The Dallas Green Zine

There will be an EPA hearing on Coal Combustion Residuals (Coal Ash) on Wednesday, September 8th. Coal Combustion Residuals (CCRs), often referred to as coal ash, are residues from the combustion of coal in power plants and captured by pollution control technologies, like scrubbers. When coal ash is impounded or deposited in landfills, impoundment structures can fail and landfills can leach coal ash into ground water. 

An EPA report (2007) looked at 181 coal ash disposal sites throughout the US and found that these sites release toxic chemicals and metals such as arsenic, lead, boron, selenium, cadmium, thallium and other pollutants at levels that put human health at risk. Coal ash dumped in unlined or clay-lined ponds and landfills pose the greatest risk. At least 23 states have poisoned surface or groundwater supplies from improper disposal of coal ash. Texas has one of the highest levels of coal ash generation.

In Texas alone, the Brandy Branch Coal ash dump, the Southwestern Electric Power Co. coal ash dump, and the Texas Utilities Electric Martin Lake Reservoir have leaked elevated levels of selenium and toxic metals. There are no leachate collection systems in Texas, and there is no groundwater monitoring.

Coal ash is currently considered exempt waste under an amendment to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). EPA is proposing to regulate, for the first time, coal ash to address the risks from the disposal of the wastes generated by electric utilities and independent power producers. We’re encouraging that EPA support the first proposal (RCRA, subtitle C designation), to allow coal ash to be classified as a HAZARDOUS WASTE. We hope you will join us in Cleaning Up Texas from this unchecked industrial waste!

Please come to these hearings and present your views on the proposed rules or come and show your support. (As we’ve learned from the recent TCEQ hearings, your presence makes a big difference!) Each hearing will have a morning, afternoon and evening session, starting at 10:00 a.m. (local time) and ending at 9:00 p.m. or later depending on the number of speakers. If you would like to speak at the hearing, please preregister. The hearings will be held at the Hyatt Regency Dallas, 300 Reunion Boulevard, Dallas, TX, 75207.  Phone: (214) 651-1234. 

Click here to learn more about Coal Ash and why certain waste from the production of electricity generation should be designated as a hazardous material (to keep out of our state’s landfills or burned upwind of DFW to make cement).

The EPA is hosting a public information meeting on the proposed study of the relationship between hydraulic fracturing (HF) and its potential impacts on drinking water.

Please register to attend and/or speak at his important opportunity to voice your concerns about North Texas Barnett Shale drilling practices and risks.

WHEN/TIME: Thursday, July 8th (6:00-10:00pm)
WHERE: Hilton Fort Worth (downtown, 815 Main Street - map)

REGISTER: Due to possible venue capacity constraints, the EPA encourages everyone who plans to attend the DFW public meeting to register in advance.  http://hfmeeting.cadmusweb.com/RegistrationForm.aspx

WHY SHOULD I ATTEND: There is currently great debate surrounding the health and ecological consequences of the practice of gas drilling hydraulic fracturing, or “fracing” (like “cracking”), across the US/world.

The North Texas Barnett Shale is experiencing a gas drilling boom, and fracing has brought urban natural gas extraction into our communities (within a few hundred of feet of our homes/schools, in many cases) and below our drinking water aquifers.

Industry claims that the chemicals used in their processes are safe, but they won’t disclose their ingredients (”secret formula, like Coca Cola,” one exec has quoted), stating exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act and Superfund, as granted to them under the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

Independent tests have identified dozens of neurotoxic and carcinogenic chemicals used in the fracing process.

Locally, XTO Energy (now Exxon Mobil) submitted a request for a specific use permit for a gas well on May 25 to the City of Dallas. Dallas City Councilman Sheffie Kadane said he is in favor of XTO’s plan to drill on its lease and said he hoped the two lessees would follow XTO’s single permit application with other requests for approval to drill on their existing leases.

