Cement
What Would A TXI Sale Mean to DFW Air?
According to the Dallas Morning News, TXI Cement is up for sale with at least two possible buyers, Vulcan and Holcim, mentioned in last Friday's story. Along with kilns in California, the company's Midlothian and Hunter, Texas cement plants are on the block as part of the deal.
As the news reports note, the timing is a little strange in that the construction industry, the barometer for all things cement, is only now rebounding out of its Great Recession doldrums, and TXI's profits are nowhere near it's pre-collapse heights. It could be that the latest generation of the Rogers' family to run the firm isn't all that interested in keeping it running, or that the two largest and restless corporate shareholders, who now own 51% of the company, are anxious to deal.
Of the two suitors listed in the News article, Holcim is one of the industry's international giants that has the large cash reserves, while Vulcan is smaller, US-based, and considered more of an Aggregates business with some cement plants in Florida.
On the other hand, Holcim already operates a huge cement plant across the street from TXI in Midlothian. It's hard to imagine the company needing to double its manufacturing capacity in DFW. But perhaps TXI's California market share makes the deal look attractive as a whole and the Midlothian plant would be spun off to a third party. For Vulcan, it looks like a way to go from a regional powerhouse to a national one by buying plants in two large, influential state economies.
Holcim is a leader in the new waste-burning revival within the cement industry. Its Midlothian cement plant already has a permit to burn a long list of industrial wastes, although it's not as long as TXI's. During the economic downturn,TXI was given permission by Rick Perry's TCEQ (without public notice or participation) to burn a variety of new wastes like car "fluff" and plastics , but reportedly didn't have the capital to build the infrastructure needed to convey the wastes to the kilns. A new owner like Holcim might have the cash to fix that, and fixing that would mean lots more waste-burning. Buying TXI's Midlothian plant would mean buying its waste-burning permits as well, opening up new waste markets for Holcim without having to go to the trouble of a permitting process.
If Vulcan or some other middle-size player buys TXI, you can be sure they'll run the plants 24/7 as much as possible to recoup their investment and take advantage of better economic times. More production equals more air pollution, even with more modern controls forced by recent clean air plans and citizen campaigns.
But it's also possible to imagine a scenario where Holcim buys TXI, uses it's Midlothian limestone quarry to add to its own local reserves, but doesn't necessarily have the incentive to run both cement plants into the ground to justify the purchase price.
A sale of TXI by the Dallas-based Rogers family would be milestone in the industry, and in North Texas. TXI opened its first cement kiln in Midlothian in 1960. You can still see it there on Hwy 67, along with three other, older "wet" kilns that operated for 48 years before being shut down in 2008. They're all scheduled to be demolished later this year, leaving only the circa-2000 TXI Kiln #5 as a landmark. The times, they are a changin'. Stay tuned.
Better Living Avoiding This Chemistry: An Industrial Toxic Primer
Even though this EcoNews article is about air poisons that result from fossil fuel production, it applies to just about any combustion source, including cement plants, manufacturing plants, vehicles, and so on. It's a pretty good top ten list, although you wonder why Dioxins and Furans got left off, since they're toxic by the gram instead of pound. Also missing is Particulate Matter as a stand alone threat, although it gets a shout out as a by-product. Nevertheless, these are the among the most dangerous pollutants that have caused and are still causing a lot of problems in North Texas and elsewhere:
1. Benzene
Benzene is a well-established carcinogen with specific links to leukemia as well as breast and urinary tract cancers. Exposure to benzene reduces red and white blood cell production in bone marrow; decreases auto-immune cell function (T-cell and B-cells); and has been linked to sperm-head abnormalities and generalized chromosome aberrations.
Benzene is one of the largest-volume petrochemical solvents used in the fossil fuel industry. It is a major component in all major fossil fuel production: oil, coal and gas. People are exposed to it from inhaling automobile exhaust and gasoline fumes, industrial burning such as oil and coal combustion, and exposure to fracking fluids.
There's a recent Emory University study concluding that risk for leukemia fell with every mile between a person's home and facilities that release benzene.
2. & 3. Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx)
Sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) are two primary examples of particle-forming air pollutants (particulate matter). Particulate matter is known to contribute to serious health problems, including lung cancer and other cardiopulmonary mortality. SO2 and NOx are both highly toxic to human health, and contribute directly to thousands of hospitalizations, heart attacks and deaths annually.
SO2 is particularly dangerous for children. Studies correlate SO2 emissions from petroleum refineries—even in lower exposure levels over time —to higher rates of childhood asthma in children who live or attend school in proximity to those refineries. Similarly, small particles of NOx can penetrate deeply into sensitive lung tissue and damage it, causing premature death in extreme cases. Inhalation of such particles is associated with emphysema and bronchitis.
4. Petroleum Coke (Pet Coke)
Pet coke is a by-product of oil processing that's also used as a fuel. It's a heavy dust which resembles coal. It's burned in power plants and cement plants. It contains dozens of dangerous chemicals and heavy metals, including chromium, vanadium, sulfur and selenium. It's a huge contributor to particulate mater and NOx and SOx formation
5. Formaldehyde
Formaldehyde is a carcinogen with known links to leukemia and rare nasopharyngeall cancers, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Formaldehyde is highly toxic regardless of method of intake. It is a potent allergen and genotoxin. Studies have linked spontaneous abortions, congenital malformations, low birth weights, infertility and endometriosis to formaldehyde exposure. Epidemiological studies link exposure to formaldehyde to DNA alteration. It is also contributes to ground-level ozone.
