Around 100 people filled the TCEQ public hearing in Arlington last week to let the agency know they're not happy with its clean air plan. Photo by Julie Thibodeaux.

Jan. 26, 2016

The state agency charged with protecting Texas air and water quality got an outpouring of criticism and frustration from a roomful of North Texans at last Thursday’s public hearing in Arlington on the agency’s 2015 clean air plan. Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s 2015 “state implementation plan,” commonly referred to as the SIP, to bring the region’s air quality to federal standards had been ruled inadequate by the Environmental Protection Agency last February and sent back with request for emissions reductions. TCEQ included none of these reductions in its revised SIP. 

More than 40 speakers gave public comment on the draft plan to TCEQ and the EPA to a packed room of what appeared to be entirely those calling for a stricter plan. Public comment closes Jan. 29. [See how to comment below.]

During the three-hour hearing, attendees learned that Texas has never had a clean air plan that met national standards and that in DFW alone, non-compliance costs the public more than $500 million a year in hospital care, lost work and school days and air pollution related deaths.

“I have asthma, my granddaughter has asthma,” was how Tamera Bounds of Mansfield introduced herself and granddaughter Cameron. “Texas has three times the childhood asthma cases as the national average. There are now 512 gas wells and two compressors in our town. Do you know what a Texas Bad Air Day is like for us? Breathlessness overcomes me at simple tasks. Cameron says it feels like an elephant is on her chest. She likes to play soccer, but she can’t.”

Tamera Bounds with granddaughter Cameron spoke at the TCEQ hearing on Thursday. Courtesy of Stephen Blackburn.

Many more speakers told the health effects on their students, children, grandchildren and adult family members, from regular inhaler time-outs at grade school soccer games and midnight breathing therapy, to death from lung disease.

“In 2015, the American Lung Association gave our region an ‘F’ for ground level ozone," testified Tom “Smitty” Smith, Texas director of public interest group Public Citizen. “For more than 20 years, we’ve been working with TCEQ to come up with a clean air plan that works to reduce pollution in the DFW area. The conclusion is clear. TCEQ and the state of Texas have failed to protect the people who live and breathe in the DFW area from the impacts of air pollution.”

Smith recounted the 25-year history of inadequate air-quality plans by TCEQ, and noted a petition by the Dallas County Medical Society for TCEQ to amend its rules and, in 2015, a joint study by the medical society and University of North Texas that found ready solutions to lower emissions from upwind coal plants and bring ozone levels into compliance. Neither effort was recognized by the agency.

Tom "Smitty" Smith of Public Citizen at a press conference held before the hearing. Courtesy of Stephen Blackburn.

“Now’s the time once again, to say, this plan fails, your commissioners have failed, our government has failed … It’s time for the EPA to come in and do a federal implementation plan to finally clean up the air in Texas.” 

The hearing room was filled with nearly 100 residents from communities across the 10-county “non-attainment zone,” from Denton to Mansfield and Dallas to Fort Worth.  A majority of speakers echoed Smith’s plea. Two brought their portable breathing devices and one, a facemask.

“The Dallas-Fort Worth area has been in continual violation of the federal Clean Air Act for ozone, or smog pollution, since 1991,’” Susybelle Gosslee of the League of Women Voters reminded attendees. DFW “is currently classified as a ‘non-attainment area, not complying with the ozone standard of 75 parts per billion” of 2008, soon to be replaced by a 70 ppb standard. Gosslee, representing 3,600 state members, submitted the League of Women Voters of Dallas’ resolution requesting TCEQ to correct its “unacceptable…inadequate” proposed plan and develop a plan to clean the air and protect public health and the environment.

Dr. Robert Haley, a medical epidemiologist representing the Dallas County Medical Society and Texas Medical Association, clarified the monetary and health effects of that missed standard. He shared results of the 2015 joint study by DCMS with environmental chemists at the University of North Texas. It estimated benefits of a 5 ppb ozone reduction in the DFW non-attainment area, using TCEQ’s own air quality data and EPA benefits computer modeling.  

Dr. Robert Haley, representing the Dallas County Medical Society and the Texas Medical Association, cites a study by DCMS and UNT. Courtesy of Stephen Blackburn.

The study found “a reduction of five ppb in the ozone levels of the…DFW area would prevent every year…77 deaths from lung and heart disease… and [would prevent] an annual economic loss of over $500 million.” Health and cost consequences included about 165 hospital admissions, 350 emergency room visits, 150,000 restricted (outdoor) activity days, 120,000 lost school days.  

