Citizen Action
A Barnett Shale Manifesto…From Austin
Sometimes it takes a perspective above the grind of trench warfare to give you a better sense of what the entire battlefield looks like. That's what UT Law Professor Rachel Rawlins has done for Barnett Shale activists with the recent publication of her article "Planning for Fracking on the Barnett Shale: Urban Air Pollution, Improving Health Based Regulation, and the Role of Local Governments" in the new Virginia Environmental Law Review.
Don't let the academic title fool you. This is a call for a radically new approach to how communities in Texas regulate the risks of fracking, and every other type of heavy industry. We put the link up for the piece on our Facebook page on Saturday based on a quick reading of its commentary on the Flower Mound cancer cluster, but it's more, so much more than that. Among other things, it's a comprehensive rebuttal of every claim of safety and well-being ever issued by the industry or state authorities about the health of residents living in the Barnett Shale, of which the Flower Mound case is only one example. Rawlins has produced a one-stop catalog of each major air pollution health controversy in the Barnett since concerns began to grow in the last decade, with an almost 30-page review of why no industry or government-sponsored study of fracking pollution and its health effects is a satisfactory response to those concerns. Want to convince your local officials that fracking isn't as safe as it's touted? Here's the staggering blow-by-blow commentary to do it.
But all of that documentation is presented in service to making the point that current state and federal regulation of fracking is failing to protect public health, both in design and in practice. Professor Rawlins' solution to this problem is not to give the state and federal government more power to regulate the gas industry. No, it's to turn the current regulatory framework upside down and give more power to local governments to do the things that the state and federal government should be doing.
In making this recommendation, she echoes the strategy that's been driving Downwinders since it was founded – that the best way to regulate pollution problems is at the local level where the most harm is being done, and it should be directed by the people being harmed. This is what drove our Green Cement campaign that closed the last obsolete wet cement kiln in Texas. This is what fueled our campaign to close down the trailer park-come-lead smelter in Frisco. And it's what was behind the recent Dallas fights over drilling. In each case, it wasn't Austin or Washington DC that was the instrument of change – it was local governments, pressed by their constituents, flexing their regulatory powers. The same thing is driving activists in Denton who are organizing the ban fracking petition drive and vote.
This strategy avoids battles where industry is strongest – in the halls of the state capitol and in DC, where citizens are outspent millions to one. Instead, it takes the fight to neighborhoods where the harm is being done or proposed, where people have the most to lose, where the heat that can be applied to elected officials is more intense. Citizens will still get outspent, but the money doesn't seem to buy corporations as much influence among those actually breathing the fumes of the drilling site, or smokestack.
Particularly now, with corporate-friendly faux-Tea Party types in control of state government and the House of Representatives in DC, there is little room for grassroots campaigns to make a difference by passing new legislation. Even if by some miracle a few bills did pass, their enforcement would be up to the same state or federal agencies that are currently failing citizens. Local is more direct, and more accountable. Professor Rawlins agrees, and spends most of the rest of her 81-page journal article citing the ways in which local control of fracking in the Barnett Shale is hampered by the out-dated top-down approach to regulation, and what should be done to fix that.
Included in her recommendations are two long-term Downwinders projects: Allowing local governments to close the "off-sets" loophole for the gas industry that exempts them from having to compensate for their smog-forming pollution in already smoggy areas like DFW, and creating California-like local air pollution control districts that could set their own health based exposure standards and pollution control measures without having to go through Austin or DC.
If there's a single major fault in Rawlins's analysis, it's that she believes more local control of pollution risks is itself dependent on action by an unwilling state government. But Downwinders and others have shown that isn't true. Our most significant and far-reaching victories – from the closing of the Midlothian wet kilns to the new Dallas drilling ordinance – have all taken place while Rick Perry was Governor and the state legislature was in the hands of our opponents. We did these things despite Austin, not because we had its permission. Local zoning laws, local permitting rules, local nuisance acts, and other local powers are under-utilized by both residents and their elected officials when it comes to pollution hazards.
The same is true now of Downwinders' off-sets campaign aimed at the gas industry. We think we've found a way to avoid the "preemption" argument that would keep local governments from acting on smog pollution from gas sources by aiming the off-sets at Greenhouse gases – an area of regulation Texas is loathe to enter. By targeting GHG reduction, we also reduce a lot of toxic and smog-forming air pollution. It's a back door way, but it accomplishes the same goal. It's going to be up to Texas activists to sew similar small threads of change through an otherwise hostile political environment.
