Bush EPA Persecuted, er, Prosecuted More Oil and Gas Violations than Obama’s EPA
It would have been nice for Politico or the NYT to have done such a study before a ginned-up manufactured controversy claimed the job of the Best EPA Regional Administrator We Ever Had ™, but instead the Associated Press comes out a month after the fact to conclude that "the EPA went after producers more often in the years of Republican President George W. Bush, a former Texas oilman, than under Obama." Depressing huh? And not at all what you might have expected if you listened to the moaning and groaning of Big Oil and Gas and their supporters on Capitol Hill. To hear them tell it, you'd would have thought he Obama EPA was picking industry names out of hat everyday to decide who to go after. The article uses former EPA Region 6 Administrator Dr. Al Armendariz's railroading by house and Senate Republicans as a jumping off point to examine if there's any meat to the charges that were being made at the time. There isn't. "Armendariz' territory, which also includes Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma, has more oil and gas wells than any of EPA's nine other regions. But the number of enforcement cases against companies working those wells has been lower every year under Obama than any year under Bush. That trend extends to the rest of the country, where the number of enforcement actions against oil and gas producers dropped by 61 percent over the past decade, from 224 in 2002 to 87 last year. The decline came despite an increase in the number of producing wells and despite the EPA's listing of energy extraction as an enforcement priority under Obama. So far this year, the administration has filed 51 formal enforcement cases against energy producers.While there has been an uptick in the average fine against companies producing oil and gas since 2007, when the penalty reached a low in the decade evaluated by the AP, the average is still lower than during some years under Bush, who was viewed as sympathetic to the oil and gas industry. The year 2011 was an exception; the average soared due to a $20.5 million fine against a BP subsidiary in Alaska. That was the largest penalty against an oil and gas producer under Obama, but it was for a pipeline spill that happened five years earlier." Like we said, too bad nobody in the media bothered to check those claims out at the time of the controversy. We bet this study won't be coming up next Wednesday when Dr. Armendariz is once again raked over the coals by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, i.e. Smokey Joe Bartons' gang. Read More
A Deal in Frisco, But Will Anyone See It Before it's a Done Deal?
Word comes with today's Dallas Morning News that the City of Frisco and the Exide lead smelter have reached an agreement wherein the city will pay Exide $45 million to close operations by the end of this year….and leave over 9 million pounds of lead waste in the ground for Exide to clean-up at an undetermined point in the future. Before addressing what little is known about the deal, and the red flags it raises for Frisco residents, let's pause for a moment and praise the efforts of Frisco Uneaded, the local residents group Downwinders helped found and has sponsored for almost a year. Lord knows, the official press releases won't give them any credit. Before their arrival on the scene, Frisco city officials were still talking about what a good neighbor Exide had been, and were negotiating a way to have the smelter remain in town. From its very first meeting, Frisco Unleaded challenged this official stance, reminding the city there was no safe level of lead exposure and calling out the Mayor and Council for their inability to get rid of the smelter through amortization, the same way Dallas got rid of its inner-city lead smelter 30 years ago. In less than 6 months, the work of the group had paid off when the city voted in January to proceed with amortization of Exide. Frisco Unleaded had so completely changed the nature of the discussion that continued operation was no longer a viable alternative. That's successful grassroots organizing. But by then, the council and mayor were already convinced they wanted to engineer their own solution out of the public eye. That's what the press release today is all about. On the surface, it's certainly good news that Exide will not be spewing new lead air pollution out of its stacks and holes in the wall after this year. That's a huge step forward for public health in Frisco that should be celebrated, no question. But there are still many, many questions….. like will Exide still be using the Frisco site to dump its waste? The company is retaining ownership of all the dirtiest most contaminated parts of the operation, including the 9 million pounds plus of waste already sitting there in a floodplain, and the open, currently-in-use landfills. New waste is being deposited there daily. Will Exide be able to continue to use these landfills for disposal of its corporate waste, even after the smelter's smokestacks come down? Even if that dumping also comes to a stop on December 31st, what happens to all that waste in the Stewart Creek floodplain? It sits there indefinitely until Exide decides to clean it up. There can be no downstream development of the City's Grand Park as long as that contamination remains just upstream. Where is the buy-out figure of $45 million figure from? Where did the "$1 million" clean-up figure stated by the City Manager in the Morning News come from? We haven't seen any evidence that there's been any comprehensive testing of the area the city is buying, so how do they know it will only cost a million? The city pretends like it's doing residents a favor by cleaning up to 250 parts per million of lead in soil with the property it's buying. But what is that level of clean-up based on? California uses a 100 ppm clean-up level to protect human health. Why not use that? Lots of questions. But Frisco City Hall isn't releasing the agreement language, because according to one source, the details are still being worked out. Good enough for a press release but not good enough for public release. Moreover the Council is now scheduled to vote on this package on Monday beginning at 5:30 pm – without anyone seeing the actual document or being able to analyze it. That's not good Democracy or public policy. If they had confidence the agreement would stand up to public scrutiny, the council would let the public dig into it for a week or two and then hold a hearing and vote. Press releases are no substitute for the real thing and it's insulting for the Council to rush this important agreement through without more time to study it. You have to wonder if in fact the Council knows this agreement is not the best that could be won, that it leaves huge holes and questions about continued lead contamination in Frisco, and so doesn't want any public oversight of it for fear it would collapse from the weight. Frisco City Hall keeps vowing that they're committed to transparency, but when push comes to shove, they always retreat behind closed doors. We're cautiously optimistic that this agreement is the end of the beginning, but we don't for a minute believe it's the end. Stay tuned.