Air Plan

It pains us to have to write about this because the American Lung Association stood with Downwinders throughout the mid-to- late 1990’s and helped us turn the tide against the burning of hazardous wastes in the Midlothian cement plants. And we also understand how hard it is to raise money for non-profits with a recession/depression still going on. But in accepting Chesapeake’s money, totaling at least $500,000 and probably much more, what is the price ALA has to pay as air quality in areas like DFW gets sabotaged by wave after wave of gas production pollution? ALA was a no-show during the EPA and TCEQ summer hearings on new gas emissions regulation. They’ve taken no part in the struggle to write a new Dallas gas drilling ordinance despite their regional HQ being in Dallas and hiring a new “Environmental Health” staff person to take on the job of helping community groups fight for cleaner air. They’ve published no reports on Barnett Shale emissions, despite it being the single largest threat to DFW air quality progress in the last decade. One can’t help but wonder if the group would be more outspoken had it not received Chesapeake’s cash deposits. Big Gas has warped every institution and group it’s touched in North Texas, and here’s one more example of an organization that appears to be letting down it guard over public health in return for contributions from them. Et Tu, ALA? FRIDAY UPDATE: We’re happy to report that the ALA, along with the American Public Health Association, the American Thoracic Society, the Asthma And Allergy Foundation of America, and the Trust for America’s Health sent a very good letter to EPA supporting “the strongest possible standards to reduce harmful emissions from the production wells, processing plants, transmission pipelines and storage units within the oil and gas industry,” because “research has shown that these pollutants can cause cancer, developmental disorders, and premature death.” Moreover the letter supports the demand of citizens in the Shale that want to see the new EPA rules cover EXISTING wells along with new ones that are now targeted. In total, it’s the strongest letter to date from anyone at ALA on fracking and represents a huge step forward in the organization’s articulation of the various public health harms of the practice. We’re relieved to see that Chesapeake didn’t buy the conscience of the ALA when its checks were cashed by the group. Now that the ALA is on the record as supporting tougher air emissions strategies for fracking, we hope the local Lung Association in DFW will find ways to insert staff resources into the numerous manifestations of the national battle going on right here in North Texas, starting with the writing of new Dallas and Denton gas drilling ordinances, and the renewed struggle to obtain safe and legal air for the region.

Word comes today that the recent updating of a national Canadian Greenhouse Gas emissions inventory shows all industrial and commercial sectors holding steady or making progress in 2010, save one: Oil and Gas. Canada had to perform the inventory under the terms of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Unfortunately, the dramatic rise in emissions from oilsands (Re: Keystone) and gas development more than off-set the progress in the rest of the economy. This is the money quote from the Canada.Com article: “Canada’s official report last year generated controversy because of a decision to exclude a breakdown of oilsands emissions from the inventory, even though this emissions breakdown was included in the previous year’s inventory. The missing details eventually revealed that the booming sector’s pollution was dramatically rising to levels that would make it difficult for the federal government to meet its own annual emissions target of 607 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2020.” Now, come south to Dallas. We know City Hall is sitting on a similar updating of Greenhouse Gas pollution emissions being emitted by both City of Dallas operations, and the metropolis as a whole. This pollution inventory was required by the 2005 Mayor’s Climate Change Agreement, of which Dallas is a signatory. Cities pledged to cut 2012 GHG pollution to 1990 levels. We’ll see how close or far Dallas is to accomplishing that goal when the numbers are released. But here’s the real number you need to keep an eye on – the amount of Greenhouse Gas pollution emitted by industrial sources in Dallas. The last time the city did such a survey, it totaled only 25,000 tons a year from all large industrial facilities combined. By contrast, a single gas compressor can easily spew 25,000 tons a year of the same kind of pollution. Gas fields have multiple compressors. It’s not unusual for large compressors to emit up to 50,000, 75,000, even 90,000 tons or more of air pollution every single year. Without mitigating or off-setting this tidal wave of air pollution from gas drilling, Dallas will never be able to meet its obligations to reduce its Greenhouse Gas pollution, and in fact, it will be responsible for making local air quality much worse. A vote to allow unfettered drilling is a vote for immediately doubling the industrial GHG pollution coming from Dallas, and in the long run, a vote to increase it by probably a magnitude or two. Why should you care if climate change doesn’t get you excited? The same GHG pollution making it impossible for Dallas to reduce its carbon footprint is the same air pollution that makes our smog worse, and its the same air pollution that makes it 66% more likely for you to contract cancer if you live within a half-mile of a gas well. It’s all inter-connected. Dallas is poised to reverse years of air quality progress if it doesn’t do something to address the large increases in air pollution caused by gas drilling.

