Downwinders At Risk - Articles

Letter to EPA from members of Congress

2009-10-24T16:02:00.001-05:00

EPA to reject Texas air permit process

2009-09-09T10:36:00.000-05:00

BY JOHN MCFARLAND

Associated Press Writer

DALLAS — The air-pollution permitting process in the nation's largest greenhouse-gas producing state does not adhere to the Clean Air Act and portions of it should be thrown out, federal regulators said Tuesday in an announcement applauded by Texas environmentalists.

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed rejecting Texas' flexible permits, which allow polluters to exceed emission limits in particular areas so long as they reach an overall emissions average. The EPA also said it plans to reject other rules, including those allowing polluters to make changes at facilities without the lengthy permitting process that requires public hearings.

"Texas' air permitting program should be transparent and understandable to the communities we serve, protective of air quality, and establish clear and consistent requirements," Lawrence Starfield, the EPA's acting regional administrator for Texas, said in the statement. "These notices make clear our view that significant changes are necessary for compliance with the Clean Air Act."

Texas has major air-pollution problems, thanks to numerous coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and petrochemical plants in and around Houston, assorted other plants around the state, and millions of cars on the road. Houston and Dallas have never been within Clean Air Act requirements for ozone pollution.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality - which has long been at odds with the EPA over permitting - defended its process as a success.

"Now that the EPA has placed its cards on the table and we finally know what specific objections they have with our programs, we look forward to working with them to resolve outstanding issues," agency executive director Mark Vickery said. "We hope the EPA will consider the actual emission reductions achieved through our state programs and will continue to build on those successes."

Environmental groups have for years criticized the permitting process as a rubber stamp in a state that's friendly to industry. The state agency's commissioners have approved 97 percent of the air permits that have come before them since 1971, although TCEQ officials note that the vast majority of permits sought don't even make it to commissioners.

"We're not surprised at this and we've been pushing for this for quite some time," said Neil Carman of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "Our concerns had fallen on deaf ears under the Bush administration EPA, but we have new leadership at EPA and they're taking action. This is just the beginning. The whole program has problems."

Andy Wilson, the global warming program director for the group Public Citizen, called the announcement "the day of reckoning that we've known has been coming."

The EPA's rejections are set to become final next year, after a 60-day period for public comment. In the meantime, the EPA will work with the state agency, industry and environmentalists to "quickly identify and adopt changes that will better protect air quality for all Texans."

The EPA made the announcement as the result of a lawsuit settlement forcing the agency to approve or disapprove aspects of the Texas permitting process, spokesman Dave Bary said.

States are required to enforce the federal Clean Air Act, but they're given some flexibility in how to do it. The EPA approved Texas' major clean-air permitting plan in 1992, and the state has since submitted more 30 regulatory changes.

Feds plan expanded Midlothian air pollution study after criticism of state report

2009-06-04T15:33:00.000-05:00

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
rloftis@dallasnews.com

The last time the federal government agreed to assess environmental health in Midlothian, the results weren't pretty.

A December 2007 draft report inspired recriminations, bureaucratic infighting and even a blast from the chairman of a congressional investigations panel. And people in Midlothian still didn't know if it was safe to breathe the air in North Texas' most industrialized city.

Now, federal officials have vowed to try again to answer that basic question – this time with weapons missing from the earlier effort, such as a squadron of scientists, a rigorous peer-review process and a much broader mandate.

The outcome of the new review of Midlothian, which a federal agency outlined in a letter dated May 27 to state and local officials, could be the most comprehensive look at air pollution health risks ever undertaken in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. At a minimum, it addresses criticism that past government reviews of emissions from Midlothian's three cement plants and a steel mill fell short.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an arm of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will coordinate the new review, this time taking the lead. The earlier report on Midlothian's air quality was written by the Texas Department of State Health Services under a contract to the federal agency.

No timetable for the new review was available. The ATSDR official in charge of the effort, Jennifer Lyke, could not be reached Tuesday.

Midlothian resident Sal Mier, a retired CDC official who first requested federal help in evaluating the city's industrial air pollution in 2005, said the renewed federal involvement was good news.

"I'm very pleased with the investment that ATSDR is willing to making in relooking at our situation," said Mier, who has met with the agency experts assigned to the study. "I was extremely impressed with their sincerity and their willingness to look at the broader picture."

Mier and other environmental advocates branded the 2007 report by the state health department as a shallow whitewash based on insufficient data. He reiterated that view March 12 before the U.S. House Science and Technology Committee's investigative subcommittee, which held a hearing in Washington on the ATSDR's performance.

At that hearing, the panel chairman, Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., called studies such as the 2007 Midlothian review examples of "jackleg assessments" that ignored communities' environmental health concerns.

That congressional grilling apparently played a role in the ATSDR's decision to launch an expanded Midlothian review. Dr. John Villanacci, manager of the Texas health department's Environmental and Injury Epidemiology and Toxicology Branch, said the federal agency launched the new study after it "got some kind of congressional direction."

Villanacci said the new study would involve more experts seeking more types of information than his department's previous effort.

The earlier review was based almost entirely upon a health department comparison of air monitoring data, gathered by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to the commission's numerical standards for airborne pollutant levels. In its letter last week, the ATSDR said, "There is much more that needs to be examined, including how the air data is generated."

The TCEQ blasted the 2007 health department report as "riddled with errors" and said it exaggerated public risk. The environmental commission says additional monitoring since December 2008 shows no public health concern.

"Our data indicate that air quality in the Midlothian area is good," the TCEQ's chief toxicologist, Dr. Michael Honeycutt, said in an e-mail response on Tuesday. "We will provide data as requested for the ATSDR study."

Local officials in Midlothian were also critical of the health department report in 2007, saying its failure to reach any conclusions had unfairly kept the city under a cloud of doubt. City Manager Don Hastings said Tuesday that he was glad the federal agency will try to provide scientifically defensible answers to questions that have plagued Midlothian for decades.

