Behind-the-scenes, many factors are driving the action between the City of Frisco and the owners of the Exide lead smelter that sits in the middle of town. We can only speculate for now. Meanwhile, let's look at some pressure points that entered the public record this last week on a collision course, and make the smelter's exit seem inevitable, no matter how much the state tries to stave it off. On Wednesday, for the first time in 20 years, the federal government lowered the recommended limit for lead exposure in young children, where it can often do the most harm. And it wasn't just decreased by the Centers for Disease Control  - it was slashed by 50%, from 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood to 5. If those sound like tiny amounts, that's because they are. But the bad news is that the overwhelming consensus of environmental health specialists is that numbers even below this amount are doing cognitive and behavioral harm to children. Even the CDC itself states that there is no known safe level of lead exposure. Not that any amount will do harm necessarily, but that any exposure is statistically capable of doing harm based on the field studies coming in. CDC estimates there are 450,000 kids nationwide that don't meet the new standard for a poison that will not honor it. We don't know how many children in Frisco fall into this category, but we do know, thanks to Dr. Howard Mielke of Tulane University, that the children the state health services agency tested for blood lead showed that 1.6 times more kids living in Frisco had blood lead levels above 2 micrograms per deciliter compared to the state as a whole - 60% above the norm. Meanwhile, new monitoring results from around the Exide smelter show that it failed for a second month in a row to obtain the new federal standard for lead particles in air of .15 micrograms (Look under "Monitoring Data" and download). In March the three month rolling average for March was.19 and .22 for April. This would mean more if TCEQ had not granted a 13 month free pass to break the standard instead of enforcing a deadline in November of this year. Did we mention that the new air-lead standard is of course based on the science behind the old blood lead level of 10 micrograms per deciliter, and therefore instantly obsolete even before Exide has to comply with it? The regulations are forever chasing the science. It might take another 4 to 10 years to lower the lead-air standard. And then more research will show even more subtle effects of lead at lower levels of exposure and so on. People who live around facilities like Exide can never win. And sooner or later, Exide lawyers or its insurance companies will be explaining why its a really bad idea to keep operating a lead smelter in a densely populated area that includes gated communities where people can spend a lot of money on attorneys themselves. We hear that things are proceeding apace in some kind of "peace with honor" resolution to this train wreck between the city and he company. Surely this last week's news can't help but spur those discussions.   Read More

(Clarification - The alert came out today, Tuesday May 15th. It applies to Wednesday the 16th)The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has issued an "Ozone Alert" for DFW for Wednesday May 16th predicting "Orange" i.e. unhealthy and illegal pollution levels. So far, it's the only one announced for any metro area in Texas, which is a little strange, because we're usually tied in tandem to Houston in such matters.  This is the second Officially bad air day of the seven-month-long season so far. The first came back in March with the late Spring heat wave and left us with the highest March ozone readings ever recorded by the state - on a Saturday at that. Please take it easy out there and pass the news along. Not to worry too much though, we're sure this is an aberration. The TCEQ computer in Austin, affectionately nicknamed GIGO by admiring citizens, has spoken and said that DFW shall have historically low ozone levels this year.   Read More

