Citizen Action
Thank you, It WAS a Watershed Moment in the Dallas Drilling Fight
Yesterday's Dallas City Council briefing on a new gas drilling ordinance was supposed to be a showdown between dueling spokespeople for pro and anti-fracking arguments. And it did provide lots of memorable exchanges and statements. But the most dramatic moment of the day came courtesy of the audience itself.
Dallas municipal law attorney Terry Welch was coming to the end of his presentation on why the recommendations from the city's task force should be strengthened: If we're wrong and fracking turns out to be completely safe, then you can always come back and liberalize strict regulations. But you can't undo the damage once drilling takes place with insufficient safeguards. Err on the side of public health and safety.
And with that, 90% of the packed room erupted into at least 60-90 seconds of continued and loud applause. But that wasn't the moment.
Because he had ended early, even after this round of applause, Welch had time left. Mayor Rawlings noted that and said something to the effect that "If you want to keep applauding for 4 more minutes I won't objec…." The last words of that sentence had not even left his mouth before the crowd took him up on his offer, began clapping wildly again and within seconds jumped to its feet with a sustained standing ovation that went on for the longest time. It was one continuous loud and kinetic vote in favor of doing more that was aimed directly at the Mayor and Council. That was the moment.
This was no public hearing, but the public most certainly was heard. It was the first time the Council had seen the depth and breath of support for stronger drilling rules. The pent-up energy from that applause was like a Blue Norther hitting the Council horseshoe straight-on.
Likewise, it was the first time the Council's constituents had seen the depth and breath of the pro-drilling members' belligerence and hopelessly out-of-date attitudes. It produced a lot of head-shaking.
We hope to bring you selected video from the meeting over the next couple of days. Meanwhile, here's a pretty good summary from the live blogging the Morning News was posting (do tell!), as well as a more sedate article for the paper itself.
Some highlights:
– You Care. There were so many of you – in August during work hours – that they had to move the meeting from the smaller briefing room to the Council Chambers, which were quickly filled too. It was a tremendous turnout. Thank you.
– Industry isn't satisfied. It's clear now that industry is trying to rollback the required distances between homes and wells even further than what the city's Task Force recommended after their last-minute collapse in February. A variance of 750 feet is no longer adequate. Now they want 600 feet. That's 400 feet closer than a strip club is allowed to get to a home in the City of Dallas.
– The council most ardent proponents of drilling share Ireland's view that the on-going national debate has been settled in their minds, and there are no serious hazards to fracking in urban areas.
– Mayor Rawling is very much engaged in this process and issue. He was attentive, asked good questions, and kept the lengthy proceedings flowing smoothly but democratically. Whatever else you may think of him or his motives, he's focused and direct on this subject.
– Citizen advocates Scott Griggs, Sandy Greyson, Angela Hunt and Carolyn Davis all asked great questions and provided a counterbalance to the Troglodyte contingent of the Council. You might want to drop them a thank you note.
– "Sulfuric Sheffie" Kadane – In what was the most jaw-dropping exchange of the day, Councilmember Kadane asked Welch if he knew what kind of chemicals would be spilled at a fracking site. Not waiting for an answer, he offered not benzene, or toluene, or diesel fuel, but Sulfuric Acid. Perfectly harmless stuff! We use it to clean our swimming pools! A little Sulfuric Acid wasn't going to hurt anyone.
– Jerry "El Conejo "Allen – Councilman Allen was obsessed with all the "rabbit holes" Welch and other could go down in terms of the hazards of fracking and thought he had all the ammunition he needed from spending a couple of hours going down some of them via Google. These rabbit holes are known to the rest of us as research. Did Welch know that the Trinity River was full of treated sewage right now?! Did he know how many regulatory agencies oversaw fracking? Did he know that thousands of people die every year from exposure to chemicals in the home? Wasn't fracking only dangerous because people were talking about it? Above all else, he kept reminding everyone that the gas operators had already paid the city 34.8 million for lease rights and not only do they deserve something in return but that's a lot of money!
Angela "Law and Order" Hunt – The most revealing exchange all day was Hunt's cross examination of hostile witness Ed Ireland, the gas PR hack Kadane had chosen to give the industry arguments, over full disclosure of all chemicals being used in fracking. She asked Ireland if he had any problem with Dallas writing an ordinance that would demand the listing of every single chemical being used on site. Not at all, Ireland said. Of course, he added, the operators themselves don't always have the last say. They hire contractors like Haliburton to come in and actually do the fracking and THEY might have a problem disclosing their fracking fluid recipes. Three times Hunt posed the same question, never letting Ireland escape a conclusive, definitive answer. Do you support full disclosure? And Ireland gave three slippery answers that finally pulled the curtain away from the industry's premeditated deception.
We're gaining momentum. By the end of he day, there was such a stark contrast between the advocates and arguments for more protections versus the Hollywood-scripted arguments of the other side, that you could almost hear the collective council pivoting to our side, despite no vote being taken. We can't afford to be over confident, but if we keep the pressure on, we can win this fight.