"Protecting the public health and safety and welfare is job No. 1," Hastings said. He said the community would be glad to get the results, "whatever the answer is."

TXI's air permit renewed

2009-04-09T12:33:00.001-05:00

TXI Air Permit Renewal

2009-04-06T22:31:00.000-05:00

Buda cement kiln turns to alternate fuels

2009-03-23T11:14:00.002-05:00

ENVIRONMENT
Buda cement kiln turning to alternate fuels
Tires, wood chips expected to help cut emissions.
By Asher Price
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Friday, March 20, 2009

BUDA — From the ninth-floor catwalk of the cement kiln facility in Buda, a person can see the past and possibly the future of industrial manufacturing.

At the terminus of a rail spur sit piles of coal and petroleum coke, old-school combustibles used to heat the kiln, a metal furnace 13.5 feet in diameter and 190 feet long. Inside the furnace, limestone rock melts at temperatures up to 2,700 degrees, or nearly a quarter of that of the outermost part of the sun.

On the other side of the plant, a conveyor belt bears what the plant's environmental manager calls "green fuel," a combination of wood chips and shredded tires.

The fuel experiment is the product of the unlikely partnership of a longtime cement man and one of the founders of the Save Our Springs environmental movement. If successful, it could blaze a path for manufacturers to cut their carbon emissions and costs at the same time.

The experiment comes in one of the nation's most carbon intensive and polluting industries. Cement kilns release carbon dioxide not only in the burning of coal to heat the kiln but also through the changing of the composition of limestone. Concentrations of carbon emissions nearly double that of some coal-burning power plants.

Initial results show that if the company uses the "green fuel" to displace 20 percent of the coal burned at the facility, it says it will cut its carbon emissions by at least 20,000 tons a year, or 5 percent of its total emissions. It is burning enough to displace 10 percent of the coal.

Bob Kidnew, who has been in the cement business for 25 years and has been president of Texas Lehigh, which owns the kiln, since 2003, said he does not think humans contribute to global warming and worries that carbon regulations could cost his company money.

But with the presidential candidates touching on carbon legislation last summer, he began thinking about ways to reduce his company's carbon emissions and get an edge over competitors.

"I realized something was going to happen on climate change," he said. "I'm skeptical of the science of it, but if it becomes legislation, I've got to deal with it."

The fact that the cost of coal had tripled in the past five years, to about $100 a ton, didn't help, he said. If emissions are regulated, experts estimate that the credits required to emit carbon could range from a few dollars to $40 a ton.

Brigid Shea, an environmentalist who helped found the Save Our Springs coalition in 1991 and who was elected to the Austin City Council in 1993, approached Kidnew around that time about cutting CO2 emissions and reducing cost from the plant. Shea, along with Terry Moore, who has worked with the Sierra Club, had started Carbon Shrinks, a consulting outfit helping companies cut their carbon output.

"It's a huge wake-up call for companies to learn what's proposed under the law," Shea said.

But the cement industry, like most heavy manufacturers, has long had an antagonistic relationship with environmental groups, and even after Kidnew agreed to meet in August, at Texas Lehigh headquarters, the cement people were suspicious.

"It was a little tense," Kidnew said. "We were not sure whether they were spies, if they were seeing if we were doing something wrong."

The Buda cement kiln makes about 1.4 million tons of cement each year, or about 10 percent of the cement used in Texas.

About 60 percent of the kiln's carbon dioxide emissions come from the change in chemical composition of the rock from limestone to clinker.

Shea and Kidnew are concentrating on reducing the other 40 percent , which generally comes from the annual burning of 160,000 tons of coal and petroleum coke, a carbon-heavy material similar to coal, to heat the kiln.

They have an advantage: For about six years, Texas Lehigh — part-owned by HeidelburgCement, a German company that has signed onto international carbon tracking measures — has kept track of its carbon emissions. It can figure out how much the addition of the green fuel has cut them.

Shea and Moore have put together a binder, more than 200 pages long , with 19 strategies for saving money and cutting carbon emissions ahead of federal legislation. They range from changing fuel to purchasing power from alternative sources to adding technology to capturing carbon emissions to paying for carbon offsets, such as the planting of trees.

To make sure the experiment is performed genuinely, Shea has consulted with staffers at the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund and Downwinders at Risk, a Dallas-area group that has challenged the burning practices at cement kilns in North Texas, where kilns have come under attack for burning hazardous waste and tires.

The experiments at the Buda plant come as the Texas Legislature grapples with whether to spurn efforts in Washington to regulate carbon emissions or to join in negotiations.

Proposals by state Sen. Kip Averitt , R-Waco, and state Sen. Kirk Watson , D-Austin, would push Texas companies to track their carbon emissions. Although Averitt has clout as chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, the proposals stand little chance of getting into law, given the broader skepticism among the state leadership on the effects of carbon dioxide.

Kidnew says he is spending "well in the six figures" to address the cement factory's carbon emissions. He declined to say how much the company was paying Shea. He said the alternative fuel costs less than $100 a ton, which is how much the company has to pay for coal. The alternative fuel mix, which is about three parts wood and one part tire, by weight, is provided by Texas Disposal Systems, a waste and recycling company in Creedmoor.

Bob Gregory, who runs Texas Disposal Systems, said the untreated lumber is recycled from Austin's Green Building program and the tires come from stockpiles in San Antonio.

He said he aims to get the fuel cost down to $60 a ton.

He said his environmentalist friends have accused him of "burning jobs" because the material could be recycled for other uses; he counters that the fuel could help cut carbon emissions and address global warming.

Kidnew says he has gotten pushback from some of his colleagues in the cement business who ask why he's not fighting carbon caps.