Independent studies, have detected dangerous levels of formaldehyde in both wastewater and ambient air emissions from fracking operations. One researcher, with the Houston Advanced Research Center, said reading from one test site in North Texas, “astoundingly high,” and, “I’ve never heard of ambient (formaldehyde) concentrations that high… except in Brazil.”
6. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs)
In actuality, this is not a single listing—polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) is an entire class of toxic chemicals, linked together by their unique chemical structure and reactive properties.
Many PAHs are known human carcinogens and genetic mutagens. In addition, there are particular prenatal health risks: prenatal exposure to PAHs is linked to childhood asthma, low birth weight, adverse birth outcomes including heart malformations and DNA damage.
Additionally, recent studies link exposure to childhood behavior disorders; researchers from Columbia University, in a 2012 Columbia University study, found a strong link between prenatal PAH exposure and early childhood depression. Infants found to have elevated PAH levels in their umbilical cord blood were 46% more likely to eventually score highly on the anxiety/depression scale than those with low PAH levels in cord blood. The study was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
7. Mercury
Mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin emitted from coal-fired power plants and any other combustion source using coal for fuel – like the Midlothian cement plants. It damages the brain and the nervous system either through inhalation, ingestion or contact with the skin. It is particularly dangerous to pregnant women and children. It is known to disrupt the development of the in-vitro brain. In low doses, mercury may affect a child’s development, delaying walking and talking, shortening attention span, and causing learning disabilities. High dose prenatal and infant exposures to mercury can cause mental retardation, cerebral palsy, deafness and blindness. In adults, mercury poisoning can adversely affect fertility and blood pressure regulation and can cause memory loss, tremors, vision loss and numbness of the fingers and toes.
One out of every six women of childbearing age in the U.S. have blood mercury levels that could be harmful to a fetus, according to EPA reports. The EPA estimates that 300,000 children are born each year at risk for significant development disorders due to mercury exposure.
8. Silica (Silicon Dust/Sand)
Crystalline silica (“frac sand”) is a known human carcinogen; breathing silica dust can lead to silicosis, a form of lung disease with no cure. This is a hazard in the cement industry and threat to those living downwind of cement plants, and now it appears to be one for natural gas roughnecks and adjacent homeowners as well.
Silica is commonly used, in huge amounts, during fracking operations. Each stage of the process requires hundreds of thousands of pounds of silica quartz–containing sand. Millions of pounds may be used for a single well.
The presence of silica in fracking operations, simply put, is a major safety risk with a high likelihood of dangerous exposure. Case in point: researchers from the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recently collected air samples at 11 fracking sites in five different “fracking states” (CO, ND, PA, TX and AR) to evaluate worker exposure to silica. Every single site had measures higher than the NIOSH threshold for safe exposure—so high, in fact, that about one-third of the samples collected were even above the safe threshold for wearing a safety respirator mask. This was reported in May 2013 in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene.
9. Radon
Radon is a colorless, odorless, tasteless radioactive gas which causes lung cancer. It is the second largest cause of lung cancer in the U.S. after cigarette smoking. About 20,000 people per year die from lung cancer attributed to radon exposure according to the National Cancer Institute. Further, there is no known threshold below which radon exposures carries no risk.
Radon exposure can come from a variety of natural sources. However, fracking (natural gas) represents a significant new and increased source of radon exposure to millions of citizens. Radon is released into local groundwater and air during fracking operations. It also travels through pipelines to the point of use—be it a power plant or a home kitchen.
The science behind radon release and exposure is complex but explained well here by Christopher Busby, the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, who warns that radon dangers from fracking “have not been addressed properly (or at all) by the environmental impact statements published by the operators, or by the Environmental Protection Agency in the USA.”
10. Hydrofluoric Acid (HF) / Hydrogen Fluoride
Hydrofluoric acid (HF) is “one of the most dangerous acids known.” HF can immediately damage lungs, leading to chronic lung disease; contact on skin penetrates to deep tissue, including bone, where it alters cellular structure. HF can be fatal if inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through skin.
The senior laboratory safety coordinator at the University of Tennessee said, “Hydrofluoric Acid is an acid like no other. It is so potent that contact with it may not even be noticed until long after serious damage has been done.”
Hydrofluoric Acid is a common ingredient used in oil and gas extraction.
Numerous studies, including recent ones conducted by both The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and the United Steelworkers Union (USU) cite the oil industry’s abysmal safety record as a high risk factor for a major HF accident; over the past decade, more than 7,600 accidental chemical releases from refineries have been reported by the industry. In the past three years alone, a total of 131 “minor” accidents involved HF.
2013 DFW Smog Report: Failure….Again
(Dallas)— On the eve of constructing yet another DFW clean air plan, the 2013 Ozone Season ended on Thursday the same way the previous 16 have ended: with North Texas out of compliance with the 1997 federal clean air standard.
