Ozone Season Update: July Goes Out Like A Lamb; August Comes In Like a Lion

Family of gasmasksAfter an uncharacteristically mild June and July produced the best ozone season in six or seven years, August arrived to remind us what summer in Texas is supposed to be about.

Seven of 20 smog monitors saw their annual highs set last Thursday, August 1st, when temperatures begin to climb back to the triple digits, with the one at Arlington's Municipal Airport recording a regional 2013 high of 93 parts per billion.

Perhaps more worrisome is the fact that on the same day, the Dallas Hinton Street site by Mockingbird and Interstate 35 also set its annual high of of 87 ppm. That's the first time this season that a monitoring site so far east in the heart of the DFW central corridor has gone above the magical 85 ppb level. And it's at a site that had not been a problem for ozone until the last couple of years. The fact that it's still capable of reverting back to these kinds of readings despite the weather-driven reprieve this year is a bad sign. 

DFW hasn't yet achieved compliance with the 85 ppb standard for smog left over from 1997, and must meet a newer, tougher standard of 75 ppb by the end of the summer in 2018.

To date, four DFW monitors have had an "exceedence" of the old 85 ppb standard this year – Hinton, Arlington, Denton Airport, and Pilot Point. It takes four such exceedences to produce an official Clean Air Act "violation" that counts against the region's goal of "attainment" with the standard. So, four strikes and you're out.

By this time last year, we'd already achieved that level of non-compliance. As of now, we're still three bad air days away from that milestone.

On the other hand, all but two DFW ozone monitors have had one or more exceedence of the 75 ppb one, and in fact four have already had four or more of them – Fort Worth Northwest, Keller, Denton Airport and…Hinton Street. That's how tough the new standard is. Even after a two month head start of rain and cooler weather, DFW is already violating it at four monitors.

This week's forecast is calling for Texas-like August heat. If the wind drops below 10 mph, we should see smog levels rise again. Traditionally, August and September are among DFW's worst bad air months. Whether 2013 will be the first year to see no official violations of the old 85 ppb standard will depend on whether the next two months are as kind to us as the last two.

Take Another Hit – It Was the Best June for DFW Breathing Since 2007

inhaleIf this unseasonable cooler weather is making it seem like you're spending summer someplace other than DFW, it's also been the best "ozone season" in the region in seven years.

In the month that just ended, we only had four monitors on four days that violated the new 75 parts per billion smog standard that takes effect in 2018, and zero violations of the obsolete 1997 85 ppb standard. The maximum 8-hour reading was an 83 at the Denton Airport on June 3rd. Contrast that with last June: 54 violations of the 75 ppb standard and 27 violations of the 85 ppb standard over 9 days. Or 2011 – 24 violations of the 75 ppb standard, 7 violations of the 85 standard.

In fact, you have to go back all the way to 2007 when we had five violations of the 75 ppb standard but no "exceedences" of the 85 ppb, to find as good a June for air quality as we just had. And there are only a couple of other Junes – in 2010 and 2000 that even come close to being as full of safe and legal air. That's the good news.

The bad news is that these years were all followed by worsening air quality trends, that is, they turned out to be aberrations. So if this pattern holds, we'll have to wait until next summer to put it in context. As always, weather has a lot to do with how bad or good our ozone season is. The cooler and wetter, the better. The dryer and hotter, the worse. Just as this summer's cooler temps seem like they're out of place, by next June we could be thinking the same thing about our reprieve from smog.

The good news is that there's no questions that declining emissions in almost every category (we're looking at you oil and gas) have had a positive impact on the numbers. That's your doing. After 20 years of citizen effort, there's a lot less pollution from the cement plant complex in Midlothian, the coal plant belt in East Texas, and the millions of vehicles on and off the road.

For the EPA and the state, 2013 comes a year too late to help them recover from a terrible 2011 "clean air plan" that was supposed to get us down below 85 ppb by watching people purchase new cars. The clock officially ran out on that plan June 15th. Sales of new vehicles are dramatically up, so there's real displacement as old gas guzzlers get traded in for more efficient models. Whether those trade-ins are enough to cancel out the still-exploding growth rate of the area and rising gas and oil activity remains to be seen. That's why the EPA uses a three-year rolling average to determine transgressions against the Clean Air Act, to minimize the impact of anomalies.

