Example Number Too Many to Count of why you just can't trust the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to be the watchdog they're supposed to be. Last year the state agency awarded a permit to the $3 billion Las Brisas coal-fired power plant in Corpus Christi last year over the objections of the EPA, AND two of its own Administrative Law Judges. When that happened, the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense sued. Yesterday they won when a District Court Judge issued a ruling that will send the plant back to TCEQ for an new air quality review. "Here, the worst-case scenarios factually and legally were not modeled,"   the Judge wrote.The opinion letter concludes by stating that the ruling may require an additional hearing or briefing to determine whether a permit reversal, or reversal and remand is appropriate. It's not surprising the TCEQ gave the plant a permit. They'll give a permit to just about anyone or thing that asks for it. But they usually don't get slapped down for it these days. Good for Sierra and EDF to call them out and win.   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

It's one of the most frustrating shortages grassroots activists face. Not money. Not lawyers. Doctors willing to say in public what they say in private. We can't count how many times physicians in the DFW area have reportedly counseled their Midlothian-area patients to move out of close proximity of the three cement plants there, but declined to issue even the mildest warnings to the public at large. We know the same thing must be happening now with the proliferation of gas drilling. A lot of private doubts, but few public condemnations.  According to health professionals themselves, the subject of environmentally-caused disease and illness just doesn't come up in medical school. Doctors are woefully underprepared to deal with patients that may be harmed by industrial pollution. It doesn't make any sense, but on any given day there are many citizen activists in DFW that are more authoritative sources on environmental health issues, more current in their knowledge of the field, than the vast majority of the thousands of doctors practicing here. That's why it's encouraging to find reports like this one out of Houston that tracks the activism of Dr. Wesley Stafford in Corpus Christi over a local power plant that would burn pet coke - a nasty fuel. More of this please.  Read More

Whew. There's quite a story from today's Guardian involving the British Government, the Environmental Defense Fund, and right-wing Texas elected officials. The year was 2009. Her Majesty's Foreign and Commonwealth Office gave 13,673 Pounds (about $21,000) to Texas EDF to "influence climate security policy and legislation in Texas." How did EDF use this money to accomplish that goal? By organizing voters in key Texas districts? No. By arranging the elected officials to meet Texas victims of climate change? Nope. "The money was used to fly two Texan state politicians, including the climate sceptic Republican Troy Fraser, to the UK to receive a briefing with climate scientists and government officials. A Conference was also held in Austin in which a video of Prince Charles personally addressing Texan politicians on the subject of climate change was shown." The article doesn't say so, but it's obvious what the strategy at work here was. Unable to persuade Texas lawmakers of the righteousness of their cause with only local speakers of the Queen's English to do the work, EDF was at a loss. If only we could impress the importance of global warming on Fraiser and Co. by using people with authoritative British accents to explain it to them. Brilliant! And it would have worked too, except no one could understand what the Prince was actually saying on that video. Of course, when Governor Perry found out about all this, he was rightfully indignant, taking the position that the English had no business interfering with his plan to devolve state government into a a giant polluter oligarchy. That's what the EPA is for. There was some other stuff too about how Texas has a great (cough) record of clean air accomplishments (cough) and how global warming is really just a vast left-wing conspiracy, yada, yada, yada. But you expect that from the Guv. What's EDF's excuse? EDF's Texas Director Jim Marston explained that "There are people in Texas, including Governor Perry, who are uneducated [on this subject]. This was the period leading up to the Copenhagen climate summit. We wanted to get it away from the theoretical and move it to a country where the Kyoto [protocol] had already been ratified. We wanted them to hear it from the best scientists from the UK, a country that Texans tend to respect." See, British accents make everything infinitely more respectable. And how grateful was Senator Troy Frasier after his London Homesick Blues junket? Marston says "he came back very enthused. Sadly, his enthusiasm has decreased since, partly because the issue [of climate change] has become so politicized."  That, plus the power of an English accent tends to wane when it's not constantly reinforced. As Texas grassroots environmental activists, should we be more disappointed in the British for being so condescending about our environmental fights when they're building breeder reactors and stopping wind turbine farms that ruin Donald Trump's view of the ocean, or EDF for being so wasteful and naive? We report. You decide.    Read More

