Air Plan

That makes an even half dozen in one month’s time, plus the COG resolution, with interruptions for elections and Memorial Day weekend. For comparison’s sake, we didn’t get to six Green Cement resolutions for at least a year.

We want to thank everyone who made this frantic run successful. With an average of about two resolutions a week, we think we proved our point: DFW residents want the state to cut VOC emissions from the gas industry in this clean air plan.

Sometime Wednesday, we’ll have a report from the TCEQ meeting in Austin, where the DFW air plan is up for a scheduled vote in the morning. This meeting is a milestone, but it’s not the end of the Fair Share campaign. There’s a public hearing in Arlington on July 14th we have to get ready for, as well as the announcement from EPA of new air regulations for gas field toxics that will need all the help they can get to withstand industry and congressional counter attacks.

These VOCs will get reduced one way or another. Dominoes have begun to fall.

Today’s vote on the new DFW clean air plan was likely the least ornamental in history. There was very little discussion or context. Of course, when you’re having to repeat a grade, you probably won’t be caught bragging about it.

There was a short and technical description of what the plan was by TCEQ staff, in which, in a kind of “oh-look-didn’t the neighbors-just-paint-their-house?” way, it was mentioned that the plan would not be able to obtain the 2011 cuts in smog-forming Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) pollution that it should have.

Downwinders at Risk’s Jim Schermbeck was the only speaker from the audience. He cited five chronic TCEQ mistakes from previous plans being repeated in this ozone “do-over”:

1) It started too late. TCEQ knew the 2006 plan failed in the summer of 2009 but didn’t begin building this plan until a year later. TCEQ has repeatedly used “lack of time” as an excuse not to pursue innovative pilot projects like an SCR control tehnology test on one of the Midlothian cement plants. This time it’s being used as the reason the state is walking away from its 2011 obligation to cut a certain percentage of VOC pollution.

2) It aims too low. This plan is only designed to meet an obsolete ozone standard that George Bush’s scientists did not believe was protective of public health. It doesn’t get DFW into compliance with the current standard, much less the new one being announced in two months. It’s the most minimalist air plan ever proposed, basically relying on the persuasive powers of new car salesmen and women, and the weather. And by the way, for an agency that criticizes EPA standards, the TCEQ plan is all about piggy-backing those standards in order to make this plan work.

3) It has no Plan B. There’s no insurance in case market forces and the weather don’t cooperate and behave the way the TCEQ computer model predicted. Since the Commission has never been successful in meeting its deadlines before, a prudent person might want to be especially conservative and seek out extra measures to ensure success. Not these guys.

4) It lacks transparency. For 9/10’s of this current planning process, TCEQ has used one transportation model/software for the required ocomputer modeling. One model that assumes average pollution levels for every car and bus and truck out there in DFW. Now, in only the last two months, the Commission is on record has saying it probably wants to use a new transportation model in this plan.  It’s produced some, but not all of that new modeling summaries. The entire new modeling exercise won’t be over until AFTER the public comment period has ended in July. In effect, the Commission is submitting one air plan for public comment during the summer, and a completely different one for official EPA consideration in December.

5) It denies local input. Six DFW local governments have passed resolutions requesting that TCEQ include Barnett Shale VOC pollution cuts to this air plan. The regional air planning body has done the same. Your response is a tank rule that cuts only 10% of the total VOCs being emitted by the gas industry in DFW, a volume now exceeding vehicular contribution. That’s just not enough. North Texas is united in its call to “formalize” the industry’s best practices into regulations that can cut deeply into the Shale VOC pollution problem. 

Schermbeck asked that the Commission strengthen the plan by:

– Triggering the proposed tank rule at 10 tons per year of VOC pollution emitted instead of 25 tons per year. This change would net 90% + of the total condensate tank emissions in the nine-county DFW “non-attainment area.”

– Begin a retrofitting of valves that could net 50 tons a day of VOC cuts.

– Enforce “green completions”/flaring ban  in the non-attainment area.

And then, well, nothing.