Even given that flaw, Professor Rawlins' introduction to her article is the most concise summary of the air pollution problems caused by gas mining and production in the Barnett, as well as the most credible call to action for a new way of doing business there. Here it is reprinted in full for your consideration:
In the last decade hydraulic fracturing for natural gas has exploded on the Barnett Shale in Texas. The region is now home to the most intensive hydraulic fracking and gas production activities ever undertaken in densely urbanized areas. Faced with minimal state and federal regulation, Texas cities are on the front line in the effort to figure out how best to balance industry, land use, and environmental concerns. Local governments in Texas, however, do not currently have the regulatory authority, capacity, or the information required to closet he regulatory gap. Using the community experience on the Barnett Shale as a case study, this article focuses on the legal and regulatory framework governing air emissions and proposes changes to the current regulatory structure.
Under both the state and federal programs, the regulation of hazardous air emissions from gas operations is based largely on questions of cost and available technology. There is no comprehensive cumulative risk assessment to consider the potential impact to public health in urban areas. Drilling operations are being conducted in residential areas. Residents living in close proximity to gas operations on the Barnett Shale have voiced serious concerns for their health, which have yet to be comprehensively evaluated. Given the complexityof the science, and the dearth of clear, transparent, and enforceable standards, inadequate studies and limited statistical analysis have been allowed to provide potentially false assurances. The politically expedient bottom line dominates with little attention paid to the quality of the science or the adequacy of the standards.
Determining and applying comprehensive health-based standards for hazardous air pollutants has been largely abandoned at the federal level given uncertainties in the science, difficulties of determining and
measuring “safe” levels of toxic pollutants, and the potential for economic disruption. Neither the state nor the federal government has set enforceable ambient standards for hazardous air pollutants.Identifying cumulative air pollution problems that may occur in urban areas, the State of California has called upon local governments to identify “hot spots” and to consider air quality issues in their planning and zoning actions. In Texas, however, preemption discussions dominate the analysis. Any local government regulation that might provide protection from toxic air emissions otherwise regulated by the State must be justified by some other public purpose.
Texas should consider authorizing and encouraging local level air quality planning for industrial activities, similar to what California has done. Care should be taken to separate these facilities from sensitive receptors and “hot spots” that may already be burdened with excessive hazardous air emissions. Given the difficulty of the task, there is also an important role for the state and federal governments in working to establish ambient standards for hazardous air pollutants, as well as standards for health based assessment and public communication. The uncertainty inherent in any of these standards should be made clear and accessible to local governments so that it may be considered in making appropriate and protective land use decisions. Texas should consider allowing local governments to have the power to establish ambient air quality standards, emissions limitations, monitoring, reporting, and offsets for hazardous air pollutants, following the model applied to conventional air pollutants pursuant to the federal program.
Professor Rawlins' article provides Barnett Shale activists with a new map to guide them toward more effective action. We'd all do well to study it and pick local battles that promise to contribute toward its realization.
Lon Burnam: Fighting the Good Fights That Needed Fighting In Austin for 18 Years
This one hurts.
Among all the election news from yesterday's primary results, the most depressing, and potentially most devastating, is the loss of 18-year incumbent State Representative Lon Burnam from Fort Worth.
It's a terrible blow not because Lon provided the margin of victory on close environmental votes in Austin. There haven't been any of those in the Texas House of Representatives in over a decade. It's not because he occupied positions of power. Representing an intensely urban area, for years he was exiled by the House leadership – both Democratic and Republican – to outposts like the House Agriculture Committee as punishment for his progressive views.
No, the pain from this loss will last because Lon Burnam was one of us, an activist, an organizer. Maybe the last one of us to serve in the Texas House for quite a while.
Lon grew up in Cowtown with middle-class parents who were dedicated environmentalists and community activists themselves – right into their 90's. He spent his boyhood camping with his family and watching his mother and father both participate heavily in the civic life of his hometown. He absorbed their examples fast. He was a political progeny.
Lon worked in campaigns for candidates for elected office from before he could vote. Even though he was very young, every leading liberal Democrat, not just in Tarrant County but throughout the state, knew about his contributions and sought his energy for their own cause.
Not long after graduating from UTA with an Urban Planning (not law) degree, Lon and two other Fort Worth natives founded the first anti-nuclear group in Texas in 1977 to try and stop the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant. Like so many fights Lon would take up, it was a good one, one worth fighting for years to come, but one with the odds stacked heavily against him.
He was an organizer for Clean Water Action in the mid-1990's, helping Downwinders fight against the burning of hazardous waste in the Midlothian cement plants and working on anti-smog issues. For years he was the Director of the Dallas Peace Center. How many people even know that JR's hometown has a Peace Center? Much less understand what it took to run it on either side of 9/11? But his real ambition was to be a legislator. Despite his peers forsaking office-holding for community organizing or other kinds of advocacy, Lon held the quaint view that public service should actually be that, and was its own best kind of advocacy work. He ran twice and lost before finally winning a seat in the Texas House of Representatives in 1996.
