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You might have already heard or read about
the Dallas City Hall news conference that took place yesterday where a
new and startling map of gas-drilling leases already approved by the
City of Dallas was unveiled for the first time. It wasn’t a product of
city staff. A citizen put it together from Open Records Act requests
submitted over the last two-three months. Mountain Creek Neighborhood Alliance President Ed Meyer assembled
the information and then plotted it on a map. Downwinders, along with
the Dallas Sierra Club, Texas Campaign for the Environment, and
Earthworks Oil and Gas Accoiuntaibility Project all participated in
presenting the finished product to the public and press under their new coalition name of “Dallas Residents at Risk.”
Even though the controversy over gas drilling in Dallas has been going
on for almost two years, there’s never been an attempt to plot the
inventory of gas leases in the city. Instead attention has been focused
on a handful of sites that were already partially through the city’s
permitting system when the current moratorium was declared and the
effort to write a new drilling ordinance was begun. When Meyer finally
got all the dots on his map, even he was surprised at the result. In
total, there are 110 leases for gas drilling on land owned by the
City of Dallas, totaling 130 tracts of land, and covering almost 1400
acres, from Royal Lane in North Dallas to the new Margaret Hunt bridge
in West Dallas to Joe Pool Lake in the South. Copies of the map,
along with a explaniton of how it was made were delivered to all city
council members. It was released on Tuesday, the day of the penultimate
Dallas Gas Force Drilling Task Force, when new issues and old,
unresolved ones were up for debate. Next Tuesday, the 28th will be the Task Force’s last scheduled meeting and the stakes could not be higher.  On
the chopping block are the 1000 foot set-backs now recommended for
homes, schools, hospitals and churches, as well as a proposal from
industry to be allowed to drill in parks. If successful, this industry move could be the single largest rollback so far in the process. Stay tuned. We’re going to have more on this attempt to roll back the protections already won in Dallas.

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That’s an old grassroots slogan and it’s one of Downwinders guideposts as a grassroots group. Since the moment we were founded, our board has included a wide spectrum of ideological points of view. When your property, family and community are under assault, you’re not really that interested in the politics of the person working beside you other than the common goal of ending the threat. Urgency trumps ideology. And so it is in Frisco these days. When Downwinders was invited to come to Frisco and help citizens defend themselves against and unresponsive government and corporation, there were those knee-jerk thinkers who condemned us as a manifestation of the vast left-wing, tree-hugging conspiracy. We knew better, and so did the citizens who established Frisco Unleaded, our sponsored local group, last summer. Now comes the announcement of a new city-wide group in Frisco organizing under the name “We are Frisco” who proudly proclaim that they are “Your Conservative Vision For Frisco.” Originally a Frisco residents group who wanted access to Frisco ISD facilities, the organization is spreading its wings and endorsing a broad platform of local issues, including, er, the Exide lead smelter controversy. Now if you’re a knee-jerk thinker yourself, you’re already imagining a diatribe on how the city’s efforts to relocate Exide are a prime example of unjust “takings” and how those lefty enviros have ganged-up on this poor company that was here in 1964 and deserves to stay no matter how many schools are near-buy. And you’d be just as wrong as your counterparts who stereotype Downwinders. Here’s what the Conservative Vision for Frisco has to say about the lead smelter: “Lights Out At Exide! No amount of lead contamination is acceptable. Exide executives and many civic leaders have claimed for years the battery recycling plant in Frisco is “a good corporate partner”. If true, why have they not been cleaning up their own mess without being forced to do so? The Exide lead contamination problem first became a major issue after the discovery they were in violation of pollution laws. The company worked with elected officials to craft new, more stringent pollution guidelines. Exide’s absurd “good faith” move in respect to adhering to the new agreement was to attempt to revert to building codes from 1964 to begin construction on modifications. If Exide has already been violating existing pollution guidelines, how can we trust them not to violate new ones? However, the question is moot as new rules will not fix the problem. There is no acceptable amount of lead contamination we can expose the area businesses and children to. Additionally, economic development is hampered by the location of the facility. Would you locate a business in old downtown Frisco knowing it was close to a lead contamination threat? Exide employs 135 people.  The loss of jobs by moving the plant is very concerning. More concerning, however, are the hundreds of jobs that will never be without removal of the facility from Frisco. The city has outgrown Exide.  It’s time for them to go.  Period.”  Couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Welcome to the fight WAF.