You're just going to have to stay tuned to find out whether the summer of 2013 is the exception to the rule, or the re-writing of the rules.

Behind Last Week’s Ash Grove Headlines: “The Rest of the (20 year) Story”

breaking newsThere 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.

Notice Something Missing So Far This Summer? Smog Alerts.

hanging gas mask on hookAlong with cooler weather in general and a little more rain this Spring has come some relief from really dirty air in DFW.

Last year at this time, we'd already had 6 "exceedences" of the old 1997 85 parts per billion ozone standard in May, and countless exceedences of the tougher new 75 ppb standard that is supposed to be attained by 2018. As of today, we haven't had one even one monitor reading above 85 ppb and only a handful in the 75 to 85 ppb range.

For the last two years in a row, DFW has seen a decrease in air quality, and an increase in smog. Could 2013 be the year that trend is halted?

Weather takes a lot, or even most of the credit. Cooler temperatures and more moisture are not conducive to ozone creation. But unlike during the recession, new car sales seem to be taking off the way the Rick Perry-approved engineers at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality wanted them to two to three years ago. It's possible that the replacement of older dirtier vehicles with newer, cleaner ones by the thousands has finally made a difference you can't see. There's also the impact of cleaner operations at the Midlothian cement plants thanks to citizen victories over the last decade, (although the kilns are rapidly turning back into garbage burners), fewer coal burning plants downwind, and other improvements up and down the southeast to northwest axis that carries our predominant winds from Houston to here. 

On the other hand, last June was pretty quiet until the 24th, and then all hell broke loose, with ozone levels into the triple digits. 2012 turned out to be a very bad year for safe and legal air.

And there's the unknowns that nobody's really examining closely – at least not in public. How much ozone pollution is being caused by the natural gas infrastructure in the Barnett Shale that's been built over the last decade and gets bigger every week? How much is the gas industry polluting upwind of us in places like Freestone County between here and Houston? Does the continuing boomtown growth in DFW population cancel out the improvement in individual vehicle emissions?

From a regulatory point of view, no matter how good or bad this summer is, we don't get credit for it either way. Another bad year wouldn't be held against us. Likewise, no violations this entire year wouldn't buy us any more goodwill from EPA. We're in a limbo period, where everyone is just waiting around for the average readings from 2015 -2018  to accumulate and tell us what category of compliance with the new 75 ppb standard we're in. While it would certainly help the cause if the region had some forward momentum in lowering the levels of smog going into 2015, officially, it makes no difference at all – unless you're breathing air. Then, according to EPA's own scientists, anything above 65-70 ppb is damaging to human health.

Theoretically, the TCEQ is supposed to be putting together yet another "DFW clean air plan" to reach that 75ppb standard, to be implemented sometime between now and 2015. The last time it tried to reach such a regulatory goal – the 85 ppb standard – it ended up with a plan that worsened air quality here by starting way too late and basically doing nothing but watching as new cars were going to clean up the air in the middle of a recession.  (By the way, the "official" regulatory date of that failure is coming up next week even though the failure was certain last summer. Stay tuned to see if TCEQ acknowledges it in any way).

It's the summer of 2013. Any big changes that need to be in a summer of 2015 clean air plan should be being discussed and set in motion now, especially if they need 2015 state legislative approval, or lead times for industry to adapt. However, state or regional officials have yet to call a meeting of the local advisory group that's supposed to be monitoring the development of that plan. No date is set for such a meeting.

We can hope that a confluence of circumstances is making it possible to have cleaner air in DFW, but as long as Rick Perry is Governor, it's unlikely such an important public health goal will override political agendas.

Can Obama’s EPA Save Us From TCEQ’s “Clean Air Plans”?

