In breaking news this afternoon, a DC Federal Court of Appeals has issued an indefinite stay in enforcement of EPA's new cross-state pollution rules whcih were expected to reduce smog-forming and acid rain-forming emissions from power plants across the country. Texas power generator Luminant, owner of the dirtiest power plants in Texas and the US, was one of the utilities seeking this stay and now claiming victory. At the heart of the companies' immediate objections is the "unrealistic" 6-month timeline for compliance. That 6 months is in addition to the approximately 22 years they've had since passage of the Clean air Act amendments of 1990 which proscribed such rules. No trial date. No sure date for anything. If the rules get pushed back past the beginning of ozone season, it means all those dirty Luminant plants upwind of DFW in East and Central Texas will still be contributing a significant amount of smog pollution to the Metromess a year after our worst ozone summer in five years spotlighted state ineptitude in getting cleaner air. At this point, there might be more than a few TCEQ higher-ups who are pulling for EPA on this one.   Read More

This is not a story that will ever make national headlines. It hardly even got a respectably-sized article in the town where it's taking place. But for beat-down citizen-soldiers of the air wars looking for proof that their own local battles can affect national policy, it's a tale worth telling. Yesterday, the Department of Justice and EPA announced a settlement agreement with a multinational cement company called ESSROC. Among other things, the agreement calls for the pilot testing of advanced Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) pollution control technology at ESSROC's two obsolete wet kilns in Logansport, Indiana. Wet kilns like the three at Ash Grove's Midlothian plant. It will be the first demonstration of this remarkable technology on wet kilns anywhere in the world. Last year, DOJ reached a similar agreement with LaFarge Cement that's requiring a pilot test of SCR on a dry kiln in Illinois. Those results are due by July, 2013. The results from the wet kilns in Indiana will be due by May, 2015. This will be about the time the DFW area is trying to assemble a new clean air plan to reach the just-announced ozone standard of 75 parts per billion. We'll have pilot tests of SCR on both types of kilns in Midlothian, and Downwinders will be using those tests to advocate finally requiring SCR on all Midlothian cement kilns. In use in European cement kilns for a decade, SCR - basically a huge industrial size version of the catalytic converter every US car has - has been proven to reduce emissions of smog-forming Nitrogen Oxides by 90% or more, while also reducing Particulate Matter pollution, metals, and dioxins. It's considered the gold standard of kiln control technology. When it does end up in Midlothian, SCR will be coming back to the kilns and people that are responsible for its import into the US. That's because Downwinders was the first citizens group in the country to began advocating the use of SCR in cement kilns - way back in the year 2000, as part of a DFW anti-smog plan. Impossible the state and cement companies said. Too expensive. Not technically feasible. We didn't win, but we kept up with information about the technology. A couple of years later, our modest assistance to a group of citizens fighting a proposed Holcim cement plant right on the banks of the Hudson in New York gave us access to their hired engineering expertise, which had done its own technical review of SCR in Europe. We took that information and made it a basis for a demand in our own settlement with EPA and TCEQ over the failed 2000 DFW air plan to do an independent review of SCR for application to the Midlothian kilns. That 2006 study is still the only study of its kind in the nation. Much to TCEQ's lasting chagrin, that report confirmed that SCR was technically and economically feasible for application on the Midlothian cement plants. TCEQ has done its best to run away from that report every since, even having its staff perjure themsleves in state legislature testimony about its conclusions, but it got published and distributed nationwide. Other states and engineers read it, and are still using it. During this same time Downwinders, with the help of funding acquired through yet another settlement, hired its first ever technical expert, a young engineer from SMU named Al Armendariz. One of his jobs was to review the SCR report we'd generated and collect more data on the track record of the technology in Europe. By the end of his stint, he was somewhat of an expert on cement control technology, especially SCR. And then he went to go to work as the Regional Administrator of EPA. As it happens, EPA was in the middle of a national enforcement initiative involving the entire US cement industry. Many of the violations that were found revolved around illegal and excessive emissions of Nitrogen Oxides. Downwinders pressed for SCR pilot tests as part of these agreements. In January, 2010 EPA and DOJ announced the LaFarge settlement requiring a first-ever US pilot test of SCR. In discussions with EPA Midwestern staff afterwards, it was clear that the TCEQ report and Downwinders's efforts were well-known and provided the technical evidence to help drive the settlement talks toward including an SCR provision. Yesterday' announcement of a new round of SCR pilot-testing indicates that influence is still being felt.....Did we need luck? Absolutely. Did we make our own luck? Absolutely. We were opportunistic as hell. We advanced the cause at every turn. We fit square pegs into round holes. Unrelated developments got pulled into relationships that built on previous steps because we saw a path that nobody else did. We slowly built the technical and political scaffolding we needed. And these last two years have seen the fruits of that strategy. What began as a demand for a specific control measure for a local DFW clean air plan has now brought the entire US cement industry to the brink of using a control technology that could bring massive reductions in pollution nationwide. This is a story about the un-sexy, un-Erin Brockovich way of grinding out incremental social change with small groups of very persistent people. And it's the way progress is made most of the time. Want to change the world? Start in your own backyard.   Read More

