Dallas Residents at Risk's road show on fracking in Dallas continues its tour with a stop at 7pm Thursday night, May 3rd, at the North Hills Prep School at 606 E Royal (near L.B. Houston Golf Course and the now famous drilling pad-in-a-park endorsed by none other than the President of the Dallas Parks and Rec Board). If you've seen the map of gas drilling leases on city owned land, you know that Northwest Dallas is a hotspot of activity. Along with West Dallas and Mountain Creek, it's one of the most densely leased areas of the city. Come see a basic explanation for why the activity is hazardous to neighborhoods, talk to some of the good guys who were on the City's gas drilling task force and find out what's being done to write a better gas drilling ordinance. Information is power. Don't be powerless.   Read More

For the second time in a row, the "Real Estate Writer" for the Dallas Morning News has written a feature article about a nice, new expensive development where there are gas leases and permits already being requested, and yet failed to mention anything about those pesky gas wells. From what we can tell, the Real Estate Writer seems to be a DMN position paid for by Real Estate developers. Last month it was the West Dallas area surrounding the new Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, where the city has leased its own land out for multiple gas leases. Today it's the "Cypress Waters" planned community being built by Lucy (Crow) Billingsley around North Lake, where there's already a gas pad permit in the pipeline, so to speak. But you'd never know it from reading the article. “We have 82 acres on LBJ Freeway that we have saved at the project’s primary entry point so that we can have retail to service the development,” Billingsley said. “We will also have restaurants on the lake.”  And if the wells get permitted, those diners will be getting lots of items off the official menu. We know she's a Crow. We know its a big development. But really? To be this much of a shill is embarrassing. UPDATE 11:30 AM: Dallas Area Residents for Responsible Drilling's Raymond Crawford e-mailed the DMN writer, Steve Brown and asked him if he knew about the wells slated for this development. Brown's reply was as enlightening as it was brief: "Yes, they've set aside six drill sites on the master plan for the project...I'm thinking that they consider this not a problem for rental housing but of course it would be a factor for people buying homes." Yes, of course, because homeowners have lungs, whereas we're not even sure if renters are a higher life form at all. Amazing isn't it?   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

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

It doesn't often work out this way, but three related stories came over the transom recently that so eloquently spelled out the case for Dallas regulating the Greenhouse gas pollution from the gas industry, that we could have written them ourselves. but we didn't have to. Downwinders and the Dallas Residents at Risk alliance support the idea of the City of Dallas requiring the  "mitigating", or "off-setting"  of new and large air pollution emissions that come with gas drilling. For every ton of Greenhouse Gas emitted by a new well, or compressor, or storage tank, the operators would have to fund a project that would reduce that same amount of pollution in Dallas, so that there would be no net increases in pollution. So why do this? ARTICLE #1: The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review covers a local permit for a gas compressor station that could emit between 20 and 90 tons of smog-forming Nitrogen Oxide, also a Greenhouse Gas. The state already has almost 400 such facilities because of its location in the Marcellus Shale gas play. According to the article, "The stations, which compress gas to get it to move through pipelines, release air pollutants that compound the state's long-standing ozone problem." Gas drilling brings large amounts of new air pollution that isn't covered under current regulations on either the state or federal level. Just one compressor station in Dallas could spew more Greenhouse Gas pollution than all the current industrial sources in the city combined. ARTICLE #2: The New Scientist gives voice to the growing perspective that the fastest way to affect climate change progress is to cut methane and soot emissions, not necessarily CO2. "Methane is a more important control on global temperature than previously realised. The gas's influence is much greater than its direct effect on the atmosphere," says Peter Cox, of the University of Exeter. Curbing methane, he adds, may now be the only way to prevent dangerous warming. "Oil and Gas sources in the US make-up 40% of all industrial methane pollution releases. Dallas has signed the US mayors agreement to reduce its Greenhouse Gas emissions. It won't be ale to keep that commitment if it allows gas drilling without some form of mitigation or off-setting. ARTICLE #3: A piece from the San Luis Obispo Tribune that details how a local county air pollution control board is now regulating greenhouse gases for new housing and commercial developments. What are they doing? Requiring mitigation. "The staff estimates that of 1,142 projects countywide over the next 10 years, 56 would be large enough to require mitigations. Mitigations usually come in the form of sidewalks, bike paths and other amenities that discourage the use of cars.Other developments could be exempted if they are covered by a qualified local emission reduction strategy...." Dallas wouldn't even be the first to think about GHG emission control on the local level, although it might be the first to apply it to the gas industry. Because that's what the biggest new threat to air quality in Dallas is.   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

At the bottom of that same Politico article on the suspension of new rule-making at EPA are the results of a national poll on clean air regulations done by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Researched, paid for by the American Lung Association, conducted February 27th to March 4th with a margin of error of 3.5 points either way. The results are not a surprise if you've been following polling on this subject for a while - there are always overwhelming majorities in support of additional efforts to clean up air pollution. But if you live some place like Texas, and/or you've been closely following the GOP presidential nominating contest, you might get the feeling that most people think the air they're breathing is hunky-dory and want the EPA to permanently close-up shop. Nope. 66% of those polled strongly favor or somewhat favor the EPA's updating of air pollution standards with stricter limits vs. 28% who strongly or somewhat opposed that effort. 37% didn't think EPA was strict enough in its regulation of air pollution vs 11% who thought the agency was too strict (14% unsure and 38% "about right"). 78% favored stricter limits on Mercury, 72% favored stricter limits on smog, 70% favored stricter limits on Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and even 60% favored new tailpipe emissions and gasoline standards - knowing that these new rules could directly affect them. 73% think new limits on greenhouse gas emissions will have a positive effect on public health and air quality and even a plurality of 44% believe these standards will have a positive impact on the economy.  No, you're not crazy. You're not the anomaly - your elected officials are.   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