Dallas smog aerialIt's only a proposal, but the Obama Administration's plan to cut sulfur in gasoline is aimed primarily at drastically reducing smog-forming Nitrogen Oxide, Volatile Organic compounds and Particulate Matter, the major pollutants that causes DFW to have such bad "ozone seasons."  Would it reduce it enough to finally put the region in compliance with the Clean Air Act? Good question.

Sulfur content in gasoline would drop from the current standard of 30 ppm to 10 ppm by 2017 – one year before the compliance deadline for the tougher 75 parts per billion national ambient air ozone standard. That's not a coincidence. The EPA hopes that this initiative is going to drive urban ozone clean-up throughout the country, even in stubborn dirty air hot spots like DFW, which hasn't been in compliance with a smog standard since it was created over 20 years ago.

Along with new stricter emission standards for cars that have already been implemented, the pollution from cars will be coming down over the next decade to historic-per-vehicle lows. Since forever, the state of Texas and local officials have put almost all the blame for DFW's poor air quality on cars. So does this mean that we might actually have a chance to breathe safe and cleaner air, by say, 2020?

Maybe.

First, there's the question of continued growth. If per-car emissions go down, but you're importing 120,000 more cars every year into North Texas, the decreases in emissions are being canceled out to some degree. In this respect, DFW has been its own worst clean air enemy. By attracting new residents year after year and, for the most part, not creating successful transportation options other than private vehicles, the Metromess dooms itself to more total car pollution.

Then there's the climate. Everyone knows how unbearably hot it can get in DFW during July, August and September. That heat and sunlight is one reason we have a smog problem – it chemically transforms the Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) into ozone. What if it gets hotter, and drier? When the ground can't cool off at night and you start out with high morning temperatures that will only get worse by 5 pm, you know it's going to be a bad air day. The more days like that, the harder it's going to be to have safe and legal air despite the changes in engine design and fuel specs. So climate change could rob us of some of those automobile reductions.

If the last couple of years are any indication, you also have to wonder how much of those vehicle changes will be lost on DFW because we live in the Barnett Shale. 16,000 gas wells that are relatively short-term air polluters are being supplemented with more processing infrastructure like compressors, refineries, and pipelines that are year round polluters. Last year's Houston Advanced Research Consortium study estimated the impact of even a single compressor or flare to be as much as 3-10 ppm within five to ten miles, something it would take thousands of cars to accomplish. Even if those cars aren't there anymore, or their emissions make them less of a clean air threat, you have these decentralized major sources taking up the slack. This is one reason why the state itself told EPA that last year there was more VOC air pollution coming from oil an gas sources in North Texas than all the area's on-road cars and trucks, and a large contributing cause to why air quality has been getting worse in DFW over the last two years.

It's not just the number of these facilities but their physical location as well. The more the gas industry moves eastward, the more of the DFW core urban area is "downwind" of these sources, the more the pollution from these facilities combines with car emissions and other urban sources, and the longer they take to leave the now 10-county "non-attainment area," meaning they linger, exposed to sunlight and heat, and have more opportunity to create high levels of ozone. If you have more flares and compressors within 1 to 3 miles of one of 18 or so state air monitors – you will probably begin to see higher ozone readings as a result of their operation –  as you have the last couple of years. Most of these pipelines and processing facilities have come online only since 2006.

And that's just in the North Texas area. There's evidence to suggest that the gas industry's building-out to the southeast – or upwind – of DFW is also affecting our air quality. In the same way that Houston's air pollution is said to make our initial "background" ozone levels higher, so too the 60-100 compressors in Freestone County, about 90 miles southeast of Dallas also feed their under-regulated "Standard Permit" pollution into the DFW urban mix. As does the Haynesville Shale gas play itself, as do the remaining east and central Texas coal plants and so forth. If sources to the south and east continue to increase their emissions, it means DFW starts from further and further behind, so that even if cars get cleaner, they might not get so clean so fast as to compensate for this imbalance.