Even a mild summer with lower temperatures and more rain couldn't save the numbers from exceeding an illegal three-year running average of 85 parts per billion at monitors in Keller and Grapevine.
According to Jim Schermbeck with the clean air group Downwinders at Risk, what makes this year’s violation particularly troublesome is that the 1997 standard has been replaced with a more protective one that's 10 ppb lower. “For the next DFW air plan to succeed, it will have to reduce smog to levels that no DFW monitors have ever recorded. I don’t know anyone outside of Austin who thinks the state is up to that task.”
That new plan has its official kick-off event next Tuesday, November 5th, beginning at 9am in Arlington at the Council of Governments Headquarters. It's the first briefing from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on the computer model it will be using to base the plan on. Everything about one of these plans is based on such a computer model, a model only the state can run. The plan must be submitted to EPA by June of 2015.
Even though extremely high ozone numbers were rarer this year, there were enough bad air days to cause the running averages of 10 out of 17 monitors, called "design values" to rise – not the kind of trend you want when you're next task is complying with a tougher standard.
Schermbeck was particularly concerned about a monitor near Mockingbird and I-35 in Central Dallas that’s seen its ozone average rise dramatically for three years in a row. “This is a monitor that had a "design value" of 67 parts per billion in 2010 – that is, it was in compliance with the new 75 ppb standard just three years ago. But now it’s up to 84 ppb and almost out of compliance with the 1997 standard. That's quite an increase in three years, and in a place where smog hasn’t been a problem for awhile.”
Every monitor inside the DFW metro area and even most "rural" monitors had a design value above the new standard of 75 ppb. Only Kaufman and Greenville made it under the wire, barely, with readings of 74 ppb.
As usual, the worst ozone levels were found in the northwest quadrant of the DFW area. This is a well-known historical pattern caused by the predominant southeast to northwest winds that blow pollution from the coast up through the coal and gas patches of East and Central Texas, over the Midlothian Industrial Complex and North Texas central urban cores into Northwest Tarrant Wise and Denton counties
This pattern has been the target of the last three state clean air plans, but has never been overcome. Schermbeck noted that last clean air plan to make a dent was the 2006 effort that produced lower numbers in steady fashion. Since 2008 however, air quality that was supposed to be getting better has gotten worse, or stagnated.
While cars have gotten cleaner during this time, and pollution from cement and coal plants has been reduced, there's one "source category" of pollution that's increased significantly since 2008: the gas industry.
In submitting the last DFW air plan to EPA in 2011, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality estimated there were more tons of smog-forming Volatile Organic Compounds being released by the gas industry in the official DFW "non-attainment area" than by all the cars and trucks on the road combined. That wasn't true in 2008.
Moreover, this is new air pollution in a smog non-attainment area that doesn't have to be off-set by reductions in pollution elsewhere in DFW. Unlike every other large industry, the gas industry is exempt from this offset requirement of the Clean Air Act.
Denton's Airport monitor's 4th highest reading of 85 ppb this summer, the one that officially counts toward its running average, was the highest such reading in the entire state, including Houston.
There's no doubt Denton is in the middle of the local gas patch, as are the Keller and Grapevine monitors that had the highest design values this year. Given the decreases in pollution from other categories, are gas patch emissions keeping these numbers from coming down they way they were supposed to? Austin keeps saying no, but the evidence is compelling.
Just last year there was a study out of Houston showing how a single flare or compressor station could significantly impact local ozone levels by as much as 5 or 10 ppbs. TCEQ itself just produced a study this last summer showing how Eagle Ford Shale gas pollution is increasing ozone levels in San Antonio.
Local Barnett Shale gas pollution might explain these Tarrant and Denton county monitors' problems, but they don't explain the rise in numbers of the Dallas monitors, since the wind during ozone season comes in from the south to southeast.
What new pollution is coming from that direction? Gas industry pollution from numerous compressor stations and processing plants stations in Freestone, Anderson, Limestone and other counties just about 90 to 100 miles south-southeast of Dallas. If one adds up all the emissions these facilities are allowed under their "standard permits." it exceeds the pollution from coal plants like Big Brown. That's a huge hit from sources that weren't there 10 years ago.
In effect, DFW is getting squeezed between gas pollution being produced in the middle of its urban areas, and gas pollution blowing in from the south.
“Officials with Rick Perry's TCEQ would rather drink lye than admit gas pollution is causing smog problems for DFW” says Schermbeck, “but such an admission might be the only way to bring DFW into compliance with the Clean Air Act.”
“This is why local DFW municipal and county governments serious about air quality must divorce themselves from Austin's politicized science and begin to seek their own solutions. Austin really isn't interested in solving DFWs chronic smog problems. Heck, the Commissioners who run TCEQ don't even believe smog IS a health problem.”
Downwinders Had A Good Day in Court Battling EPA Over Cement Plant Rules
Downwinders has been trying to get new emission limits for cement plants since the mid-1990's. We're still trying.
The first real reform in those rules during the Clinton Administration were pathetically inadequate. Downwinders and other groups assisted by DC-based Earth Justice sued to get them strengthened. We won. When new rules finally emerged from EPA in 2009, they were much better. Many of you came out to the historic national hearing at the DFW Airport hotel to testify in favor of them.