Next stop – We need at least one, if not two evening public hearings on the ordinance. As you contact your city council reps, please be sure to include this request.
Where Speaking Up Can Get You Killed
Jose and Maria Santos were executed last year for trying to save the Amazon
Now imagine you were doing the same thing in China, or the Congo, or Brazil, where the global environmental "Rio+20" conference is going on right now.
According to the group Global Witness, 365 environmental advocates around the world were killed for their work last year, including Jose and Maria Santos of Brazil, a married couple who were both shot down in cold blood for their work in protecting the Amazon forest from timber companies. Jose predicted his own death only six months earlier:
"I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment."
Brazil recorded almost half of the killings worldwide, the majority of which were connected to illegal forest clearance by loggers and farmers in the Amazon and other remote areas.
It's no picnic to be an environmental advocate in Texas, the home of the world's petrochemical industry and the country's most virulent anti-green rhetoric. But it's not a death sentence either.
ATSDR E-Mail Address For Comments is Bad, Compensates with Week Extension
The ATSDR finally admitted that, yep, that e-mail address we published for people to submit their commnets on the Agency's Midlothian "health consultation" doesn't work and never will work, and so they're providing another and extending the commenting opportunity by one week to Friday, June 29th. Here's he entirety of the ATSDR's response:
ATLANTA— The public comment period for the recently released Midlothian Public Health Assessment has been extended to June 29, 2012.
Comments on the document must be made in writing and those received during the public comment period will appear in the final version of the health consultation. Comments (without the names of persons who submitted them) and ATSDR’s responses to these comments will appear in an appendix to the final health consultation. Names of those who submit comments will be subject to release in answer to requests made under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Send comments to: rlm6@cdc.gov,or mail to:
ATSDR Records Center
Attn: Rolanda Morrison
Re: Midlothian Area Air Quality – PHC #1
4770 Buford Highway, NE (MS F-09)
Atlanta, Georgia 30341
No "We're sorry we screwed-up the public comment process" or "It's all our fault, try again." We could say this is one big metaphor for the Agency's multi-year invovlvement in Midlothian, but we won't. We'll let you do that in your comments.
Downwinders, The Early Years
They Were Against Clean Air Before they Were For It
It's always a good darkly-comic read when fierce opponents of clean air take credit for progress even while they're still fighting against it. So get ready from some really twisted pretzel logic as you tackle the official and severely anti-climatic Ash Grove press release that announces the 2-year, $136 million effort to convert the Last Wet Kilns in Texas™ to dry kiln technology, eliminating hundreds of thousands of tons of air pollution by 2014.
This news was first broken by us last January, then Ash Grove applied for the state permit it needed (w/o having to be bothered with public notice or comment), and then again over a week ago when we pointed out they'd ink the engineering contract. Nevertheless, we'll leave it up to the company to have the belated last word. But you're not going to find any mention of Downwinders' seven-year "Green Cement Campaign," or the more than a dozen local governments that overwhelmingly voted for procurement policies that explicitly said they were not buying wet kiln cement because it produced too much air pollution. Or the lawsuit that Ash Grove eventually was forced to file when they lost a 5-0 vote over such a procurement policy at the Tarrant County Commissioners Court. Or how Downwinders successfully intervened last year to protect those procurement policies when Dallas and Arlington were thinking about ditching them over that Ash Grove lawsuit. No, Charles Sunderland the Third and Company would rather drink lye than give us our due.
But the press release does cite the "U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) portland cement National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) rule, which are scheduled to take effect in Sept. 2013," as a determining factor in the modernization.
That would be the same standard that over 200 local residents supported in-person throughout a day-long hearing at DFW airport in 2008. It was the largest, best-attended hearing on the rules that EPA hosted that year, including stops in L.A. and Washington D.C. , capping over a decade of organized support from Downwinders at Risk. No other single grassroots group did more for so long to make sure those rules got approved because no other group was faced with such a concentration of old, dirty wet kilns that we knew would have to modernize to conform to them. By linking their decision to the NESHAP standard, the company is at least acknowledging a large factor that Downwinders had a large impact on. But the comedy of the Ash Grove press release lies not in what it leaves out, but what it crams in – toasts to its success from all the elected officials who worked do diligently to destroy the NESHAP rule and, or thwart our Green Cement Campaign.
“My colleagues will be delighted, as I am, to know that Ash Grove is making this investment in Midlothian during difficult economic times. The costs that this company is incurring to comply with mandated federal air emissions regulations are incredible while sales are down in the industry by more than 40 percent. We are fortunate that they are 0making this investment in Texas. In my estimation, Ash Grove always has been a leading corporate citizen,' Texas House Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts (R-Waxahachie) said in his reaction to the decision."