Instead of enforcing a November 1st, 2012 deadline for lower levels of lead pollution, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality will allow the Exide lead smelter in Frisco to violate the more protective air quality standard until January 6^th 2014 as part of a plan for the facility the state agency is submitting to EPA later this month. The decision is a reversal of policy in place as recently as last summer, and came with no opportunity for public hearing. It also makes it clear that TCEQ is siding with Exide in its on-going battle over zoning regulations with the city of Frisco. In pushing back the compliance date, the TCEQ specifically noted Exide's lack of building permits from the City of Frisco, an unresolved zoning battle that might have kept the smelter from meeting the November 1^st deadline, and eventually forcing its closure. In giving the extension at the last minute, the state is allowing the smelter regulatory breathing room it didn't have before.  Frisco Unleaded, the residents group devoted to closing the 50-year old smelter that Downwinders is sponsoring is calling for its supporters to be at Tuesday's city council meeting to demand City Hall protest the extension and help persuade EPA not to endorse it. Once the new deadline passes, Exide will still be getting a break. Despite assurances from Frisco's Mayor and City Council that the smelter's new permit would be "first class" or they wouldn't support it, the TCEQ will also allow Exide to spew ten times as much lead as a similar Exide smelter operating in Vernon, Californianot require that Exide spend money to install pollution control equipment could reduce emissions from 1-3 tons to 1-3 pounds of lead a year because it's "unnecessary" to meet the new standard. According to Jim Schermbeck of local clean air group Downwinders at Risk, "The TCEQ is telling Frisco residents that the "first class" controls they want are too good for them; that they're too effective at getting rid of lead, a poison we know is capable of doing harm at any level of exposure. These controls work. TCEQ just doesn't think Frisco residents are worth the cost." Released late last Friday, the TCEQ plan, called a State Implementation Plan, or SIP, will be voted on by the agency's three Commissioners at their May 30^th meeting. EPA will then have six months to accept, modify or reject the plan. Green noted thatFrisco Unleaded is calling on residents to let their city council members they don't want Exide to get any extra time to further pollute their city. Tuesday's council meeting is the last one scheduled before the TCEQ vote on May 30^th. Schermbeck said the law states that Exide must comply with the new standard "as expeditiously as practicable," and no later than the end of 2015. "This extension is the opposite of that language. It delays the implementation of the standard, and does so by taking sides in a local zoning fight the TCEQ has no business in. For a state government that likes to exalt the virtues of local control, it just did a pretty good job of undermining Frisco's."   Read More

One of the reasons Dallas Residents at Risk has made full disclosure of fracking chemicals one of its five basic protections to be included in Big D's new gas drilling is because the Texas law passed last year by the legislature is so inadequate. Besides allowing for "trade secrets" that mean there's no real disclosure, the law doesn't even allow physicians or first-responders to know what's behind those trade secrets before they respond to an emergency situation involving them. Now we know that the law is so industry-friendly that Exxon and its gas drilling subsidiary XTO sponsored it as a nationwide model within the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council which received a lot of publicity over its controversial "Stand Your Ground" legislation.   Read More

You may not know the name of the chemical, but you know it by smell. "Rotten eggs" is the olfactory indication you're being exposed to Hydrogen Sulfide. There's a reason it smells like that. Biological sources can emit it. Certain bacteria produce hydrogen sulfide as they decompose waste - like rotten eggs. It also occurs in geothermal situations. Hot water, steam and magma from inside the Earth carry heat, minerals and gases – like Hydrogen Sulfide – to the surface, liberating them in springs, geysers and volcanic lava. If you've ever been to Yellowstone, you know the smell. Industrial sources of hydrogen sulfide include oil and gas drilling, refineries, paper mills, large scale livestock production, waste water treatment and landfills. At high levels of exposure, Hydrogen Sulfide is linked with serious neurologic damage – including death. Lower levels can trigger eye irritation, fatigue and headaches...and asthma according to a new three-year study out of Iceland. Measuring levels of Hydrogen Sulfide near major intersections and power plants in the capital city of Reykjavik that turn geothermal energy into electricity and heating steam, researchers found a weak but constant association between the pollutant and asthma medication rates. It's one of the first studies to find respiratory ailments at low levels of Hydrogen Sulfide - much like you'd find in the Barnett Shale or any gas or oil patch. The fact that oil drilling has been around for over a century, and yet only now are we actually studying what happens when people are exposed ti it at exposure levels found in real life, tells you all you need to know about the risks of allowing drilling so close to people.   Read More