For the 34 counties north and west of the East Texas legacy coal plants, costs saved would amount to 97 deaths and $650 million every year.  

“An appalling toll on the lives and pocketbooks of North Texans…that could be avoided with reasonably available control technology,” stated Dr. Haley.  

He quoted a TCEQ official as characterizing the required technology to avoid these losses as “not worth the cost.”  “I am dismayed,” Dr. Haley said.  

He urged TCEQ to reconsider and build emission limits for the East Texas coal plants into its draft plan, on behalf of 45,000 physicians statewide.  

Environmentalists Molly Rooke and Rita Beving both spoke, noting years of repeated appearances before TCEQ on this same issue, amid struggles with asthma personally and of family members.

Teacher Castanda Allen pointed out that black children are three times as susceptible to asthma as the general population.

Cherelle Blazer, an environmental chemist, told listening TCEQ staff, “I am up at night and work every day to do your job for you. There are data for the number of deaths from various ozone levels. We know how many will die. We know asthma rates for certain populations, white versus Hispanic versus black...Your plan is killing us.”

Ronnie Mestas of West Dallas testified that cement batch plants, a heavy source of air pollution in DFW for 30 years, were permitted in his area “right behind a public school, without DISD or the City Council being informed. You are listening, but do you hear us?”     

Retired engineer Richard Guldi, a veteran of the integrated circuitry industry and Sierra Club leader, testified “methane leaks into our air from fracking…are accompanied by propane, benzene…at least 20 other compounds harmful to humans,” including xylene, “which the integrated circuitry industry banned in the 1970s because it causes miscarriages…All of which are found in Texas air and water.” 

“Clean air and water are a human right — not the oil and gas industry’s to treat like a sewer.” 

Arlington residents Kim Feil and Ranjana Bhandari noted that Arlington’s populace of 370,000 live in 100 square miles, with 400 gas wells and 56 drill sites, and gave numerous examples of health hazards. As many as 900 wells are projected by the city of Arlington in the next five years. Bhandari stated that seeing the health effects on her son over his lifetime has prompted the family to send him to college out of state. 

A representative of Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson’s office weighed in, as did Texas Campaign for the Environment leader Zac Trahan, Dallas attorney and educator David Griggs of Sierra Club, Jim Schermbeck of the clean air group Downwinders at Risk and numerous other residents. Gary Stuard of System Change Not Climate Change put in language at times unprintable a conviction stated by many others: “It is an outrage that we have to come and beg EPA to do the TCEQ’s job! Your agency has failed… We hope you’ll do the right thing.  How many more have to die?”

These comments and more are in the hands of TCEQ until July 2016, the deadline for the state’s SIP to the Environmental Protection Agency. EPA then has 18 months to approve, disapprove or give a partial approval/partial disapproval, according to Jennah Durant of EPA Region 6. TCEQ then has two years to reply to disapproval/partial disapproval “by submitting an approvable SIP to avoid a FIP.”

If agencies take the maximum time allowed, a plan for clean air in North Texas could be nearly four years away. 

“We are hoping for EPA to take it out of the state’s hands now,” said Schermbeck.

PUBLIC COMMENT DEADLINE

Comments regarding the TCEQ SIP must be received by Jan. 29. 2016.    

Online Toolkit: See DownWindersAtRisk.org for links to email EPA Administrators, sign the CHANGE.ORG petition to EPA or view a 2-1/2 minute video on reasons for an EPA plan.

Via EPA Channels: Must reference:   “DFW AD SIP Revision for the 2008 Eight Hour Ozone Nonattainment Area,” Project Number 2015-014-SIP-NR

Electronic Comments:  http://www.1.tceq. texas.gov/rules/ecomments/index.cfm

Written Comments:  

Kathy Singleton, MC 206, SIP Team
Office of Air, TCEQ
PO Box 13087
Austin, Texas 78711-3087

or FAX (512) 239-6188

 

CURRENT TCEQ COMMISSIONERS:

Bryan W. Shaw, Ph.D., Chairman

Toby Baker, Commissioner

Zak Covar, Commissioner

The TCEQ has three full-time commissioners appointed by the governor, to establish overall agency direction and policy, and to make final determinations on contested permitting and enforcement matters. The commissioners are appointed for six-year terms with the advice and consent of the Texas Senate.

SOURCE: Wikipedia

 

WATCH VIDEO FROM THE HEARING. Courtesy of Stephen Blackburn.


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