Then there's the "fire hose" effect of the three Midlothian cement plants sitting so close to one another as to create one large super plume that's usually pointed toward the DFW urban core most of "ozone season." Because of citizen efforts, those cement kilns are substantially cleaner in 2013 than they were as recently as 2008. All but one wet kiln is closed, and that one is due to shut down next year. None are burning hazardous waste. But they're still the largest stationary sources of pollution in North Texas – including emitting copious amounts of NOx and VOCs – and they can still impact monitor readings miles and miles away. It's unclear what impact the burning of newly-permitted "non-hazardous" industrial wastes like car parts and plastics in the Midlothian kilns will have on the formation of smog-forming pollution.

EPA estimates an 80% drop in VOC and NOX pollution from cars as a result of its new low-sulfur fuel rule. That's steep. Remove that amount of pollution from all DFW's cars and trucks, and you'd expect to see a substantial improvement in air quality. That's what you'd expect. But, depending on a lot of other variables the state and federal government may or may not be interested in fixing, it could take more than this proposal to bring DFW into compliance with the new 75 ppb ozone standard that is now the federal definition of safe and legal air.

State Budget Writers Vote to Keep Raiding Anti-Smog Funds

l__burglar-cartoonToday brings news of the first skirmish in this year's state Legislative session over using anti-smog funds collected in DFW and other EPA "non-attainment" areas to ease budget gaps in general revenue. 

The Dallas Morning News has an account of local Dallas State Representative Helen Giddings teaming up with Houston Rep. Turner Sylvester during a House Appropriations Committeee meeting on Tuesday to make the case that the funds are desperately needed to help reduce air pollution in Texas' largest cities where unhealthy air is still the norm during "ozone season."

Everyone who gets their car inspected in North Texas pays an extra $6 that goes to the "Low-Income Repair and Replacement Assistance Program," (LIRAP). The money is supposed to be used to help low-income car owners upgrade their vehicles so they'll run cleaner. Because they can't afford to buy new vehicles as often, low income owners usually drive older cars. Older cars are dirtier cars. Fix them or upgrade them to newer cars and you reduce air pollution.

According to the folks that wear the green shades, the LIRAP fund will have approximately $77 million in unspent money at the end of August. Another $80 million is expected to be collected in the state's "non-attainment areas" over the next two years. That's a lot of car repair money. But as it turns out, state budget writers are proposing to only spend a little over $11 million in the next two years to be split up between Houston, DFW, Austin and San Antonio.

The size of the diversion has publicly angered elected officials in DFW and the other urban areas who are facing compliance with a new, stricter EPA smog standard by 2018 even as they annually fail to meet the old standard. In DFW and Houston LIRAP funding is traditionally used to build the clean air plans that must get approved by EPA. Without sufficient funds, local officials are telling the state that its next plan, due in 2015, might not get approved by EPA. You can imagine the disappointment in Austin of hearing that news.

Austin and San Antonio officials have actually threatened to pull out of the fee system all together unless they get more back of what their residents are putting in. That huffing and puffing paid off a bit Tuesday, as the Republican-led committee voted to approve an additional, but token, $1.4 million to those cities. Still, perhaps that lesson will not be lost on DFW officials, who have a long history of suffering silently as the state increasingly robs the region of its ability to control it's own air quality fate.

This was only the opening round of votes, and the House is more conservative than the Senate. But it's probably not a good sign that Rep. Giddings was the only one of at least five DFW-based members of the House Appropriations Committee quoted in News as leading the charge. Missing in Action was former Arlington City Council member and previous sometime-clean air supporter Diane Patrick, and oh yeah, the Chair of the Committee that hails from non-attainment Ellis County, Representative Jim Pitts. If the local North Texas clean air establishment can't get more help from its own players in the Lege, they're unlikely to see more money flowing their way.

Most Anti-Smog Money in Texas Doesn’t Go to Fight Smog

hoarding moneyOnly 12 cents out of every dollar collected in DFW to pay for anti-smog initiatives actually goes toward cleaning the air, according to representatives of the North Central Texas Council of Governments quoted in a new Texas Observer article.  Most of the money collected goes into the State's general fund to pay for other state programs.