WRITTEN COMMENTS: To submit a written comment, send your email to hydraulic.fracturing@epa.gov.

For more info about the EPA HF Study Background, Intent, Timeline and Web-based Outreach, click here.
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/uic/wells_hydrofrac.html

This article is by Rachel Stone with Advocate Magazine blog.

The city’s 2011 Bike Plan open house Thursday was so well attended that by 7 p.m., there was no available space to lock up a bike at City Hall. Almost 250 people, some in cycling jerseys and toting helmets, came out to express their desires and concerns to planners, including Dallas Bike Coordinator Max Kalhammer and Toole Design Group, the consulting firm that is putting the plan together.

The general consensus was that the city needs more bike lanes. The city has a nice trail system, but it’s not always logical for commuting. Cyclists also suggested that the Katy Trail should connect to Spring Valley and across Beltline.

Peter Lagerwey, Toole’s senior designer, gave some 30 examples of bike system elements that work well in other cities. But to make a bike system work in Dallas, it has to be formulated based on the needs of cyclists here. The 2011 Bike Plan has a website with an interactive map and survey at http://www.tooledesign.com/dallasbikeplan/, where Dallas residents can make suggestions for the plan through June 30, when Toole and city staff will start putting the ideas together for a preliminary plan.

This is time sensitive. These are the last 2 weeks of the 2009 session of the Texas legislature. Please urge passage of these bills! 

The Texas legislature is in the last two weeks of its five month long, every other year session. In these sessions our primary focus has too often been fighting bad bills. But, for a change we have some GOOD legislation that has a chance of getting passed! There are three bills that have passed the Senate, and are now scheduled for vote by the full House. Please call or e-mail your state representative as soon as possible and ask him or her to support these bills. If you don’t know your state representative, you can look up who it is here:

http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/

The results page shows the name and phone number of your representative, along with a links that will take you to their e-mail form.

The bills we want them to vote in favor of are:

SB 545, on-site renewables
SB 541, off-site solar
SB 16, energy efficient building codes and clean air programs

It should take you less than five minutes to look up your representative, call, and leave a message with the staff person asking for a vote in favor of these bills.

If you want more details on these bills or would like to use the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club web-site to send e-mail, please refer to the chapter’s action alert on this page:

https://secure2.convio.net/sierra/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=2259&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr010=69d4r0rwe6.app24a

(Dallas)– Public health advocates say desperation by a company out of sync with the times has motivated an ill-advised lawsuit filed against local governments by the operator of the oldest, dirtiest cement plant in North Texas.

Late in the afternoon on the day before Thanksgiving, lawyers for Kansas City-based Ash Grove Cement filed suit in federal court against the cities of Dallas, Ft. Worth, Arlington, Plano, The Dallas County School District and Tarrant County for adopting “green cement” resolutions that favor modern, less polluting dry kilns over older, dirtier wet kilns - like the three the company operates at its 43-year-old Midlothian plant, south of Dallas.

“I don’t see Ford suing these cities for replacing their Crown Victorias with Priuses,” remarked Jim Schermbeck, spokesperson for Downwinders At Risk, the longtime local pollution watchdog group. He compared the municipalities’ motive for buying cement from dry kilns with why they’re buying hybrids to replace older, more polluting gas-guzzlers. “It’s all about public health and staying one step ahead of the Clean Air Act.”

He believes the company knows it can’t win in court. “ But this isn’t a lawsuit meant to win. It’s meant to scare local officials and stem the loss of business to newer and cleaner kilns,” said Schermbeck. He pointed out that besides the seven cities, counties and school districts cited by Ash Grove in its lawsuit, three more cities have green cement resolutions on their council agendas in the next two
weeks, beginning with Denton on Tuesday.

“Ash Grove is losing their largest customers over legitimate concerns about air pollution. Rather than investing in a modern plant that would significantly reduce pollution, Ash Grove is investing in lawyers and suing those customers because of their legitimate concern. That’s not a strategy they recommend in business school. What happened to ‘the customer is always right?”

