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

Wasn't it just the other day that we were talking about the harms of Particulate Matter (PM) pollution and mentioning that the Obama Administration was holding up new PM standards? And yet on Wednesday the US was announcing a new international effort to cut methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and yes, PM pollution, in an effort to make short-term gains in fighting global warming. “The science is quite clear that the only way to slow warming in the near term . . . is to reduce emissions of these so-called short-lived climate forcers,” said Erika Rosenthal of the advocacy group Earthjustice." Specifically, the "Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants" (CCACRSLCP?) will fund programs to reduce diesel exhaust, ag-waste burning in the field, capturing methane from landfills, coal mines and...natural gas wells. Come to think of it, that's another area of possible mixed messages being sent since this Administrations is simultaneously promoting fracking like a carnival barker in the US while telling other countries they need to limit their own emissions from drilling. But you know they must be really serious this time. Combined, the US and Canadian governments are throwing a whole $15 million at the campaign.   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.
  Read More

A local California commentator take the results of the recent Fresno air pollution study and talks about the connections between the old fight against smog and the new fight against global warming. Turns out there are a lot. That's why air quality advocates shouldn't be afraid to talk about Greenhouse Gases and air pollution in the same strained, wheezing breath.    Read More

Mother Jones does a profile on Bryan Shaw, the often overlooked Chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. An ideological twin of Rick Perry that runs the state agency charged with enforcing every federal environmental law on the book, Shaw is the equivalent of the Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Department in Mississippi, circa 1960. Reading this goes a long way towards understanding why the TCEQ is the way it is right now.  Read More