These rules were on their way to being signed by President Obama when they got hijacked by industry at their stop at the Office of Management and Budget, which must review all new regulations. When they emerged, they were unrecognizable in many ways, with deadlines pushed back by years and the important Particulate Matter standard being significantly weakened.
Once again, we're back in court trying to get these watered down rules thrown out. Last week, the DC appeals court that usually takes up federal regulatory fights heard oral arguments from both sides, and even the Republican judges on the panel were skeptical of the Administration's rewrite job.
Reprinted in full below is an inside-the-Beltway account of the proceedings that gives you some idea of what's at stake and what a good day citizens and their representatives enjoyed in court. No date on when to expect a ruling. Even then, if we win, the rules go back to EPA to be rewritten again, albeit with more judicial constraint…theoretically at least.
Judges seem skeptical of EPA claims in cement emissions case
Jeremy P. Jacobs, E&E reporter
Published: Thursday, October 24, 2013
Public health advocates argued in court today that U.S. EPA unlawfully weakened and delayed air standards for cement manufacturers, appearing to gain some traction with a panel of federal appellate judges.
The Natural Resources Defense Council contends EPA caved to industry pressure when it revised its National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, or NESHAP, for portland cement kilns and pushed back its compliance date by two years.
EPA's standards apply to several pollutants, including particulate matter, mercury and other acid gases. The agency revised the particulate matter standard after a court ruling in 2011, but advocates claim the agency did more than the ruling required.
James Pew of Earthjustice, representing the NRDC, told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that EPA "gratuitously weakened the particulate matter standard" and violated the "plain and literal meaning" of the Clean Air Act.
Further, he said, many of the issues EPA addressed with its changes "didn't come up" in the previous case.
The cement NESHAP has long been the subject of controversy and litigation.
The kilns are one of the top sources of man-made mercury emissions in the United States. Public health advocates forced EPA to set the standards in a 2010 lawsuit, and when the agency issued the standards later that year it said they would prevent 960 to 2,500 deaths per year.
Industry, however, quickly challenged the standards at the D.C. Circuit. In December 2011, the court ordered EPA to reconsider the standards by taking commercial incinerators that burn solid waste out of its calculations. However, the court largely left the standards in place, including their 2013 compliance deadline (E&ENews PM, Dec. 9, 2011).
When EPA recalculated the standard for particulate matter, the advocates claim the agency made it less stringent. Additionally, EPA reached a settlement with the portland cement industry to delay compliance to September 2015 for all pollutants — not just particulate matter (Greenwire, Dec. 7, 2012).
Public health advocates challenged both actions, as well as a shift from continuous monitoring to one-time annual stack testing for compliance — which also changed the particulate matter standard. The environmentalists also question the standard's inclusion of an "affirmative defense" that protects kilns from citizen lawsuits if they violate the standards during an unavoidable malfunction.
Each issue came up today before a three-judge panel, which included two judges who are considered potential future Supreme Court nominees. The panel appeared receptive to some of the advocates' arguments but not to others.
For example, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, one of the country's leading conservative jurists, appeared skeptical of EPA's decision to delay standards for mercury and other gases to 2015, even though the Clean Air Act says standards must take effect within three years. The 2010 standards for those pollutants, which weren't affected by the D.C. Circuit ruling in 2011, should be in effect now.
"I don't understand," said Kavanaugh, a Republican appointee. "I need help. I don't understand the interrelatedness."
Further, Senior Judge Harry Edwards, a Democratic appointee, said EPA could have easily linked the standards by saying it wasn't "practicable" to meet some without meeting the others. But EPA, Edwards said, never made that argument in the rulemaking.
"I'm really not following this," Edwards said. "Where does the agency make the finding … that compliance couldn't be done practicably?"
Matthew Oakes of the Department of Justice, representing EPA, countered that all the standards are related because the pollution control technology required to limit particulate matter also controls emissions of mercury and other gases. Therefore, it didn't make sense to require kilns to install technology for mercury, for example, before it knew the final particulate matter standard, he said.
That argument was echoed by Carter Phillips of Sidley Austin LLP, representing the cement industry, which intervened in the case.
"You cannot implement any of them in a one-off system," he said.
It was unclear which way the judges were leaning with regard to the advocates' arguments surrounding the particulate matter standard itself. But they appeared receptive to their challenge to EPA's affirmative defense.
Oakes argued that the advocates lacked standing to challenge the affirmative defense, meaning they had failed to prove how they would be injured by it. That notion was flatly rejected by the panel, which said the defense would allow kilns to, at times, exceed the standards, which would harm human health. Therefore, the advocates have grounds to bring the lawsuit, the judges said.
The panel was also skeptical of EPA's arguments on the substantive issue of whether EPA could create the affirmative defense in the first place. Judge Srikanth Srinivasan, President Obama's first appointee to the D.C. Circuit and a leading liberal judge, contended that the Clean Air Act didn't grant EPA that ability.
"This authority wasn't delegated to the EPA to begin with," he said.
Cement Plants and Gas Plays Affecting Ozone Levels In….San Antonio?
