Natural Gas
Study: Low Levels of Hydrogen Sulfide Linked to Asthma
You may not know the name of the chemical, but you know it by smell. "Rotten eggs" is the olfactory indication you're being exposed to Hydrogen Sulfide. There's a reason it smells like that. Biological sources can emit it. Certain bacteria produce hydrogen sulfide as they decompose waste – like rotten eggs. It also occurs in geothermal situations. Hot water, steam and magma from inside the Earth carry heat, minerals and gases – like Hydrogen Sulfide – to the surface, liberating them in springs, geysers and volcanic lava. If you've ever been to Yellowstone, you know the smell. Industrial sources of hydrogen sulfide include oil and gas drilling, refineries, paper mills, large scale livestock production, waste water treatment and landfills. At high levels of exposure, Hydrogen Sulfide is linked with serious neurologic damage – including death. Lower levels can trigger eye irritation, fatigue and headaches…and asthma according to a new three-year study out of Iceland. Measuring levels of Hydrogen Sulfide near major intersections and power plants in the capital city of Reykjavik that turn geothermal energy into electricity and heating steam, researchers found a weak but constant association between the pollutant and asthma medication rates. It's one of the first studies to find respiratory ailments at low levels of Hydrogen Sulfide – much like you'd find in the Barnett Shale or any gas or oil patch. The fact that oil drilling has been around for over a century, and yet only now are we actually studying what happens when people are exposed ti it at exposure levels found in real life, tells you all you need to know about the risks of allowing drilling so close to people.
Dallas Turns Over Trinity River and Parks to Drilling
It's sure going to be crowded between the levees of the Trinity River in Dallas in a couple of years, what with the tollroads, and parks, and solar-powered water taxis. And they'll all have to dodge the new gas rigs, tanks, pipelines, separators, compressors and processing stations if gas operators get their way.
A new map direct from Dallas City Hall staff shows practically the entire Trinity River bottoms from extreme Northwest Dallas to Downtown leased to just one fracking company, Trinity East.
Look at a copy of the map accompanying this post. All that area in green with black stripes running through it has been leased for gas drilling purposes. Dallas Council member Scott Griggs asked city staff to start preparing maps of where all the city owned gas leases were located. This is the first. It was released to the press with the help of Dallas Residents at Risk, who produced their own map of gas leases on city land back in February (Channel 8 News coverage here; Channel 4 here).
In addition to the whole of the river bottoms, the map also shows two pieces of park land in Northwest Dallas leased for gas drilling – the Crown Point baseball and soccer field complex and the proposed Elm Fork Soccer Complex. And all this is in addition to the LB Houston Golf Course lease site where the city is considering drilling next ti the park's golf course.
This map is just the latest piece of evidence that Dallas hasn't really leaned anything from its past neglect and abuse of the Trinity River. When push comes to shove, it's still a dumping ground for the Powers That Be. To paraphrase the proponents only slightly, "It's already where we put landfills, so let's just keep putting crappy stuff by the River." Status Quo in 1964, even 1974 but unbelievable in 2012.
The final round in this two year old fight to write a new gas drilling ordinance for Dallas begins at 9 am on May 16th at Dallas City Hall in the City Council Chambers when the Mayor and Council will officially receive the gas drilling task force recommendations and discuss where to go from here. We know it's a workday, but we must show strong public support for the most protective regulations we can get. We must send a message that even the Dallas City Council can't ignore.
Wise County in, Hood Left Out: EPA Declares New Non-Attainment Area for Smog in North Texas
At around closing time came news that the EPA had finalized the boundaries of the new “non-attainment area” for smog in North Texas that corresponds to enforcement of the “new” 75 ppb ozone standard approved last year. The 9 counties that were already in violation of the older standard are still there: Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, and Tarrant. The only new addition is Wise County, but it’s a huge one given its prodigious amount of gas industry pollution and commuter traffic to Tarrant and Denton Counties. It also means that Wise County will be getting an ozone monitor. If it’s placed correctly by TCEQ – and that’s a big if – it could be giving us a much truer understanding of how high or low ozone levels are really going. Since predominant winds during “ozone season” (April -November) are from the southeast to northwest, much of DFW’s dirty air gets pushed into Wise County, where it then officially falls off the map because there’s no air monitors there to record it. TCEQ likes it that way because ozone readings in Wise – where DFW dirty air meets gas patch emissions – could be significantly higher than in most of the rest of DFW. And that would dampen the Austin happy talk about improving DFW air quality. Also coming to Wise are things like those Vapor Recovery units on gasoline pumps, and other stricter pollution control requirements – although the impact on the entrenched gas industry infrastructure already there is unclear. Hood County was also singled out by EPA for inclusion in the non-attainment area but is left off this final order. It also has a number of gas industry facilities, including compressor stations, although most have shown up over the last ten years as opposed to Wise, which has seen decades of oil and gas production. There was no explanation for Hood exclusion in EPA’s letter. DFW wil be classified as a “Moderate” non-attainment area under the new standard while Houston will get a more severe “Marginal” classification. Why? Because the EPA uses a formula based on percentage above the new standard and Houston has traditionally had higher readings – think Ship Channel “upsets” and belches, even if DFW had just as many. Dallas and Houston remain Texas’ only non-attainmenta areas for smog, although that could certainly change over time. Next up is EPA’s determination of the compliance timeline for all non-attainment areas. The good news is that DFW’s deadline should be sooner than Houston’s because it’s not as severely ranked. The worse the air, the more time a region has to clean it up. The bad news is that it could still mean officials don’t have to get serious about cleaner air until around 2015 for a 2017-18 deadline. That”s been the pattern up to now – keep waiting until the last minute to think about how to dig yourself out of a multi-decade deep hole. And believe us, with this process, 2 years is “the last minute.” There could be all kinds of useful planning and researching going on right now but they’ll be none of that. Because insuring receipt of federal highway dollars, not protecting public health, has been the primary motivating factor behind the clean air machinery in North Texas. Until those priorities are reversed and clean air is sought for its own worth, we’re likely to always be behind the curve, chasing “unattainable” smog standards.
“Drilling in Dallas” Community Meeting: Northwest Dallas on Thursday Night
Dallas Residents at Risk’s road show on fracking in Dallas continues its tour with a stop at 7pm Thursday night, May 3rd, at the North Hills Prep School at 606 E Royal (near L.B. Houston Golf Course and the now famous drilling pad-in-a-park endorsed by none other than the President of the Dallas Parks and Rec Board). If you’ve seen the map of gas drilling leases on city owned land, you know that Northwest Dallas is a hotspot of activity. Along with West Dallas and Mountain Creek, it’s one of the most densely leased areas of the city. Come see a basic explanation for why the activity is hazardous to neighborhoods, talk to some of the good guys who were on the City’s gas drilling task force and find out what’s being done to write a better gas drilling ordinance. Information is power. Don’t be powerless.