In today's New York Times, columnist Nicolas Kristof writes extensively about the threat of endocrine disruptors - those chemicals that, instead of killing you outright, do strange and horrible things to your hormones and reproductive systems like genital deformities, breast cancer, infertility, diabetes and even obesity. Endocrine disruptors are everywhere, in food, cosmetics, even the receipts you get at the grocery store or your ATM machine...and the air pollution from many kinds of facilities.  It's the hormone-wrecking properties of one such chemical - bisphenol-A, or BPA, used to line food cans - that prompted eight medial organizations representing MDs in the fields of genetics, gynecology, and urology to say BPA should be banned from the marketplace last year. But it's clear that there are many, many chemicals, including less exotic ones like lead, and dioxin, that also act as hormone disruptors in the body. As Kristof explains, scientists know that even the tiniest variations in hormone levels influence fetal development. Endocrine disruptors play a kind of birth defect roulette as they course around the mother's body and end up in the fetus' bloodstream. In making his argument, Kristoff uses the example of a very specific birth defect, Hypospadias - a misplacement of the urethra - is now twice as common as it used to be and cites a leading researcher linking this trend to increased exposure to endocrine disruptors.  Why is this important for North Texans? Because the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) found that the incidence of Hypospadias was approximately four times higher in Midlothian than the state of Texas as a whole. Remember, everyone is exposed to a constant sea of endocrine disruptors just from everyday living, so that wouldn't explain the much higher rate of a specific birth defect linked to the chemicals in Midlothian. But maybe operating three huge cement plants plus a steel mill could.  That same ATSR study - officially "inconclusive," also found a much higher rate for Microcephaly, where the newborn's head is more than two standard deviations smaller than the average, and Craniosynostosis, a condition in which one or more of the skulls' fibrous sutures prematurely fuses. That was only one study of a specific area. We know the Frisco lead smelter generates large quantities of dioxin. We don't know the impact of those releases. We know that gas drilling also involves a lot of chemicals identified a endocrine disruptors, but we don't how the last decade of urban drilling in the Barnett Shale has dispersed them or what their cumulative effect has been. According to Kristof, many scientists have seen enough proof and now want to better protect us from the dangers of endocrine disruptors. "For several well-studied endocrine disruptors, I think it's fair to say that we have enough data to conclude that these chemicals are not safe for human populations," according to Dr. Linda Vandenberg, who was the lead author of a new report we featured last month that concludes there are no safe doses for these kinds of chemicals. When it comes to the effects of chemical exposure, government regulations often lag far behind the science. How long will it take this warning to be implemented into public health precautions? And why don't we have a system that examines the possible impact to human health of a chemical BEFORE it's released into the marketplace?  Read More

(Dallas)----Kansas City-based Ash Grove Cement Company has submitted a permit amendment to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that seeks permission to convert its Midlothian plant from three wet process kilns operation to a single dry process kiln by 2014. In a cover letter to the TCEQ dated January 13^th, Trinity Consultants’ Kasi Dubbs writes that, “With this permit amendment application, Ash Grove is proposing to modify Permit Number 1 to decommission two kilns at the plant, and reconstruct that third kiln from a wet process kiln to a preheater, precalciner kiln system." According to the permit amendment application, total plant manufacturing capacity will decrease by 230, 000 tons a year, from a maximum of 1,182,000 tons of cement to 949,000 tons. Ash Grove claims that this decrease in capacity combined with cleaner dry process kiln technology will reduce pollution from its Midlothian operations by almost 105,000 tons of air pollution a year, including 98,000 tons of CO2, 6,000 tons of Sulfur Dioxide, and 560 tons of smog-forming Nitrogen Oxides. Ash Grove’s decision means that in two years, Texas will no longer host any obsolete wet cement kilns that were the industry standard throughout the 20^th Century but whose energy inefficiency and pollution made them disadvantageous in the 21^st. As recently as 2008, Midlothian had almost a fifth of the nation’s total wet kilns. Wet kilns depend on massive quantities of water to mix the ingredients of cement and then uses equally