Anticipating possible legal challenges, TCEQ lawyers probably advised Chairman Bryan Shaw and Commissioners Garcia and Rubinstein to keep away from commenting on specifics. But it was kind of odd. Prior to Schermbeck speaking, the TCEQ staff itself had just admitted it wouldn’t be hitting its 2011 VOC reduction goal – the first time that’s ever happened. And you just had six local governments that represent about two and a half million people send you resolutions pleading with you to act, including two just this morning. Did we mention they were all unanimous votes? That’s local intent.

But there were no comments from the Commissioners at all on any of these facts. No acknowledgement that local governments might have a legitimate concern, or that the resolutions passed might have merit. No acknowledgment at all that a large part of the non-attainment area it was attempting to regulate was disagreeing with the way it was doing it. Instead there was a generic comment from the Chairman instructing staff to make sure they were using the “best science” and had “reasonable expectations” about their modeling. And then a 3-0 vote, and the next stops are public hearings on this “plan” July 14th at Arlington City Hall.

If you think about it, the lack of pretense is pure Rick Perry, and all three Commissioners are Perry appointees. There’s a ruthless political calculation that concludes you don’t have to respond to criticism if you completely control the outcome. But we wonder if any of them will be coming to Arlington on July 14th?

WEBCAST
A video of the TCEQ meeting will be available in the next day ro so online at this site. The discussion on the DFW air plan begins about 15 or so minutes from the end of the meeting.

At 1:15 pm today, the TCEQ issued a “LEVEL ORANGE” warning for the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Ozone air pollution levels are rated as UNHEALTHY FOR SENSITIVE GROUPS based on measurements at the following monitoring site(s)*:

Denton Airport South
Keller
Grapevine Fairway

There’s something familiar about those monitor sites. Oh yeah, they’re some of the same ones, along with Eagle Mountain Lake and Meacham Field, located in the NW quadrant of the Metromess, that traditionally record the most, and the most severe, ozone violations in the entire region. They’re downwind of the central Texas coal plants and the Midlothian cement plants. They also happen to be located in the middle of the Barnett Shale in Tarrant, and Denton Counties.

TCEQ is scheduled to vote on the proposed DFW air plan this coming Wednesday. That plan doesn’t address any of those major sources of smog-forming pollution except for the token application of controls on condensate tanks that emit more than 25 tons of Volatile Organic Compounds a year that nets the Commission a whole 14 tons per year in reductions. That’s compared to 114 tons per day of VOCs emitted by the gas industry in the area – more than all the cars and trucks in DFW.

Instead, the TCEQ mostly just sits as a spectator while it takes credit for the federal government’s auto emissions reductions, which the state says will allow us to meet the obsolete 1997 ozone standard of 85 ppb by 2013. So many DFW residents will be trading older more polluting cars for newer, less polluting ones, that no other anti-pollution measures are necessary, says the TCEQ. 

Just a reminder that the TCEQ has never gotten any prediction about DFW air quality right in the past 20 years. The air plan to be voted on Wednesday in Austin is a do-over for the failed plan of 2006. Might we need a do-over for the do-over?  The next three summers will tell.

Meanwhile, science marches on, and a new federal ozone standard is due out in July, probably somewhere in the 65 to 70 ppb range. That’s what most experts believe to be a safer level of exposure to smog. That’s 16 parts per billion, at least another whole new air plan, and a lot of pollution cuts away from the DFW status quo in 2011.

Update 1 at 2:00 pm: 

You can track the individual monitors mentioned in this warning, but it’s not easy because most of the maps TCEQ uses are not updated in real time and lag by hours. You have to go to each individual monitor description and then click for current readings.

For example, in Grapevine, you had an 11 am reading of 93 ppb of ozone with the next two hours 11am to 12pm and 12pm to 1pm “not available” which is TCEQ for “Wow, those numbers are high, let’s see if we can find a way to downplay them or make them go away.”

Same thing at the Denton Airport. There you had an 11 am ozone level of 91ppb, with the next hour’s readings unavailable because of the “lack of valid data,” or they’re simply “not available.” See a pattern here?