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.

rumors that a gas ordinance vote in Dallas could happen as soon as the middle of May, only a week or so after the City Council gets a briefing on the issue from staff. And speaking of city staff, City Manager Mary Suhm reportedly thinks any Dallas citizen who believes 500 feet is to close to live next to a gas well must be crazy. Fortunately, she doesn’t vote on the matter. Tonight, like every Tuesday night, there’s a planning meeting for citizens who want a stronger ordinance. The Dallas Residents at Risk alliance is meeting at the Texas Campaign for the Environment office at 3308 Lee Parkway, Suite 401 (right across from Lee Park) beginning at 7pm. If you haven’t contacted your Dallas city council member, you need to do that pronto, and even better arrange a meeting to meet them in person and tell them why you want a better, more protective gas drilling ordinance.

Public outrage over cement plant pollution has sparked a government ultimatum that the industry must comply with new emission standards in three months or risk being shut down temporarily or permanently. This isn’t happening n Western Europe. And because this isn’t fiction, it’s not the US either. No it’s Dubai.  It’s part of a larger effort to reduce polluiton from cement plants by 50% in three years  in that country, which is still experiencing a construction boom. Plus, how’s this for nice touches, the plants also have to “ensure 50 per cent of the boundary of their factories be covered with trees and other foliage, to mitigate some of the carbon dioxide emissions and to ‘improve the ecology’ and appearance of the area.” Meanwhile, we’re hearing nasty rumors about the EPA possibly backing off its new cement plant emission rules that are due to be implemented in the fall of next year. Never thought we’d say it, but could we just be guaranteed the same kind of environmental protection as a Developing Country?

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.

They came from North Dallas, and South Dallas. They came From East Dallas and West Dallas. They were veterans of past fights and they were brand new to the scene. In all, over 100 people attended the citywide organizing meeting on drilling in Dallas Tuesday night. As good as the turnout was, the quality of the audience was just as impressive. There were lots of community leaders present. League Of Women Voters and Dallas Homeowners League officers, neighborhood associations from Mountain Creek and La Bajada. Young South Dallas leaders. Representatives from the Oak Cliff and First Unitarian – Universalist Churches, Move On, and Occupy Dallas. They heard from city council members, citizen activists, lawyers, and organizers about how important it is to get this right. They signed-up to speak at Dallas City Council meetings and wrote postcards to specific council members. It was a very good start to a new chapter in the fracking fight in Dallas. Whether its a pivotal moment is really what we do from here on out. Thanks to everyone who came. Thanks to Councilman Scott Griggs, Jim Bradbury, Cherelle Blaze and Terry Welch for telling it like it is. Special thanks needs to go to Zac Trahan of the Texas Campaign for the Environment, and Claudia and Ed Meyers of the Mountain Creek Neighborhood Alliance for making this such a successful event. Dallas Morning News coverage is behind the paywall here. Over the next few days we’ll be posting the materials handed out at the meeting here at the Downwinders web site, as well as the slide shows that were presented  – Fracking 101, and maps of the 13 specific Dallas drilling sites currently seeking approval. Dallas Residents at Risk will continue to meet EVERY TUESDAY EVENING @7 pm at the Texas Campaign of the Environment office at 3303 Lee Pkwy #402  for the duration of this campaign. Everyone is invited to these meetings. You do not need to be a representative of a group. You just need to be interested. Last night saw the blooming of a 1000 good ideas on how to follow up on the positive energy generated by the meeting. Now we need help in implementing them. We’ve got to hit the streets, go door-to-door, schedule PowerPoint shows for our groups, and make appointments with council members. Last night marked the beginning of something new and exciting, but to have something to celebrate at the end, we have to put in a lot of hard work in-between.