massive amounts of energy to evaporate the water out of the cement through exposure to extreme heat. They began to fall out of favor after the second Arab oil embargo of the 1980’s when energy prices climbed significantly. Their numbers have been steadily declining for decades. In 2010, TXI Cement announced they were closing their four wet kilns in Midlothian, almost a decade after operating side-by-side with its huge new dry “Kiln #5”. With Ash Grove’s conversion, there will be only a handful of wet kilns left in the entire U.S. Citizens who had spent years campaigning to close the Midlothian wet kilns were celebrating. “This is truly an end to an era. These kilns have been operating since 1965. They were the dirtiest cement kilns in Texas. They inspired a grassroots rebellion in DFW that forced Ash Grove to court. Their closure is one more step in bringing all of the Midlothian cement plants into the modern era,” said Jim Schermbeck, Director of Downwinders at Risk, the local clean air group founded almost 20 years ago to oppose the burning of hazardous waste in the Midlothian kilns. It was Downwinders who broke the story on January 4^th that Ash Grove was finally considering dry conversion in Midlothian, while also being the target of a national EPA enforcement action. The group encouraged it supporters to launch waves of e-mail blasts to both the company’s headquarters and EPA administrators urging Ash Grove to commit to dry conversion, while also seeking to include the switch as part of the agency’s list of demands in any national settlement. Nine days later, Ash Grove submitted its permit amendment to the TCEQ. Regulators admitted that the publicity probably accelerated the final corporate decision in Kansas City. In 2006, Downwinders successfully pushed for inclusion of a recommendation in that year’s DFW smog plan that urged local governments to buy cement exclusively from the state’s dry kilns to provide an incentive for wet kiln operators to modernize. Schermbeck and the group then began their “green cement campaign” that methodically collected agreements from city and county governments that cut Ash Grove off as a potential cement supplier for municipal and county projects. Dallas passed the nation’s first green cement policy in May of 2007 during the last days of Mayor Laura Miller’s term. Over the next two years, Ft. Worth, Arlington, Plano, Denton and the Dallas County School District passed green cement policies – all unanimously. When Tarrant County passed a green cement policy by a vote of 5-0 in November 2008 Ash Grove decided it couldn’t afford to lose any more customers and took the County and all the rest of the green cement cities to court. Last January, when it looked like Dallas and Arlington might be forced to give up their policies as part of a settlement with Ash Grove, Downwinders stepped in and was praised for reaching a compromise that saved the policies’ intent to force modernization, but removed the threat of Ash Grove legal action. Meanwhile, in the 2007 and 2009 state legislatures, green cement bills garnered a bi-partisan group of sponsors including former State Senator Kim Brimer, his successor, State Senator Wendy Davis, and Tarrant County State Representative Vickie Truett. Schermbeck noted that the green cement campaign had been of the few grassroots environmental success stories during the tenure of Governor Rick Perry. Ash Grove’s decision was also just the latest victory in a string of wins by citizens that have transformed each of the three Midlothian cement plants into more modern facilities. In 2005, Holcim Cement reached a settlement with Downwinders that resulted in the first use of a specific pollution control technology that is now standard equipment on new kilns. In 2008, TXI Cement suspended operation and then closed its four wet kilns, and stopped burning hazardous waste. Now Ash Grove is converting the last wet kilns in Texas. Comparing the emissions generated by all of the Midlothian cement plants before and after the changes sought by Downwinders over the last two decades, there’ll be at least 23,000 tons less air pollution when the new Ash Grove kiln goes online in 2014 than at the peak of the bad old days in the late 1990’s and early part of the 21^st Century at all three plants – not including the reduction of an estimated hundreds of thousands of tons of greenhouse gases like CO2 that weren’t even officially counted until recently.“I think anyone will be hard pressed to find a more successful grassroots group in the state of Texas over the last 10 years than Downwinders at Risk,” said Schermbeck. “It’s hard work to win even one of these concessions from industry. To be able to reduce this amount of air pollution from all three plants is an accomplishment that will be hard to duplicate. But that doesn’t mean we won’t be trying.”Schermbeck noted that the group has been busy pressing for the adoption of advanced pollution controls at the cement plants that have been used for a decade in Europe but have yet to reach the U.S.  He expects to see those controls included in the next DFW clean air plan. “We’re not stopping until every cement plant in North Texas is a state-of-the-art facility.”  Read More