In Keller, ozone levels reached 100 ppb at 11 am – the highest level recorded this ozone season by far, with the next two hours also MIA as of 2pm.

Remember, it takes an 8-hour average of 85 or above to constitute a violation, so every hourly number counts a lot toward the final end-of-day average. Missing two hours of what could be very high numbers could throw the average off by a lot – below violation levels for example.

What’s also interesting is that while the TCEQ website says “The latest images available are for Monday June 6, 2011 12-13:00 CDT,” in fact, the latest images and readings on its map are from the 9 to 10 am hour – before the high 11 am ozone readings occurred. That is, even though the individual monitoring sites show high levels of ozone being recorded at 11am this morning, none of the TCEQ maps reflect these high readings because they’re still frozen at 10am.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————–
2:18 pm screen grab

Update 2 at 2:30:

New numbers up, although TCEQ is still 2 hours behind in their reporting.

101 ppb of ozone at Keller at the 12 noon reading, still no info for the following two hours.
101 ppb of ozone at Denton airport at 12 noon.
103 ppb at Grapevine at 12 noon.
98 ppb in Pilot Point at 12 noon.
96 ppb at Frisco at 12 noon.
91 ppb at North Dallas at 12 noon.
91 ppb at Hinton St in Dallas at 12 noon.

Based on these numbers and the weather, we’ll probably have our first violation of the ozone season today. Congratulations to everyone in Austin who made this possible.

Update at 3:30:

92 ppb in Keller at 1 pm. Strange that the ozone is decreasing even as temperature increases. Four hour average of almost 93 ppb.
98 ppb at the Denton Airport site at 1pm, with a four hour average of 91 ppb.
96 ppb at Grapevine at 1pm, with a four-hour average of over 92 ppb.
91 ppb at Pilot Point at 1pm, with a four hour average of 86 ppb.
110 ppb  at Frisco at 1pm – highest reading of the day so far, and already a four-hour average of 90 ppb.
91 ppb at North Dallas at 1pm, four hour average of 81ppb
88 ppb at Hinton in Central Dallas at 1pm, four hour average of 84 ppb.

It takes an 8-hour average of 85 or above for a violation of the 1997 ozone standard – the one DFW hasn’t met yet.
And the TCEQ map remains frozen at 10 am this morning.

Update at 5:00:

Keller is suddenly at 84 ppb at 2pm but still has a five hour average of 91. Potential violation still occurring.
Denton is at 90 pbb at 2pm, with a five hour avg of 91. 4 and a six hour avg of 86.6. Potential violation still occurring.
Grapevine is 98 ppb at 2pm, five hour avg of 93, six hour avg of 87. Unless something drastically good happens, this will be a violation day for this monitor.
Pilot Point is at 89 ppb at 2pm with a five hour average of 87. Potential violation still occurring.
Frisco is at 105 ppb at 2 pm with a six hour avg of 87 already. Also looks to be a violation at this site today.
North Dallas is at 79 ppb at 2 pm with a five hour avg just above 85. Probably not a violation day.
Dallas Hinton is at 75 with a four hour avg of 85. Probably not a violation day.

Doesn’t appear to be any other DFW monitors in range for a violation besides these seven. Higher winds are forecast for tomorrow and if they’re high enough, it may save DFW from consecutive ozone violation days.

Update at 6:00 :

All TCEQ monitor readings are still three hours behind. The following are from 3 pm:
Keller – back up to 86 ppb. Six hour avg of 90 ppb.
Denton Airport – 102 ppb. Seven hour avg of 88 ppb. This now looks like a probable violation.
Grapevine – 103 ppb. Seven hour avg of 89.5 ppb. One more high reading away from the season’s first ozone violation.
Pilot Point – 98 ppb. Six hour avg of 89 ppb.
Frisco – 86 ppb (something must have blown in big time and out again). Even so, it has a seven hour avg. of 86.8, so the next hour or two will be the difference.
North Dallas – down to 71 ppb. Definitely not a violation at this site today.
Dallas Hinton – down to 66 ppb. Ditto.

And of course the map TCEQ sends out with the 6pm readings that are really 3 pm readings is still frozen at 10 am readings.