"The legislative train on climate change is going to leave the station," he said he tells them. "You can spend energy trying to stop it or get the best seat on the train."

asherprice@statesman.com; 445-3643

WFAA, Channel 8, Cities see green on cement

2009-01-28T17:05:00.001-06:00

January 23rd, 2009
Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington and Plano all have a policy to pay up to five percent more for cement if it comes from an environmentally-friendly factory. But with cities slashing budgets, is it okay to spend taxpayer dollars to encourage social change? David Schechter has a Project Green report.

Creating an Air of Uncertainty

2009-01-19T11:19:00.004-06:00

State of Neglect: Plant emissions create an air of uncertainty in Midlothian
11:35 PM CST on Saturday, January 17, 2009

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
rloftis@dallasnews.com

For the weak and the vulnerable, Texas has long been an especially hard place. Year after year, national surveys place the state at or near the bottom in such categories as assistance to poor children and the malnourished, treatment of the mentally ill and care of the disabled. This story is part of The Dallas Morning News' 'State of Neglect' series examining how the state determines whom it protects and whom it excludes – and how special interests and their lobbyists strongly influence the writing of laws and the workings of state government.

Sal Mier used to think fighting infectious diseases was tough. That was before he stepped into the politics of Texas pollution.

The retired federal health manager as sumed that if he asked experts whether decades of industrial emissions in his adopted hometown of Midlothian had hurt anybody, people would at last get a clear, impartial answer to a nagging question."I assumed wrong," Mier said recently. "I really didn't understand it very well."

What people got instead was a full-scale assault by one Texas state agency on another's credibility, a $349,000 state study that even its sponsor didn't want to do, a citizens' advisory committee that excluded anyone who knew anything about the situation, and for an answer to the original question – is Midlothian's air safe? – so far, a big Maybe.

People also got a glimpse at the clout of heavy industry, which has spent millions of dollars building political support in Austin and Washington, managing to fend off repeated environmental reform efforts. The result has been state laws studded with elements that critics say protect industry instead of people.

"It's an amazing system, and it's completely corrupt, and it's completely bankrupt," said Jim Tarr, a former Texas environmental inspector who consults for community groups. "And it ha s left the people of the state of Texas in dire need of a housecleaning."

Also Online
Download: Read the Texas Department of State Health Services' December 2007 report on Midlothian air quality
Download: Read TCEQ's comments on the state health department's Midlothian air quality report
Link: See the Texas Department of State Health Services' Midlothian air quality petition site
Link: TCEQ plan for additional Midlothian air-quality monitoring
Link: Texas Aggregates and Concrete Association
Link: Downwinders at Risk
Follow the full State of Neglect investigative series

Gov. Rick Perry's appointee as chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Buddy Garcia, disagrees.

"I think there's a very good balance right now the way we do it and what we look for on the front end before we give permits, and then especially on the enforcement side," said Garcia, who was Texas deputy secretary of state when Perry tapped him for the TCEQ in 2007.

"I'm a very big proponent of making sure we enforce the laws," he added. "That's the contract we have with the state, and that's our obligation here."

Perry, however, often adds another obligation about the environment: safeguarding corporations' bottom lines. Texas is proud, the governor said in a recent speech, to have "a regulatory system that protects our citizens and environment without strangling prosper ity."

For Mier, who in 1994 retired from running federal education programs on HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, the story of Midlothian's pollution teaches a lesson about profits and public health.

"When a health problem is linked to viruses or bacteria, nobody cares," he said. "When it's linked to industry, it's very, very different."

Strip malls, strip mines

Much of Midlothian looks like every other farm town shaking off its bucolic past for a subdivision present. The crossroads-and-railroad downtown has some old, two-story buildings and new convenience stores. Housing developments and office parks sprawl in former hayfields.

But Midlothian is also the heavy industrial center of North Texas, churning out materials that literally build the region. Giant factories form odd, jarring skylines over verdant hills and fresh neighborhoods, with lights blazing all night, conveyors and gigantic rotating kilns humming and cranking, trucks coming and going, and pollution plumes rising.

Dallas-based TXI's Midlothian cement plant, with five kilns, is the state's biggest. Ash Grove of Kansas, with three kilns, and Swiss company Holcim, with two, are nearby. Each has big strip mines for limestone, cement's chief ingredient.

Adjacent to TXI, a steel mill melts trainloads of scrap metal and crushed cars into new structural steel. Brazil's Gerdau Group owns Gerdau Ameristeel, a former TXI subsidiary originally called Chaparral Steel.

The kilns cook limestone and other ingredients at 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, using as fuel coal, natural gas, roofing debris, shredded tires or, in the case of TXI, other industries' hazardous waste – contentious for decades, but legal.

TXI said in August it would idle indefinitely its four older kilns, the ones that can burn hazardous waste, because of a market slowdown and keep its newer kiln going. But the company is continuing its effort to renew the old kilns' permits for the day when sales rebound.

The Midlothian plants dominate North Texas industrial pollution. In 2006, the most recent year available for such data, they were among Texas' 40 biggest sources of smog-causing nitrogen oxides.

Holcim ranked 10th statewide in carbon monoxide. Gerdau Ameristeel was 10th in lead, topped locally only by Exide's Frisco battery plant, which was fifth. Holcim was 14th in tiny, inhalable particles. All three cement plants were among the top 32 in sulfur dioxide.

The federal Toxic Release Inventory yielded similar results. In 2006, TXI's Midlothian plant ranked 23rd among 1,488 Texas facilities in routine chemical releases – 547,148 pounds. Chemicals in the emissions have been linked to cancer, birth defects, nervous system disorders and other illnesses, but how they aff ect people depends on personal factors and the amount and duration of exposure.

Using the EPA's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators software, The Dallas Morning News compared industrial emissions in Texas. In 2005, the most recent year the software contains, TXI's emissions had the region's highest toxicity score – based on the type and amount of pollution and the number of people potentially exposed, the newspaper found. TXI ranked 10th statewide.

