churning out tons and tons of harmful air pollution as they plod their way to the bone yard. The Clean Power Plan insures they'll be the last of their kind, but it's not a silver bullet.
Happy 2015 Ozone Season!
No sooner had the Lung Association's annual "State of the Air" report been released on Wednesday than DFW promptly lived down to its reputation for bad air with its first Ozone Action Days and "exceedences" of the national smog standard of 75 parts per billion on Thursday and Friday.
Thursday saw 8-hour averages of 79 ppb at the North Dallas monitor and 82 ppb at the Rockwall site. For three hours in the late afternoon that day the ozone levels in Rockwall were exceeding the old 1997 smog standard of 85 ppb and went as high as 97 ppb. In North Dallas, smog was also at 85 ppb or above for three hours and got as high as 90 ppb.
Friday' problems were more widespread but not as intense. Five different monitoring sites exceeded the current 75 ppb standard, and the pattern of exceedences were more traditional. That is, the highest-reading monitors on Friday were the ones that traditionally produce the highest numbers every year. Keller and Grapevine averaged 76 ppb, Denton and Eagle Mountain Lake average 77 ppb, and Parker County averaged 79, seeing a peak of 82 in early afternoon.
In all, as of Friday evening, seven out of the 20 DFW smog monitors had their first official excedence of the current 75 ppb standard. As veteran observers know, it takes four such exceedences to qualify as an official violation of the standard. That is, each monitoring site is allowed to exceed the standard three separate days before the fourth-highest day is counted as a violation. This methodology ends up masking the severity of a region's smog problem, but it's been used for over two decades now and so is the EPA's measuring stick of choice.
Since it's only May, there's lots of time for one or more sites to accumulate four or more days over 75 ppb. What will be interesting to see this year is how many, if any, end up with 4th highest readings above the 1997 85 ppb standard – a level of compliance we had not been able to meet until last year's cooler and wetter summer.
For those of you who want to keep score at home, here are the relevant, if not all together public-friendly links:
For tracking the four highest ozone levels recorded at all 20 DFW ozone monitors.
For tracking 8-hour average ozone levels at all 20 DFW monitors by day and month
For tracking ozone levels in real time during the day at all 20 DFW monitors (This site sets-up with a statewide graphic. Click any white square with a number in it in the DFW area and you'll get a closer view of the North Texas region and monitors. For tracking any monitor's ozone levels hour-by-hour for any day, use the same technique but then click on the monitor on the North Texas map you want to examine more closely and the specific data for that day at that monitor will come up. To change the day you want to look at hour-by-hour, change the month and/or day in the slots above the "parameters" chart.)
Hovering over all these numbers is one more – the prospect of a new national smog standard by the end of the year. This is the one that was at the center of the EPA's national hearing in Arlington this last January. Although EPA's own panel of scientists has recommended a level of 60-65 ppb, most pundits believe it will end up between 65 and 70 ppb. So when you see officials boasting about lower ozone levels in DFW, keep in mind that the medical consensus is that the current 75 ppb standard set by the Bush administration is still too high to protect public health.
What’s worse than DFW air being bad? The news coverage of it being bad.
Another year, another "F" from the American Lung Association's "State of the Air" report. This week saw the release of the annual study, which ranks air quality across the US, and has given DFW a failing grade for its dirty air every year, beginning in 1999 when the first one was published.
Since passage of the amendments to the Clean Air Act establishing national health-based standards for ozone, or smog, in 1991, North Texas has never had safe or legal air, and usually ends up in the list of ten worst bad air cities in the country. This year was no exception, when the Metromess came in at #7, relying on numbers from 2011 to 2013.
Yes the levels of smog have mercifully come down over the last 15 years. But so have the levels that are considered by public health experts to be "safe." And while other metropolitan areas of equal size have shown faster, deeper improvements in air quality, DFW has lagged behind.
But many of you already know that. What was most disappointing about the ALA report was not its conclusions concerning our air, but the coverage of those conclusions in the local media, which was almost invisible, exceeded in its inconspicuousness only by the lack of context in what little mention there was.
By our count only the Dallas Morning News and its television partner Channel 5 even had stories about the report. In the DMN, it was left up to Jack-of-all-trades reporter Robert Wilonsky to write the short blub (490 words, or less than the guest op-ed limit of 650 words imposed by the paper's editorial pages) in a blog post, while KXAS clocked in with a relatively long piece over just over 2 minutes that featured an interview with Downwinders at Risk board member Cherelle Blazer and her asthmatic son.
A decade ago, this report would have been a bigger story. Some of that missing coverage is due to bad air fatigue by local news editors – "This just in, DFW air still sucks, details at 10" – but a lot of it's due to the entire category of environmental beat reporters that no longer exists. Not that long ago, both papers had full-time environmental reporters, as did most of the network TV affiliates. Not now.
The Star-Telegram newsroom is shrinking faster than a Greenland glacier and keeps shedding reporters with an environmental portfolio at a rate of about one per year. At this point it's not even possible to name a newsroom employee to whom you could pitch an anti-pollution story. The Morning News has an environmental reporter in name, but Randy Lee Loftis has been away from the beat for years, instead doing mostly work as an editor and dropping in only for occasional pieces. Stories about earthquakes and fracking were recently covered by science reporter Anna Kuchment, while other pieces about fracking itself were written in the business section by James Osburn. Wilonsky's Wednesday's article about the ALA report was in the "Life and Arts" section of the DMN's website.
Don Wall used to be the Channel 8 environmental reporter. Channel 4 had one too. But now these stores are rotated out to those who may or may not have any background in environmental reporting at all.
That's bad news because the less familiar they are with the subject matter, the more likely a reporter is to fall for the smooth Party Line from government or industry, rather than having seen for themselves that the official explanation has big holes. Anyone who's in the news business knows that the best stories are broken and covered by those with the best sources and understanding of what they're talking about. You need to know the context, the series of dominos that's falling or will fall around this piece, as part of a longer, larger narrative. A beat reporter who's been covering the issue and knows all the players without a program.
In the case of air quality and the ALA report, there's simply no one around to remind the public that this report covers the exact years the last "clean air plan" submitted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality was supposed to give us historical low levels of smog – despite not requiring any new controls on any sources of air pollution. Instead, smog got worse, the first time a plan has actually produced higher levels of ozone at its conclusion than when it began.
And that's important in 2015 because the same state agency is once again submitting a clean air plan that does nothing but wait for the federal government to act. No new controls on the cement kilns, the coal plants , or the gas industry. As a result, EPA's own computer modeling shows DFW is predicted to be only one of four areas in the country still out of compliance with the current smog standard in 2018.
As Paul Harvey used to say, that's the rest of the story – the really important part. The part that keeps the annual "DFW has bad air" piece from being just another update from an asthmatic child about a problem that seemingly has no solution and no end. There wasn't one mention of the do-nothing TCEQ plan(s), or the important industrial sources of pollution that keep getting a pass in either the DMN or Channel 5 pieces. Instead, smog is treated apolitically, as if it was an inevitable force of nature.
In fact, there's a reason why we keep getting F's in these reports. There's a reason why DFW air got worse between 2011 and 2013. It's because the State of Texas, with co-facilitation from EPA, wasn't doing anything to actively promote cleaner air. And now it's doing the same thing again.
Smog doesn't happen just because we have really hot days. It happens because there's an unresponsive system in place. It happens because of the politics of smog. Politics that people can change. That's a story that an environmental beat reporter who had covered the last five years of local air quality planning could tell. But instead you have to read it in a small non-profit's blog.