Once elected, his views didn't change. It was still all about fighting the good fight, no matter the odds. Whether it was same-sex marriage, immigration, nuclear waste, insurance reform, fracking, or anything remotely progressive, Lon was the elected official you could count on to take up for your cause and fight for it. Not for nothing is there a framed picture on his office wall showing him casting the lone vote against a House resolution supporting the Iraq war in 2003.
That was the official support he gave. But as important was the unofficial support he and his office offered to "constituents" who lived outside his district, but served his district's cause. If you were a clean air activist who needed a place to use as base camp while you were in Austin, you were always welcomed at Lon's. He made his staff available for work in the field with you, as well as in the office for you. Instead of trying to wrestle a state agency to the ground for months to get some documents, Lon would write an official request and get them for you in weeks. When you couldn't get an official to return a call, Lon would get the drawbridge lowered. He knew that his title could get him through doors the rest of us had trouble opening – because you see, he had been one of us and those doors had been closed to him at one point as well.
Lon's office in Austin provided one of the few oasises in a place that's increasingly hostile to regular folks. He used his staff to promote not only legislation but the issues driving the legislation. He used his position as a Bully Pulpit to draw attention to issues that otherwise wouldn't have received any. In other words, he did everything a community organizer would do if they held elected office. Even among our other Austin allies, this is what made Lon different, special, and beloved. And impossible to replace.
He lost yesterday to an opponent who's the logical end product of 21st Century Texas political cynicism. Beginning with Tom Delay's plan of a decade ago, Republicans have gerrymandered districts so severely in Texas cities that the only "safe" Democratic districts are also drawn as "minority" districts. The GOP wants only black and brown faces to represent the Democratic Party. In Lon's case, his district kept getting redrawn as a Hispanic district, with a higher and higher percentage of Hispanic vs Anglo or Black voters. And indeed, the challenger who won Tuesday's Democratic primary has a Hispanic surname. And that's it. He holds no progressive views on anything, has never fought hard for anything, doesn't really believe in anything but his own ambition.
It's one thing to be beaten by a legitimate progressive Hispanic candidate, quite another to be beaten by a cipher with a vowel on the end of his last name. It's this ethnically appropriate empty-suit aspect to the defeat that makes it so sour.
Although his last election was close, Lon has served so long and become such a fixture that many of us took it for granted he would squeeze by this time as well. This hard lesson must not be forgotten by any of us doing this kind of work. Especially for the next 5 to 10 years, as things get a lot worse before they get any better. Next January, things won't be much different if Greg Abbott is sitting at the Governor's desk in the Capitol. But it'll make a big difference to a lot of good folks that they can't stop by Lon Burnam's office.
If you get a chance, please call or e-mail Lon's office and tell him how much you appreciate what he's done and tried to do, and how much he'll be missed:
Lon.Burnam@house.state.tx.us
(512) 463-0740 (Austin office)
(817) 924-1997 (Ft. Worth office)
Between Now and Friday: Tell Them What They Can Do With Their Smog
Frustrated that Rick Perry's Texas Commission on Environmental Quality isn't doing enough to end DFW's chronic smog problem, the local "Council Of Governments" has issued a "Request for Information" asking for the public's help in suggesting ways to reduce ozone pollution in North Texas.
Please use our Click N' Send E-mail form to make sure they get the message that the public wants:
1) State-of-the-Art pollution controls on huge "point sources" of pollution like the Midlothian cement kilns and East Texas power plants.
2) New pollution control equipment and strategies to reduce the air pollution from the thousands of natural gas facilities mining the Barnett Shale.
3) Inclusion of all trucks and off-road vehicles in the state's vehicle maintenance and inspection program.
You can also add strategies or ideas of your own as well. Just click here, fill out the e-mail and send it in to be counted.
It takes as little as 30 seconds.
BUT YOU ONLY HAVE UNTIL 5 pm FRIDAY, VALENTINE'S DAY.
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Rick Perry's TCEQ is so discredited on the matter of DFW smog, local officials usually working in concert with the state agency are now looking elsewhere for help.
Ever since DFW was required to write and submit new clean air plans, The North Central Texas Council of Governments has been the local vehicle used by the state to funnel information, concern, and ideas back and forth.
It was never easy to get Austin's attention or convince the Powers That Be of the need to take bigger clean air measures. It took a decade for Downwinders to get the State to admit that the Midlothian cement plants had a huge impact on local air quality before they were the targets of new controls.
But ever since Rick Perry began running for President in 2010, it's been impossible for Austin toget serious about any DFW clean air plan. For the past four years, TCEQ has claimed that it can reduce air pollution enough by doing nothing.
That strategy has been a dismal failure. New car buying in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the 1930's was the TCEQ clean air plan in 2011. Austin promised that if we just sat back, we'd have the lowest smog levels ever recorded. Instead we had worse air pollution levels than we did five years ago.