The industry, Midlothian civic leaders and Texas regulators say that despite the big numbers and towering smokestacks, the plants are safe.
TXI vice president D. Randall Jones said the industry has invested millions to cut pollution. He said he believes those efforts will form the basis of the health department's final conclusion, which isn't out yet.

"I'm confident that it's going to be that the air in this area is safe for human health and the environment," he said.

In the context of the whole metropolitan area, the Midlothian heavy industries aren't huge employers – between them, the cement plants and the steel plant have at most 1,500 workers, about two-thirds at Gerdau Ameristeel – but their payrolls, property taxes, sales and purchases make them economic powers.
That's why it seems unlikely that one woman who lives with her husband and horses in an older, woodsy neighborhood five miles north of the town center would challenge how Texas regulates those big plants.

'Just a housewife'

Sue Pope says she's "just a housewife." But 16 years ago, she started investigating industry assurances after her father's cows and her horses stopped breeding. Learning that TXI and North Texas Cement – now owned by Ash Grove – were burning hazardous waste, she thought they might be to blame. (Ash Grove does not burn hazardous waste now, and TXI has announced it will idle its waste-burning kilns).

Pope learned of neighbors with animal problems and about human health compla ints, too – breathing problems, headaches, even cancer and birth defects. She founded Downwinders at Risk and has led the group, now among Texas' oldest local grassroots groups, through research projects, lawsuits, protests and permit fights.

With filmmaker and veteran community organizer Jim Schermbeck as its chief researcher and spark plug, the group has educated lawmakers, successfully pressed cities to buy cement only from the cleanest-burning kilns, championed deeper cuts in the plants' smog-causing emissions and dug up minute details of cement plants' environmental performance.

One battle over Holcim's failure to achieve required pollution cuts after an expansion led to a settlement in which the group dropped its opposition to a new permit in exchange for better air monitoring and a $2.25 million payment by the company.

The money allowed the creation of the Sue Pope Fund, which provides grants to North Texas groups and governments. First-round recipients last year are teaching green development and building sustainable homes for low-income people, boosting clean transit and cracking down on phony vehicle emissions stickers.

Such victories lead Pope to believe the message is getting through. "Fortunately, I think the general public is waking up to what's going on," she said.

The victory, however, is incomplete. At least three state reviews since 1996 have found unexpectedly high rates of birth defects in Midlothian and surrounding communities. Four reviews of cancer cases or deaths haven't found high rates. In no case has the state said it could find a link between local health concerns and the plants' emissions. The industries and state regulators say that's because the amounts in the air are too small to harm people. Pope says it's because agencies haven't investigated seriously.

And Pope, 68, is left with a painful personal legacy. She blames Midlothian pollution for her immune disorder, the unexplained death of her son six years ago at age 47, and her husband's prostate cancer – none of the links proven or disproven, a common frustration for people facing possible toxic risks in their communities.

But she keeps on fighting. "I guess I'm just stubborn," she said.

Cementing relations

Cement is political material.

The industry, through its political action committees, has handed out more than $2 million to Texas politicians since 2000, state reports show. Combined with its lobbying firms, the total reaches $12.6 million – not counting money from allies such as the Texas Association of Business, Texans for Lawsuit Reform, and the Texas Mining and Reclamation Association.

TXI, for example, gave nearly $283,000 from 2000 through 2008. Its lobbyists, Albert Axe and former TCEQ chief lawyer Derek L. Seal, work for the Winstead P.C. law firm, which gave almost $926,000 in that period.

Ash Grove has given just $7,500 in Texas since 2000. Its lobbyists – including the Vinson & Elkins law firm, Austin's HillCo Partners lobbying firm and others – doled out $6.25 million.

The state's top elected officials have received more than $1.8 million from the industry and its lobbyists since 2000: $921,714 for Perry; $891,450 for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

The industry hasn't neglected Washington, D.C., either. A chief beneficiary is Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, from Ellis County. Since 2000, Texas cement companies and their lobbyists have given him $103,500, records show.

Barton went to bat for his home turf industries in 2004, pressing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency not to extend tougher anti-smog rules to Ellis County. The EPA rebuffed the congressman.

Still, political muscle has served the in dustry well. Year after year in the Legislature, bills favoring the industry have tended to become law, while those the industry opposed usually died quietly.

If some of those failed bills had become law, the Midlothian air study might never have been necessary. Pollution could have been drastically reduced years ago, far below today's levels.

"Our industry is one that people have taken some shots at, as far as quarrying activity or concrete plants or cement kilns," said Michael Stewart, executive director of the Texas Aggregates and Concrete Association. "By and large, we've been successful in fending off those efforts."

Seeking answers

When wondering who might untangle the conflicting claims over local pollution, Mier thought of his former employer, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – specifically its environmental arm, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. So he contacte d the agency.

"I thought that there would be a team coming out from Atlanta [headquarters]," Mier said.

Instead, the ATSDR did what it frequently does: It farmed the job out to locals, in this case the Texas Department of State Health Services, which had already declared Midlothian industries safe as far back as 1993.

For critics of Austin's support for the industry, state involvement was bad news. "It's a conflict of interest," said Pope. "Have you seen what the highways are made of?"

In charge of the new review was Dr. Richard Beauchamp, the health department's senior medical toxicologist. He had issued the earlier all-clear in the 1990s.
"I had concluded previously that [Midlothian emissions] didn't appear to be a problem except for a few limited things, I think for sulfur dioxide and particulates or something like that," Beauchamp said in a interview.

That was based on summaries environmental regulators provided. This time, the health department asked the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for the raw data so the department could reach its own conclusion. The health department gathered no new information, a common but controversial approach that saves time and money but often leaves key questions unanswered.

