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On Monday, the Obama Administration announced that it was re-writing new pollution rules for cement plant pollution on the eve of their implementation, including delaying compliance by two years, almost doubling the soot pollution standard, and giving up trying to monitor that pollution in real time.

This is an unacceptable rollback in emission rules that Downwinders and is supporters have been fighting for since the mid-1990's and we must organize now to show the EPA they have no popular support at all.

North Texas is one of the regions that will be most affected by EPA's retreat. Midlothian hosts the largest concentration of cement plants in the US, with three huge plants owned by TXI, Holcim, and Ash Grove operating a total six kilns, or furnaces within a few miles of each other. All three have permits to burn used tires and other industrial waste besides coal. They are the largest stationary sources of air pollution in North Texas, emitting hundreds of thousands of tons annually.

Finalized in August 2010, and on the eve of being made into law with a deadline of 2013 to comply, the new EPA emission rules were projected to prevent between 960 and 2,500 premature deaths, 1,500 non-fatal heart attacks, and 17,000 cases of aggravated asthma EVERY YEAR.

By EPA's own estimate, the two-year delay until 2015 would cause between 1,920 and 5,000 avoidable deaths, 3,000 non-fatal heart attacks, and 34,000 cases of aggravated asthma.  Since we have more cement plant capacity than any other part of he country, we'll probalby be absorbing a disproprotional share of that harm.

The delay in compliance from 2013 to 2015 is bad enough, but the EPA is also proposing to raise the Particulate Matter emissions rate for existing plants from .04 pounds of manufactured cement to .07 and it's scrapping requirements to monitor PM pollution in real time and instead substituting a controlled test burn every three years.

PM is used as a surrogate for toxic metals like Mercury, Lead and Cadmium. It's one of the most insidious and dangerous pollutants there are. The EPA just lowered the national ambient air standard for PM pollution based on the medical literature linking even very low levels of the pollution to a variety of health effects, including heart attacks, strokes and brain damage.

EPA has given cement plants a free pass – with only one test every three years to prove they're meeting a daily standard.  This is like trying to control speedy drivers with a radar gun test every three years – and you know exactly where and when the radar gun will be pointing at you.

Concurrent with the EPA's announced plan to weaken and delay its clean air standards for cement plants, the agency also announced that a variety of industrial wastes such as tires, treated wood, plastic and chemical solvents do not meet the agency's new definition of "solid waste." That will mean cement plants like those in Midlothian can burn these kinds of industrial wastes without having to meet more stringent requirements under the Clean Air Act that were designed to limit the additional amount of dangerous pollution that results from their incineration.

The EPA issued the proposed changes under a court settlement with the Portland Cement Association. However, that case was decided more than six months ago in a unanimous decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Nothing in the Court's decision requires that the agency's rules for cement plants must be weakened or delayed in any way. Numerous attempts by industry lobbyists to weaken and delay the rules in Congress were ultimately voted down. After two decades of trying to get the EPA to follow the Clean Air Act, citizens thought they had overcome their final hurdle.

What the cement industry, radical House Republicans, and the courts could not do over the last two decades, EPA is trying to accomplish on its own just as this proposal was about to be implemented.

This is what makes these changes so senseless. EPA seems to be going out of its way to kowtow to the cement industry when it doesn't have to, and when the vast majority of citizens over the last 20 years have urged it not to. Many of you will remember that one of only three national hearings on the rule in September 2009 took place at the DFW Airport Hotel and drew over 200 people. Every speaker, save for less than a half dozen industry representatives, were supportive of strong emission limits for cement plants.

Downwinders at Risk was one of the original plaintiffs that went to court in the 1990's and early 2000's to challenge weak Clinton Administration rules for cement plants that were eventually overturned. It's been a major force in rallying public support for better regulation of cement plant pollution since its founding in 1994. And we're not stopping now.

Please send comments to EPA on these new rules. Click and submit the prepared comments we have at our website, or write your own using the same click and comment tool, but please make sure your voice is added to the thousands of others that we need to send EPA a strong message of disapproval. EPA is hoping this is a niche issue that you don't care about. Please prove them wrong.