After 21 years, four Presidents, countless political battles and lots of pollution, the EPA finally released its health reassessment of Dioxin this past Friday. Like so many environmental decisions from this Administration, the report splits important hairs. While
confirming that ultra-low exposures (we’re talking 1 millionth of a
gram or less) to Dioxin can cause damage to a person’s immune and
reproductive systems, cause skin rashes and liver damage, EPA says
that levels of exposure for most Americans have declined so much over
the last two decades that there should be no significant risk. To at
least one expert, that was an      “very odd statement.” Arnold Schecter of University of Texas School of Public Health, noted that EPA’s assurances really didn’t jibe “because some people
are more highly exposed than average and some groups, such as fetuses
and nursing babies, are more sensitive to the effects.” What
other populations are more highly exposed to Dioxin? People who live
downwind of facilities where its emitted – power plants, cement plants,
and lead smelters, to name a few. DFW residents live downwind from all
three. Exide’s lead smelter in Frisco was the 9th largest dioxin polluter in Texas in 2009, releasing more of the poison than industrial facilities many times its size. While
most exposures come through eating or drinking animal products that
contain dioxin because the animals themselves were contaminated and
store it in their fat, breathing in dioxins directly is also a pathway
of exposure when you live near a place that burns hazardous wastes,
smelts metals, or deals with a lot of chlorinated materials. Like
millions of DFW residents. While there was a lot of disappointment by
environmentalists at the lack of follow-through on the report, the food
industry is sweating bullets
over its conclusions. Last year, food industry groups wrote the EPA,
stating that  most Americans could “easily exceed the
daily [0.7 picogram limit] after consuming a single meal or heavy
snack.” Now they’re afraid safer food advocates will use the report to
push for new restrictions on how much of one of the most poisonous
substances ever discovered can be included in their food products.
Indeed. How unreasonable to expect less human-made poison dreck in your
food. No release date for the part of the reassessment dealing with
cancer risks. 

This week, we’ve examined new studies linking brain damage to breathing. Let’s take on heart disease now. Short-term exposure – less than seven days – to common air pollutants raises the risks of heart attack, according to a new study that looked at air quality from 100 studies on five continents. “…an improvement in air quality could have a significant effect on public
health,” wrote the authors, led by Dr. Hazrije Mustafic of the Paris
Cardiovascular Research Center at University Paris Descartes. Dr. Jesus Araujo, an assistant professor of medicine and director of
environmental cardiology at UCLA, said there is now “more than enough
evidence” from human, animal and cellular studies that air pollution
kills. One of the most important findings of the new research is that it
confirms that heart attacks increase even when exposures to worsening
air quality are short in duration.“We don’t have to be exposed for weeks or months or years,” Araujo said. The study found harmful effects to the heart from breathing in microscopic particulate matter, or soot, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide, often at levels that are considered “safe.” “The more scientists look, the more they find effects at lower
exposures,” said Jean Ospital, Director of Southern California’s Air quality District, “This is a question that always comes up, how
low do we need to go to protect public health? It seems to be a moving
target in terms of where the health effects are, where we really need to
go to have health protection.” Indeed.

Craig McDonald and Texans for Public Justice do a great and basic civic service every year by collecting all the information about which Austin lobbyists got paid by whom to do what. They put out an annual report that analyzes The Lobby by industry, and lobbying firms, as well as by individual clients and lobbyists. It’s without a doubt the most comprehensive look at the financial machinations driving legislation in Austin. On Wednesday, the 2011 edition came out. Not many surprises – the energy and natural resources industry group was the biggest spender on hired help. But it’s always a good reminder to pursue through the list of high dollar lobbyists and see how many used their “public service” as a stepping stone to private wealth.