So sad are the politics of climate change initiatives in the US that even ones that have no immediate impact and might never have an impact are applauded by advocates as if they were groundbreaking efforts. On Monday, the Obama administration's proposed, and court-ordered, rules for greenhouse gas pollution from large power plants were released. They call for a limit of 1000 tons of CO2 for every megawatt hour of power produced. Most analysts think that standard favors natural gas over coal - a good description of the current marketplace. The standards don't apply to the sources where they could do he most good - older and dirtier coal-fired power plants, and in fact according to this report out of Austin's KUT, could actually result in a rush to build more dirty coal plants in the next 12 months to avoid them. Other, more aggressive measures, if they happen at all, will have to wait until after November.    Read More

A lot of people may think that the largest public health problems linked to horizontal gas drilling,or fracking, are all water-related. They are not, at least not yet. It's the huge amounts of air pollution fracking generates and its consequences for nearby residents, downwind dwellers, and the planet as a whole that are really pose the paramount risks to the most people. Take smog. Saturday's record-setting ozone levels remind us again that DFW is a 21-year old chronic violator of the Clean Air Act. Fracking generates both kinds of smog-forming pollutants identified by the EPA and the state - Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) from combustion sources, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) from the leakage and "upsets" of chemicals in tanks, pipelines, and other facilities and pieces of equipment. In 2006, NOx pollution from the gas industry was estimated to be over 68 tons per day by the state. That was more than all three cement plants in Midlothian combined, plus every other large stationary source of NOx pollution in the region. By this year that number is expected to drop by 2/3rds because of new rules by the state requiring more modern diesel engines and less drilling in the Barnett Shale in general. TCEQ believes NOx pollution has more of an impact on DFW ozone levels than VOCs, and so it got more serious about regulating the NOx pollution from fracking. But that theory is being seriously tested. This year, again according to the state, all the cars and trucks in DFW will produce 80 tons per day of VOC air pollution. Oil and gas production in DFW will produce 114 tons per day of the same kinds of pollutants - 34 more tons a day than all cars and trucks combined, and the largest emissions by far from any one industry in North Texas. TCEQ says not to worry about the smog impact of these gas VOC emissions because they're aren't as reactive or volatile as the kind vehicles emit and are less likely to form ozone. Independent scientists and regulators disagree, especially given the volume of the pollution. Denver officials believe that when already dirty air - from other urban areas, or coal plants or cement plants - combines with the VOCs from the gas industry, it actually makes the gas VOCs more volatile, and more likely to form ozone. This phenomenon has never been incorporated into the computer modeling TCEQ uses to predict ozone formation in DFW. In 2011, DFW had its worst smog season in five years, even as the state refused to significantly cut VOC emissions from the gas industry. You don't have to live near a gas well to feel the effects of the drilling going on in North Texas. All you have to do is breathe.  The same VOCs that cause smog are also the most responsible for making near-by residents ill with their toxic fumes. Benzene, formaldehyde, and other VOCs are routinely released or escape from gas facilities. A recent Colorado School of Public Health study found a resident's cancer risks increased 66% when they lived within a half mile, or over 2000 feet from a fracking operation. Many of the chemical exposures recorded residents near wells by way of state-issued hand held canisters are exactly the same ones Midlothian residents found when they used the same canisters to test their bad air downwind of the cement plants when they were burning hazardous wastes. And the official response is the same as well. Despite the fact that the resident is testing the air when he or she is feeling the health effects of air pollution, the levels of poisons never seem to reach above mandated levels of concern that would trigger action. But of course those levels are based on theory and never put to the test in any epidemiological way - except when residents' experience contradict the theory - and then its the residents who must be mistaken, not the theory. If you live next to a fracking well operation, you live next door to a hazardous facility that's capable of generating toxic air pollution just like a hazardous waste incinerator, a chemical plant, or refinery. Finally,  the same air pollution from gas operations that causes smog and sick people also contributes to climate change.  Fracking, along with gas processing, and especially compressors to generate pressure instead of wells and pipelines produce very large volumes of Greenhouse Gases. A recent EPA survey of GHG from all Texas facilities shows compressor stations spewing anywhere from 10,000 to over 90.000 tons of GHG pollution. Industry spokespeople say not to worry because most of this is methane that is relatively short-lived compared to other kinds of Greenhouse Gases like CO2.  The problem with that argument is that while it might have a shorter life span, methane is many times more potent in its greenhouse effect. So much so that a recent groups of climate change experts recently said that the best thing we could do in the short term for negating climate change would be to concentrate on reducing methane and particulate matter pollution. This is most relevant to Dallas because of all North Texas cities, it's the one that has officially pledged to cut its GHG pollution along a specific timetable. Just one compressor station within its city limits and any hope of meeting those goals is lost. So one kind of air pollution from the gas industry is responsible for all three impacts - local, regional and global. That's why the Dallas Residents at Risk alliance has endorsed off-setting, or balancing any increases in GHG emissions caused by the gas industry with industry-sponosored reductions in Dallas that keep our total air pollution burden from skyrocketing. It's the first time this strategy has been advocated and it is the only brand new idea to be included in the Dallas Gas drilling Task Force as a "suggestion" in its cover letter to the City Council. Even its members saw the collision of City of Dallas promises to clean the air with opening the door to fracking. Gas isn't cleaner than coal in DFW. It's just as bad or worse.   Read More