Yesterday, the EPA released the first national emissions inventory of Greenhouse Gases from the largest stationary sources. All 2010 releases of CO2, Methane, and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) from large industrial facilities were self-reported by industry  per EPA guidelines In North Texas, that meant a lot of cement plants, power plants, landfills and gas industry compressors and processing plants. Specifically, it's the first time we have a map of the impact of the last ten years of Barnett Shale gas mining. 45 gas plants or compressors with a total of over 2 million tons of GHGs were listed within the DFW "non-attainment area" for smog. Those usually don't show up in traditional Toxic Release Inventories that have been coming out annually since 1989. Totals from the three Midlothian cement plants accounted for almost 2.3 million tons of GHS. The cement plants were #3, 4, and 5 among the top CO2 emitters, and #1, 2, and 3 among the top ten NOx polluters. Ash Grove's dirty old wet kilns were the top NOx polluters in the entire North Texas area. Slightly exceeding the cement industry totals was the combined output of GHGs from regional landfills. While gas sources emitted primarily CO2, landfills released the majority of industrial methane as might be expected. Topping all those categories was the amount of GHG pollution released by the area's power plants, totaling 5.3 million tons in 2010. In all, over 100 facilities reported close to 13.4 million tons of GHGs in 2010. By County, Ellis assumed a top ranking because of the cement plant complex in Midlothian plus some huge emissions from the gas-fired power plant in Midlothian. Wise County was next with power plant and gas facility emissions, then Johnson, Hood, Dallas, Tarrant, Parker, Denton (where Frisco's Exide Lead Smelter was the top CO2 polluter) and then Collin. There were no listings for Kaufman of Rockwall. The placement of more rural counties ahead of Tarrant and Dallas reflects where the larger power plants, gas production facilities, and other large sources have been locating over the last 15 years or so. We're going to have more analysis as we continue to go through the inventory. You can download the entire national emissions inventory at the EPA's site here.   Read More

As of last week we know that Ash Grove's operations across the country are the target of an national PEA enforcement action similar to ones we've been seeing emerge after a couple of years of focused attention on the entire industry. In response, we asked you to let EPA know there was an opportunity to match that enforcement action with what we also now know to be Ash Grove's consideration of converting it Midlothian wet kilns to dry technology. From EPA comes word that the e-mail messages you sent have been received. But this week begins by Downwinders trying to confirm that the owners of a second Midlothian cement plan is also the subject of one of these EPA national enforcement actions. If true, it gives DFW citizens another chance to win public health concessions from one of the single largest polluters in the region. More to come as we find out what's going on. Please take note - despite the fact that the owners of two large North Texas cement plants look to be the target of federal action, the only place so far you'll find any news about this development is right here. Looking for more reporting on clean air issues in DFW? You found it.   Read More

As of this week, EPA officials mulling a national settlement agreement over various Ash Grove transgressions across the country know that the company is considering converting their Midlothian old wet kilns to new dry technology and can take that into account when drawing-up the terms of said settlement agreement. Also, as of this week, Ash Grove corporate headquarters knows the cat is out of the bag and the public knows it's considering the switch. That's more than either party knew last week - thanks to citizens. From all available indications, both the Ash Grove VP in charge of Environmental Affairs and the EPA's Assistant Administrator in charge of Civil Enforcement received lots and lots of e-mails yesterday about the subject because so many of you were nice enough to respond to our action alert. Thanks and well done. Having added these new ingredients into the mix, we will now stand back from the stove for a minute and watch to see how things stew. EPA could now make it clear that the national Ash Grove enforcement settlement must include a dry conversion of its Midlothian kilns. Ash Grove could decide to preempt what looks like a forced move by EPA and announce it's already made the decision. Maybe neither. Meanwhile, we're out shaking the bushes for more information. Since the company was supposed to make a decision by early December we can't help but feel some new development is imminent. Stay tuned. And thanks again for being active citizens instead of passive receptors.   Read More