Texas residents pay a small fee whenever they transfer a vehicle title or get their car emissions tested. Those fees are add up into big money every year – an estimated $772 million over the next two years. That funding is supposed to assist low-income families to get their cars repaired, and to help businesses purchase cleaner on and off-road engines. But only about $134 million is actually targeted for those clean air measures in the state's smoggiest areas – DFW, Houston and Austin-San Antonio. Everything else will be diverted according to a proposed state budget.

It's not like we don't need the money. For the last two years, DFW smog has gotten worse, and we're in our second full decade of failing to meet the Clinton-era smog standard even as we're looking at a 2018 compliance date for a much more stringent one implemented by the EPA last year. That means we have to have to go three years without exceeding that standard at any one monitor – beginning in 2015. That's not very long from now and that's why that money is needed now.  Not surprisingly, local government officials are a little upset.

“Our local and elected officials see it as county money that’s not coming back to the county,” said Shannon Stevenson, program manager at the North Central Texas Council of Governments.

The Capital Area Council of Governments, an association of ten Austin-area counties, has considered a plan to opt out of the program altogether, said Adele Noel, air quality project manager for Travis County.

“Honestly, we cannot operate if they do not give us more money,” Noel said.

So the North Central Texas COG is teaming up with other local governments in the state's largest urban areas and trying to redirect the anti-pollution funds back to their original purpose. With so many members of the legislature from districts affected by the funding shortfall, you might think they stand a good chance. But those other programs that get the money now also have their advocates, and not every member of the Lege from an urban county is necessarily sympathetic to clean air concerns. Stay tuned.

 

Remember Those East Texas Coal Plants?

TXU coal plantsThe Sierra Club does. Funded by a $50 million donation from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, its Beyond Coal campaign is coming to Dallas-Ft. Worth to take on the old TXU, the operator of some of the most polluting coal plants in the nation, including Martin Lake, the third largest stationary source of Greenhouse Gas pollution in the nation.

Hoping to persuade customers to switch electricity providers, as well as hit the plants as contributors to the chronic regional smog problem, the Club is sending at least two organizers up to North Texas from Austin on a regular basis. They'll be supervised by former Downwinder technical adviser and EPA Regional Administrator Dr. Al Armendariz, who's now heading up the Texas franchise of Beyond Coal.

Although some might argue that gas mining in the Barnett Shale has replaced the threat the coal plants represented seven years ago when Governor Perry attempted to fast track the permitting of over a dozen new ones, the old TXU ones still release formidable amounts of pollution because they're so old. A new Texas Tribune interview with Dr. Armendariz lays out the campaign's strategy for taking them on.

Where Were You?

When the City of Dallas Decided

….to either let a vote stand, or steal it

….to defend air quality, or approve a new refinery that will be a top ten polluter

….to protect parks and floodplains, or make them industrial sites

….to listen to its residents, or a single gas company

The City Plan Commission Can Decide All These Things Today

Thursday 1:30 pm 6th Floor City Council Chambers
 Dallas City Hall
 1500 Marilla 

Now is the Time for All Good Breathers to Come to the Aid of Our Air – And Your Rights

Stand Up for the Right to Speak Out

The fight over gas drilling in Dallas is now as much a about the democratic process as it is about pollution:

 – Public meetings scheduled five days before Christmas in hopes of lowering turnout

– Hiding a huge compressor station and gas processing plant that will be the 10th largest air polluter in Dallas inside a "drilling permit"

– And now, they want to steal a vote citizens won in December through "reconsideration" of that vote a tomorrow's Plan Commission meeting…without any opportunity for public comment.

But we assure you. There will be public comment.

Help us protect your rights as citizens and breathers

Join us Tomorrow

Because some things just need protesting

Thursday 1:30 pm

6th Floor  City Council Chambers  Dallas City Hall

And Today… you can send an instant e-mail to the Dallas City Council and the Dallas Plan Commission telling them you don't want them to "reconsider" the gas permits that were denied in December

Just Click Here

Do this right now. Please. Thanks