For decades DFW was the only major urban area in Texas to have its air quality challenged by the cement industry. Repeated modeling over the course of the last several local air plans showed that the concentration of the plumes from three huge cement plants in Midlothian could increase downwind ozone levels significantly. Part of this is the voluminous emissions produced by the kilns and part of it's location, location, location – the close proximity of these cement plants to the center of DFW. So much so that you can see their smokestacks from I-20 in Grand Prairie and Arlington.
Then beginning in 2006 or so, the area's air shed began to be reshaped by the presence of gas production facilities as the Barnett Shale was opened up to exploitation from fracking, a process freshly exempted from just about every federal environmental regulation with passage of the 2005 Energy Act. But unlike large "stationary sources" like cement plants, these gas facilities were spread out over a large area, right in the middle of the Metromess, and were except from the "off-set" requirements of other large polluters. Even though their collective emissions were as large or larger than any other single industrial source, their decentralization allowed their operators to release their tons of pollution into the air without ever having to consider its impact on local smog levels.
That one-two punch of local industrial pollution flies in the face of the office park business image of DFW. Houston has traditionally been the city where industry has made it harder to breathe. In North Texas, it's supposed to be all about cars and trucks. But those cars and trucks lay a mostly uniform blanket of ozone over the entire area, whereas the gas production facilities and the cement plants are concentrated fire hoses of smog-forming pollution that can impact specific monitors over and over again.
And all of this has taken place during a time when the official federal ozone standard has been a relatively high 85 parts per billion. Beginning in 2015, the standard becomes 75 ppb, and it might drop to 65-70 by 2020.
Texas cities like Austin and San Antonio have had little problem complying with the higher standard, but now face obstacles to coming in under the wire of a 75 ppb rule.
For one thing, the only other large concentration of cement plants in Texas besides Midlothian is located along the I-35 corridor from Buda, south of Austin to North San Antonio. Because prevailing winds have often carried the pollution from these plants away from central Austin or San Antonio, they haven't been seen as much of a threat. But now urbanization is increasingly creeping westward into the downwind path of these plumes, adding some heft to the emissions and combining with them to elevate ozone levels.
And then there's the Eagle Ford Shale gas play, the new Wild West of fracking in Texas, taking place directly upwind of central San Antonio. Unlike the urban drilling in the Barnett Shale, most of the activity in the Eagle Ford is taking place in unincorporated parts of South Texas counties. There haven't been any reliable emissions inventory of the pollution coming out of he Eagle Ford, but it's considerable. Anecdotally, there seems to be a lot of flaring that DFW never saw. Because of the amount of production taking place, as well as its location upwind during the summer "Ozone Season," Central Texas is starting to sweat about its impact on its own air quality.
That concern has prompted a regional modeling exercise which is supposed to determine how much, if any, impact the drilling in the Eagle Ford is having on the Alamo City's air. Back in July, we reported that the preliminary numbers of this study showed that gas production was capable raising local ozone levels by as much as 3 to 7 parts per billion by 2018 – exactly when all Texas cities must be in compliance with the new 75 ppb standard.
Maybe 3-7 ppb doesn't seem like much. And it isn't, unless you're already at or above the new 75 ppb standard and that amount will put and keep you over that red line. Like San Antonio in 2013. The July headline in the San Antonio paper was unambiguous: "Eagle Ford drilling is polluting San Antonio's air"
But it looks like someone at the San Antonio Council of Governments is taking a page from DFW and TCEQ officials and downplaying those preliminary numbers from last summer.
Previous studies show that emissions of ozone-forming chemicals from sources other than drilling have dropped significantly since 2007 despite the city's population growth, said Steven Smeltzer, AACOG's environmental manager. Smeltzer attributes the improvement to new vehicle standards and voluntary reductions by local industries.
Preliminary numbers from the AACOG study also indicate that much of the problem lies in the Eagle Ford. InsideClimate News obtained a copy of the data, which have not been made public. The data show that during the months when San Antonio experiences the highest ozone levels—April through October—oil and gas development produced about half the amount of ozone-forming emissions per day as all other industrial sources combined.
Bella said the data came from an early version of the study that wasn't as thorough as later drafts. "My sense is they're really not worth using…They're not solid numbers."
He declined to comment on whether the numbers are close to the latest estimates. What matters isn't the number, he said, but the process behind the study. If the science isn't right, then it's "garbage in, garbage out."
Yeah, we know. Believe it or not, citizens had to literally force the TCEQ to consider the effect of the pollution from Midlothian cement plants before they discovered, wow, they really do have an impact. Likewise, it took Dr. Al Armendariz's 2009 study of Barnett Shale pollution for the state to even consider local gas sources might be a contributing factor to the DFW smog problem – although TCEQ officials are still doing their best to deny it. The largest purveyor of junk science in Texas is the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Remember that in 2012, TCEQ's computer model told us to expect the lowest level of smog ever recorded in DFW. Instead we got the highest levels recorded since 2008 or so. So yeah, GIGO.
That's why it's disappointing to see the Council of Government official try to use the same strategy with this new study – whose final edits will be made by TCEQ, not an independent entity. Just like with TCEQ's Wednesday's ruling against 7000 Dallas County doctors that said there's no link between smog and public health, Rick Perry's agency can't afford to admit the state's gas plays are making the state's air illegal and unsafe.
