Drilling in Dallas
Time to Push Back and Make Some History
Dallas Plan Commission Public Hearings on Trinity East Gas Permits, including the "Rawlings Refinery"
Thursday, 1:00 pm
6th Floor Dallas City Hall, City Council Chambers
When the Dallas Plan Commission held its January 10th vote to "reconsider" the denial of gas permits to Trinity East, it didn't allow any public testimony at all about the dangers posed by these proposed drilling and production sites.
Tomorrow it will. And we need you to come and add your body and your voice to this fight.
When the Mayor and City Manager first cooked up this scheme to ram through the last three gas permits in Dallas, they didn't expect to have any roadblocks. They scheduled a meeting five days before Christmas and thought they had it locked up.
They were wrong. You showed up anyway and the Plan Commission voted to deny the permits based on your impassioned pleas for public health and safety.
When City Hall didn't like the results of that vote, and pulled the "reconsideration" stunt in January, 100 of you showed up on a work day to shame the CPC publicly in a meeting that received a huge amount of media coverage.
Now they're holding the second public hearing on these gas permits. We need a larger show of strength to demonstrate we're gaining momentum
We need you to personally come and tell the Plan Commission why it's a bad idea to allow drilling in floodplains and parks and build a refinery next to the city's largest soccer complex where thousands of kids will be playing every weekend.
We know it's getting tiresome, but when you show up at these meetings and hearings, you're helping us win this fight.
Slowly, but surely, your concerns and questions about these Trinity East permits are weighing them down and making it harder for them to get rammed through.
For example, because of your work, we're about to see a bi-partisan call for the Mayor to reject the refinery permit near the Elm Fork Soccer complex. That news will be announced at tomorrow's press conference starting at 1:00 pm.
There's also more in the works challenging the process the City is using to keep these "zombie" permits alive.
The tide is turning. But you have to keep showing up.
Nothing can take the place of a room full of angry citizens. Tomorrow, don't just watch history on TV or read about it the next day. Make history. Thanks.
Zombie Gas Permits on the March Again
Public (re)-Hearing on the Last Three Dallas Gas Sites.……including the newly-discovered "Rawlings Gas Refinery"
This Thursday
1:00 pm
Dallas City Hall
6th Floor
City Council Chambers
Press Conference followed by City Plan Commission Mtg
This is the "do-over" hearing demanded by the Mayor in order to win approval of these permits – after the first one in December resulted in denial.
Come and defend this victory or they'll steal it away from us.
Dallas Residents at Risk, the alliance of groups that we work with on this issue, will be holding a press conference at 1:00 pm – just like we did before the much-publicized January 10th reconsideration vote – and then heading into the CPC meeting at 1:30. Show up early because we'll be talking about a surprising new development in this fight and bringing you up to date with the latest information.
It's important to demonstrate that opposition to these permits is growing, so if you haven't made it down to City Hall before, Thursday is the day to come.
If you're a regular, then you know how much warm bodies in the audience mean to the moment.
They would have been no news coverage on the 10th without all of us standing up and publicly "shaming" the CPC over its "reconsideration vote" in person. You can't do that by e-mail or petition. We need you there. We need you clapping for the good guys. We need you hissing the bad guys. We need you. There is no substitute.
Looking for material for your testimony? Here are some things we know now about these sites that we didn't when the CPC turned them down in December…..
* Neither the Park Board nor City Council ever voted to allow surface drilling in parks. In fact, city staff assured the City Council in 2008 that would be NO surface drilling in parks. So where did Trinity East get the idea it could have two of its drill sites on city park land (The newly-named Luna Vista Golf Course and near-by gun range)? That's a really good question that nobody at Dallas City Hall has attempted to answer.
* One of the Trinity East sites now contains a large gas refinery and compressor station in addition to a pad site for 20 wells. This facility will become the 10th largest air polluter in Dallas the moment it comes on line, releasing 75-100 tons of air pollution every year only 600 feet away from the City's new Elm Fork Soccer Complex on Walnut Hill.