The draft report, issued in December 2007, refused to endorse the previous blanket assurances. Neither, however, did it say there was a problem. Not enough data, the health department said.

The main data gap concerned chromium. The TCEQ believed that virtually all in the local air was trivalent chromium, a low-toxicity type, but had no measurements to back that up.

"They were basing that on their experience at other sites in the state and assuming that the same thing applies to Midlothian," Beauchamp said. "I can't assume that the ratios are going to be the same in Midlothian. I can't really make that conclusion until I see some hard data."

Until proved otherwise, the health department said, it had to assume that people were breathing hexavalent chromium, the most toxic, cancer-causing type.

However, the health department skipped several questions on the minds of local residents. It drew no conclusions about dioxin and mercury because the TCEQ didn't know how much of those contaminants were in local fish, the main exposure source for people.

Health investigators also turned down an offer to check Debra Markwardt's dogs as surrogates for human exposure. Pups grow up sick if they stay with her and healthy with new owners elsewhere, said Markwardt, who lives about a mile from TXI and Gerdau Ameristeel.

Dr. William Cibulas, head of health consultations for the federal agency overseeing the study, replied in a December e-mail that while "sympathetic toward the plight of your animals," that was "outside of our mandated domain."

Markwardt sensed a b rushoff: "They use animals for testing all the time," she said. Cibulas didn't respond to a request for comment.

Markwardt sued TXI and Gerdau Ameristeel last year, alleging damage from air pollution. The companies filed a joint response this month denying any harm and saying Markwardt waited too long to sue.

The state health department also didn't try to assess potential risks that might have collected in the soil during Midlothian's 50 years of heavy industrial emissions. Just since 1990, when comprehensive records begin, pollution from the cement and steel plants total nearly 1 billion pounds, according to a 2008 study by University of North Texas geography students Amanda Caldwell and Susan Waskey.

The total includes 10,000 pounds of mercury, 91,000 pounds of lead and 400 million pounds of sulfur dioxide, which contributes to acid rain and can cause breathing problems.

The health department's overall conclusion was that air in Midlothian posed an "indeterminate" risk – an answer that20pleased no one, including the TCEQ.

"They were a little bit upset, I guess, that we didn't really continue through with that same thing and give it just a blanket clean bill of health on the basis of that sort of information," Beauchamp said.

Riddled with errors?

That may be an understatement. "Shocking" is how Dr. Michael Honeycutt, chief toxicologist for the TCEQ, described it.

On top of that, he said, he learned about it from reporters.

"They spent two years working on this, and they didn't communicate with us in the meantime, which was unfortunate because they weren't looking at the right data set," Honeycutt said. "We got the report after you. We read about it in the paper, and then we got a copy of it."

Upon reading it, he said, "it took about five minutes for us to realize that, oh, something's not right."

Weeks later, after numerous meetings with the health department, the TCEQ filed a 29-page response saying the draft report was riddled with errors. The TCEQ also complained that the draft might undermine public confidence in Texas' environmental protection.

"To come up with an 'indeterminate,' I think that that can just make the community be unduly concerned," Honeycutt said.

Beauchamp said his final report may conclude there is no risk from chromium or anything else. But not yet. The TCEQ has been forced to go back to Midlothian and produce the data the health department wanted – to find out whether the chromium emissions are fairly harmless or an exceedingly powerful carcinogen.

The first of four five-day monitoring periods scheduled over a year took place in early December, when TXI's four older kilns were idle. TXI's status might affect the chromium's numbers, TCEQ officials conceded, depending on whether the older kilns are operating during any testing.

Scientists contacted by the residents who requested the health department study were also extremely critical, but for different reasons.

One was Dr. Stuart Batterman of the University of Michigan, an expert on industrial emissions who had written a damning report on the state's assurances on Midlothian in the mid-1990s. He also reviewed the latest study.

"The health consultation is biased," Batterman wrote in his review. "It contains overarching statements that discount all indications that emissions from local industry and environmental conditions might or do pose a health concern in the community."

The report frequently used flawed methods for assessing risks, he wrote, and wrongly focused only on exposure by breathing – neglecting skin contact, ingestion and other ways chemicals can enter the body. "It is unacceptable and misleading that the healt h consultation completely excludes this discussion,"
Batterman wrote.

The city steps in

In reluctantly launching its new chromium monitoring, which is costing $349,000, the TCEQ got local input – but not from the residents who have spent more than a decade studying the situation.

Instead, the TCEQ went to the city of Midlothian, regarded by some as a cement company town; TXI executive and lobbyist Maurice Osborne was mayor for 12 years.

City Manager Don Hastings insisted that the industries don't dictate city affairs. He said he specifically wanted residents who didn't have a history of involvement in local air pollution controversies to advise the TCEQ: "no strongly pro-industry kind of lobbyist types, but probably also no other folks from an extreme perspective of the other sides of the issues as well," he said.

Hastings said the group didn't want to substitute its judgment for the TCEQ's, but he did suggest that the agency put some of the air monitoring stations near schools in hopes of addressing parents' concerns.

According to a list that the city provided The News under the Texas Public Information Act, the nine members of the city's focus group included a pastor, a doctor, real-estate and insurance agents, a couple of lawyers and two engineers. The organizer was Midlothian resident Cathy Altman, who practices law in Dallas and recently served as chairwoman of the North Texas Clean Air Coalition, a business-backed group that promotes voluntary emissions reduction efforts.

TCEQ briefing materials for the group said a goal was to "encourage open communication with citizens through this Focus Group." However, there's no evidence that its meeting schedule or even its existence – or the fact that the state was conducting more air monitoring in Midlothian – were ever announced to the public.

Mier, who triggered the Midlothian air review, said he learned about the city's focus group from vague references in the TCEQ's 70-page solicitation for a monitoring contractor.