This time round, TCEQ is saying a new EPA-mandated low-sulfur gasoline mix in 2017 will be the region's savior for the new clean air plan that's supposed to be successful in reaching the new federal ozone standard of 75 parts per billion in 2018. We're at 87 ppm now – still in violation of the old 1997 standard.
Just watch this new fuel being added to cars and see the ozone numbers drop, TCEQ is saying. No need to put controls on gas facilities, or cement kilns, or power plants. Nothing that would give Rick Perry's opponents on the Right any opportunity to claim he was "anti-bidness."
Even the Council of Governments isn't buying it.
That's why, in their own bureaucratic fashion, this Request for Information that the COG has issued is it's own middle-of-the-road middle finger to TCEQ.
Usually, it would be the state facilitating a discussion of new air pollution control strategies, but since it's obviously not interested, the COG has decided to go its own way. That's how bad things have gotten in Austin – even their most reliable allies in DFW can no longer take them seriously.
It's not clear what will happen to the list of control measures that the Council of Governments is assembling. Some might receive some more official attention, but locals have no authority to write or override Austin's decisions. TCEQ is the only entity that's authorized to submit a new clean air plan to EPA by the June 2015 deadline.
But there are ways to use the useless clean air plans that Austin is submitting. Downwinders' own green cement campaign is a great example.
In 2007, we successfully inserted a voluntary air pollution control strategy into the TCEQ plan revolving around the purchasing of cement from newer cleaner "dry" kilns by local North Texas governments. We then took that "green cement" procurement option and went to Dallas to pass the nation's first green cement ordinance. Then Fort Worth passed it. Then Plano. Then Arlington. Then Denton. Then Dallas County. Then Tarrant County.
Within two years, we had established a de facto moratorium on dirtier "wet kiln" cement within at least a dozen municipal and counties. Combined with federal rule changes, we were able to get all Midlothian wet kilns closed. The last one is being be converted to a dry kiln this year. All while Rick Perry was governor.
The same thing could happen with a good "off-sets" policy for gas facilities if a local city of county could pass a template ordinance showing the way. Currently, most of the gas industry is exempt from being required to "off-set" their air pollution in smoggy "non-attainment" areas like other large industries in DFW. Take away this exemption and you'll see a swift decrease in gas industry air pollution.
It's these kinds of strategies that don't depend on action from Austin that offer the greatest potential for progress this time around.
TCEQ has never written a successful clean air plan for North Texas, and it's not going to start now. But citizens themselves can take their lungs' fate into their own hands and begin to build a system of local measures that can make breathing easier.
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CALENDAR AND STATUS REPORT OF DFW'S NEWEST CLEAN AIR PLAN
Reach a 3-year rolling average of no more than 75 ppm of ozone at all 18 DFW area air monitors.
Why Downwinders is involved in the Azle Earthquake Fight
Downwinders at Risk's Jim Schermbeck was one of several speakers at the public organizing meeting on January 13th in Azle, just northwest of Ft. Worth, that saw the creation of a local citizens group to campaign to end the "human-induced" earthquakes plaguing the area for the past several months.
On Tuesday, he'll climb aboard a bus with Azle area residents and go to Austin to speak before the Texas Railroad Commission about the need to cease operations at local fracking waste injection wells until a Unites States Geological Service study on problem in completed in April.
Why is a group whose stated mission is protecting the DFW airshed getting involved with a fight over injections wells and earthquakes?
1. We were asked to. There just aren't that many groups in Texas that employ someone who knows how to parachute into a community and start an effective campaign from scratch. Downwinders is one of them. When we're asked to help a community we haven't been involved in before, as we were in Frisco, and as we are now in Azle, we think about our own past and the lack of any professional resources on the scene in the early 1990's during our fight with the Midlothian cement kilns. If we can be of some help in assisting people who legitimately need it, we usually don't turn them down.
2. Injections wells can be significant sources of air pollution. These facilities can dispose of 100 to 200 million gallons or more of waste every year. Besides fugitive emissions for unloading and storage, some injection wells also have outdoor pools of waste that systematically evaporate pollutants into the air. Injection wells are known to contribute to air quality problems on the ground similar to those experienced by original Downwinders living near the Midlothian cement kilns when they were burning hazardous waste. It turns out there are downwinders surrounding injection wells too. These well emissions are not only a toxic threat to residents living in the immediate vicinity, but they also contribute to regional smog problems too.
3. A win in Azle could led to saner restrictions on locating injection wells. It looks like the recent "swarm" of earthquakes around Azle are centered between two active injection wells. Why are these wells causing problems but others aren't? And why are injection wells being placed in densely populated areas near lots of water wells and infrastructure? DFW Airport saw earthquakes from their injection well and it got closed. Azle residents just want the same respect as American Airlines jets. Are there places in Texas where injections wells shouldn't be located? Yes. Like airports and places where people live near-by. Is it possible to use the Azle fight to better articulate that, regionally or even statewide? Yes. And that would be a good thing.