* Last September, the City of Dallas denied a new permit to a rock crushing facility near the Elm Fork Soccer Complex because its 17 tons of annual air pollution was deemed too threatening for children's health. However, five months later, the city is advocating allowing the operation of a gas refinery and compressor station that is estimated to release some 75-100 tons of air pollution a year. Why is 17 tons of air pollution a health threat but 100 tons is OK? Another great question nobody at Dallas City Hall has answered.
* Trinity East knew when it signed its leases with the City that drilling in parkland and the floodplains was prohibited. So why is the City of Dallas still saying its afraid of a lawsuit by Trinity for backing out of the deal if the permits are denied?
We can win if we keep showing up and asking questions.
Please show up this Thursday.
Magical Mystery Tour: Then vs Now
Dallas city staff are trying very hard to persuade the City Plan Commission to reverse their December 20th denial of the three Trinity East gas drilling and production sites.
So hard, they engineered a "reconsideration vote" to overturn that denial, now scheduled for 1:30 pm February 7th – next Thursday.
So hard, they're flip-flopping on established positions, misrepresenting the facts, and fabricating new definitions to avoid the truth.
So hard that they're resorting to the tired and true tactic of polluters and their flunkies everywhere: "Let's Take a Tour of the Site!"
So at 8 am on Thursday morning- tomorrow – members of the Plan Commission, under heavy escort by city staff, will meet at City Hall to board buses and take a tour of the Luna Vista Golf Course drill site, the gun range site near-by, and the refinery site near the Elm Fork soccer complex just west of Walnut Hill. Interested citizens will be along as well, but city staff has told them that they may or may not be able to ride on the tour bus with CPC members and staff. Too risky we suppose – what if someone wants to challenge the staff narrative? Is such a bus ride a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act? Good question. But Dallas City Hall hasn't been in the mood lately to observe the fussy legal niceties.
But the tour does give CPC members the chance to compress all the tricks and untruths of the gas lease controversy into a nice 3-hour package. For example:
Threat of a lawsuit from Trinity East for Not Alllowing Drilling in Parks or the Flood Plain
Then: "When the city executed its lease with Trinity East, the words “park land” didn’t appear. The lease designated just five sites – none on parkland – as authorized drilling locations. Two sites that were on parkland were listed as ‘possible’ drilling sites, the same two locations now up for review. But city staff made it clear to the council that the company had no assurance that those sites would ever be available.” (Dallas Morning News, 2012).
Now: Trinity East says "prohibiting drilling and production in public parks is a complete reversal of the City's position when the leases were sold. In fact, two of the pending drill sites are on park lands (one adjacent to L.B. Houston Golf Course and one on the Gun Club). Not only were these sites advertised in the original RFP, but they were also specifically identified by city staff before the
leases were purchased. It will result in a breach of agreement. (2011 Trinity East Letter to Gas Task Force.
Surface Drilling on Park Land
Then: “There will be no drilling allowed on the surface of city of Dallas park land.” (2008 City of Dallas staff presentation to City Council)
Now: Dallas city staff say there will not only be surface drilling on city parkland allowed, but that city parkland will be permanently taken out of park use to allow for drilling. There's a February 13th hearing on doing just that scheduled by the Dallas City Council.
Refineries and Compressor Stations
Then: Under the current ordinance, compressor stations and refineries “would require a planned development district because no defined use; or must create a use in zoning districts.” (City Staff to Gas Task Force in 2012).
Now: Under the current ordinance, special zoning districts are not required for compressor stations and refineries. These are part of “normal well site production.” There is no definition of a compressor station or refinery that distinguishes it from normal well site production. (City of Dallas Staff, January 2013)
Citizens will be on the tour with fact sheets reminding the press, the CPC, and city staff themselves about these obvious contradictions. But's it up to you breathers, to remind them forcefully enough to keep the permits denied on the 7th. Keep those cards and letters coming in and be sure to show up for the CPC meeting at 1:30 pm next Thursday,
“That Deal is Cut”
An op-ed from today's Dallas Morning News…..