Ash Grove’s three cement kilns in Midlothian are the oldest still operating in North Texas, dating back to 1965. They run without “scrubbers” for Sulfur Dioxide pollution - something regulators say would not be permitted now. They can emit twice as much smog-causing pollution as newer dry kilns just down the road. State officials say the cumulative emissions of all three Midlothian cement plants can have a significant impact on local ozone levels. It’s that impact that the green cement resolutions target, persuading Ash Grove to make mandatory state emissions cuts a year early and helping to convince TXI to shutter all four of its Midlothian wet kilns earlier this year. Over 5000 tons of air pollution has been reduced in whole, or part, by the adoption of green cement purchasing policies since Dallas passed the first one in May 2007.

According to EPA and state data, Ash Grove is among the largest industrial polluters in North Texas, belching out over 19 million pounds of air pollution in 2006 (the last year figures are available), including almost 80,000 pounds of officially classified “toxic” air pollution such as lead, mercury, styrene and benzene.

That also includes over 12 million pounds of Sulfur Dioxide pollution - twice as much as Holcim’s much bigger cement plant across Highway  67 - and over four million pounds of ozone causing Nitrogen Oxide. Pound for pound, the Ash Grove cement plant may have the three dirtiest smokestacks in the region.

Green cement resolutions put pressure on wet kiln operators to either update their smog-causing pollution controls to the level of dry kilns, or replace their wet kilns with new dry ones. They do this by incorporating state emissions standards as specs in bids for cement purchasing. These specs favor more aggressive pollution controls that Ash Grove has chosen to avoid so far. While it was forced by the recent DFW clean air plan to install new equipment that cuts this kind of pollution, Ash Grove still can’t reach the same level of control demanded of Midlothian’s dry kilns, mainly because its design is obsolete. There hasn’t been a new wet kiln built in the US since the 1970’s and more close every year. They use too much energy, are too inefficient and pollute too much. In 2009, there will be less than 40 in the entire country, compared to over 130 dry kilns.

“That’s why we think this lawsuit is an act of desperation by a backward-looking company seeking to exempt itself from competing under modern rules,” Schermbeck said.  “There are now third world countries with better cement kilns than Ash Grove’s.”

Ash Grove has owned 2000 acres of farmland in Grayson County near the Red River for a new North Texas plant for over 10 years. Despite both its local competitors building new dry kilns in North Texas during that time, the company has not announced any plans to build its own DFW dry kiln on the Grayson County land. Instead, it committed to spending $200 million to replace three aging wet kilns at its Forman, Arkansas plant with a single new dry kiln that will produce twice as much cement with half the pollution.

Schermbeck challenged the company. “I’d like to see the President of Ash Grove try to explain why rural Arkansas residents whose air doesn’t violate federal standards deserve the best cement kiln technology, but DFW residents, whose air has violated the Clean Air Act for 17 straight years, do not.”

Schermbeck said the lawsuit would have the effect of promoting a unified regional green cement legislative response in the up-coming state legislative session in Austin. “When the same governmental entities being sued by Ash Grove combine their lobbying muscle in Austin, this lawsuit will become moot before the first round of motions are heard. I know many of these officials, and they won’t like being sued for doing things the law clearly gives them the power to do, and that they’ve been doing for years. I predict this will end badly for Ash Grove.”

This article comes from Downwinders At Risk. For more information, click here.

With the stock market reeling under the burden of the recent collapse of real-estate markets due to the wave of adjustable rate mortgages coming due, the problems with excessive use of home equity loans, and to the effects rippling through the financial sector as a credit crisis, we are once again at a teachable moment. How we spend our money matters at least as much as how much we spend.

Congress is scrambling to pass a stimulus package to revive the economy; but, as in the past, the emphasis on a quick fix, a few extra bucks in the pocket that will set everyone off on a spending spree. We have seen this before. The “Bush tax rebates” and other measures in the stimulus package of 2001 did help foster a consumer driven recovery; but at the same time the trade deficit grew exponentially and many good manufacturing jobs went overseas never to return.