According to an e-mail from Altman to Hastings, Altman called Mier but did not invite him to join the focus group; Mier said he probably wouldn't have joined anyway, because he didn't see much point in having non-experts advise the state.

"It seemed like they were going through the motions to try to show that they were interested in getting community input," he said.

The News found no record indicating that Altman asked anyone from Pope's group, Downwinders at Risk, or from the industries to take part. Altman referred questions to Hastings.

However, e-mails show that cement maker TXI gave health department and TCEQ officials a tour of its plant before a focus group meeting.
Mier said his first peek into how Texas handles a big environmental controversy leaves him convinced the final word will be, once agai n, that everything's fine in Midlothian.

"I think they'll succumb to the TCEQ," he said. "They always do."

Midlothian emissions
Totals for some key emissions:
2000 2002 2004 2006
Chromium 573 705 1,008 634
Lead 4,143 3,752 2,050 1,114
Manganese 7,998 8,994 7,612 7,299
Mercury 848 758 811 813
Sulfuric acid 1,416,045 606,500 581,838 618,036

Capitolism, cement-style
The cement industry has had many victories in the Texas Capitol, including the=2 0ones below.

These listings include legislation beginning in 1993, the earliest year when bill texts are available online; and campaign donations as of 2000, the year when campaign finance reports went online.

Listings include campaign contributions that bill authors or – in the case of industry-opposed bills that died in committee – committee chairmen have received from the industry or its lobbyists.

1993
•HB 2244, to force cement kilns burning hazardous waste to meet the same standards as commercial waste incinerators.
Outcome: Industry opposed. Died in House Environmental Regulation committee.
Author: Rep. Helen Giddings, D-DeSoto. Cement money: $22,000.
Committee chairman: Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa. Cement money: $36,600.

1995
•SB 776, to pay cement companies to burn shredded waste tires in their kilns, which the bill calls "energy=2 0recovery facilities."
Outcome: Industry supported. Passed; signed by then-Gov. George W. Bush.
Author: Sen. J.E. "Buster" Brown, R-Lake Jackson. Cement money: $10,405 (covers only 2000; retired in 2001. In 2008, 18 lobbying clients paid him up to $1.375 million).
Note: Tire payment program expired in 1997. In 2003, the state gave TXI and Cemex grants of $1 million each to retrofit their kilns to burn tires.

1997
• SB 1538, another attempt to put cement plants under the same rules as commercial waste incinerators.
Outcome: Industry opposed. Died in Senate Natural Resources committee.
Author: Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas. Cement money: $62,000.
Committee chair: Sen. J.E. "Buster" Brown, R-Lake Jackson. Cement money: $10,405 (covers only 2000; retired in 2001. In 2008, 18 lobbying clients paid him up to $1.375 million).

• HB 1008, to prohibit cement kilns in a metro area of more than 1 million from burning hazardous waste.
Outcome: Died in House Environmental Regulation committee.
Author: Rep. Jesse Jones, D-Dallas. Cement money: $2,500 (lost 2006 primary).
20 Committee chairman: Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa. Cement money: $36,600.

1999
• HB 2134, to restrict new batch plants near schools and neighborhoods.
Outcome: Industry opposed. Died in House Calendars committee.
Author: Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton. Cement money: $37,181
Committee chairman: Rep. Barry Telford, D-DeKalb. Cement money: $18,850 (retired 2004; now lobbies for the Texas Retired Teachers Association, making up to $150,000).

2005
• HB 2742, to prohibit hazardous waste burning in cement kilns.
Outcome: Died in House Environmental Regulation committee.
Author: Rep. Jesse Jones, D-Dallas. Cement money: $2,500 (lost 2006 primary).
Committee chairman: Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton. Cement money: $39,838.

• SB 1272, to ban contested case hearings on new local cement-mixing stations, called batch plants, which generate noise, dust and traffic complaints.
Outcome: I ndustry supported. Passed; signed by Gov. Rick Perry.
Author: Sen. Ken Armbrister, D-Victoria. Cement money: $45,500 (left Senate in 2007 to become Mr. Perry's legislative director).

• SB 15, to make it harder for workers to win damage suits after breathing asbestos and silica sand, the latter a raw material in concrete.
Outcome: Industry supported. Passed; signed by Mr. Perry.
Author: Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Fort Bend. Cement money: $57,250 (left Senate in March 2008; now vice president for business development of Austin-based Biophysical Corp., a medical test developer).

2007
• SB 1177, to require state regulators to test pollution-cutting technology called selective catalytic reduction on a cement plant in North Texas.
Outcome: Industry opposed. Passed Senate; watered-down House version died in House Calendars committee.
Author: Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth. Cement money: $92,328 (defeated for re-election in 2008).
Committee chairman: Rep. Beverly Woolley, R-Houston. Cement money: $39,347.

SOURCES: Legislative bill search (www.capitol.state.tx.us); Texas Ethics Commission (www.ethics.state.tx.us).

Ash Grove sues over Texas green cement resolutions

2009-01-07T13:15:00.000-06:00

By DAN MARGOLIES
The Kansas City Star
Business Section

Overland Park-based Ash Grove Cement Co. is challenging “green cement” resolutions enacted by Texas municipal bodies requiring local governments to buy cement made using less-polluting methods.

In a lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Dallas, Ash Grove says the defendants, by enacting the resolutions, stifled competition and jeopardized scores of jobs and economic growth.

“This is not a case about air quality; rather, it is about whether the defendants, however well intentioned but misguided their goals might be, may ignore laws they do not wish to follow, may pass resolutions which are unfair, unwise and unlawful, and may take property away from Ash Grove in an arbitrary and capricious manner,” Ash Grove’s complaint states.

The suit names the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington and Plano, Dallas County Schools and Tarrant County as defendants.