CLICK HERE TO SEND YOUR COMMENTS TO EPA RIGHT NOW

Not sure of what the point is of having a public hearing on a done deal, but that's what the Frisco Community Development Corporation is doing Thursday night at 6:30 at Frisco City Hall, where items 1 and 2 on the agenda are public hearings on the pieces of Exide plant property the CDC is buying as part of the larger buy-out of the smelter announced in early June. It might have been more useful to have such a thing before the city signed off on the agrement so citizens could learn of the extent of soil testing being done, or debate about how low clean-up levels should be for any kind of new economic developmnet on the proprty. But oh well. Still, if you're a Frisco resident, it might be a good thing to offically register your concern at the potential leaden pig in a poke the city owns now and why you want the best, most thorough clean-up possible of all Eide properties.

Via the Dallas Morning New comes word that the American Lung Association has developed a new i-phone and Android app that can keep track of your local air quality status. It supposedly brings you real time smog and particulate matter info using the EPA's brightly colored Air Quality Index that you may have seen on local weather cast, although "real time" in this case is about 2 hours behind the actual numbers you'll be breathing thanks to the state's slow posting. It also offers the handy option of sending clean air messages to members of Congress and donating to the ALA. Having a bad air day? Make sure your elected offciials know.

Dallas Residents at Risk is taking its road show on fracking and the City's new gas drilling ordinance to southwest Dallas this Tuesday night,May 8th beginning at 7pm at the Harmony School, 8120 West Camp Wisdom Road. Along with northwest Dallas and West Dsllas, Mountain Creek is the site of some of the densest gas lease activity in the city. Longtime citizen activists Ed and Claudia Meyer will be hosting the event in their own neighborhood this time, with Downwinders Jim Schermbeck, Texas Campaign for the Environment's Zac Trahan, Sharon Wilson of Earthworks and the Blue Daze drilling blog, members of the gas drilling task force and other special guests. Don't forget that the Dallas City Council will be getting its first briefing on the gas drilling issue in a year on Wednesday, May 16th in the 6th floor Council Chambers at City Hall starting a 9am. If you can be there for this important milestone event, please attend and show your support for a stronger, more protective gas drilling ordinance for Dallas.

It's been a week since Dr. Armendariz resigned as Region 6 EPA Administrator.  Here's the best timeline of the events leading up to that tragedy.

(NOTE ON GRAPHICS: Pie chart on the right  hand side is from 2012 estimates from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality as part of the DFW State Implmentation Plan submitted to EPA in December 2011. Pie chart on the left hand side is from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for 2009 and still being used by the state)

Since DFW was first identified has having a smog problem in the mid to late 1980's, there's a standard formula that's become familiar to folks in local air quality: NOx and VOCs + Sunlight = Ozone.

There have always been two primary culprits to North Texas' chronic smog problem. NOx, or Nitrogen Oxides which primarily come from combustion sources (engines, boilers, furnaces), and VOCs, or Volatile Organic Compounds that are mostly invisible plumes and fumes from things like gasoline pumps, storage tanks, as well as combustion. These pollutants combine with sunlight and heat that chemically interacts with them and forms ozone downwind.

When the first air pollution control measures were adopted, Austin and the EPA agreed that VOCS were the driving force DFW ozone levels. Some old-timers may remember the Mrs. Baird's bakery on the West Freeway in Ft. Worth having to install controls that eliminated the smell of baking bread that was stout enough to waft across the highway. That's also why every gas pump in Collin, Denton, Dallas, and Tarrant Counties has a "Vapor Recovery Unit."

Over the years, the blame shifted to a combination of VOCs and NOx, and that's what made it possible to bring large NOx polluters like cement plants and coal plants into the picture. Still, VOC emissions remained a major player in the DFW smog problem, and they've been addressed with controls on everything from solvents, to boat resins, to bakeries by every single clean air plan ever drafted by the state and EPA.

But now Austin is saying VOCs aren't such a big problem after all, that DFW's smog is all about the NOx. Why? Austin's computer model says so. This is the same computer model that says DFW ozone levels will reach historic lows this summer. But might there be another reason? TCEQ's de-emphasis on VOCs coincides precisely with a very large jump in VOC pollution from the gas industry, a jump due to the explosion of drilling in the Barnett Shale and the government's lack of regulation to control it. In 2006, cars and trucks in DFW still spewed more VOCs than the gas industry. This year, the gas industry will release 30 MORE TONS PER DAY of VOCs than all the cars and trucks in DFW combined according to the TCEQ itself. But you'd never know it from looking at any of the public material the TCEQ produces about DFW's ozone problem. Instead it's all NOx all the time.