There are at least four major EPA rules in line to be finalized in 2012 but don't look for that to happen until after the elections. That's the consensus of opinion from this Politico article, which says new regulations for lower sulfur gasoline, coal ash disposal, Greenhouse Gas limits on power plants and refineries and a new federal particulate matter standards are all on hold while the Obama Administration becomes full engaged in the 2012 Presidential campaign. "“If there’s one thing we’ve learned in a presidential election year, Democrats and Republicans behave similarly in that they are loath to propose or finalize a rule that could be construed as being controversial or having a significant impact on the economy,” said Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents state regulators. While some groups will be filing lawsuits, it's not clear if the glacial pace of such efforts will be any quicker in getting the new rules than waiting until after the election.  Read More

Yet another study is out confirming the link between air pollution and brain damage. Published recently in the Archives of Internal Medicine, this is one of the largest to ever explore the connection, relying on interviews with 22,000 women over a period of six years. It concludes that long-term exposure to Particulate Matter, or soot, reduces a woman's cognitive functions. "We keep learning about more adverse effects (from pollution) than we thought possible,” said Jean Ospital, health effects officer with the South Coast Air Quality Management District who was not involved with the current research. “I’m not sure I find these results surprising,” he said, “but I’m also not sure I would have expected them if you’d asked me 10 years ago.” For years, environmental health experts have been urging regulators to get more serious about regulating PM pollution based on the wide variety of injuries it causes, even at currently "safe" levels of exposure. Regulators have stalled, because even more than smog, PM pollution is ubiquitous, being released by everything that has a flame or dust or both -  from backyard grills and home fireplaces to internal combustion engines, to industrial processes of all kinds - cement plants, power plants, smelters, gas drilling, steel mills, etc. Only last week 11 states went to court to sue the Obama Administration for purposely delaying the downward revision of PM standards, saying in their challenge that new rules for PM exposure were vital to public health. This new study links the kind of decline in brain function identified with PM pollution to an increase in dementia diagnoses, already beginning to rise significantly. This has a significant public policy aspect that was noted by the study's main author, Jeanifer Weuve of Rush University Medical Center, “What’s interesting about air pollution is that other factors that may cause dementia are generally found at the more individual level – diet, weight, smoking. And we can help to try to prevent them at that level. But in this case, we’re looking at something that we can do to intervene at a broad scale, with society at large. It's a whole new way to think about prevention for dementia and cognitive decline."  Read More

