Let's see, last time we checked in at Frisco City Hall, the city was finally scheduling a June 18th amortization hearing in response to an historic map of Exide lead smelter contamination showing up in the mailboxes of over 30,000 registered voters' mailboxes and reporters calling for a response about what the city would do next after not doing anything publicly since January. This is a good thing, right? Citizens won, right? We wish we could shout a definitive "yes," but the answer is instead a definite maybe. The city has been half-hearted in embracing the amortization option, with the city attorney's office misleading the public and Council members over the history of its use in Dallas, and making it out to be more difficult to use than other municipal attorneys consider it to be. Now, maybe this is to cover-up for the lack of any real documentation the city has to prove Exide was a "non-conforming use in decades past," like a valid Certificate of Occupancy, we don't know. Whatever the reason, there is the public face at City Hall, pointing out that the Council has done all the mechanical things to set amortization in motion, and a private face at City Hall that takes every opportunity to dismiss the strategy. Based on recent events, the two faces have not yet reconciled into a unified cogent position by the city on amortization, and residents are still skeptical. When the City released its statement last week that contained the long-delayed hearing date, it also went out of its way to take shots at the position the residents group Frisco Unleaded, and Downwinders has taken on amortization. It didn't just tell reporters that a hearing date for amortization had been scheduled. It posted a specific response to Frisco Unleaded's flier. After a couple of days of digesting this, the leadership at Frisco Unleaded released its reply to the City's posting. Here the whole thing, and here's a sample that shows why residents still don't trust the city to do this the right way:  CITY:  Some maintain amortization is a simple process. It is not. There are many safeguards in place to assure an existing business is treated in a lawful and fair manner.  Failure to follow the law and treat the existing business fairly could subject the City of Frisco to other liability that could cost taxpayers if a judgment is awarded by a court against the City.  As such, it should not be assumed that all one has to do to close a business is set an amortization hearing and the case is closed or that speeding through the process is an advantage to the citizens of Frisco. FRISCO UNLEADED RESPONSE: Amortization has been made out to be more difficult than it is by a Frisco city attorney’s office that is biased against this legal strategy. What is our proof? Exhibit A: “The Postell Report.” After our initial criticism that the City of Frisco wasn’t taking this option seriously, Frisco city attorneys went to interview the attorney who pursued amortization of Dallas’ lead smelters in the 1980’s – Don Postell. Dallas had three lead smelters at the time. One closed before the city could take action. The second closed before its amortization was settled in court. The third smelter, owned by Exide, closed in 1990 as a result of being amortized, and its amortization was upheld by the Texas Supreme Court. Guess which example the Frisco report left out of its report on Dallas amortization? Yep, the smelter that was owned by Exide, amortized successfully, and had its amortization upheld by the Texas Supreme Court. So when the City of Frisco city attorney’s office wrote a report that described its meeting with the Dallas attorney who participated in the amortization of that city’s smelters, it didn’t contain one word about the Exide smelter that was successfully amortized. Does that sound like an objective fact-finding report on Dallas amortization to you? Moreover, the city attorney’s office has made several references in public to new legislation from the Texas legislature that supposedly makes it harder to amortize a business. No other lawyer familiar with this legislation that we’ve spoken to outside of the city attorney’s office shares this interpretation of the law, suggesting to us this is yet another smokescreen. We remain skeptical that the Frisco city attorney’s office is sincere about its commitment to amortization or has the legal expertise to pursue it successfully against Exide, but we look forward to being proven wrong.   Read More

The Dallas Residents at Risk Alliance, of which Downwinders is a member, is taking its successful March 27 community meeting format on the road again over the next couple of weeks. If you want to know what all the fuss was about, or need a refresher, you'll have three chances: Thursday April 26th, 6:30 to 8 pm, El Centro Community College/West Campus, 3300 North Hampton Road;  Thursday May 3rd, 7 pm to 8:30pm North Hills Prep School, 606 E Royal (near L.B. Huoston),  Tuesday, May 8th, 7 to 8:30 pm Harmony School, 8120 West Camp Wisdom Road. All three will feature members of the Alliance going through the Fracking 101 slide show and fundamental concerns, special guest speakers from the Dallas gas drilling task force and other experts, and a list of things that residents can do to make sure this epic saga has a happy ending when a vote comes up at the City Council within the next 30-60 days. Momentum is growing toward a saner solution. Come be a part of the most important environmental issue in Dallas since the lead smelter fights of the 1980's. And if you really want to plug into how to stop fracking from riding roughshod over Dallas, don't forget about the weekly Tuesday 6 pm evening Residents at Risk Alliance organizing meetings at 3303 Lee Parkway Suite 402, the offices of Alliance member Texas Campaign for the Environment. Everyone is invited. All you need is your interest in preventing a disaster before it starts.   Read More

