News Plume

"Cypress Waters" Wacked as Cypress Hill

Friday, April 13, 2012

This map is a layout of the Billingsley-City of Dallas joint "eco-development" by the name of "Cypress Waters" taking shape on North Lake in Northwestern Dallas. The same one the Dallas Morning News wrote about today. Only they didn't include this perspective of the development - the master plan for the development. Maybe because it makes explicit reference to the fact that there will be gas wells tastefully scattered among the neighborhoods and schools of Cypress Waters, a fact never mentioned in the Morning News story (they're the green rectangles on the map). Indeed, there's a drill site that sits directly across the street from TWO schools. This is the completely FUBAR'd world of developers unfamiliar with the messiness of gas drilling, or alternatively don't care about the impact of that messiness on their residents. On a map, a well pad is a nicely contained rectangle of a different color that just sits there and mingles with the other colored rectangles. On the ground, it's 24/7 traffic, noise, smells, fumes, health effects, and accidents that don't stay within the rectangle. Remember that just a month ago the Colorado School of Public Health published a study that concluded that residents living within a half mile of a gas well were exposed to at least five different toxic chemicals at levels above federal regulatory concern and stood a 66% higher chance of getting cancer. Four out of six of the wells in this planned Cypress Waters eco-development are much closer to people than a half-mile. Some look like their as close as a half block. Yeah, that's real eco of y'all. People who design developments like this should be sentenced to live on their front lines. UPDATE @ 4:30 PM: To its credit the Dallas Morning News is now running a story from their City Hall reporter on its digital front page that talks about the fact that Cypress Hill is also hosting six drilling sites and even posts the same map that we have up here. It's a good piece and if it's language would have been inserted into the larger Business Section article this morning, there would have been no basis to complain. Good for citizens howling about this. Good for the Morning News being responsive to reader comments about so obvious an omission and making the correction by putting it on the front page of the web site. Should we credit this reasonableness to the "Wilonsky Effect?"  Read More

Perry Sends Buddy Garcia After the Big Money

Friday, April 13, 2012

Via the Texas Tribune, we see where former Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Chairman Buddy Garcia has been appointed by Governor Perry to fill the seat on the misnomered Railroad Commission vacated by Eizabeth Ames Jones, who's running for a state Senate seat in South Texas. In his time with TCEQ Garcia distinguished himself by, well, let's see, how did he stand out? He didn't. He's one of a series of inter-changable Rick Perry clones that have inhabited TCEQ Commissioner positions over the last decade and voted in lockstep with whatever their mentor wanted. Now that's he's been reassigned to the RRC, Garcia has access to the kind of Oil and Gas money helpful for running for whatever it is that Garcia will be running for after his stint at the candy counter is over. He prepared tirelessly for the job by being a salesman for various energy industry front groups, like "Balanced Energy for Texas," which you might not be surprised to learn actually is quite heavily lopsided towards oil, gas and coal. Perhaps because its sponsors include Peabody Coal, Luminant Energy, and American Electric Power. among others. Congratulations Commissioner Garcia. We know you'll like this position much better than your last government job. It's all about drilling and much, much less concerned about environmental quality.    Read More

FW Weekly Reviews the State of DFW Air

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

With the Star-Telegram abandoning the idea of having an environmental reporter all together, and the de facto abandonment of environmental beat coverage at the Dallas Morning News, DFW residents are having to rely on the alternative weeklies to provide the kind of coverage they used to get in the dailies. This week, the Ft. Worth Weekly provides another example of this trend with an excellent retrospective of where DFW air quality stands after the worst ozone season since 2007. Kudos to Weekly editor Gayle Reaves for taking up the slack and committing journalism in the name of public interest.   Read More

Another Ellis County Fire Reminds Us We All Live Downwind

Monday, October 03, 2011

In 1995, a Midlothian tire disposal company that collected, stored and shipped used tires for the near-by cement plants to burn in their kilns caught fire itself and burned for almost a month. It was located right across the street from the TXI plant. Black, toxic smoke wafted between high rise office buildings in Downtown Dallas for days. At the time, the fire was particularly and painfully ironic for Downwinders at Risk supporters who had been trying to tell people why burning tires in cement plants is a bad idea, as well as how Dallas air could be affected by pollution from the cement plants despite the state saying they were too far away. Now, here in plain sight from Reunion Tower, columns of carbon black smoke thousands of feet high originating less than 2000 feet from TXI gave lie to the official assurances that the cement plant was too distant to affect DFW air quality, or that miniatures versions of this fire was supposed to be effective "recycling" of tire wastes. Oh yeah, the name of the tire disposal company? "Safe Tire."  Read More

I don't know but it's been said, the streets of Frisco are paved with lead.

Monday, September 19, 2011

One of the most disturbing and unforgettable images conjured up by the recent TCEQ  inspection report on the Exide lead smelter in downtown Frisco is the revelation that for a number of years it was routine for the town's streets to be paved with highly contaminated lead slag waste from the facility.   Read More

EPA Responds Aggressively to Luminent's Disinformation Campaign

Thursday, September 15, 2011

We hope our friend Mr. Reaves has been watching the news the past couple of days because there's no better evidence that indeed Luminent Energy is playing high-level inside-the-beltway-chess with its employees than its own words and actions concerning the Air Transport Rule since last Monday's announcement. We expect the company to name a campaign manager any day now.  Read More

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