This is not good for America, long term, because we need to provide a range of economic opportunities for our youth that includes demand for skills needed in the manufacturing sector.

On the other hand, a stimulus package that focuses on the future, by building infrastructure here in the US and that promotes clean energy and more efficient use of physical resources will contribute to a healthier more sustainable economy. There would be a real benefit now and in the future.

Just as we can’t borrow our way to financial security, we can’t drill our way to energy security. Environmentalists have been saying for years that its not the “economy or the environment” but the “economy and the environment“. There are many reasons why we need to shift from a highly polluting unsustainable fossil fuel economy to a clean, renewable energy future. There are numerous studies that show that fostering the growth of clean, renewable energy industries will be a net benefit to the economy, both in the short and the long term. In doing so, we will also have a better chance to dodge the most egregious consequences of the global warming bullet should it come our way.

One way to stimulate renewable energy production would be to extend existing tax credits the renewables industry says are critical to sustain its growth this year and next. While wind energy related construction in Texas has been on the rise, some wind and solar power producers are now seeing investors pull back and they expect many projects to be canceled if the tax credits passed in 2005 are not extended by the end of March. So, environmentalists are pushing to include clean energy incentives in the economic stimulus package.

See below for the latest call to action from the Sierra Club.
[ If you can’t make the call, take action HERE ]

Friday, 1 Feb 2008:

Important Senate floor votes on the economic stimulus package are likely Wednesday. A vote on cloture (to proceed to floor debate on the economic stimulus package) will likely occur Monday night. The next round of votes will determine whether the clean energy incentives stay in or are taken out.

TAKE ACTION:
Call your Senator TODAY! Ask him/her to support tax incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency!

Senate switchboard: (202) 224-3121

Sample Phone Script
Hi. My name is [NAME] from [CITY/TOWN]. I urge Senator [NAME] to support clean energy and energy efficiency tax incentives in the economic stimulus package. This package is an opportunity to provide a boost to clean energy companies and consumers right now that will create and retain green jobs and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

Renewable energy tax incentives are urgently needed to maintain the robust growth of renewable energy investment and production and will stimulate local economies. The industry needs an extension of these important incentives beyond 2008.

If you can’t make a call, take action here:
https://secure2.convio.net/sierra/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=537

TEXAS U.S. SENATORS:

Kay Bailey Hutchison
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
284 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-4304
202-224-5922
202-224-0776 (FAX)
202-224-5903 (TDD).
email Kay Bailey Hutchison -

John Cornyn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
517 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
Main: 202-224-2934
Fax: 202-228-2856
email John Cornyn -

It’s that time of the year again when tens of catalogs start arriving in the mailbox. Not only is it a big time-consuming hassle to sort through them, but there’s also the awful feeling of wasting lots paper. Have you ever wondered how much paper and forest destruction is involved?

 

According to Catalog Choice, 19 billion catalogs (and yes, that’s a ‘b’) are mailed out to American consumers each year, requiring 53 million trees and 3.5 million tons of paper. But not only millions of trees are destroyed, but paper processing of this volume requires mind-blowing excesses of energy and water.

Well, now there’s a way to opt out! Catalog Choice provides a free service that can help you reduce mailbox clutter and save natural resources. Through this free service, you can sign up and specify which catalogs you do not want arriving at your house. (Unfortunately, since it takes 10 weeks for Catalog Choice to process this, you probably won’t be able to stop this holiday’s deluge–but there’s always next year.)

Also, as you go through the list and click ‘Decline’ next to each catalog that you don’t want sent to your mailbox, you will see a request for a customer number. If you don’t have the catalog in front of you, just click Not Available, and the request can still be processed without a customer number.

And again, this service is totally free, and it’s a great way to save some trees.