At issue are cement-purchasing resolutions passed first by Dallas in May 2007 and then by the other defendants. The resolutions require the municipalities to use cement manufactured by a dry kiln process or to give preference to kilns that emit no more than a certain amount of nitrogen oxide per ton of material used to make the cement.

Ash Grove operates a $200 million cement plant in Midlothian, Texas, that employs 124 people, according to its complaint. The plant uses so-called wet process kilns, which are more polluting than dry process kilns.

There are two other cement plants in Midlothian, which is just south of Dallas. The operator of one of the plants, Texas Industries Inc., indefinitely shuttered its four wet kilns in October. The company cited the economy and a shrinking construction market.

Ash Grove alleges that the green cement resolutions violate Texas law, which it says require municipal bodies to evaluate only the competence of the bidder and the quality and price of its products or services.

The suit also contends that the resolutions violate Ash Grove’s constitutional rights.

The suit drew an immediate response from Downwinders At Risk, a Dallas area pollution watchdog group, which decried it as an attempt to intimidate local officials.

“I don’t see Ford suing these cities for replacing their Crown Victorias with Priuses,” Downwinders spokesman Jim Schermbeck said in a written statement.

“Ash Grove is losing their largest customers over legitimate concerns about air pollution,” he said. “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.”

Downwinders said that Ash Grove’s kilns, which date back to 1965, are the oldest and dirtiest in North Texas.

In its complaint, Ash Grove says that it “takes its responsibility to the environment seriously” and has voluntarily reduced its nitrous oxide emissions by 46 percent between 2006 and 2008.

“Of the three cement manufacturing plants located in the Midlothian area,” it said, “Ash Grove’s Plant has the lowest total NOx emissions, representing less than approximately 25 percent of total NOx emissions from the three plants.”

The Dallas-Forth Worth region has until 2010 to comply with federal ozone standards. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported last December that Ash Grove was willing to slash pollution if Dallas and Fort Worth softened their green cement resolutions and Arlington agreed not to pass one. Arlington, however, went ahead and enacted its resolution a few weeks later.

Forbes magazine recently listed Ash Grove as the 372nd largest private company in the country, with estimated revenues of $1.27 billion in 2007 and 2,800 employees.

To reach Dan Margolies, call 816-234-4481 or send e-mail to dmargolies@kcstar.com.

DON'T GIVE IN TO THE CEMENT BULLIES

2009-01-07T11:34:00.001-06:00

Denton Record Chronicle Editorial

08:21 AM CST on Monday, December 8, 2008

Picture this: A health-conscious city looking to prepare for its annual pie-eating contest issues an invitation for bids, along with the specification that the pies must be made with artificial sweetener. The Pie-Oh-My Co. of East Frog Leg, Texas, which does not make sugar-free pies, sues in federal court, claiming the no-sugar requirement stifles competition in violation of the United States Constitution.

If that sounds ridiculous, it is, but it is essentially what Ash Grove Texas LP has done in filing a federal suit against the cities of Dallas, Plano, Arlington and Fort Worth. Ash Grove Texas doesn't make pies; it makes cement, and it makes it using a "wet-kiln" process that turns out pretty good cement but also produces serious air po llutants. The defendant cities have all passed resolutions favoring the purchase of cement made by a cleaner, "dry-kiln" process.
If the pie analogy is too far-fetched for you, try this one: Under the argument posited by Ash Grove Texas, an automobile manufacturer that makes only gas-guzzling, air-polluting vehicles could sue any city that advertised for high-mileage, low-emission cars for its municipal fleet.

We have no idea if the cement company actually believes their own argument. We tend to think it's using the lawsuit as a cudgel to intimidate other cities that are contemplating similar resolutions.

Unfortunately, the bullying tactic may be working. Even worse, it may be working right here in Denton.

The Denton City Council had such a resolution on the agenda last week, but postponed action on it after about Ash Grove Texas' lawsuit. According to the report by the Record-Chronicle's Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe, the council decided to postpone action on the resolution after City Attorney Anita Burgess "urged the council to be cautious."

"Be cautious" is usually good advice, but not when trying to figure out what to do about a bully.

No governmental entity should recklessly discount the consequences of litigation. But neither should it be intimidated by a platoon of legal blowhards with a fat client and a dubious legal claim.

The reduction of air pollution is, or should be, high on the agenda of every municipality in North Texas. Dry-kiln technology is a cleaner way of making cement, and any government that buys cement has not only the right, but the duty, to demand that it come from as environmentally friendly a source as possible.

Anybody can file a lawsuit about anything; the members of our City Council should know this from experience. There is a time to "be cautious," and there is a time to say, "See you in court, pal."

This looks to us like a time for the latter.

Ash Grove cement firm an anti-green bully

2009-01-07T11:26:00.001-06:00

Dallas Morning News editorial

03:33 PM CST on Friday, December 5, 2008

The city of Dallas blazed a green trail in 2007 when it created a policy that gave purchasing preference to cement kilns that use cleaner technology.
Since then, several other North Texas cities have passed similar environmentally conscious resolutions.

Now, one cement company is crying foul. Ash Grove Texas LP is suing cities with green cement policies, contending that these clean-air efforts violate the company's constitutional rights. Who knew that our forefathers ranked the right to pollute up there with due process and free speech?

The company, which relies on older wet-process kilns, blames Dallas for being the Pied Piper of enviro-friendly cities and compelling other governments to go green. The nerve.

When it comes to clearing North Texas' ozone-choked air, local leaders have only limited options. In a state that has fought environmental regulations at almost every turn, city councils have been forced to get creative in crafting their own policies. Dallas, Arlington, Plano, Fort Worth and other local governments wisely recognized that pollution has a price. Green cement regulations sent the message to companies that investing in clean technology would pay dividends.

For its part, Ash Grove has emphasized its efforts to reduce nitrogen oxides emissions. The company has taken some steps to reduce pollution and actually was recognized with an award from the North Texas Clean Air Coalition.