There’s a moment in Woody Allen’s Bananas when the newly empowered dictator goes from deliverer to deranged. “All children under 16 years old are now … 16 years old,” he blithely declares. “The official language is now Swedish.” We laugh because the decrees are at such odds with the facts.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is experiencing his own Bananas moment over old gas drilling leases and having similar luck imposing fantasy on the facts.
But he’s not letting that stop him. The City Plan Commission will hold a do-over vote Feb. 7 on gas permits sought by Trinity East because the first vote, which opposed the permits, wasn’t to the mayor’s liking.
The CPC began hearings on these permits in 2010 but stopped because members were asked to perform tasks — environmental, toxicological and engineering — that were far outside their job description as part-time citizen volunteers.
So City Hall froze all action on the permits, established a task force, let it meet for a year and issue recommendations for a new gas ordinance last spring, and then promptly ignored the results.
In November, the mayor unfroze the process, declaring that the pending gas permits would be decided by the same inadequately equipped CPC, using the same inadequate 2010 rules. After three years, Rawlings has managed to lead us to the same inadequate spot where we started in 2010. Only now, according to him, it’s adequate.
But some things have changed. A Trinity East permit that in 2010 was limited to drilling is now a huge new gas refinery-compressor station that will handle toxic hydrogen sulfide and emit at least 75 tons a year of air pollution — within 600 feet of the city’s largest outdoor recreation center.
How do we know this? Because citizens went to investigate the site plans at City Hall — something no city employee, Plan Commission member or City Council member had done.
That’s a problem because the old, used-to-be-inadequate-but-now-adequate gas ordinance states that such facilities need their own zoning districts. That isn’t part of the current permit request.
It’s also a problem because the chair of the city’s gas task force never wanted compressor stations within the city limits. They emit too much pollution.
Now City Hall is scrambling to solve the problem — linguistically. Staff says that what they defined as processing plants and compressor stations last month are no longer defined as such this month.
In other words, “Everything that was a compressor station … is now not a compressor station.”
There’s also the question of how a proposal sold as involving no surface encroachment on city park land became a policy that allows rigs in the middle of city parks and taking park land out of circulation forever. But there’s method to this madness.
It appears that Dallas City Hall made a deal with Trinity East to drill on city park land and floodplains even though no such thing was possible under current law.
“When we took the lease, we had that discussion with the city,” Trinity East manager Steve Fort told the Dallas Observer. “It was made very clear that adding that as a permitted use would not be an issue.” Or, as Mayor Rawlings later said bluntly to reporters in December, “that deal was cut.”
It’s in service to this seedy deal that the mayor and City Hall are distorting the entire municipal bureaucracy for the benefit of a single gas company.
Rawlings should recognize that he’s abetting, as Allen’s Bananas character says, “a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.” He should withdraw support of the Trinity East permits. He should pass a protective gas ordinance that will process gas permits correctly. And he should demand resignations from anyone at City Hall who sold public assets to the highest bidder when those assets weren’t up for sale.
Ed Meyer is president of the Fox Hollow Homeowners Association and may be contacted at mcnalliance@yahoo.com. Jim Schermbeck is director of Downwinders at Risk and may be contacted at info@downwindersatrisk.org.
Last Rig Standing: the Stakes for February 7th Dallas Vote
Today, DMN Dallas City Hall reporter Rudy Bush wrote that the Exxon-Mobile gas drilling subsidiary XTO has decided to permanently withdraw its requests for gas drilling permits in the city. Previously, the company had said it was "suspending" activity on the permits.
With its decision, XTO becomes the second out of three gas companies to withdraw from drilling leases that were first signed with the City of Dallas in 2007. Chief Oil had already pulled out, apparently complaining that it was too hard to get a permit approved in Dallas.
That leaves only the three sites being pursued by Trinity East as the very last ones left over from the Wild West days of gas leasing in Dallas – the same sites that have been the subject of so much controversy since the Mayor unilaterally decided to push them through after Thanksgiving.