Here's a Fighting for Air Exclusive: Rumors out of the Overland Park, Kansas headquarters of Ash Grove Cement indicate that the company is seriously considering converting its three Midlothian wet kilns into one or more dry ones. This would be instead of a piece meal approach of installing a variety of new pollution controls demanded by the new MACT rules going into effect in September, 2013. Apparently out of the running are the less drastic options of closing the plant all together, or building a new DFW plant on the property Ash Grove owns in Grayson, County. According to our source, Ash Grove says it has at least 50 years of limestone left at its Midlothian quarry and the company is trying to decide whether to invest in a dry conversion now or try to make a lot of new equipment demanded by EPA's new rules blend with a very old, out-of-date wet kiln facility. Adding to the company's consideration is the likelihood of coming greenhouse gas regulations for kilns and other changes that are designed for dry kiln adaptation. We haven't taken a recent count, but there are probably not more than 15 wet kilns left in the entire country. Ash Grove operates the Last Wet Kilns in Texas.™ Converting to a dry kiln would cut all kinds of air pollution significantly from Ash Grove's Midlothian cement plant, beginning with smog-forming Nitrogen Oxide, Sulfur Dioxide, Particulate Matter, and Volatile Organic Compounds. It's been done before and there should be no technical obstacle to the change if Ash Grove wants to make it.  If you'd like to encourage Ash Grove to make the jump to a dry kiln, please feel free to drop a short and polite e-mail to Curtiss Lesslie, the company's Vice-President for Environmental Affairs at  curtis.lesslie@ashgrove.com. (Example: Dear Mr. Lesslie, as a resident of North Texas I'd appreciate it if Ash Grove would convert its Midlothian wet kilns to dry ones and pollute less. Thanks) But wait, there's an important factor that could help Ash Grove make its decision to convert to dry kiln technology. Downwinders has also learned that EPA is pursuing a nationwide, multi-plant enforcement action against Ash Grove that is now in settlement talks. These are the same kinds of national enforcement actions and settlements that have previously resulted in requiring new controls on kilns across the country and pilot testing of Selective Catalytic Reduction. As part of this national settlement, EPA could require that Ash Grove convert to dry kiln technology or close its Midlothian plant. Will it? We don't know, but we know one way to encourage that result: sending a short e-mail to Cynthia Giles, the EPA Assistant Administrator who oversee these settlement agreements at giles-aa.cynthia@epa.gov. (Example: Dear Ms. Giles, As a resident of North Texas, I'd appreciate it if, as part of the Agency's nationwide enforcement settlement with Ash Grove Cement, the EPA would require the Ash Grove plant in Midlothian, Texas to convert from wet to dry kiln technology. It would help a lot with DFW air quality. Thanks.) We promise to follow this story as it develops. Stay tuned.    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 trying to get the news out quickly about the four-part NPR/Center for Public Integrity series on toxic pollution in America titled "Poisoned Places," we didn't do a very good job of explaining the origin and purpose of the two different "watch lists" that the reporters discovered and publicized.  In fact, we're pretty sure we got it dead wrong. So here's a second try. There's a list that was begun by the Bush Administration in 2004 that included what the EPA considered "high priority violators" nationwide. As of September, this list was about 1600 names long. In North Texas, TXI, Holcim, Ash Grove, Exide, Magnablend, the GM plant, the Bell Helicopter plant, and over 100 other sites are included on this longer "high priority violator" list. There's a second, smaller "watch list" of 464 facility names of facilities nationwide with on-going violations, but which no administrative action has been taken to resolve. This is the list that only two North Texas sites are on - GE Engine in Ft. Worth and Ash Grove Cement in Midlothian.  National Map of the 1600 sites is here. State map of the Texas sites on the 1600 list is here.   Read More

Some of you may be wondering what's happening on the green cement front after this last week's successful citizen derailing of the Ash Grove Cement Settlement in both Arlington and Dallas. Dallas decided to set March 9th as the date they'll revisit the issue, although things could be resolved, or at least much clearer, before then.   Read More