Frisco Unleaded's meet and greet turned into an impromptu town hall with Mayor Maso, at least two council members and City Manager George Purefoy showing up and fielding questions from a sometimes skeptical, sometimes supportive crowd of 50 or so residents who turned out to get an update on the fight over the Exide lead smelter. The official topic was the city's start and stop amortization efforts that began with a January vote by the Council to send the matter to the city's Board of Adjustment, then seemingly stalled, and then got jump-started by Frisco Unleaded's massive mailing to residents around Earth Day that prompted the city to announce a June 18th public hearing date. Local municipal attorney Jim Schnurr gave a presentation on the amortization process and how citizens should prepare for the June hearing. He also mapped out a strategy to plug any holes in the city's amortization case against Exide between now and June. But the discussion turned to other ways to get Exide out when Council Members Pat Fallon and Bob Allen spoke about the city's position. Although circumspect, from the language the councilmen were using, it seems the City is indeed exploring an aggressive "buy-out" of the lead smelter using a combination of bond money and economic development funding that would result in Exide ceasing operations within the next 12-24 months. That would probably be sooner than an amortization proceeding could close the smelter because of the length of time to hear appeals. But it would also cost more. With the rumor that the state and EPA have found a lot more hazardous wastes illegally buried at Exide, the expense of clean-up are still unknown but they're not going down. Purefoy did say that residents should see something happen within the next 60-90 days. The message residents sent the council on Monday night was that it was past due for a definitive resolution to get Exide out, and that they want all means of doing that aggressively pursued. If you're a Frisco resident, it's very important to keep the pressure on and show up on June 18th at the Board of Adjustment hearing and testify why you believe Exide's operations are a public nuisance to your health and/or property. This time last year the City of Frisco was negotiating with Exide over the conditions under which it would remain open. Now, it's haggling with citizens over which mechanisms to use to close it. That's progress and that's happened because of a determined group of people in Frisco Unleaded who haven't taken no for an answer. Stay tuned.   Read More

It's sure going to be crowded between the levees of the Trinity River in Dallas in a couple of years, what with the tollroads, and parks, and solar-powered water taxis. And they'll all have to dodge the new gas rigs, tanks, pipelines, separators, compressors and processing stations if gas operators get their way. A new map direct from Dallas City Hall staff shows practically the entire Trinity River bottoms from extreme Northwest Dallas to Downtown leased to just one fracking company, Trinity East. Look at a copy of the map accompanying this post. All that area in green with black stripes running through it has been leased for gas drilling purposes. Dallas Council member Scott Griggs asked city staff to start preparing maps of where all the city owned gas leases were located. This is the first. It was released to the press with the help of Dallas Residents at Risk, who produced their own map of gas leases on city land back in February (Channel 8 News coverage here; Channel 4 here) In addition to the whole of the river bottoms, the map also shows two pieces of park land in Northwest Dallas leased for gas drilling - the Crown Point baseball and soccer field complex and the proposed Elm Fork Soccer Complex. And all this is in addition to the LB Houston Golf Course lease site where the city is considering drilling next ti the park's golf course. This map is just the latest piece of evidence that Dallas hasn't really leaned anything from its past neglect and abuse of the Trinity River. When push comes to shove, it's still a dumping ground for the Powers That Be. To paraphrase the proponents only slightly, "It's already where we put landfills, so let's just keep putting crappy stuff by the River." Status Quo in 1964, even 1974 but unbelievable in 2012. The final round in this two year old fight to write a new gas drilling ordinance for Dallas begins at 9 am on May 16th at Dallas City Hall in the City Council Chambers when the Mayor and Council will officially receive the gas drilling task force recommendations and discuss where to go from here. We know it's a workday, but we must show strong public support for the most protective regulations we can get. We must send a message that even the Dallas City Council can't ignore.   Read More