To summarize, Dallas citizens have beat back all but three pre-2008 gas drilling permit requests in order to make sure any drilling done in the city is implemented under a new, more protective, and as yet, unwritten, gas drilling ordinance.
That's why the February 7th "re-do vote" on the Trinity East permits at the City Plan Commission is a decisive one. That's why we keep asking for your help in winning it. We get rid of these three sites and we've managed to avoid the mistakes of just about every city west of Dallas over the past decade. We draw a line in the Shale.
We are three sites and one February 7th vote away from starting with a clean slate. Three sites and one February 7th vote away from not having to worry about "grandfathered" gas facilities. Three sites and one February 7th vote away from keeping Dallas responsible in its drilling.
All that's standing in our way is Dallas City Hall.
In contrast to what seems like a kind of nonchalant attitude by Mayor Rawlings in the DMN article, we know for a fact that he and the City Manager are launching a full court press to make sure the Trinity East permits get approved, despite their locations, pollutants and impact on public health. If the Plan Commission railroad job earlier this month didn't convince you, please look at what kind of legal back flips the city attorneys are doing to cover-up how bad the permits are.
Over this last week we've seen the city change its definition of what a compressor station is in reaction to discovering that it had one hiding in the Trinity East Elm Fork permit. What just last year had required a special zoning district to be built now no longer does. Now, the compressor station and refinery that Trinity East wants to operate are all just part of the "normal well head production" that every pad site has. Honest, that's what Dallas City Hall is saying – that a refinery and compressor station are now part of everyday normal pad site operation. Every well head needs one! But Dallas City Hall also says it has no way to distinguish between normal production equipment and anything bigger, including a miniature Texas City on the Trinity.
This interpretation of the current regulations was simply proclaimed by lawyers, not passed as policy. It has no basis in engineering or science or existing regulation. There are facilities much smaller than the planned Trinity East Elm Fork plant that are regulated as "compressor stations" and "processing plants" by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Dallas thinks it can downsize the pollution from these facilities just by changing what they call them.
That's how desperate they are to approve these Trinity East permits. It'd be laughable – if these things weren't being said by City of Dallas attorneys with straight faces in meetings with citizens.
It's about the process as much as the pollution now. City Hall is twisting the municipal machinery all out of shape in service to a single gas company. That's why we need you to come and stand with us on the 7th.
How Many Dallas Police Officers Does It Take To Approve An Illegitimate Gas Drilling Permit?
No punchline. Just wondering.
Thank You for Helping Us Show Some Green Muscle Last Thursday
Regardless of what else might transpire on the way to resolving the Trinity East gas permits, there is now one unintended, but indisputable, result. The environmental movement in Dallas is growing up.
Almost 100 of you came out during the middle of a weekday and made sure your public comments were heard, even as the City of Dallas used police to try and stifle them.
Tired of the Banana Republic abuse of government, the Orwellian hypocrisy, and the bold-faced lies used to explain the raw political power plays, you used your own bodies and voices to say enough is enough. You made your own raw political power play. You dared to push back. You publicly shamed the City. Out loud. You were so rude you had to be asked to leave the premises. Imagine!
That wasn't very Dallas of you.
Or was it?
You may or may not know that the Civil Rights movement came late to Dallas, and then not as a part of any national campaign, but from the grassroots up. There's a reason the late Rev. Wright has a freeway named after him. It's because he, along with other members of the black establishment, kept MLK and the national movement from coming to town during the 1960's.
It was only after folks like Peter Johnson, Domingo Garcia, Al Libscomb, the Medranos, and Diane Ragsdale started raising hell, and started getting thrown out of the same City Council Chambers Dallas environmentalists were thrown out of last Thursday that progress came in the form of single-member council districts and city projects in minority neighborhoods. Closed off from the power structure and negotiated change, they didn't have anything to lose in engaging in confrontational tactics with the City. Indeed the city didn't take them seriously until they started doing so – and suing in federal court.