4. Azle represents an opportunity to organize and win deep behind enemy lines. Azle is in the heart of the Barnett Shale. It's already surrounded by wells and pipelines and compressors, and yet area residents know the shaking that's disrupting their lives is directly linked to fracking itself. This is a revolt of the already-gassed masses, something the western part of the Metromess hasn't seen. It's also true that Azle is prime tea-party GOP territory. Making alliances there helps give lie to the myth that environmental health is only something Democrats and tree-huggers are concerned about. Azle residents can't be easily dismissed as Greenpeace types. You can already see the worry from elected officials over the rise of these new critics. Railroad Commission special meetings. The hiring of a new state seismologist. A new legislative committee on quakes. All in less than a month. This ain't Austin. It's not even Dallas.
That's why we're getting on the bus come Tuesday.
“Did you know there are five carcinogens in Clearasil?”
That's the question called out from the bathroom by his wife that finally put Ed Brown on the road to making a film about how many synthetic chemicals we're exposed to in our daily lives, often without our knowledge or consent. Brown's final product, "Unacceptable Levels," has its Dallas premiere the evening of January 30th.
At the time, the couple had recently gone through a second miscarriage. "We thought we'd been doing everything right this time – eating organic, staying away from second-hand smoke." They didn't suspect chemical assault by zit cream.
"The Clearasil question" prompted Brown, a former stand-up comedian and CBS Sports staffer, to begin looking at the ingredients of lots of different products we use everyday, including the water we drink. How was it legal to sell carcinogens in something people put on their faces? What was a "safe" dose of a cancer-causing substance, and how did we know it was safe? He found the same pattern time and again – exotic chemicals included for mostly esthetic reasons that had almost no information about how they actually affected human health in the real world, being released on an unsuspecting public to mix and match in ways never predicted by anyone.
At the time, Brown was in the restaurant business. He had never made a film before. But using a camera he'd bought for family use, Brown became a one-man-video-band who went out and interviewed academic and industry experts within one-day's driving distance from his middle-Pennsylvania home about these chemicals. "I edited these clips into a two, three-minute trailer and began showing it to people I knew, who passed it along to people they knew. It eventually caught the attention of producers who wanted to help make the larger film and get it distributed. It was completely D.I.Y."
Brown is particularly concerned about how vulnerable women are to chemical exposure through personal care products and views moms as his film's primary target audience. "I think a lot of us look at a newborn baby and see it as a clean, completely unaffected child, but in fact we're having pre-polluted babies now, born with 200 or more synthetic chemicals in them. Science is telling us what's in them already could harm the health of their great grandchildren. Women are at greatest risk and because they're the child-bearers, but they're also putting successive generations at greater risk."
Changing the way things are done will take time. "It took decades for these chemicals to seep into the marketplace to the extent they have. It'll take decades to get them out." Instead of starting at the top of the bureaucratic food chain, he recommends pursuing change at the local level first. "Go to your neighborhood grocery store or drug store. Ask them to carry non-contaminated alternatives to these products. Ask the local water district why it has to put Fluoride, an industrial waste with no known benefits to dental health, into the water supply. Moms, when they're organized, have a lot of power in the marketplace. General Mills just took GMOs (genetically modified organisms) out of Cheerios because of moms."
When he does talk about wider changes in policy, he notes the attempted reform of the ancient Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 and adoption of the Precautionary Principle as a gatekeeper for new chemicals. "There's no question that the current testing protocol for new chemicals is deeply flawed, with only a 90-day observation period, compared to multi-generational health effects we're seeing produced through the new field of epigenetics."
Brown spent 2013 picking up awards for "Unacceptable Levels" on the festival circuit and is using 2014 to roll out the film for general release later this year. He likens it to other low-cost first-time video guerrilla efforts like "Supersize Me" that captured wider audiences with word of mouth.
Now with three children, including a new five-month old, Brown has quit his restaurant job and is trying to make a go of it as a full-time filmmaker concentrating on subjects he cares deeply about. "There's no doubt that becoming a parent changes your perspective. These things are not something you think a lot about until you have kids." He's already at work on his next film: "Genetically Modified Movie."
Ed Brown's "Unacceptable Levels" will be shown at 7:30 pm January 30th at the AMC Valley View. Only a handful out of 230 tickets remain. They're $11 each. To buy them, visit the Dallas showing's own website. The film will be followed by a short panel discussion including Downwinders' Jim Schermbeck, Earthworks' Sharon Wilson, Texas Campaign for the Environment's Zac Trahan, and Susan Lee Pollard of the Texas Honeybee Guild.