Update at 7:30: First two ozone violations of 2011.

All TCEQ ozone monitors still three hours behind. The following are for 4 pm.

Keller – 90 ppb. Right now it has a 85.7 eight hour avg. that includes a 55 from 9 am. The next hour should bring an official violation.
Denton Airport – 109 ppb. Eight hour avg. of 91.3 – the first definite ozone violation of 2011. That average will go up as the numbers for 5 and 6 pm come in.
Grapevine – down to 88 ppb, but not in time to save it from the second definite ozone violation of 2012, with an eight hour avg of 89.3 ppb.
Pilot Point – 91 ppb with a seven hour avg of 89 ppb.
Frisco – 64, but with a seven hour avg. of 88 ppb.

And of course, no better symbol than the never-changing TCEQ map that you click onto with each new warning alert, still stuck at 10 am this morning. Ozone? What ozone?

..occurred at Grapevine (91 ppb) and Denton Airport (95ppb) today. They won’t be the last. Read about how they happened in detail here.

Update at 10pm:

In total, there were four violations today. Beside the two above, there was also Keller   (90) and Pilot Point (87) with Frisco coming in right at 85 ppb. 

You can play at home using this TCEQ website. When one or more monitors gets four or more readings of 86 ppb or above during a single ozone season, that means the DFW air plan is officially failing.

The Union of Concerned Scientists provides the first evidence of why air quality planning for ozone violations (like DFW) should also be paying attention to climate change,

“Higher ozone levels could trigger 2.8 million additional serious respiratory illnesses and 944,000 extra missed school days in the United States in 2020 that could cost $5.4 billion….

“The study used a mapping model by the Environmental Protection Agency to calculate national impacts and rank the 10 states most likely to be harmed in 2020.”

“In terms of costs, the research found that California would be hit hardest, followed by Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey and Virginia. It said these states have large numbers of urban residents, children and seniors as well as high levels of nitrogen oxides and VOC (volatile organic compound) emissions from vehicles and power plants.”

….and cement plants, and the largest urban gas field in the country. 

And once again puts into vivid focus the difference in coverage that the news weeklies give Shale issues versus the Dailies. This is the first stand alone story on our report in any DFW outlet.

Wherein the Star-Telegram’s Mike Norman invokes the nostalgic West Freeway aromas of Mrs. Baird’s to call for the gas industry to do its fair share to clean the air. Thanks to Mr. Norman for this piece at a media address that hasn’t always been at its best when reporting on gas issues.

This editorial seal-of-approval arrives one day after the DFW regional air quality planning process endorsed the same idea, and in anticipation of another round of Fair Share resolutions after Memorial Day.

Report: Pollution Controls Would Earn DFW Gas Operators $52 Million Annually

“Industry has run out of excuses to do the right thing says

clean air group. Demands State add more Shale pollution

to regional air plan June 8th.

(Arlington)—- Gas companies, their shareholders, and local mineral rights owners could gain $52 million a year in increased revenues by installing simple air pollution control devices in the DFW nine-county “non-attainment area” for ozone, or smog.   

“Leaking Money: Potential Revenues from Reduction of Natural Gas and Condensate Emissions in North Central Texas” by Dr. Melanie Sattler Ph.D.,P.E, was commissioned by local citizens group Downwinders at Risk to provide the first estimate of monetary losses to the gas industry as a result of continuing to allow intentional releases of smog-forming Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in the DFW area.   

Citing controls already in use by gas operators, and quoting current market prices for gas and its various chemical constituents, Dr. Sattler estimates that the industry could collect product worth $51.9 million annually from installation of those controls in the non-attainment area’s nine-counties, plus Wise County.  

Wise County was included in the report because of its concentration of gas facilities and the likelihood of it being officially included in the DFW ozone area when a new federal standard for the pollutant is announced this summer. 

“We’ve known for some time that the technology was readily available to dramatically reduce this kind of pollution,” said Downwinders Director Jim Schermbeck. “Now we can point to millions in new profits that could be made if it was uniformly installed in our region, a region that’s been violating the Clean Air Act for 20 years and needs the gas industry to do its fair share for cleaner air. With this report, the industry and TCEQ have officially run out of excuses.”   