Very few out of the hundreds that came down to City Hall to protest were tossed out. But the hundreds that came supported those being tossed out. Because they knew they had to finally stand up for themselves.
Last Thursday's police escorts out of the City Council Chambers were only the latest in along line of such escorts for people who feel like they didn't have any choice left. But it was the first time environmentalists had been the escortees. It felt like the first time the they'd said "we're not going to take it anymore." Thanks for helping us show some muscle as a community. While we may have lost the actual reconsideration vote last Thursday, your actions made sure that we won the battle over public opinion. If you don't believe us, take a look:
Dallas Morning News : Amid Cries of Shame, Dallas Reconsiders Gas Permits
Channel 11: Protesters Oppose New Life for Drilling Fracking Project
Channel 5: Neighborhood Association President Callas City Un-democratic and Un-American
KERA: Dallas "Re-do" on Gas Drilling Permits OK'd
Last Thursday's outcry should spur more public acts of indignation, as well as a new focus on city politics. There are city council elections this May. There are pro-drilling incumbents running. There's a chance to send them a message that's even louder than the one chanted last Thursday: "You lost."
Thursday's vote means that the City Plan Commission will now "reconsider" it's December 20th rejection of the Trinity East gas permits at its Thursday, February 7th 1:30 meeting back at City Hall.
Citizens won that December vote 7-5 with two members absent. We lost the reconsideration vote 6-5 with three members absent. Two members who voted against the permits in December voted for reconsideration. Two members who voted for the permits in December voted against reconsideration because the politics were now so rank.
What does it mean? Anything could happen on the 7th.
A second rejection of the Trinity East gas permits by the Plan Commission would kill the Trinity East gas permits permanently because it would then take 12 Council members to override such a rejection and there are not 12 members willing to approve them.
An approval of the permits by the Plan Commission would give a green light to gas drilling in parks, flood plains and near schools, overrule its December rejection, and send the requests to the City Council, where it would only take 8 votes to approve them, not 12.
So – everything is at stake on the 7th. Please mark it on your calendar now. And yes, we'll be sending out reminders. Because this is where we're we're drawing a line in the sand. This is where the abuse stops. This is where we stand up for ourselves and say "enough is enough."
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
Do this right now. Please. Thanks
Guess What? That “Drilling” Permit is Really for a Refinery
Under the guise of "gas drilling," Dallas City Hall and industry are pressing for approval of a permit that would locate a gas refinery only 600 feet from the new Elm Fork soccer complex, and immediately give birth to one of the ten largest air polluters in the City of Dallas, as well as one of its most toxic.
"There's a huge toxic Trojan Horse hiding in what the City and Trinity East describe as just a gas drilling permit," charged clean air activist Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk. "In fact, the Elm Fork permit allows for the building of a gas refinery that houses at least three giant compressors as well as an entire acid gas removal unit that strips off hydrogen sulfide, one of the most dangerous substances in the gas patch."
A motion to "reconsider" the Dallas City Plan Commission's 7-5 December 20th rejection of the Elm Fork permit and two other Trinity East gas sites is being advocated by CPC Chair and Mayoral appointee Joe Alcantar at this Thursday's meeting. If successful, the "reconsideration" would require the CPC to hold a second hearing and re-vote on the permits less than a month after denying them.
Opponents say the move is an act of desperation on the part of the Mayor and City Manager to protect a secret deal that was made between the City and Trinity East when the company first paid for mineral rights leases on city owned land. In interviews, the Mayor himself has said that a "deal was cut." Residents say the public was left out of that deal.
But after making calls to City Hall, Schermbeck is convinced that no one in Dallas city government is aware that the "gas drilling permit" being proposed by Trinity East is actually a permit to build a large gas refinery in the Trinity River floodplains.
"They're in way over their heads. City attorneys are still describing this as a drilling permit, but that's not what takes up most of the acreage on this site – it's all about the refinery."
During the December 20th City Plan Commission hearing on the permit, Trinity East representatives stated that the three proposed compressors alone – huge locomotive sized diesel-powered engines that produce thousands of horsepower in order to move gas through pipelines – would release 25 tons of air pollution each every year for an annual total of 75 tons.