It Happened Last Night
Azle area families are proud to announce the birth of their new grassroots group, and movement, born last night around 8:30 pm, CST.
It's so new, the 300 or so parents haven't had a chance to name it yet. But it does have a mission: challenging the Barnett Shale status quo.
There's an air of mystery surrounding how these things happen. Many people don't want to be in the room when it actually occurs. Many get nervous. Sometimes it gets messy.
But it's really quite a simple procedure and last night the delivery room was primed for quick and decisive action by two earthquakes in the last 24 hours. No prolonged labor this time. When the call went out to fill the ranks of a local steering committee, bodies shot up out of chairs and spoke their names into the mic for posterity. Male and female, booted and sneakered, grandparents and their grandchildren, Black, Anglo and Hispanic. At the end, approximately 20 volunteers stood in front of the crowd receiving a thankful ovation from their peers.
There are few more poignant moments you can witness in American democracy than the birth of real citizenship.
The newcomer will be taking its first baby steps very soon – at least one bus is being chartered to go to the next Railroad Commission meeting in Austin this next Tuesday, January 21st, and speak to the need of immediate help versus the delay and more study approach of the state. The meeting begins at 9:30am. Details are being worked out now, but the parents say you don't have to be from the Azle area to join the Austin protest. It takes a region to raise a ruckus.
Congratulations to the parents. May their offspring grow up to be strong and smart, and know how to do its job in the shortest amount of time possible. Here's some sample news coverage of the birth:
Physicians for Social Responsibility Talk This Thursday Night
Chris Masey
DFW has a lot of things, but one thing we do not have is a group of medical professionals who speak out for environmental health when it's threatened by pollution or other human-made disasters. Nationally, the group Physicians for Social Responsibility (PRS) has filled this role for over 50 years now. Founded in 1961 to make the medical case against a "winnable" nuclear war, the organization has morphed into a strong voice for clean air and water from a public health point of view.
Despite being a national center of medical research and care, DFW doesn't have a local chapter of PSR. But this Thursday, Chris Masey, the Austin-based Texas Director of the group will be in Dallas to talk about their connection to current energy and environmental fights, including the one against aging East Texas coal plants that were the subject of a Dallas County Medical Society petition to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
His visit is sponsored by Dallas Interfaith Power and Light. Its scheduled for this Thursday beginning at 7 at the White Rock Methodist Church on Oldgate Lane. Here's what their blurb says about the talk:
Chris will speak about air quality as a crucial key to human health including fossil fuels background and information, specific toxic emissions, air as a carcinogen, climate disruption, and the shifting patterns of infectious diseases. Chris’s lecture will also include information about Texas PSR, and ongoing advocacy efforts to phase out and close coal-fired power plants and to advocate for stricter carbon emission standards.
More about our speakers: Chris Masey, MBA, is a eighteen-year environmental professional who has worked on a diverse set of projects throughout Texas focusing on public health, conservation, land stewardship, alternative energy sources, recycling, and environmental and solid waste planning. During the last two years, Chris has proudly helped guide Texas PSR (formerly Austin PSR) to become the largest environmental advocacy group led by healthcare professionals in Texas! Chris’ dedication to environmental sustainability is grounded in his love of Texas and the desire for his family to continue to enjoy clean air, clear water, and wide-open spaces.
If you're a medical professional who's interested in helping out citizens in need, or you know someone who fits thst description, please consider attending this Thursday's meeting. There's really no excuse for a metropolitan area the size of DFW not to have a cadre of concerned doctors and nurses who can speak put against fracking close to homes or burning plastic in cement kilns, or just confirm for some of our more aggressively ignorant elected officials that indeed, smog and lead are bad for people. With any luck, perhaps Chris Masey's appearance here this week can begin a conversation that leads to such an effort. It is way overdue. See you there.
“Unacceptable Levels” Screening January 30th Reveals How Your Body is Ground Zero in the Chemical Wars
New Film Screening
One Night Only
"Unacceptable Levels"
One man and his camera traveled extensively to find and interview top minds in the fields of science, advocacy, and law. He weaves their testimonies into a compelling narrative of how the chemical revolution brought us to where we are, and of where, if we’re not vigilant, it may take us.
Thursday, January 30 7:30PM
at AMC Valley View 16 in Dallas
$11.00
(Only 100 tickets left as of Monday)
It doesn't take the average citizen very long to figure out that it's not only the chemicals being released from the drilling pad, or cement plant, or lead smelter they're fighting against that's harming them, but also the way those chemicals are allowed to be dispersed into the public commons and our bodies by government regulators.