Control technologies for VOC pollution in the gas field can capture escaping fumes, or prevent their leakage, reducing waste and adding to product inventory for the gas operator.

Dr. Sattler’s was the latest development in a two-week-old “Fair Share” campaign launched by the group to try to get the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to include gas pollution in the current DFW air plan scheduled for a TCEQ vote in Austin on June 8th.  

VOC pollution from the gas industry has grown significantly in the last six years, to the point where the TCEQ concludes it now accounts for more annual tonnage than all the cars and trucks in DFW combined. Because this growth in emissions has happened so recently, it’s never been addressed in any previous DFW air plans.

Since May 9th, Dallas County, DISH, Flower Mound, Bartonville have all unanimously passed “Fair Share” resolutions, with Southlake committed to a June 7th passage. More votes on similar resolutions around the region are pending. On Wednesday morning, the Council of Government’s Oil and Gas Sub-Committee is expected to vote on approving a letter to TCEQ echoing these local officials’ call for including more Shale pollution in the plan.

Last Friday at 5pm, TCEQ released a “revision” to the DFW plan that for the first time proposed modest cuts in Shale pollution – 14 tons per day from new controls on condensate tanks. But Schermbeck contrasted the size of those new cuts with the 100-tons-a-day of VOC pollution the Commission has said gas facilities emit in DFW. “What TCEQ is proposing is just a drop in the bucket compared with what could and should happen on June 8th.”  

He cited one of the conclusions of the “Leaking Money” report in making the charge that the state was still avoiding easy answers in clamping down on gas pollution.  

“Using TCEQ and industry numbers, Dr. Sattler shows that just replacing small valves in gas industry equipment in the 9 county area plus Wise County would decrease VOC pollution by 71 tons a day while bringing in $35 million in revenue. That’s five times the drop in pollution that the TCEQ “revision” on Friday promises. Just by replacing valves!”   

Schermbeck also pointed out that because of historically low prices for gas, the report’s revenue estimates were a worst-case estimate, and bound to rise with the cost of natural gas. Despite these low prices the report concludes that “most retrofit investments pay for themselves in little over a year, and replacements in as little as 6 months.”

“We have no doubt that some industry spokespeople will find reason to quibble with our numbers – even though Dr. Sattler’s math is based on industry and TCEQ sources. We encourage them to do their own studies and show how many millions of dollars their companies, shareholders, and mineral rights partners would reap from doing the right thing and cutting their pollution.”

This morning, by a vote of 9-2, the Oil and Gas Sub-Committee of the North Central Texas Council of Governments’ Clean Air Steering Committee voted to request the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to:

1) Review its existing regulations governing gas field air pollution to make sure “they are adequate to achieve their intended purpose,” and

2) Consider requiring controls on gas field condensate tanks in the 9-county DFW non-attainment area that emit 15 tons per year of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) or more,

3) formalize best practices of the gas industry, including vapor recovery on tanks, low-leak pneumatic valves, and green completion into TCEQ rules that apply uniformly to the DFW 9-county non-attainment area.

You can download and read the entire text of the letter here, sans a minor amendment in language that was put on at Judge Mark Riley’s (Parker Co) request immediately before the vote took place.

All in all, not bad. Citizens and local governments put enough pressure on the local regional air quality planning process to get it to address the issue of reducing Shale pollution in this air plan, signing-off on a letter that basically, after a lot of pussyfooting around, endorses the Fair Share strategy outlined in the resolutions passed by Dallas County, DISH, Flower Mound, and Bartonville, with others to come.  This seems more impressive when you realize it’s a total reversal since December, when basically this same body voted against making any recommendations about improving air quality to the state, or EPA, about anything.

And even more impressive when you know that TCEQ is only recommending controls on tanks that emit 25 tons of VOC pollution per year or more, so the regional group went 10 tons lower than what the state proposed just last Friday. This is not an unimportant difference – TCEQ’s proposed rules would cover only 588 out of 1370 tanks in the DFW 9-county area, while the regional proposal would cover 913.

