Stop TXI’s New “Landfill in the Sky”

With State’s help, the company has radically altered its permit behind closed doors

In July 2010, TXI made the announcement that it was finally closing its four old “wet” kilns that held permits to burn hazardous waste. Big sigh. Short period of celebration.

In August 2010, the company submitted a new permit request to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality seeking to burn seven new kinds of fuels in its massive Kiln #5, including plastics garbage, car “fluff” (all the non-steel parts of a junked car, including the dashboard containing heavy metals, seats, brakes with asbestos, and PCB-laced electronics), “liquid wastes,” and tires.

In particular, burning plastics and car fluff are known sources of Dioxin emissions – one of the most potent poisons that EPA has ever studied.

At least with its hazardous waste fuel permit, TXI had to blend the toxic soup into a consistent mix with minimum BTU, chlorine, halogen, metals, ash and water content. There are no such minimums, or maximums, in the mix of fuel covered by this new permit request. Many of the new wastes TXI wants to burn can cause instability in the kiln itself, resulting in more unplanned emissions or “upsets.”

By TXI's own admission, the changes in its permit will result in large emissions increases in major pollutants:

• Carbon Monoxide (CO) will increase by over 500 tons a year.
• Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) will increase over 1000 tons a year.
• Sulfur Dioxides (SOx) will increase by 700 tons a year.
• Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) will increase by 30 tons a year to 67 tons annually.
• Total Suspended Particulates (TSP) will increase by 75 tons per year.
• Particulate Matter10 microns or less (PM10) will increase by 93 tons a year.
• Sulfuric Acid (H2SO4) will increase over 35 tons a year, and TXI states this is an “Increase Greater Than (regulatory) Significance.”

In total, TXI is seeking a permit amendment that would increase pollution from Kiln 5 by at least 2525 tons, or 5 million pounds, a year. And given the instability of the fuels it wants to burn, and how it wants to burn them, that’s probably a very large underestimate.

To try and prevent what would normally be automatic EPA involvement in light of these huge emissions increases, TXI claims in the permit request that because it’s closing its old wet kilns, these emission increases from Kiln 5 won’t really be increases at all, and so “no federal review is required for purposes of this application.” The new emissions will be “netted.” That is, the decreases in wet kiln pollution will even out with the increases in new pollution from Kiln 5.

But that “netting” is only a claim that TXI makes and there is no operational data from Kiln 5 to support it. Kiln #5 has never burned anything but coal and natural gas, and as we noted earlier, car fluff waste is notorious for destabilizing kiln operations.

With respect to Carbon Monoxide emissions, the total netting for all four wet kilns comes EXACTLY to the amount of increase TXI is estimating to result from the changes at Kiln #5, down to the ounce - a mathematical and engineering feat that begs closer analysis. VOCs netting is performed with only a slightly larger half-ton margin of error.

TXI says it can do all of this without ANY public notice, without ANY public hearings, and without ANY public scrutiny. TXI’s new permit request is actually a permit amendment to its main air pollution permit - 1360A. Renewal of 1360A is the very same permit that Downwinders, local officials, North Texas municipalities, and hundreds of individuals sought to get a public hearing on in 2009, but were denied by TCEQ on a 2-1 vote. It was “the poster child” of why there should be a public hearing process according to the dissenting TCEQ Commissioner.

Downwinders is certain that this latest permit request by TXI is part of a regulatory charade that began with that landmark vote. TXI received its renewal of 1360A without delay or public hearings. A year later it’s submitting a permit “amendment” that would fundamentally change operations at its Midlothian plant, and that permit, but it too will not be subject to public participation or federal oversight. The result is a seamless two-year complete makeover where the largest single air pollution permit in North Texas is renewed and then changed beyond all recognition without the slightest bit of public or EPA involvement.

Of course, TXI couldn’t get away with this subterranean plan without Rick Perry as Governor and his appointees as TCEC Commissioners. What TXI wants from this crowd, TXI gets. No public participation necessary – or wanted. In reality, TCEQ and industry are just two names for the same group of corporate interests. When TXI taunts the EPA that there’s no reason for its involvement in this permit, it knows it has a powerful benefactor in Governor Perry.

But that protection depends on the public not understanding the permit request and TXI’s assumptions about its total emissions - assumptions that need to be scrutinized and challenged. That’s why we’re asking EPA to intervene.

Given the enormity of the changes to the plant, as well as the radically-different composition of fuels being proposed, we’ve called on EPA to perform a top to bottom technical and legal analysis of TXI's permit request. Read the letter Downwinders sent EPA Region 6.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

1. Tell EPA Region 6 Administrator Dr. Al Armendariz that you expect the EPA to subject the new TXI permit request to a thorough review and public hearings.

2. Send TXI’s Board of Directors a message that you don’t want them burning upwindof you and request they withdraw their new permit amendment.

3. Tell Governor Rick Perryand the Texas Commission on the Environment to quit protecting TXI and cooperate with the EPA in enforcing the law, including giving citizens the right to public hearings on new permit requests like this one.

4. Sign this online petition against TXI’s new “Landfill in the Sky”

5. Invite someone from Downwinders at Risk to come speak about the new permit request.

6. E-mail to Dr. Armendariz, Regional Administrator EPA Region 6

(armendariz.al@epa.gov)

E-Mail to TXI Board

(txi@openboard.info)

E-MAIL to Governor Perry and cc to Bryan Shaw Chair, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality

Click here to send automated letter

Copy and paste the letter below to this email: bshaw@tceq.state.tx.us

Download these links for more information:

• EPA Response to Downwinders on TXI (269 KB)

• Letter to EPA Region 6 (62 KB)

• Midlothian Cover Page Sec_1-Sec_5 (40 KB)