That number would immediately place the facility among the city's ten largest air polluters according to the latest state emission totals from 2010. It would join power plants, asphalt and roofing materials manufacturers, and chemical plants as one of the city's biggest "stationary sources" of pollution.
However, Schermbeck thinks Trinity is low-balling their total air pollution impacts by not including other on-site refinery sources like its battery of storage tanks and "acid gas removal" operation that's designed to strip dangerous hydrogen sulfide off of natural gas streams through a series of acid baths and heat.
Hydrogen Sulfide is a harmful and toxic compound. It is a colorless, flammable gas that can be identified by its "rotten egg" odor. This invisible gas is heavier than air, travels easily along the ground, and builds up in low-lying, confined, and poorly ventilated areas. It acts as a chemical asphyxiant through inhalation exposure and its effects are similar to cyanide and carbon monoxide, which prevent the use of oxygen.
The equipment to strip off Hydrogen Sulfide from raw gas is large, complicated and dangerous. Site plans show a 200 foot long "pipe rack" with at least 20 "point sources" or stacks, apart from the compressors, where pollution could be released into the atmosphere.
"This isn’t a facility you want near parks or kids," said Schermbeck. "Yet, the City of Dallas seeks to put it just 600 feet away from its new huge soccer complex that’s meant to attract thousands of kids for hours every week."
Such a gas facility also challenges regional smog goals. A 2012 study from the Houston Advanced Research Center found that "routine emissions from a single gas compressor station can raise ozone levels by 3 parts per billion (ppb) as far as five miles downwind, and sometimes by 10 ppb or more as far as 10 miles downwind."
The Trinity East numbers don't reflect the release of greenhouse gas pollution either, which could be enormous from a facility the size of the refinery being proposed. Gas processing plants can release 20 to 80,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. By comparison, the entire inventory of greenhouse pollution from all Dallas industrial sources in 2005 was 25,000 tons a year.
None of this information was brought up at the December 20th CPC hearing on the Elm Fork permit because the permit request in its current form was only a couple of weeks old when it went to the CPC and the compressors were a last-minute addition to an older, pending request.
Citizens were lucky to get a crowd to even show up five days prior to Christmas, and Schermbeck believes no one at Dallas City Hall bothered to notice that one of the so-called drilling permits was a refinery permit.
"Because it had no expertise of its own, and it was ignoring citizens, City Hall was completely reliant on the company's version of what the permit was for, and Trinity East probably didn't want to admit they were stuffing one kind of permit inside of another. The City didn't perform its due diligence. The result is that it's been completely played by the company."
Schermbeck recounted that he could find no one at City Hall who had any idea of how Trinity East arrived at their "25 tons a year" air pollution figure, knew what kind of specific pollutants that tonnage included, or, most importantly, thought it would be good to know this information before the city handed the company a permit to operate an inner-city gas refinery.
"Mayor Rawlings and the City Manager seem content to give Trinity East a blank check to pollute Dallas air," he said.
A closer look at the refinery site plans also reveals equipment that is fundamentally at odds with the way Trinity East and the gas industry has been portraying what kind of gas Dallas has underneath it.
Up to now, gas operators have been saying Dallas gas is "dry" and without a lot of extra hydrocarbons found in "wet gas" further west. But the acid gas removal units and Glycol conductors proposed for the Elm Fork refinery are built for wet gas.
Schermbeck suggests that perhaps either the City has been mislead about the nature of the gas it owns or the nature of the Trinity East site. He theorized that instead of the Dallas refinery being built for dry Dallas gas, it might be aimed at wet gas coming from the west.
"Dallas would get none of the royalties, but all of the pollution."
Mad? Go to this link now and send an e-mail to the Dallas City Council and City Plan Commission that says you oppose these gas permits and the "reconsideration" of their denial by the Commission:
https://www.downwindersatrisk.org/featured-citizen-action
Do it Now.