Like San Antonio, almost every other category of pollution in DFW has decreased over the last 6 years – except gas industry pollution. It's the one category of emissions that's grown and grown and grown – to the point where the state itself admitted that the industry was releasing more smog-forming Volatile Organic Compounds than all the trucks and cars on the road in North Texas. As DFW continues to linger in violation of an almost 20-year old obsolete ozone standard, it's the gas industry that is the logical culprit for the backsliding. It's the one variable that's going the opposite direction as all the others. But despite the overwhelming evidence to the contary TCEQ is busy defending the Shale from any charges that it has the least bit of impact on area smog, even to the point of ignoring basic air modeling chemistry.
San Antonio officials may want to deny the link between the Eagle Ford and smog in their city, may want to down play it, and they'll have plenty of rhetorical help from Austin. But when it comes to TCEQ rhetoric versus the real world, the monitors in the field tell the tale. Negligence doesn't make your air cleaner.
“March of the Incinerators” is Killing Recycling in Britain
For the first time in 30 years recycling rates in the UK are going down and a influx of incineration capacity is being blamed.
New European Union directives favoring waste burning over recycling are now spreading throughout Great Britain and having a big impact. Landfill disposal has gone down by almost 50% in just over a decade. Meanwhile there are now 39 incineration plants in the UK that have either been built are under construction or are at the planning stage – so many that there are now concerns about overcapacity. Moreover, every time an incinerator is chosen over other options, it institutionalizes the economics of incineration.
Experts said the use of incinerators had consequences for recycling as local authorities were forced to divert waste to feed the plants. "The choice to invest in thermal treatment can hold back recycling efforts," Adam Baddeley, principal consultant at Eunomia, said. "At one level, the money invested in such plant simply isn't available to put into building recycling plants or collection infrastructure. And once you've built an incinerator or gasifier, there's a strong incentive to keep it fed with waste, even if that means keeping on collecting as 'black bag' rubbish, material that would be economically practicable to collect separately for recycling."
Because Texas is still home to relatively cheap and abundant land, it hasn't seen the wave of incinerators that swallowed up the budgets of East Coast and Midwestern towns throughout the 1980's and 90's. But that may be about to change with increased urbanization, the desire of cities to profit from their garbage somehow, and new regs that are written to encourage incineration of "biofuels" that can include waste. Some local observers think it's only a mater of time before a large garbage incinerator is proposed for the Dallas area.
But why wait when you've got three large cement plants down the road?
Hazardous waste was burned in two out of the three Midlothian cement plants for decades and now all three are burning different kinds of solid wastes, including tires, car parts, and "non-recyclable" plastics. They're the front line in the March of Incineration in North Texas.
New Studies Link Air Pollution to Cancer, Heart Failure and…Appendicitis?
According to CBS News
"A new study published July 10 in The Lancet showed that even breathing low levels of air pollution for a prolonged period of time could raise risk for the often-deadly lung disease. Another study released on the same date showed that short-term exposure to most major air pollutants could increase the risks of hospitalization and death from heart failure."
Lung cancer risks went up 18% with each increase of 5 migrograms of PM 2.5. Researchers noted that they did not find a level of pollution for where there was no risk, and the results indicated "the more the worse, the less the better" when it came to pollution.
"At this stage, we might have to add air pollution, even at current concentrations, to the list of causes of lung cancer and recognize that air pollution has large effects on public health," Takashi Yorifuji from the Okayama University Graduate School of Environmental and Life Science and Saori Kashima from Hiroshima University in Japan…."
A second study shows the risk of dying or going to the hospital because of heart failure increased by 3.52 percent for every 1 part per million increase of carbon monoxide levels; 2.36 percent for every increase of 10 parts per billion of sulfur dioxide; 1.7 percent for ever 10 parts per billion increase in nitrogen dioxide; and about 2 percent for every 10 micrograms per cubic meter increase of particulate matter. Surprisingly, increases in ozone were not linked to heart failure. Unsurprisingly, you're breahting in all of these kinds of air pollution if you live in DFW.
All of that is kind of old news – put stuff in air, see stuff harm your lungs and heart. But here's a new "adverse health effect" being linked to air pollution – appendicitis. While not as lethal as lung cancers and heart attacks, anyone who's had their appendix rupture can tell you it's not a pleasant experience.
And while ozone may not have been linked to heart problems in that previous study, the New York Times reports a Canadian one links it to a slight increase in your chances of having appendicitis.
High ozone levels were associated with an increased number of hospitalizations for appendicitis and were even more strongly associated with cases of burst appendix. For each 16 parts per billion increase in ozone concentration the scientists found an 11 to 22 percent increase in ruptured appendix cases. The study was published in Environmental Health Perspectives. The associations persisted after controlling for age, sex, season of the year and the presence of other air pollutants, like nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter. The reason for the association is unclear, but studies in mice have shown that air pollution can alter the animals’ abdominal bacteria.
Who knew?
Nation’s First Commercial-Sized Carbon Capture Plant Uses San Antonio Cement Kiln For Source
On the same day President Obama was making news in launching his climate change initiatives aimed at power plants, a company called Skyonic was announcing it had obtained financing to build America's first full-size carbon capture facility adjacent to the Capital Aggregates cement plant in San Antonio.