Every month generates a new study confirming how levels of a pollutant previously thought to be "safe" actually turn out to be harmful. Or that exposures to multiple chemicals can cause cumulative health impacts not currently assessed. Or that even if one generation escapes harm from a dangerous exposure, as many as three of four future generations of descendants are still at risk from being harmed by that very same exposure. The more we study contamination, the more extensive and complex it is.
Meanwhile, government regulators are stuck in a simplistic 19th Century, "Arsenic and Old Lace" risk assessment view of the world that's completely underestimating the harm of 80,000 synthetic chemicals on the marketplace. They're in our food. They're in our water. They're in our air. They're in our sippie cups and backpacks and jewelry. Only a handful – less than 200 – have been studied extensively. We're all lab rats in a huge, unprecedented experiment on human health. Your body is now ground zero in this experiment, whether you like it or not.
Why are there higher rates of child asthma, autism, food allergies, immune system problems? Adult onset asthma is increasing, soaring lung cancer rates among non-smokers and insulin resistance-related maladies? Science tells us all of these health problems, and more, can be caused by an increasing body burden of higher and higher doses of involuntary chemical exposures.
There is no better or faster way to get schooled on this contradiction between the science and regulation of chemical exposure than a new 90-minute film coming to Dallas on January 30th called "Unacceptable Levels."
First, it assumes the Everyman viewpoint of Ed Brown the filmmaker. He's not a professional environmentalist or propagandist. He's a dad that works in a restaurant that's wondering what in the food and water he and his family are ingesting. It's his curiosity about the chemicals he's surrounded by, just as it is with most citizens being shat on, that fuels the film's narrative.
Brown hits the road and talks to some of the leading environmental health researchers and advocates, including Dr. Richard Clapp, Professor of Environmental Health, Boston University and Biologist Dr. Tyrone Hayes at The University of California, Berkeley, Randy Hayes of Rainforest Action Network, and Jeff Hollender, the former CEO of Seventh Generation. You never get the feeling you're being preached to or given a scolding. Ed Brown is as surprised as anyone else at what he's finding out as he makes each of his stops. (We've put in a request to interview Brown. Stay tuned)
Second, the film breaks the information down into bite-size pieces that are digestible even if you start out knowing nothing about environmental health. This is meant to be a primer for the average citizen, so bring your skeptical Tea Party uncle or aunt and see, if by the end of the film, they still think the EPA is "over-regulating" industry.
Finally, even though it doesn't address air contamination issues that Downwinders works on, the facts of how "small stuff adds up" and affects human health when it comes to industrial poisons is exactly the same no matter how you get exposed. It's the same rotten out-of-date system that's allowing the exposure. There's no better one-stop explanation of how that binary "safe/not safe" system stinks than this film. It's a great case for regulatory reform.
Downwinders at Risk has a long history of challenging that system. In 1996, we published "Sacrificing Science for Convenience," by the late Dr. Marvin Legator of the University of Texas at Galveston, the first journal-published and peer-reviewed critique of the way the State of Texas assessed toxic exposures. It paved the way for an historic Houston Chronicle series and even produced some reform of procedures. We've continually challenged the "safe" levels of ozone pollution allowed by EPA despite their own scientists telling them otherwise, as well as "acceptable" levels of toxins from cement kilns and gas wells. Currently, we're fighting over what are "safe' levels of lead to leave in Frisco from the Exide smelter.
If you want to know a bit more about the kind of issues talked about in the film and how they relate for the January 30th screening of "Unacceptable Levels," please see these past posts:
The Dose No Longer Makes the Poison, But We Regulate It As if It Does
Another Study Reveals Why Our System of “Safe Levels” is a Tragic Mirage
Dallas-based Gulf War Illness Study Points to Low Level Chemical Exposure; DMN Ignores
Don’t Miss the Big D Finale to the Dallas Gas Wars On Wednesday
It All Comes Down To This Last Public Hearing and Final Vote on a New Drilling Ordinance
Beginning 1:00 PM
THIS WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11th
6th Floor Dallas City Hall
Participate, and (with any luck) Celebrate…..Over a Year of Constant Activism…….Over Three Years of Constant Organizing…….The Defeat of the Trinity East Permits………The Passage of Protective Dallas Gas Ordinance
After the Vote at City Hall. Come Raise a Glass with us at Lee Harvey's Bar, at 1807 Gould St.
THIS WEDNESDAY'S SCHEDULE
1:00 pm
Citizens' Press Conference
with special guests
1:30 pm
Final City Council Public Hearing on Gas-Drilling
ordinance
Following the Public Hearing, the City Council will have its final vote on the ordinance
Following the Council's vote, we'll reconvene at Lee Harvey's, the official bar of the Dallas Gas Wars.
Even if you Don't Live in Dallas, You Can Help Us Bring the REAL Barnett Shale to the Public Hearing on Wednesday
One of the constant refrains of our opponents on the Council is that drilling has been "going on for years in the Barnett Shale with no apparent harm." In particular, they love to use Fort Worth as a model for how Dallas should regulate gas drilling.