Kudos to Ft. Worth Councilman Jungus Jordan who threaded the rhetorical needle necessary to gather up enough votes to endorse the letter. Special thanks to Judge Riley who always seems to be the most authentic voice in the room when the issue of gas drilling comes up.

And thanks to you dear breather, for helping us build up enough steam to see that the locals didn’t just walk away from their responsibility after the fiasco in December. We now have the regional body on record as saying they want to see the state to do specific things to reduce gas field pollution. They’ve never done that before. And we’re going to take that and run with it all the way to Austin on June 8th and beyond.

That’s what happened officially. We won one and did something that the gas industry and TCEQ would rather us not have done. So yes, let’s celebrate victories when we can pull them off. The next round is on us.

But it’s what else that was transpiring in that Arlington conference room that gives one pause.

For one thing, participants had to be reminded that the goal of this plan was to reach a level of smog poisoning that the EPA has already declared as being “unprotective of human health.” And it still wasn’t clear at the end of the discussion that all of them, you know, really understood that. We’re aiming at an obsolete standard –  not even the Bush one that’s being replaced in two months – but the one that was replaced by the Bush Administration for being unprotective of human health. How bad does you air have to be when you’re not even meeting the smog standard that W thought was unhealthy? And yet, the idea of protecting regional public health by going beyond the minimum needed to achieve a dubious obsolete success rarely got mentioned by anyone but the environmental group representatives and, fortunately, Judge Riley.

All that talk about doing “as much as it takes”, “not settling for a passing grade”, “being the best you can be” – that only applies to local boosterism. When it comes to pursuing aggressive strategies to get safe and legal air for DFW residents to actually breathe – fuhgeddaboudit.

The lack of self-awareness in the room was palatable. Here they were talking about the necessity of a new DFW clean air plan because the old DFW clean air plan TCEQ had built had failed, (has had every other DFW clean air plan in the history of TCEQ), and yet Dallas Chamber of Commerce rep and industry attorney Howard Gilburg joined Collin County Judge Kieth Self in saying if this new proposed plan is good enough for TCEQ, it ought to be good enough for us. Leave it up to the experts. The ones that have never been right. Why do we even need to meet at all, right?

And then there was the mystery of Mayor Cluck, who in the space of 45 seconds made the following points in this order: 1) we do have an air quality problem here in DFW, 2) we should only use voluntary measures to control gas field air pollution, and BTW, the threat of such pollution is exaggerated, and 3) we’re about to toughen gas drilling regulations in Arlington. Try wrapping your mind around those intellectual contradictions and then meet us in the bar. It was his first meeting since the Sub-Committee was formed.

The TCEQ dropped by to say they were blowing off the entire 2011 VOC shortfall problem. For this year and next, the TCEQ was supposed to have met targeted reductions in smog-forming pollution, including VOCs. They will not meet these reductions for 2011. This has never happened before in DFW air planning history that anyone can recall.

TCEQ’s defense to this failure was, “Golly, we would have to have started on this SIP way before last summer if we were going to be able to pass new rules to take effect this summer.” Yes, that’s right. You would have had to start planning this SIP right after you knew you were going to need one – right after the monitors tripped in the summer of 2009, right after a group called Downwinders at Risk said you should start it, because if you didn’t, we’d expect to hear all kinds of excuses from TCEQ about running out of time to do things that are necessary when crunch time came.

Voilà.

Can they get away with this? Maybe. If they can make the black box math work on the back end and get their 2012 targets met, there’s apparently some precedent for EPA letting it slide. And if that’s really so, what incentive does an underachieving agency like TCEQ have in beating expectations and doing anything less than the absolute minimum? “TCEQ – when just getting by is all you want.”