Senior House Energy and Commerce Committee member Democrat Henry Waxman of California and other House Dems released a report on fracking the other day that deserved more attention than it got. Using data that the last (Democratically-controlled) Congress required oil and gas companies to submit concerning the ingredients and volumes of chemicals used in fracking during the period from 2005 to 2009, the report produced a wealth of new information, including: 1)“The 14 leading oil and gas service companies used more than 780 million
gallons of hydraulic fracturing products, not including water added at
the well site. Overall, the companies used more than 2,500 hydraulic
fracturing products containing 750 different chemicals and other
components.” 2) “The components used in the hydraulic fracturing products ranged from
generally harmless and common substances, such as salt and citric acid,
to extremely toxic substances, such as benzene and lead.” 3) Between 2005 and 2009, the oil and gas service companies used hydraulic
fracturing products containing 29 chemicals that are known or possible
human carcinogens, regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)
for their risks to human health, or listed as hazardous air pollutants
under the Clean Air Act. 4) “Many of the hydraulic fracturing fluids contain chemical components that
are listed as “proprietary” or “trade secret.” The companies used 94
million gallons of 279 products that contained at least one chemical or
component that the manufacturers deemed proprietary or a trade secret.
In many instances, the oil and gas service companies were unable to
identify these “proprietary” chemicals, suggesting that the companies
are injecting fluids containing chemicals that they themselves cannot
identify.” During the Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force meeting, there has often been discussion of “salt water” injection wells, or spills of “essentially salt water.” This is a canard. It is the liquid equivalent of what the cement companies used to say about the thick plumes of pollution pouring out of their smokestacks – “It’s just steam.” No. It’s not. And the hazardous waste the gas industry uses for fracking fluid and must dispose of in deep underground injection wells because of its toxicity is not “just saltwater.” You can download a copy of the report at the link.

Wasn’t it just the other day that we were talking about the harms of Particulate Matter (PM) pollution and mentioning that the Obama Administration was holding up new PM standards? And yet on Wednesday the US was announcing a new international effort to cut methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and yes, PM pollution, in an effort to make short-term gains in fighting global warming. “The science is quite clear that the only way to slow warming in the near term . . . is
to reduce emissions of these so-called short-lived climate forcers,”
said Erika Rosenthal of the advocacy group Earthjustice.” Specifically, the “Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants” (CCACRSLCP?) will fund programs to reduce diesel exhaust, ag-waste burning in the field, capturing methane from landfills, coal mines and…natural gas wells. Come to think of it, that’s another area of possible mixed messages being sent since this Administrations is simultaneously promoting fracking like a carnival barker in the US while telling other countries they need to limit their own emissions from drilling. But you know they must be really serious this time. Combined, the US and Canadian governments are throwing a whole $15 million at the campaign.

Gather ’round children, and you will hear, when daily newspapers had no peer….Hard to believe now, but not very long ago, daily newspapers hired writers who also reported. These were the kind of literary roustabouts who could go from writing a book, to a New Yorker piece, to how a local bad guy got what was coming to him for your local paper. Bud Shrake, Dan Jenkins,  Brian Woolley – if you never got to read a long Sunday Magazine piece by these kinds of writers, you just can’t appreciate the status daily dead tree media had in its last glory days. Bill Minutaglio is one of those writers. He worked for the Dallas Morning News in its Austin bureau, but he’s also written a couple of books and lots of magazine articles. He’s now a journalism professor at UT and writes a “State of the Media” column for the venerable Texas Observer. In his latest observations, he takes note of the side effect of a Rick Perry run for president – a recent uptick in Texas environmental reporting among the mainstream media that’s seen its interest in such stories generally decline over the past decade. But News abhors a vacuum and Minutaglio also discusses the rise of local grassroots blogs that are increasingly becoming primary sources of information and breaking news. As evidence of this trend, he cites our very own front page blog, as well as Sharon Wilson’s BlueDaze. We know we’ve arrived when we get mentioned in the same sentence as Sharon. Thanks very much to Mr. Minutaglio for his kind words. With the continued support our readers, we’ll keep trying to provide the news citizens need to make their air cleaner, and their government more responsive.