Sometimes officials can only see the light after they feel the heat. Less than 48 hours after a new map showing 50-years of lead fallout from the Exide lead smelter was sent to over 30,000 Frisco households, and less than 12 hours after a news release made it a story to follow, the City of Frisco posted an update on its official Exide website yesterday, the first since November. It announced a June 18th amortization hearing for the Exide smelter. All it took was hundreds of Frisco voters sending e-mails to the City Council and Mayor less than a month before the next municipal election, reporters quizzing them on when the city would follow-up on their January vote to begin amortization, and a national news story that reminded them of what was in store if they let Exide have its way with their city. Even though it's now set a hearing date, citizens remain skeptical of the city's sincerity, primarily because the Frisco city attorney's office has been openly biased against the amortization process. The FU flier with map that started it all can be downloaded here.  The city's puffy and defensive response that came out at the end of the business day on Thursday is here. By the way, when we asked Jess Mcangus, the engineer at Spirit Engineering in Houston in charge of putting together the map for us and Frisco Unleaded, to respond to Exide's claims that the lead emissions estimates used to draw the map were way too high, this is what he said: "The lead emission totals were derived from Exide's own reported annual lead emissions, and when annual emissions were not available, from the lead emissions from Exide's own permits (reduced by their historic operating capacity).  If anything, the 300,000 pounds of lead is lower that what was actually emitted by the company."  Read More

The new oil and gas air toxics rules that over a hundred people came out to support this last summer at an EPA hearing in Arlington are under heavy fire as they're getting closer to getting implemented. These are rules, that for the first time would clamp down on the Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) released by gas drilling that cause smog, toxic air pollution and make global warming worse. EPA recently announced a two-week delay in their being brought on line and there's a campaign by industry to gut the rules entirely by limiting their scope in a ridiculous way. Sharon has all the details in how you can urge the EPA to get a backbone and go through with their modest reforms, and The Hill has a good article explaining the effort to roll back the rules. Whether these rules are implemented in their original form or not, the struggle over their creation and scope argues for why more local governments should be looking at regulating these emissions through the lens of Greenhouse Gas pollution (GHG), as Downwinders and others are suggesting Dallas do in its new gas drilling ordinance. Lack of federal and state action on GHG pollution allows local governments to fill in the gap and level the playing field to reduce air pollution that would otherwise fall through the cracks and loopholes of current law. Even if the new EPA rules were to come on stream in their original form, they still wouldn't cover 70-75% of the VOC emissions causing so many problems. This is why local governments must act out of self-defense. In this case, no other level of government is making sure that new gas pollution doesn't contribute to already bad regional ozone problems, doesn't blow open a city's commitment to reducing its carbon footprint, as Dallas has pledged to do under the 2005 Mayor's Climate Change Agreement, and doesn't poison a city's neighborhoods. If the as industry was treated like other industrial polluters, it would have to mitigate or "off-set" these air pollution increase with air pollution decreases elsewhere in the same area. Gas operators do not have to do this. Local regulation could make them. It could force gas operators to decrease air pollution as much as they increase it in Dallas by paying for projects that reduce the same kind of GHG pollution as they emit. It would also act as a automatic incentive for the gas operators not to release as much air pollution to begin with - stopping it before it starts. EPA is not going to save the residents of the Shale from the gas industry. They'e got to do that themselves. Here's a way that could help.   Read More