In another installment in our continuing series on mothers across the world spurring change, here's a story from Japan describing how the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster has created a new kind of activist in Japan - the web-savvy Mom - who dares to take on industry and government. "People used to think of the government as something like a father figure," said Tatsuya Yoshioka, founder and director of Peace Boat, a volunteer group involved in recovery efforts in the tsunami-hit northeast. "But people are graduating from that. We are moving toward a more active kind of democracy in which people realize they are the primary actors, not the government." Indeed. Time to quit being industry's "passive receptor" and become an active citizen. Democracy is a DIY project.   Read More

In one of the most comprehensive follow-ups to Ft. Worth resident Deborah Rogers' groundbreaking work, Slate's Chris Nelder disembowels the natural gas industry's claims of a century's worth of US gas reserves. Try 11 years. In particular, there's an analysis by Houston oil and gas engineers Arthur Berman and Lynn Pittinger of North Texas' own Barnett Shale record of productivity over the long haul that suggest the typical life of a Barnett well is an average of 12 years instead of the 50 claimed by industry. Everything in this article supports what Ms. Rogers has been saying for over a year now. For cities like Dallas that are now pondering how to regulate drilling, this information begs to be weighted against the legacy of air, land and water pollution left behind by a lots of quick, deep, and dirty pokes in the ground.   Read More

Actually, 25,000 in Russia alone, but we couldn't resist the headline. These include nuclear submarines, ships carrying radioactive cargo, and just plain ol' waste that was dumped. But don't worry, Russia is putting all of its national nuclear experience into addressing these ticking time bombs in a timely manner. According to a Ministry spokesperson, "Should a major threat to the environment and people arise then the state will take effective measures to eliminate it." Sleep soundly.
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Forrest Wilder summaries the year from a newsy perspective. No surprises, but its a good recap of an apocalyptic 12 months: Drought, Hellfire, War, and the bi-annual Plague otherwise known as the Texas Legislature.  Read More

For the first time in almost 50 years, Exide didn't get what it was asking for from the City of Frisco last night.  By a 5-0 vote, the city's Planning and Zoning Commission voted to reject Exide's demand that it's elderly lead smelter be regulated only under the zoning regulations of 1964 Frisco, instead of being held accountable to current standards. Although it might not seem like much of a stretch, the vote has a cascade of ramifications, none of them good for Exide. It means that the City is telling Exide that it must get a Special Use Permit to continue operating the smelter. It's also more or less telling Exide there's not a snowball's chance in Hell of the city ever granting such a permit, and that means Exide can't make the modifications it needs to meet a tougher new EPA lead air standard. With any luck, it's also the first step toward amortization and the permanent closure of the facility, although the A-word was not uttered by any city official last night. DMN story here, Channel 11 coverage here, Channel 8 coverage here. You could tell Exide thought it was in trouble because for the first time in the two-year fight, it brought its employees down to Frisco City Hall to fill the chambers and plead its case. Since it's just after Xmas, citizens opposing the smelter's continued operation did not rally their troops in a repeat of their own December 6th show of force, but still managed to have a respectable showing. In fact, when the dust settled, each side had 12 speakers. The important differnce was that 10 of Exide's speakers didn't live in Frisco, and only one wasn't an employee, whereas 9 out of 12 opponents speaking could actually vote in town and their side wasn't getting a check to be there. What happens next? Exide could appeal to the entire City Council at its January 10th meeting, where they know the results will be the same, and then sue the City, or it could go straight to court this week. Meanwhile, Frisco is preparing to remove any doubt about the smelter requiring a Special Use Permit by making sure lead smelters are specifically referenced in the zoning ordinance definition of "hazardous use." That revising of the code is still under way, but could surface at the next P&Z meeting on January 17th. One could complain that City Hall should have done this two years ago when the smelter announced a major expansion, or that Frisco waited only until it was backed into a corner by the company's actions, or that it's been way too coy and secretive with citizens in trying to keep Exide guessing, but we're not going to nag today. Today is about celebrating what very possibly might be the beginning of the end for the last of the bad old lead smelters in North Texas. Downwinders at Risk congratulates the leadership and supporters of Frisco Unleaded on their amazing five-month run of community organizing which galvanized opposition in town as never before and pressed the city to take aggressive action. Might we also give the tiniest self-satisfying pat on our own backs for whatever help Downwinders gave in assisting the effort? Sure. It feels good to win. But we'll let our hair down and party only when the last lead particle leaves the Exide smokestack. Stay tuned.   Read More