If all goes as planned the technology will be retrofitted to the kiln and capture carbon dioxide, acid gases, and heavy metals from the kiln's pollution plume and turn them into products such as baking soda and hydrochloric acid.
The company recently raised over $120 million to complete the project. Investors include Canadian oil giant Cenovus Energy, ConocoPhillips, BP Ventures, Energy Technology Ventures, BlueCap Partners, Toyo-Thai Corporation Public Company Limited, Berg & Berg Enterprises, Northwater Capital Management, PVS Chemicals, and Zachry Corporation, owner of the kiln.
Skyonic had been operating two pilot projects in Texas, including one at the same kiln. but this new facility is a large upgrade, able to remove more than 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually. It hopes to make a profit in three years.
Cement plants are among the largest sources of greenhouse gases on the planet, and there are a variety of start-ups and established firms competing to find a low-CO2 way of making the product. Some are concentrating on changing the manufacturing process itself, and others, like Skyonics, are looking at end-of-pipe treatment or recovery.
It's a shame there's zero interest among local Midlothian cement plant operators to bring any of this new technology to North Texas. We have the largest concentration of cement manufacturing in the country, and so we're also likely to have the largest concentration of cement-generated greenhouse gas pollution in the country as well. There's also the fact that DFW is the largest urban area in the nation downwind of so many kilns, and any reductions in pollution among those kilns, especially in metals and acid gases, would be welcome.
Behind Last Week’s Ash Grove Headlines: “The Rest of the (20 year) Story”
There was a great deal of official news fluttering last Thursday when the EPA and Department of Justice announced a national settlement with Kansas-City based Ash Grove Cement that confirmed the company's Midlothian plant, site of The Last Wet Kilns in Texas™, would shut down and covert to one large dry process kiln by September of next year. Both dailies reported like it was 1999, with front page headlines and lots of column inches (ask your parents).
But the newsworthy part of last week's developments was not that Ash Grove was converting its wet kilns to a dry kiln. In February of last year, Downwinders at Risk reported that the company was seeking a permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to do just that. The Star-Telegram, bless their hearts, even wrote a story about it. Ash Grove's planned conversion was so widely-known that it was the subject of Midlothian Rotary Club meeting speeches this last Spring. So, you know, not news.
It wasn't news because those new national EPA air pollution rules for cement plants that we all drove out to DFW Airport in 2009 to testify in favor of and then to Arlington last year to defend, were expected to put the final nail in the coffin of Ash Grove's wet kilns by the time they took effect in September 2013. TCEQ granted the company a lame one-year extension to the 2013 deadline, but by September 2014, it was pretty clear that Ash Grove's Midlothian wet kilns would have to be converted or replaced to meet those new EPA standards coming down the pike. That's why last year's permit application for the conversion wasn't a surprise, but a confirmation.
And then the Obama Administration decided to stop the standards from coming down the pike. Just as those rules and that 2013 deadline was about to be signed into law, the President changed his mind and put them on hold. His EPA weakened the air pollution standards as proposed and delayed the deadline until 2015 or later – against overwhelming public opposition. All of a sudden, that 2014 deadline for an Ash Grove conversion looked to be in trouble. Would The Last Wet kilns in Texas™ just keep chugging along?
But what do you know? As part of that national settlement announced last Thursday, Ash Grove committed to the government to make the conversion and run the new dry kiln starting in….September 2014, or the original date of dry kiln conversion before the Obama u-turn on the new rules. What a coincidence!
So what was REALLY newsworthy about last week's announcement was that the national EPA managed not to screw-up a very good thing that its now-abandoned tougher rules were already putting in motion on the ground in Midlothian. Lucky us, huh?
The luck had some help from Downwinders. We knew the EPA was looking at Ash Grove for the kind of national enforcement settlement it had cut with LaFarge and other cement companies as part of its multi-year spotlight on the industry. We knew that the former Regional Counsel for the EPA office in Dallas, Larry Starfield, who spent decades dealing with all three Midlothian cement plants, was now in DC as EPA Deputy Enforcement Director, and probably in line to sign-off on any agreement. And we knew the original 2014 deadline for Ash Grove's conversion was in trouble with the Administration's reversal on the new air pollution standards.
We made inquiries, We made pitches. If Ash Grove were the subject of such a national enforcement effort, would it be possible for EPA to please consider requiring Ash Grove's Midlothian plant to firmly commit to its 2014 conversion deadline as part of any settlement? Turns out, it was possible.
How likely would it have been without our intervention? Best not to ask. But if you think, as we do, that our showing-up and making the case made a difference in securing progress that was in danger of being further delayed, here's the tip jar.
So yea for our side, although the victory seems a little less satisfying than what it should be when you know it's simply maintaining the status quo. Still, it's better than another couple of years of pollution from the area's dirtiest smokestacks.
$2.5 million in fines plays well in headlines until you realize how small it is compared to company's annual profits (almost $900 million n 2010). Beside the fines, nine Ash Grove plants will have to better control their smog-causing Nitrogen Oxide, Particulate Matter and Sulfur Dioxide pollution better, including the installation of Selective Non-Catalytic Reduction, or SNCR technology. The Midlothian plant was already scheduled to have this included in its conversion in order to meet those now-abandoned new air pollution standards. There's also a strong possibility that Ash Grove's other wet kilns will follow Midlothian's lead and also be converted to dry kiln technology.
