Midlothian
Groups Demand DFW Hearing on EPA’s Rollback of Cement Plant Rules
In a letter sent Tuesday, ten grassroots and national groups from across the country, including Downwinders at Risk, joined together to call on EPA to schedule a public hearing in Dallas-Ft. Worth on its proposed rollback of cement plant emission rules.
In publishing the revised rules in the Federal Register last week, EPA proposed only one public hearing be held on August 2nd in North Carolina, where there is not a single operating cement plant, although the proposed new giant Titan cement plant is trying to win permit approval to operate near Cape Fear.
Downwinders was joined by Montanans Against Toxic Burning out of Bozeman; Montana Environmental Information Center in Helena; Selkirk, Coeymans, Ravena Against Pollution (SCRAP) in upstate New York; California Communities Against Toxics, based in Rosamond, the Stop Titan Action Network, Penderwatch and Conservancy, Cafe Fear River Watch, and North Carolina Coastal Federation, all from the Tarheel state, as well as Earthjustice, the DC-based legal defense team that has partnered with Downwinders and many of the other groups for 20 years in trying to get these new rules implemented.
In 2009, DFW was one of three metropolitan areas that hosted public hearings on the then-proposed rules, referred to as National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, or NESHAP. Over 200 people attended at the impossible-to-get-to DFW Airport Hotel and almost 100 testified – more than participated in the DC and LA hearings combined. All but five testified in favor of strong EPA regulation of cement plant emissions.
DFW is also downwind of the nation's largest concentration of cement plant manufacturing capacity, with three large plants and a total of six kilns operating today in Midlothian, in Ellis County.
EPA's changes to the rules, which include moving the compliance deadline from 2013 to 2015, as well as loosening the Particulate Matter standards and eliminating real time monitoring of PM pollution, were proposed just as the rules were about to be finalized and signed into law. No one at EPA can explain exactly why. No judge asked them to. The public didn't demand it. The Administration seems to be going out of its way to find favor with the cement industry even as the EPA is still carrying on a massive national enforcement initiative against it.
If you haven't done so already, please click here and send your comments opposing the changes in the cement plant emission rules. You only have until August 17th.
The full text of the groups' letter:
We, the undersigned groups, respectfully request that the Environmental Protection Agency hold a public hearing in Dallas, TX on its recently re-proposed NESHAP rule for Portland cement kilns. We request that this hearing be held in addition to the hearing scheduled at the Research Triangle Park facility in North Carolina.
There are no cement plants operating in North Carolina. It is incredibly important for the EPA to hold at least one public hearing in a location that is directly impacted by the toxic air pollution that this NESHAP rule addresses. Dallas is an appropriate additional hearing location for numerous reasons. First, there are multiple cement plants in the vicinity. Second, there is a precedent for public hearings on this rule in the region— on June 17, 2009, the EPA held a productive public hearing in Dallas on the Portland cement NESHAP. Third, Dallas's central location is more convenient for other impacted citizens from across the country who wish to travel to provide testimony.
We have worked for more than a decade to secure strong protections against the emissions of mercury, arsenic and other toxic air pollutants that cement plants emit. We would appreciate the opportunity to continue our involvement on this important issue at an additional public hearing in Dallas.
Wastes Waiting to Be Burned in Kiln Ignite Unauthorized Fire
What local news reports called a "massive fire" swept through the piles of industrial wastes waiting to be burned at the Argos Cement Plant in Harleyville South Carolina yesterday. Ten workers escaped injury, but the fire was so intense that it required the assistance of outside fire departments totaling 75 firefighters, three trucks and two aircraft, and lasted all day as crews snuffed out hot spots.
Starting at about 5 in the morning, the fire quickly engulfed the 60 by 100 foot warehouse stuffed with carpet pieces, paper, and rubber ready to be put into the cement kiln as "fuel." Imagine a landfill or tire fire and that's the kind of heat, smoke and toxicity you've got to deal with when your "recycled fuel" goes up in flames.
Of course, health officials denied there was any risk of exposure to toxic fumes even as they were still trying to determine exactly what was in the warehouse. That's the deductive reasoning process in action when it comes to local officials in company towns. Harleyville is home to the second-largest concentration of cement manufacturing in the country, behind only Midlothian. It hosts two large plants – Argos and Giant. It's also been a center of kiln waste-burning since the 1980's
The kinds of wastes that caught fire in South Carolina are among those that TXI now has a permit to burn in its Midlothian cement plant, along with car interiors and plastic garbage. A permit that did not offer any public comment or hearing opportunity. The Ash Grove and Holcim Midlothian cement plants also burn industrial wastes including tires and used oil. In the mid-1990's a tire "recycling" firm in Midlothian connected to the cement plants caught fire and burned for days with the black smoke wafting through downtown Dallas skyscrapers.
Clean Air As Political Football
Yesterday's Senate vote on rolling back the new EPA Mercury rules for power plants is a great example of how both sides use fake controversies to puff-up their political bone fides and financial support.
At issue is another move by Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma to gut the widely popular regulations that would establish limits for mercury pollution from power plants – the largest source of the air-borne poison in the US.
Inhofe's motives are pretty clear – this is just one more run at trying to deconstruct the EPA and the last 40 years of government-mandated clean air provisions. This is what the Senator does. Even when he knows he doesn't have the votes to win weeks in advance, as was the case with this vote. Why? Because it's a presidential election year and the EPA is red-meat to the Republican Party core constituency. After a week of publicity about the rules and the chance to demagogue against them, the vote itself is a mere formality. In fact, losing the vote gives the Senator a chance to say that the only way to permanently get rid of these kinds of awful business-killing EPA regulations is to elect a Republican president and Senate. Get those fundraising letters out. Mission accomplished.
Likewise, many of you probably received urgent appeals from large national environmental groups to e-mail your Senators about this power plant vote or risk losing the rules. This too was political posturing. If you'd been keeping track of the debate, you knew Senator Inhofe did not have the votes to win in the Senate. And even if he had somehow won, the President still would have vetoed the bill. The rules themselves were never in any danger. So why send out urgent appeals? Because it's a presidential election year and the Republican threat to EPA is a red meat issue to a core Democratic/Environmental constituency. After a week of scaring people into believing the rules were in jeopardy, the vote itself was a mere formality. And the "closeness" of the vote means that the only way we can protect rules like these is to keep a Democratic president and Senate. Cue those fundraising appeals. Mission accomplished.
Tomorrow, it's very likely that the Obama Administration will begin the self-inflicted process of dismantling parts of the EPA's new emission rules for cement plants that Downwinders and others have worked almost two decades to see implemented. These rules govern Mercury emissions too – cement plants are also a major source. For no reason that anyone in the environmental establishment in DC can understand, the EPA is going out of its way to weaken and delay these rules. This is not a drill. This is actually happening. And it's not the fault of Senator Inhofe this time. It's the Obama EPA. But the Senator won't be crowing about it because it doesn't conform to his own popular narrative about an anti-business EPA. We'll wait and see, but we also imagine there won't be any urgent national calls from Washington environmental groups next week to stop the EPA from eating its own and save the cement plant rules. That's not the narrative they're trying to sell either.
But it's the one taking place on the ground in Midlothian and another two dozen or so communities across the country that were depending on these rules to make their lives less miserable.
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.