We know many of you have a different story to tell because you've experienced drilling up close and personal, or have family or friends who have.
The Dallas Residents at Risk alliance has put out a call for Wednesday's public hearing on the new gas ordinance that will proceed the final vote.
We're asking residents of the Barnett Shale who've been harmed by drilling to submit their testimony to the Dallas City Council.
You can do this directly by coming to the hearing Wednesday afternoon and testifying yourself, or you can submit you testimony to us at info@downwindersatrisk.org and we'll ask a Dallas resident to read it into the record for you.
We'll have these first-hand statements available for Dallas residents who want to help read them into the record at the 1pm press conference preceding the public hearing.
Our goal is to paint a more realistic picture of what it's like to live with gas drilling and production on a daily basis before the final vote on a new Dallas gas ordinance is taken. Please help us paint that picture.
How The Vote Looks as of Monday
Whatever happens on Wednesday, it'll be a close vote. There are still six votes against the new ordinance, and six votes for it. Mayor Rawlings, and Council members Jennifer Staubach-Gates and Dwaine Caraway are all officially undecided and hold the key to victory for either side. We must have at least 8 out of the 15 members vote with us to win.
Thanks to you, each of these three officially-undecided council members has received hundreds of e-mails supporting the new ordinance and its 1500-foot setback over the past week or so. We understand that they may be having an impact, along with phone calls, visits, and everything else residents are doing to try and persuade these three Council members to do the right thing. (If you still want to reach them here's their contact info.)
Thank you for doing all that you've done. We couldn't have gotten as far as we have without our army of citizen-lobbyists. But now we need your butt in a seat one last time at City Hall on Wednesday to close the deal. Please come if you can. Thanks.
D-Day Minus 7: Dallas Gas Ordinance Countdown
Considering how little public notice there was, yesterday's Dallas City Council "public comment time" on the new gas-drilling ordinance was well-attended by residents supporting the Plan Commission Draft. Over two dozen people spoke in favor of the CPC recommendations, including the 1500 foot setback, and/or stronger language for parks and flood plains. Murky statements by the Mayor about whether speaking this week would disqualify you from also having your say at next week's public hearing immediately prior to the final Council vote kept other residents from going to the podium.
True to whatever consultant's media training rule book they're following, industry representatives waited until they thought citizen testimony ended to make their condescending case that citizens were relying only on fear and didn't really understand the fracking process. The problem with this strategy is that you have to pretend the previous 45 minutes of citizen testimony never happened, since it's always replete with references to new scientific studies showing increased health harms from fracking, or another connection with earthquakes, or just strange foamy crap falling out of the sky into your yard from the rig down the street. It turns out the industry folks are the ones who don't really know the process.
And as fate would have it, citizens weren't through testifying. Right after telling the City Council how much West Dallas would lose out by not embracing fracking in its neighborhoods, up popped a West Dallas resident who said she wanted nothing to do with the industry, no matter how much money was involved. After another industry spokesman again said supporters of a stronger ordinance were just imagining harms they weren't really there, Sierra Club member Molly Rooke gave a devastatingly effective presentation on exactly how real harms to real people had forced her own group to acknowledge the dangers of gas pollution after initially endorsing natural gas as an entirely green fuel.
Unlike the staff briefing of two weeks ago, which allowed industry supporters on the Council to bloviate at will over what a crime it was to limit drilling in Big D, nobody behind the horseshoe did any talking except the Mayor, who was perfunctory in his opening and closing remarks and didn't give any clues as to his position on the CPC draft. According to Rawlings, it was his idea to have this "public comment time" prior to the final hearing so there wouldn't be the pile-up there was during the Trinity East vote, where you felt more like you were a cog in an assembly line instead of a citizen participating in one the small pageants of American democracy.
At the end of the meeting, Texas Campaign for the Environment members unfurled a banner urging Rawlings to "Be Strong," which was quickly confiscated by the City Hall Police Rapid Protest Response Team. Here's the Dallas Morning News' muted coverage of the event.
Because of the weather, Dallas Residents at Risk is waiting until next Monday to gin up a final push for passage of the Plan Commission draft going into Wednesday's final public hearing and vote beginning at 1 pm at City Hall. Please stay tuned for details about how you can express your public support and send a message to the Council to pass a strong ordinance. We know we sound like a broken record, but if you haven't sent a quick e-mail to the Mayor yet, you can click here and do so within a minute pretty painlessly. If you want a short explanation of what's going and what votes are where, you can read this previous post and get caught-up.
We have only a week to make sure our last year's worth of hard uphill slogging through corruption, double-dealing, and aggressively ignorant bureaucracies is not in vain. Please help us make it the last 1500 feet.