Unfortunately, EPA didn't require any new testing of Selective Catalytic Reduction Technology, as it had in previously announced cement company settlements. SCR is twice as effective at cutting cement plant pollution as SNCR and has been used on kilns in Europe for over a decade. It's state of the art. But it's still not required in the US, although the results from two EPA-mandated pilot tests on kilns in the Midwest are due this year. One good thing about Ash Grove's conversion is that the plants can no longer use their continued operation of obsolete wet kilns as an excuse not to install modern equipment like SCR as it has in the past – although we know they'll find a new excuse now.
Here's the consent decree if you want to read all the details of the settlement. And here's the original complaint, which chronicles the alleged misdeeds of the company, plant by plant, including the sins of the Midlothian facility. A lot of the legal case depends on parts of the Clean Air Act that says any "major modification" to a plant must not increase pollution. Ash Grove ignored this law. Repeatedly. Over the last 20 years. According to the complaint, the violations in Midlothian originally occurred in 1995. That's right, it's taken almost 20 years for EPA to enforce a basic Clean Air Act violation.
"Kilns 1, 2, and 3 at Ash Grove's facility in Midlothian, Texas: 1) in or around 1995, Ash Grove performed a project to re-route ductwork that transports hot air from Midlothian Kiln 1 to the coal mill and performed a project to enable Kiln 1 to burn waste whole tires as a fuel source; 2) in or around 1995, Ash Grove performed a project to re-route ductwork that transports hot air from Midlothian Kiln 2 to the coal mill and performed a project to enable Kiln 2 to burn waste whole tires as a fuel source; and 3) in or around 1995, Ash Grove performed a project to re-route ductwork that transports hot air from Midlothian Kiln 3 to the coal mill and performed a project to enable Kiln 3 to burn waste whole tires as a fuel source."
Downwinders has always argued that tire-burning increases emissions, not decreases them as the industry maintains. We were saying this in 1995 as these illegal changes were taking place and Ash Grove officials were saying what a great air pollution control strategy it was to burn whole tires.
The implications of these kind of very common violations hang heavy over the current industry transition to new and more exotic industrial wastes being burned in kilns, some of which make tires look like Grade-A fuel oil. Plastics, shingles, car parts. All of the Midlothian cement plant are now burning things that they shouldn't be with no more assurance they aren't breaking the law than there was in 1995 when they were changing fuels then. But don't worry, EPA's on the case and you can expect any such violations to be prosecuted in….2033.
Illegal Border Crossings
If you live downwind of a state line in the US, you're more likely to breathe the wastings heaved out by heavy industrial air polluters according to a new study reported on by the Washington Post today.
University of Georgia, Georgetown, and University of South Carolina political scientists collaborated on the findings, which document "State Line Syndrome, i.e. when large air polluters are disproportionately likely to be located near downwind borders instead of sharing the burden with more interior locales.
This is not a new phenomena. Lots of case law has been made by one state suing another over cross-border pollution issues. About a decade ago, the Midlothian cement plants were cited by Oklahoma and Tribal Authorities as a statistically significant contributor to haze problems at the Wichita Mountains Wilflife Refuge in the western part of he Sooner state. However, what the new study shows is despite the lack of no logistical reason for many large air polluters to be located near a border, that's where they're concentrated anyway. The result?
"…the farther a location is from a downwind border, the lower the odds that it will host an air polluter. For instance, being about 100 miles upwind of a state line reduces the odds of an air polluter locating there (compared to a hazardous waste facility) by around 6 percent.
The effect is also strongest among the biggest polluters. The facilities that release the most toxic emissions (measured by number of pounds) are the most likely to locate near a downwind border."
But what's at least as interesting to citizens as the confirmation of concentrations, are the motives the professors hypothesize for allowing or designing these concentrations by state government:
"One is that state policy makers encourage it. For instance, Texas would surely want the economic development and tax revenue that would come from a new manufacturing plant. But the state could probably do without the resulting toxic emissions. So one option would be to encourage a manufacturer to locate on Texas’ northern border, where the wind tends to blow across the Red River into Oklahoma.
Alternatively, companies might decide on their own to build a facility in a location where pollution would be carried across state lines. Doing so might reduce the effectiveness of NIMBY, or not-in-my-backyard, activism. If the citizens who feel threatened by a plant live across the border, they may have a hard time persuading lawmakers in the facility’s state – who have little incentive to attend to the concerns of out-of-state residents – to oppose its construction or operation."
That's sounds like the paranoid ranting of a angry housewife or two we've met over the years. And it probably gives Texas officials too much credit for caring about their own airshed. But it does once again show the impossibility of trying to solve air pollution on a piecemeal basis rather than taking a firm and aggressive federalist approach to the problem. What if we dealt with infectious diseases the way we do air pollution – refusing to recognize the transport of the harmful virus across local or state lines? Science has amply demonstrated that we do all indeed live downwind. Time for policy to catch-up.