Prenatal exposure to high levels of air pollution double the likelihood of children becoming obese in a new study by Columbia University's School of Public Health released last week. Its one of the first reports to definitively link chemical pollutants to weight gain. Pregnant women who lived in areas where they were exposed to abnormal amounts of Poly Aromatic Hydrocarbons, or (PAHs), were more than twice as likely to have children who were obese by age seven than women who had lower exposure to the chemicals. PAH's are a pretty common pollutant which come mostly from the burning of fossil fuels. This news comes on the heels of a new study of the danger of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, which can reek havoc with a person's hormones. Animal studies had already shown that PAHs inhibit the release of fat in the body, decrease IQ increase behavioral disorders. And oh yeah, PAHs can also give you cancer. There are many causes for weight gain in the US. Could one of them have anything to do with our swimming in a sea of 80,000 chemicals, only a handful of which are fully understood, much less regulated to reflect the current science?     Read More

Downwinders' affiliate Frisco Unleaded is having a public meet and greet tonight beginning at 7 pm in a back room at Matitto's on the Square in Frisco. It's the group's first public meeting since it sent out thousands of mailers to Frisco households about the dangers of continuing to let the Exide lead smelter operate in the middle of town. That mailer, along with the media attention it received, prompted the city to set a June 18th hearing date to move forward with amortization of the smelter. Local attorney Jim Schnurr will come and give an encore and revised version of his "Amortization 101" presentation that initiated Frisco Unleaded's first public meeting back in September. They'll also be a preview of the EPA/TCEQ "open house on May 21st, and a citizen's slide show of Exide that's ready to be shown in from of any interested group. Meanwhile, municipal election are May 12 and there seems to be unanimity among all four Council candidates that Exide has to go, although some are more blunt than others. From an anonymous tip over the digital transom comes news that that the TCEQ has found lots of hazardous waste in the Exide "non-hazardous" waste landfills. We're tracking this down and expect to have an update shortly. If true, this news ought to shore up the City's case for amortization, since no zoning has ever authorized hazardous waste disposal at the facility. And besides all this, is the city still trying to work a deal with Exide that "buys-out" the smelter? If it is, what impact will finding a lot of hazardous waste onsite do to the cost of such a deal? Digging up and re-disposing of a hazardous waste landfill or two isn't cheap. If you live in Frisco or know someone who does, you really owe to yourself to come out and find out what can be done to accelerate removal of the smelter and meet the brave citizens who are pushing the issues toward progress.   Read More