(Dallas)---- Stung by a last minute industry-fueled rollback of safeguards they thought they’d won through a special task force process, Dallas residents concerned about allowing “fracking,” or natural gas drilling, in the city’s neighborhoods and parks will gather Tuesday evening to begin planning on how to make the final ordinance more protective of public health.  They think they have a compelling argument. “Our goal is simple, “ said Jim Schermbeck with clean air group Downwinders at Risk, one of five organizations participating in the meeting. “We want the City of Dallas to protect neighborhoods from the risks of toxic gas drilling at least as well as they protect them from the risks of seeing people naked.” Under pressure from gas operators to open up more Dallas land for drilling, the City’s gas task force reversed previously-approved measures at its very last meeting on February 28^th, and recommended allowing drilling in parks under certain circumstances, and as close as 500 feet to homes, schools and hospitals. Dallas prohibits strip cubs from locating 1000 feet from those same “protected uses” including parks, under current zoning law. Schermbeck says being tougher on strip clubs than sources of toxic pollution that can make people ill shows how shortsighted the Task Force’s last-minute roll back was.  He pointed to the release of a Colorado School of Public Health study this week that concludes those living within a half mile, or 2640 feet, of gas wells were exposed to air pollutants five times above a federal hazard standard and suffered an estimated 66% higher risk of cancer than residents living further away.  “Instead of shrinking the level of protection, the City should be expanding it, “ said Schermbeck. During a citywide organizing meeting being called for Tuesday night at 7 at the Center for Community Cooperation, 2900 Live Oak, residents will be regrouping to push for the inclusion of what they call “five basic protections” in the final Dallas ordinance: Restoring and expanding the 1000-foot buffer zone and prohibition of park drilling the task force had originally voted to recommend before the last minute rollback in February. They also want a ban on drilling in the floodplains, which they say is the historical dumping ground for Dallas. 2) Protecting Dallas water resources better from the thirsty fracking industry, including charging more for using city water in drilling, banning its export to other cites for drilling, and cutting off water for drilling during Stage 3 drought conditions like Dallas experienced in the summer of 2011. 3) Off-setting, or balancing increases in air pollution by industry sponsorship of projects that reduce air pollution in Dallas so that our illegal and unsafe air quality doesn’t get worse.  4) A local database that fully discloses all the chemical ingredients used in drilling, their amounts and locations, to Dallas First Responders. 5) Establishing an industry-funded, fully staffed, fully-equipped office of gas drilling enforcement providing effective responses to complaints as well as conducting independent monitoring. Sponsored by the Dallas Residents at Risk alliance, Tuesday’s meeting is the first to try and mobilize the public after the Task Force’s conclusion in February, and it’s attracting a lot of attention.  Candidates for the newly-created Congressional District 33, which incorporates many areas already identified as likely drilling spots within its boundaries, will be sending staff, or attending themselves. So will representatives from local Homeowners Associations, churches, and Dallas PTAs. All of the city’s most active environmental groups are already on board. Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs, who defeated a pro-drilling incumbent last year to win the District Three seat, will give welcoming remarks to the gathering.  Two members of the Dallas gas drilling task force, attorney Terry Welch, and environmental chemist Cherelle Blazer, will be on hand to offer their assessment of what went wrong with that effort. Ft. Worth attorney Jim Bradbury will be giving a presentation on what to expect when you let drilling happen inside your city limits and why Cowtown’s example is a bad one for Dallas to follow.  They’ll be a basic introduction to the fracking process for newcomers, as well as a chance to sign-up to make appointments with city council members who need persuading. Despite being disappointed about how the Task Force ended, Schermbeck believes the residents have a good chance to strengthen the final ordinance. “Almost everyday, there’s a new study or report about the dangers of fracking that supports our arguments. It’s going to be hard for any Council member to tell a constituent they don’t deserve the same level of protection against gas drilling as they voted to impose on strip clubs. Last time I checked, strip clubs can’t give you cancer.”   Read More

Oh no, they're on to us. The jig is up. Texas Sharon got a subpoena from Range Resources - that paragon of business virtue that's gotten itself in a bit of trouble over in Parker County  - asking for a whole bunch of stuff including any and all communications between herself and half of the environmentalists in Texas. That includes Downwinders. That's us right there in paragraph 23, between Public Citizen and The University of Texas Law Clinic. It's all part of Range Resources' plan to finally identify the forces that have them in so much hot water. It's obvious that it has to be causes outside of the company. Surely nothing the company did on its own could be responsible. And now we've been discovered. We suppose the weekly meetings on how best to undermine Range's reputation will have to be 86'd. Damn, we were getting so much Soros money for those too. We wish the RR lawyers luck in finding anything the least bit interesting, much less incriminating, but last we looked, this is the first post that's ever mentioned the company. So you know, congrats to them for that. For us, there's nothing like getting named in corporate subpoenas along with a lot of other good folks to give us new-found confidence we're on the right side of history.  Read More

We're pleased to announce that Dallas Council member Scott Griggs has agreed to open up the March 27th citywide organizing meeting on Gas Drilling in Dallas, sponsored by the Dallas Residents at Risk coalition that includes Downwinders, the Sierra Club, Texas Campaign for the Environment, Dallas Residents for Responsible Drilling and the Mountain Creek Neighborhood Alliance. Griggs is the freshman Council member from Oak Cliff who upset incumbent Dave Neumann last year, and anti-gas drilling momentum in the district was one reason why. The meeting is from 7 to 8:30 pm at the Center for Community Cooperation, 2900 Live Oak in Old East Dallas and will also feature Dallas gas Drilling Task Force members Terry Welch and Cherelle Blazer, as well as Ft. Worth activist Gary Hogan. Nothing wold please the gas industry more than for Dallas to use Ft. Worth as its template and Gary speaks eloquently as to why that's a really bad idea. You'll not only hear a review of where we stand after the disastrous last Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force meeting, but you'll be able to help plan how we get to 8 or more votes for the five priority protections we need the City to adopt as part of the new re-written gas drilling ordinance. Whether you're concerned about drilling in parks, the toxic air pollution caused by drilling, the amount of water and water contamination caused drilling demands, the incredible Greenhouse gas pollution that will force Dallas to abandon its commitment to clean air - whatever the issue, now is the time to come together and mobilize. A council vote could happen as soon as April. This is the most important environmental issue Dallas faces since the lead smelter fights of the 80's and 90's. Don't be MIA.   Read More