 After almost 50 years of saying yes, beginning at 5:30 this evening, the City of Frisco starts saying no to the Exide lead smelter that wants to keep operating in the middle of town. In a rare combined meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission and the City Council, there will be two ways this sentiment is officially communicated. First, at the 5:30 P&Z meeting, Exide's demand to be regulated by the City under 1964 zoning rules, of which there are none, will be rejected or approved. Staff has recommended rejection. That is, instead of rolling back 50 years of zoning law, the city staff's position is that Exide should be regulated under current zoning regulations. Second, there will be a public hearing on whether to revise the city's zoning ordinance definition of a "hazardous use" to be sure there's no wiggle room and require secondary lead smelters like Exide to get a "Special Use Permit." Special Use Permits are a common zoning tool for cities. They require that businesses that want to do exceptional things in certain parts of a city - for example, selling beer next to a school, or expanding a potentially hazardous operation into a residential neighborhood - must get a special exemption from the city to do those things. This allows for a final say on the matter by a city council with input from residents. Dallas required Special Use Permits for its inner city lead smelters. Downwinders and Frisco Unleaded urge residents to show-up and support both of these measures. Then, at the 6:30 pm City Council meeting, they'll be opportunities to send these two decisions up the political food chain for approval. The Council will consider joining the P&Z in rejecting Exide's demand to be regulated as if LBJ was still president, and then will also hold a second public hearing on the language revision to insure Exide must apply for a Special Use Permit. This will probably all end up in court soon, and it's important that the City show there's popular public support for dealing with this public nuisance and toxic threat. We know you're still enjoying the holidays, but tonight represents an historic shift of political winds in Frisco. Don't just watch history being made on the 10 o'clock news. Come and help make it.   Read More

Sometimes, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality chooses the wrong target at the right time. That was the case with Rice University Oceanographer John Anderson, who had a perfectly sensible and straight-ahead research paper on the rising sea levels along the Texas coastline disappear into the TCEQ political black hole. You might remember that Anderson submitted the paper for a TCEQ publication, and then the Commission political hacks took a knife to every single possible reference to climate change and cut them out, prompting Anderson and everyone else associated with the piece to withdraw their names from authorship and cry foul. The story went viral and prompted a San Antonio science teacher to start an online petition that had over 11,000 signatures last week when news of TCEQ's surrender came. In a statement released to the press, Anderson said "My research found that the rising sea levels in Galveston Bay are due to climate changes that are caused in part by humans. It is important that people have access to my complete scientific findings." It appears now they will.   Read More

You just can't beat this for an opening sentence: "When winter comes to Utah and atmospheric conditions trap a soup of pollutants close to the ground, doctors say it turns every resident in the Salt Lake basin into the equivalent of a cigarette smoker." That's from an article summarizing a new effort to bring accountability to a single open air copper mine that's responsible for a third of local air pollution. State regulators have let the mine double its allowable production, flaunting a 1994 EPA agreement. In response, Utah Moms for Clean Air has teamed up with Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment to enforce that federal rule and bring the mine to justice. "There's no safe level of particulate matter you can breathe," said Salt Lake City anesthesiologist Cris Cowley, who is among a number of Utah doctors raising the alarm over some of the nation's worst wintertime air...Rio Tinto is making our blood vessels act as if they were seven years older," said Dr. Claron Alldredge, an opthamologist at LDS Hospital." Since it's inception, Downwinders has known that there's no greater dynamos for change than angry moms. But we've always had a problem finding doctors that would speak publicly about the dangers of air pollution. Our question: Why isn't there a Texas Physicians for a Healthy Environment?   Read More