Give him points for consistency: Rep. Pitts was against the federal cement plant rules when the economy was booming too. And he fought any and all attempts to protect the downwind cities from Ash Grove's green cement lawsuit in the Texas legislature. But he's delighted that both evil strategies worked in concert with one another and produced this wonderful result!.
Smokey Joe is merely pleased: “For years, I’ve seen these companies scrutinized by groups who would rather shut them down and force Texans to rely on imported cement. In spite of that, in a bad economy, Ash Grove has chosen to continue to operate in Texas and further improve on its record of reducing air emissions. I am pleased by Ash Grove’s decision and by the knowledge that it will be among the lowest emitting cement producers in Texas,' said U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R 6)….."
Yes. That's the same Joe Barton still trying to sabotage the very NESHAP rules he's congratulating Ash Grove for following. Don't spend too much time thinking about the hypocrisy in this one, it'll make you pass out. In point of fact, the fight over cement pant pollution in Midlothian has been about citizens dragging an industry kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, being forced to reduce its pollution but also becoming more efficient. Jim Pitts, Smokey Joe, and Charles Sunderland the Third never mention that while pollution has been significantly reduced in Midlothian as a result of all those nasty federal mandates and citizen lawsuits and permit fights, the actual manufacturing capacity to make cement at Midlothian's three cement plants has grown.
Not If, But How?
Frisco Unleaded's meet and greet turned into an impromptu town hall with Mayor Maso, at least two council members and City Manager George Purefoy showing up and fielding questions from a sometimes skeptical, sometimes supportive crowd of 50 or so residents who turned out to get an update on the fight over the Exide lead smelter.
The official topic was the city's start and stop amortization efforts that began with a January vote by the Council to send the matter to the city's Board of Adjustment, then seemingly stalled, and then got jump-started by Frisco Unleaded's massive mailing to residents around Earth Day that prompted the city to announce a June 18th public hearing date. Local municipal attorney Jim Schnurr gave a presentation on the amortization process and how citizens should prepare for the June hearing. He also mapped out a strategy to plug any holes in the city's amortization case against Exide between now and June.
But the discussion turned to other ways to get Exide out when Council Members Pat Fallon and Bob Allen spoke about the city's position. Although circumspect, from the language the councilmen were using, it seems the City is indeed exploring an aggressive "buy-out" of the lead smelter using a combination of bond money and economic development funding that would result in Exide ceasing operations within the next 12-24 months. That would probably be sooner than an amortization proceeding could close the smelter because of the length of time to hear appeals. But it would also cost more. With the rumor that the state and EPA have found a lot more hazardous wastes illegally buried at Exide, the expense of clean-up are still unknown but they're not going down. Purefoy did say that residents should see something happen within the next 60-90 days. The message residents sent the council on Monday night was that it was past due for a definitive resolution to get Exide out, and that they want all means of doing that aggressively pursued.
If you're a Frisco resident, it's very important to keep the pressure on and show up on June 18th at the Board of Adjustment hearing and testify why you believe Exide's operations are a public nuisance to your health and/or property. This time last year the City of Frisco was negotiating with Exide over the conditions under which it would remain open. Now, it's haggling with citizens over which mechanisms to use to close it. That's progress and that's happened because of a determined group of people in Frisco Unleaded who haven't taken no for an answer. Stay tuned.
Frisco Unleaded Meets Tonight Amid Rumors and Rumblings
Downwinders' affiliate Frisco Unleaded is having a public meet and greet tonight beginning at 7 pm in a back room at Matitto's on the Square in Frisco. It's the group's first public meeting since it sent out thousands of mailers to Frisco households about the dangers of continuing to let the Exide lead smelter operate in the middle of town. That mailer, along with the media attention it received, prompted the city to set a June 18th hearing date to move forward with amortization of the smelter. Local attorney Jim Schnurr will come and give an encore and revised version of his "Amortization 101" presentation that initiated Frisco Unleaded's first public meeting back in September. They'll also be a preview of the EPA/TCEQ "open house on May 21st, and a citizen's slide show of Exide that's ready to be shown in from of any interested group. Meanwhile, municipal election are May 12 and there seems to be unanimity among all four Council candidates that Exide has to go, although some are more blunt than others. From an anonymous tip over the digital transom comes news that that the TCEQ has found lots of hazardous waste in the Exide "non-hazardous" waste landfills. We're tracking this down and expect to have an update shortly. If true, this news ought to shore up the City's case for amortization, since no zoning has ever authorized hazardous waste disposal at the facility. And besides all this, is the city still trying to work a deal with Exide that "buys-out" the smelter? If it is, what impact will finding a lot of hazardous waste onsite do to the cost of such a deal? Digging up and re-disposing of a hazardous waste landfill or two isn't cheap. If you live in Frisco or know someone who does, you really owe to yourself to come out and find out what can be done to accelerate removal of the smelter and meet the brave citizens who are pushing the issues toward progress.