State Gives Frisco the Finger, Grants Exide Another Year to Violate Law
Instead of enforcing a November 1st, 2012 deadline for lower levels of lead pollution, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality will allow the Exide lead smelter in Frisco to violate the more protective air quality standard until January 6th 2014 as part of a plan for the facility the state agency is submitting to EPA later this month.
The decision is a reversal of policy in place as recently as last summer, and came with no opportunity for public hearing. It also makes it clear that TCEQ is siding with Exide in its on-going battle over zoning regulations with the city of Frisco.
In pushing back the compliance date, the TCEQ specifically noted Exide's lack of building permits from the City of Frisco, an unresolved zoning battle that might have kept the smelter from meeting the November 1st deadline, and eventually forcing its closure. In giving the extension at the last minute, the state is allowing the smelter regulatory breathing room it didn't have before.
Frisco Unleaded, the residents group devoted to closing the 50-year old smelter that Downwinders is sponsoring is calling for its supporters to be at Tuesday's city council meeting to demand City Hall protest the extension and help persuade EPA not to endorse it. Once the new deadline passes, Exide will still be getting a break.
Despite assurances from Frisco's Mayor and City Council that the smelter's new permit would be "first class" or they wouldn't support it, the TCEQ will also allow Exide to spew ten times as much lead as a similar Exide smelter operating in Vernon, Californianot require that Exide spend money to install pollution control equipment could reduce emissions from 1-3 tons to 1-3 pounds of lead a year because it's "unnecessary" to meet the new standard.
According to Jim Schermbeck of local clean air group Downwinders at Risk, "The TCEQ is telling Frisco residents that the "first class" controls they want are too good for them; that they're too effective at getting rid of lead, a poison we know is capable of doing harm at any level of exposure. These controls work. TCEQ just doesn't think Frisco residents are worth the cost."
Released late last Friday, the TCEQ plan, called a State Implementation Plan, or SIP, will be voted on by the agency's three Commissioners at their May 30th meeting. EPA will then have six months to accept, modify or reject the plan. Green noted thatFrisco Unleaded is calling on residents to let their city council members they don't want Exide to get any extra time to further pollute their city. Tuesday's council meeting is the last one scheduled before the TCEQ vote on May 30th.
Schermbeck said the law states that Exide must comply with the new standard "as expeditiously as practicable," and no later than the end of 2015. "This extension is the opposite of that language. It delays the implementation of the standard, and does so by taking sides in a local zoning fight the TCEQ has no business in. For a state government that likes to exalt the virtues of local control, it just did a pretty good job of undermining Frisco's."