This slant benefits a politicized TCEQ in a couple of ways. First, when you talk about NOx, you don't have to talk about the doubling of gas industry emissions over the past decade or so. Second, you can keep repeating the mantra that it's all about cars. Cars only produce about 15% of the VOC pollution in DFW vs 49% of all NOx in North Texas. No need to worry about new controls on cement plants or coal plants when it's really all about cars. Until today, that TCEQ message creep was showing up locally in websites and promotional material sponsored by the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) made up of area municipal and county governments. 

Unlike in past years when the familiar formula of both NOx and VOcs was recited to the public, this year NCTCOG's Air North Texas site, Air Facts page trumpeted that "On road vehicles cause half of the ozone forming emissions. Ozone forms when nitrogen oxides (NOx) combine with sunlight and intense heat." That just wasn't true. When you combine all VOC and NOx emissions (as calculated by TCEQ) in DFW, on-road vehicles account for 29% of ALL ozone forming emissions. Point Sources like cement plants and other industrial facilities, combined with oil and gas sources, total 25% – a much different looking pie chart than when you use NOx emission alone.

To its credit, as a result of our inquiry, the NCTCOG Air North Texas "air facts" page has been re-edited to put VOCs back into the equation as of today, along with a little bit of spin claiming that "historical emphasis has indicated NOx reductions are the most appropriate way the region can lower ozone levels." We label that spin because it relies totally on the TCEQ's point of view, which has been, how do we put it, "historically wrong." We've already discussed how the DFW smog problem began as just a VOCs problem. We know they're still a factor. And if NOx reductions alone are so darn effective, why haven't they worked better? According to the TCEQ, total NOx pollution from ALL DFW sources decreased by almost 150 tons per day over the last six years. And yet 2011 was the worst ozone season since 2007. VOC Pollution? It's increased by 17 tons per day despite almost every individual category going down, save the ambiguous "Area" sources and emissions from the Oil and Gas industry.

So if NOx decreases ozone so much more effectively than VOC decreases, how come 2011 ozone levels didn't reflect that? Many public officials around the country cite scientific evidence that already smoggy air turbocharges the ability of gas patch pollution to create more ozone. Usually very weak VOC molecules are transformed into smog-producing machines. TCEQ refuses to factor in this scientifically validated increased reactivity of VOCs being released by gas sources despite predominate winds carrying already smoggy air into the heart of drilling country in Tarrant, Denton, Wise, and Johnson Counties. It's model doesn't recognize this phenomena happening. 

TCEQ may also be underestimating the ability of these weak VOCs to already make ozone. In her 2011 landmark "Leaking Money" report for Downwinders, Dr. Melanie Sattler wrote that just the sheer volume of new gas industry VOCs is enough to affect DFW ozone levels.

If DFW is ever going to solve its chronic smog problem, it has to have reliable information about what the increase in gas industry pollution is doing to our air. We don't have that now and no one in Austin is interested in finding out. Local leaders would be wise to decouple themselves from the TCEQ's politicized and uncurious approach to DFW air quality planning in Austin and find funding for their own research that can test for things the state doesn't want to know….

Here's the full statement of Chris Klaus, Senior program Manager at NCTCOG and the lead staff person ther for all things air: "We appreciate your e-mail and comments regarding air quality facts and information on our Air North Texas and the North Central Texas Council of Governments’ (NCTCOG) websites.  We welcome and value this type of input.  In regards to your comments, historical emphasis has indicated NOx reductions are the most appropriate way the region can lower ozone levels.  Of the primary emission sources, on-road vehicle activities account for nearly half of the NOx inventory.  We frequently discuss NOx and VOCs when providing outreach, and have updated the Air North Texas website to make sure VOCs are referenced when appropriate.  Air North Texas is meant for the general public, and NCTCOG staff feels it is more effective to educate them about what they can do to improve air quality, and how to protect their health and the environment." 