Up until now, it's been relatively easy for the city of Dallas to play good guy over regional air quality issues. It didn't host any cement plants, or GM car factories, or coal-fired utility boilers. It could afford to take progressive stands to protect its public health, like adopting the nation's first green cement procurement policy, fighting Rick Perry's "coal rush" of 18 new power plants, and signing-on to co-sponsor a "Sustainable Skylines" initiative. But now push is coming to shove as the Barnett Shale gas operators eye moving further east into Dallas proper in a big way. The City Council's gas drilling task force is probably only going to be meeting two more times after today before its final recommendations are submitted. Among those recommendations is one to allow gas compressor stations to set up shop on a well pad site. Compressors are giant pressure-creating machines run to pump the gas through pipelines. They use a log of energy, make a lot of noise, and create a lot of air pollution - tens of thousands of tons of air pollution, every year. This is in addition to the pollution caused by drilling itself, and the off-gassing of storage tanks and pipelines. Dallas city attorneys have tried to steer the task force away from regulating the smog-forming and toxic air pollution from well and other gas facilities because the state and federal governments are supposedly already doing this and claim the jurisdiction. However, there is one important area of air quality that the federal government and the state agencies are currently NOT regulating - the emissions of Greenhouse Gases (GHG). In 2005, then-Mayor Laura Miller signed the Mayor's Climate Change Agreement that committed the city to reducing the city's own carbon footprint by 7% below 1990 levels by 2012. In two months, the city is expected to announce the results of a new GHG inventory that will tell us if the City of Dallas has managed to reduce the 98,401 metric tons of greenhouse gases necessary to meet it’s own goal, and the 5,748,843 tons of reductions necessary for the community to reach its promised target. In forecasting future GHG pollution loads for the city and community, gas-drilling emissions in Dallas were not considered. To give you some idea of how large the impact of those emissions could be, look at the results of the last city-wide GHG pollution inventory. In 2005 Dallas estimated that the total amount of GHG pollution from ALL stationary sources within the city was then only 23,000 tons a year. One compressor can emit anywhere from 25 to 90,000 tons or more of GHG annually. In its material describing a commitment to reducing GHG pollution, city staff writes that, “…additional reductions of greenhouse gases will be necessary to meet the challenge of the U.S. Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement. The City has the opportunity and the obligation to work collaboratively with the community to create a sustainability framework by which to meet our obligations as a signatory to the Climate Protection Agreement and to lead the region.”  Meeting that historic obligation will be impossible if Dallas allows a wave of gas drilling to take place without trying to blunt the impact of new emissions of greenhouse gases such drilling will bring.
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For some time now, it's been possible for industry in Texas to apply for "permit amendments" or "permit modifications" that make wholesale changes in a facility's operation just like a real new permit would, but without all the messiness of a public hearing or public comment (weren't we just talking about how polluters love the dark? Yes we were.) While new permits require a public comment period, and the possibility of a contested case hearing with citizens able to use discovery and cross-examination, none of that transparency is required by a permit amendment or modification. TXI used this tactic last summer to seek and receive a "permit amendment" from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that adds a wide variety of new "non-hazardous" wastes it can burn at its Midlothian cement plant without knowing whether burning all the new wastes will increase emissions or not. TXI only has to test itself after it begins burning the wastes. As of this week, the Sierra Club is calling the state on the carpet for some of the most egregious examples of this practice and suing the TCEQ over the issuing of permit amendments to four coal plants where the state knew beforehand that the changes would increase pollution - to a tune of over 11,000 TONS of particulate matter/soot a year. That's no slip-up or ambiguous definition. That's refusing to enforce the law.   Read More