Since DFW was first identified has having a smog problem in the mid to late 1980's, there's a standard formula that's become familiar to folks in local air quality: NOx and VOCs + Sunlight = Ozone. There have always been two primary culprits to North Texas' chronic smog problem. NOx, or Nitrogen Oxides which primarily come from combustion sources (engines, boilers, furnaces), and VOCs, or Volatile Organic Compounds that are mostly invisible plumes and fumes from things like gasoline pumps, storage tanks, as well as combustion. These pollutants combine with sunlight and heat that chemically interacts with them and forms ozone downwind. When the first air pollution control measures were adopted, Austin and the EPA agreed that VOCS were the driving force DFW ozone levels. Some old-timers may remember the Mrs. Baird's bakery on the West Freeway in Ft. Worth having to install controls that eliminated the smell of baking bread that was stout enough to waft across the highway. That's also why every gas pump in Collin, Denton, Dallas, and Tarrant Counties has a "Vapor Recovery Unit." Over the years, the blame shifted to a combination of VOCs and NOx, and that's what made it possible to bring large NOx polluters like cement plants and coal plants into the picture. Still, VOC emissions remained a major player in the DFW smog problem, and they've been addressed with controls on everything from solvents, to boat resins, to bakeries by every single clean air plan ever drafted by the state and EPA. But now Austin is saying VOCs aren't such a big problem after all, that DFW's smog is all about the NOx. Why? Austin's computer model says so. This is the same computer model that says DFW ozone levels will reach historic lows this summer. But might there be another reason? TCEQ's de-emphasis on VOCs coincides precisely with a very large jump in VOC pollution from the gas industry, a jump due to the explosion of drilling in the Barnett Shale and the government's lack of regulation to control it. In 2006, cars and trucks in DFW still spewed more VOCs than the gas industry. This year, the gas industry will release 30 MORE TONS PER DAY of VOCs than all the cars and trucks in DFW combined according to the TCEQ itself. But you'd never know it from looking at any of the public material the TCEQ produces about DFW's ozone problem. Instead it's all NOx all the time. This slant benefits a politicized TCEQ in a couple of ways. First, when you talk about NOx, you don't have to talk about the doubling of gas industry emissions over the past decade or so. Second, you can keep repeating the mantra that it's all about cars. Cars only produce about 15% of the VOC pollution in DFW vs 49% of all NOx in North Texas. No need to worry about new controls on cement plants or coal plants when it's really all about cars. Until today, that TCEQ message creep was showing up locally in websites and promotional material sponsored by the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) made up of area municipal and county governments. Unlike in past years when the familiar formula of both NOx and VOcs was recited to the public, this year NCTCOG's Air North Texas site, Air Facts page trumpeted that "On road vehicles cause half of the ozone forming emissions. Ozone forms when nitrogen oxides (NOx) combine with sunlight and intense heat." That just wasn't true. When you combine all VOC and NOx emissions (as calculated by TCEQ) in DFW, on-road vehicles account for 29% of ALL ozone forming emissions. Point Sources like cement plants and other industrial facilities, combined with oil and gas sources, total 25% - a much different looking pie chart than when you use NOx emission alone. To its credit, as a result of our inquiry, the NCTCOG Air North Texas "air facts" page has been re-edited to put VOCs back into the equation as of today, along with a little bit of spin claiming that "historical emphasis has indicated NOx reductions are the most appropriate way the region can lower ozone levels." We label that spin because it relies totally on the TCEQ's point of view, which has been, how do we put it, "historically wrong." We've already discussed how the DFW smog problem began as just a VOCs problem. We know they're still a factor. And if NOx reductions alone are so darn effective, why haven't they worked better? According to the TCEQ, total NOx pollution from ALL DFW sources decreased by almost 150 tons per day over the last six years. And yet 2011 was the worst ozone season since 2007. VOC Pollution? It's increased by 17 tons per day despite almost every individual category going down, save the ambiguous "Area" sources and emissions from the Oil and Gas industry. So if NOx decreases ozone so much more effectively than VOC decreases, how come 2011 ozone levels didn't reflect that? Many public officials around the country cite scientific evidence that already smoggy air turbocharges the ability of gas patch pollution to create more ozone. Usually very weak VOC molecules are transformed into smog-producing machines. TCEQ refuses to factor in this scientifically validated increased reactivity of VOCs being released by gas sources despite predominate winds carrying already smoggy air into the heart of drilling country in Tarrant, Denton, Wise, and Johnson Counties. It's model doesn't recognize this phenomena happening. TCEQ may also be underestimating the ability of these weak VOCs to already make ozone. In her 2011 landmark "Leaking Money" report for Downwinders, Dr. Melanie Sattler wrote that just the sheer volume of new gas industry VOCs is enough to affect DFW ozone levels. If DFW is ever going to solve its chronic smog problem, it has to have reliable information about what the increase in gas industry pollution is doing to our air. We don't have that now and no one in Austin is interested in finding out. Local leaders would be wise to decouple themselves from the TCEQ's politicized and uncurious approach to DFW air quality planning in Austin and find funding for their own research that can test for things the state doesn't want to know....Here's the full statement of Chris Klaus, Senior program Manager at NCTCOG and the lead staff person ther for all things air: "We appreciate your e-mail and comments regarding air quality facts and information on our Air North Texas and the North Central Texas Council of Governments’ (NCTCOG) websites.  We welcome and value this type of input.  In regards to your comments, historical emphasis has indicated NOx reductions are the most appropriate way the region can lower ozone levels.  Of the primary emission sources, on-road vehicle activities account for nearly half of the NOx inventory.  We frequently discuss NOx and VOCs when providing outreach, and have updated the Air North Texas website to make sure VOCs are referenced when appropriate.  Air North Texas is meant for the general public, and NCTCOG staff feels it is more effective to educate them about what they can do to improve air quality, and how to protect their health and the environment."  Read More