In today's New York Times, columnist Nicolas Kristof writes extensively about the threat of endocrine disruptors – those chemicals that, instead of killing you outright, do strange and horrible things to your hormones and reproductive systems like genital deformities, breast cancer, infertility, diabetes and even obesity. Endocrine disruptors are everywhere, in food, cosmetics, even the receipts you get at the grocery store or your ATM machine...and the air pollution from many kinds of facilities.  It's the hormone-wrecking properties of one such chemical – bisphenol-A, or BPA, used to line food cans – that prompted eight medial organizations representing MDs in the fields of genetics, gynecology, and urology to say BPA should be banned from the marketplace last year. But it's clear that there are many, many chemicals, including less exotic ones like lead, and dioxin, that also act as hormone disruptors in the body. As Kristof explains, scientists know that even the tiniest variations in hormone levels influence fetal development. Endocrine disruptors play a kind of birth defect roulette as they course around the mother's body and end up in the fetus' bloodstream. In making his argument, Kristoff uses the example of a very specific birth defect, Hypospadias – a misplacement of the urethra – is now twice as common as it used to be and cites a leading researcher linking this trend to increased exposure to endocrine disruptors.  Why is this important for North Texans? Because the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) found that the incidence of Hypospadias was approximately four times higher in Midlothian than the state of Texas as a whole. Remember, everyone is exposed to a constant sea of endocrine disruptors just from everyday living, so that wouldn't explain the much higher rate of a specific birth defect linked to the chemicals in Midlothian. But maybe operating three huge cement plants plus a steel mill could.  That same ATSR study – officially "inconclusive," also found a much higher rate for Microcephaly, where the newborn's head is more than two standard deviations smaller than the average, and Craniosynostosis, a condition in which one or more of the skulls' fibrous sutures prematurely fuses. That was only one study of a specific area. We know the Frisco lead smelter generates large quantities of dioxin. We don't know the impact of those releases. We know that gas drilling also involves a lot of chemicals identified a endocrine disruptors, but we don't how the last decade of urban drilling in the Barnett Shale has dispersed them or what their cumulative effect has been. According to Kristof, many scientists have seen enough proof and now want to better protect us from the dangers of endocrine disruptors. "For several well-studied endocrine disruptors, I think it's fair to say that we have enough data to conclude that these chemicals are not safe for human populations," according to Dr. Linda Vandenberg, who was the lead author of a new report we featured last month that concludes there are no safe doses for these kinds of chemicals. When it comes to the effects of chemical exposure, government regulations often lag far behind the science. How long will it take this warning to be implemented into public health precautions? And why don't we have a system that examines the possible impact to human health of a chemical BEFORE it's released into the marketplace?

A previous edition of this post defined Houston's EPA rank of "Marginal" has being more sever than DFW's EPA rank of "Moderate." This was a mistake. In fact, it's just the opposite. "Moderate" is more severe under EPA's ranking than "Marginal." We regret the error. Thanks to a reader for pointing it out.)……….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 will be classified as a "Moderate" non-attainment area under the new standard while Houston will get a less severe "Marginal" classification. 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 worse the air, the more time a region has to clean it up. 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.  Read More

The Dallas City Council will be getting a briefing by members of the Dallas gas drilling task force about its controversial recommendations at the May 16th council briefing meeting. Things begin at 9am and take place in the Council Chambers on the 6th floor of City Hall. Besides getting a summary from Chair Lois Finkelman, each council member will be able to ask their task force appointee questions regarding the recommendations, so it could get interesting when Councilmember Davis decides to ask her task force appointee, Downwinders board member Cherelle Blazer, what she thinks. And will the Mayor have the gumption to ask his Parks Board Prez, Joan Walne why she voted to drill in city parkland? This is the first time gas drilling as been on the Council's agenda since the task froce was created last year. We know it's a work day, but if you can, you really need to make it downtown to be in the audience and show your support for a better drilling ordinance than the one being recommended by the task force, which rollbacked previously agreed-to protections at its very last meeting with any warning or public hearings. This is shaping up to be a very, very close vote. Your participation is critical in the most important environmental issue to face Dallas in the last 20 years.