The Commission spokesman also confirmed that final runs of the computer modeling being done with new EPA software for transportation pollution WILL NOT be finished before the public comment period ends on this proposed clean air plan on July 25th. What this means is that the public will see one air plan during the comment period and then a potentially totally different one – without any additional public comment –  will be submitted by TCEQ to EPA in December. This is the “Pod Plan” from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. They’ve done “preliminary modeling” with the new software, the results of which are buried in the husk of this current SIP that used the older software. After the public comment period, these results will be supplemented and they will grow, slowly but surely, until they take over the whole plan.

And of course, this being another month and another TCEQ presentation, we have another updated inventory of Shale VOCs. And these updates only go one direction – up. Just since April, TCEQ seems to have identified 11 more tons a day of gas pollution – for a total of 114.1 tons per day now from all gas sources in the DFW 9-county area. But just wait a month. Chances are that’s still an underestimate.

A new ozone standard is scheduled to be announced in July. It will be much tougher than the one this “plan” is aimed at. Lord help us.

As Flower Mound Council member Al Filidoro put it on Monday night: “Who can be against clean air?”

So far at least, no one but the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Bartonville’s Town Council became the fourth North Texas local government in eight days to pass a Fair Share resolution, and the fourth to pass it unanimously.

Located in the thick of the Cross Timbers in middle Denton County, Bartonville is home to some of the most notorious gas industrial facilities in DFW. One was featured in the Dallas Morning News series on gas that ran this week. It means a lot that we have the town’s support.

Thank you Mayor Ron Robertson and Council. And thanks to Sharon Wilson of the Texas Oil and Gas Accountability Project for representing us in Bartonville.

Meanwhile, down the Timbers in Northern Tarrant County, Southlake City Council member Al Zito (we’re the prefered clean air group of guys named Al) made sure Fair Share was up for discussion on that Council’s agenda. Like so many Shale cities, Southlake local politics is being wretched by the conflict between the promises of gas field financial gain for some residents, and the overriding concerns for public health and safety by others.

Mayor John Terrell said he’d watched the Flower Mound Council pass their Fair Share resolution on TV Monday night and believed it was something Southlake could pass too – unanimously. Nobody disagreed. There was discussion by the Mayor and other members about how the city had incorporated a lot of the same pollution control devices mentioned in the resolution into its recent overhauling of city drilling ordinances.

Southlake will hold their formal vote on June 7th, just in time to be counted for the scheduled June 8th TCEQ vote on the DFW plan. Thanks to Council member Zito for initiating things in Southlake, and for the support of Mayor Terrell and the rest of the other Council members. It felt good to emerge again with a consensus, especially in a city that hasn’t seen it on this issue.

It’s only been eight days, but please take a moment to consider a couple of things about what’s happening.

Like the breadth of support for the simple good idea of including Shale VOCs in this DFW clean air plan. Dallas County and Southlake. John Wiley Price and Calvin Tillman. Democrats and Republicans. Liberals and Conservatives. Rural and Urban and Suburban. That’s not just hyperbole, that’s a real regional consensus taking shape.

Citizens are building local political support for at least the air quality part of Responsible Drilling even while we suffer through the most regressive sate legislative session in recent memory. We’ll be lucky just to maintain the status quo in Austin this year, but locally, we’re gaining ground.

A regional clean air policy position is being built from the ground-up. It’s not FLOWING FROM Washington, or Austin, or even Council of Governments headquarters in Arlington. It originated with a citizens group. It’s being put together, plank by plank, by local governments, and DIRECTED AT Washington and Austin and Arlington. That’s so grassroots you can taste the dirt in your mouth.

Ever heard of the “better block” movement? When you want your neighbors and elected officials to see how your community could be improved, you take a weekend off and Do-It-Yourself. You bring in the trees in planters. You put a fresh coat of paint on. You invite the food vendors and entertainment. You set up kiosks of all kinds. You don’t talk about how things could be transformed. You transform them. And people see how it could be different. And they like it. And the perception becomes the new reality.

We still have a long way to go, and we won’t always win by unanimous margins, but the Fair Share campaign has already changed the political reality surrounding the June 8th vote in Austin by establishing a different political reality. The traditional regional voices for air quality aren’t being responsive to this problem and citizens are filling a vacuum of leadership. We’re doing it ourselves.