But instead of building upon these efforts, Ash Grove is throwing a legal tantrum, stomping its feet and demanding most-favored kiln status.

The company's lawsuit was filed as at least three other cities were poised to consider similar cement resolutions. Instead of trying to scare cities off, Ash Grove would be better served to continue its push to reduce emissions and bolster its case for being a preferred supplier.

The company's lawyer derided the green cement policies as coming under the "slogan of cleaner air." But as cities that have used the power of the purse to reduce pollution demonstrate, clean air isn't just a slogan – it's serious business.

Response from MISD to USA Today article

2009-01-07T11:22:00.000-06:00

Statement from Dr. Kennedy, Midlothian ISD Superintendent of Schools

Midlothian ISD strives to keep student safety a priority. The USA Today
article entitled "Health Risks Stack up for Students Near Industrial
Plants" creates concern. However, the article is based on a
computer-simulated air pollution screening model using data from 2005.
Since that time, TXI has closed its wet processing cement kiln and other
pollution controls have been added to the cement plants throughout the
Midlothian area.

At the present time, according to city officials, the Texas Commission on
Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is monitoring air quality throughout the
city, especially close to schools and parks. The monitoring that TCEQ is
accurate, real data and not a computer simulated model.

Michael Honeycutt, TCEQ Manager of the Toxicology Section, stated that
TCEQ has been monitoring Midlothian air quality for the past ten years. He
indicates no concerns regarding air quality of Midlothian schools.

Midlothian ISD will continue to consult with the TCEQ to ensure that our
schools are safe.

Jana Hathorne
Public Relations Coordinator
Midlothian ISD
100 Walter Stephenson Rd.
Midlothian, TX 76065
972.775.8296, ext. 1037
www.midlothian-isd.net

How is Pollution Affecting Your School?

2009-01-07T11:20:00.000-06:00

http://startelegram.typepad.com/extra_credit/2008/12/how-is-pollution-affecting-your-school.html
+++++++

December 08, 2008

How is pollution affecting your school?

USA Today published a special report examining pollution data from the EPA and the nation's schools, including private schools. The results are very surprising. An Ohio elementary school was shut down after state EPA officials found the chances of getting cancer there to be 50 times higher than accepted levels. Meanwhile in Texas, Port Neches-Groves High School (south of Beaumont) has more than two dozen graduates that were diagnosed with cancer several years after high school. The paper reports that 17 of those students have reached settlements with nearby petrochemical plants.
But locally, the numbers are unsettling. USA Today found Midlothian's Peak and Vitovsky elementary schools at the worst level for exposure to cancer-causing toxins and other chemicals (the first percentile. The lower the percentile higher the exposure to such toxins). The city has three cement plants.
Diamond Hill Elementary School to be the Fort Worth school exposed to the most toxins ranking it in the 5th percentile. The next two Fort Worth schools were Oakhurst Elementary School and Calvary Academy, both in the Riverside area. Next were Meacham Middle and M.H. Moore Elementary schools, both on the north side of the city.
You can look up your school's rank here.
-Eva-Marie Ayala

Health risks stack up for students near industrial plants

2009-01-07T11:17:00.001-06:00

December 8, 2008

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/school-air1.htm

Mountain Peak ISD, Midlothian
http://content.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/smokestack/school/88210

All Schools in Midlothian
http://content.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/smokestack/search/TX/~/Midlothian/~/name/~/1/

TXI to idle 4 of its cement kilns in Midlothian

2008-08-09T11:54:00.001-05:00

10:38 PM CDT on Friday, August 8, 2008

By BRENDAN M. CASE / The Dallas Morning News
bcase@dallasnews.com / The Dallas Morning News
Randy Lee Loftis contributed to this report

Dallas-based Texas Industries Inc. will idle some cement production at its Midlothian plant as demand slows because of the economic downturn, a company spokesman said Friday.

Four of the company's wet kilns will be shut down. However, the company will continue to operate its larger, more environmentally friendly dry kiln, said Randy Jones, vice president of corporate communications and government affairs.

"Certainly, residential demand has fallen off, and that precipitates other things to slow down," Mr. Jones said. "It's an inventory management action."

Vicki Bryan, a bond analyst in Houston with Gimme Credit LLC, said the move was unexpected.

"They're definitely hunkering down," she said.

The company did not have an estimate Friday on how many of its 270 Midlothian employees will be affected, Mr. Jones said.

It will take 60 to 70 days to idle the four kilns. After that, employees with continuous service of six months or more will be furloughed and can be brought back if necessary, Mr. Jones said. Employees with less than six months of service will be laid off.

From March to May, TXI's cement shipments fell 3 percent compared with the same period last year, according to the company's most recent financial statements.

TXI stock rose $2.49 to close at $50.32 Friday, the day after a larger-than-expected bond offering by the company. Shares are down about 28 percent since the start of the year.

The kiln idling may be good news for local air quality since fuel for the four includes hazardous waste. Already, the state permit for the newer dry kiln, which burns coal and natural gas, requires TXI to idle two of the four older kilns at any given time to limit emissions.

TXI began burning hazardous waste in 1987, a year after another local plant – now owned by Ash Grove Cement Co. of Overland Park, Kan. – began using waste as fuel. TXI is now the only local cement company burning hazardous waste.

"For the first time since 1986, no plant in Ellis County will be burning hazardous waste," said Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk, a Midlothian clean-air watchdog group. "This is a big deal."

Staff writer Randy Lee Loftis contributed to this report

TXI to idle four Midlothian cement kilns

2008-08-09T11:52:00.000-05:00

Saturday, Aug 9, 2008
Posted on Sat, Aug. 09, 2008

By AMAN BATHEJA
abatheja@star-telegram.com
TXI, the largest cement producer in Texas, will idle its four biggest-polluting kilns in Midlothian, the company announced Friday.
The company will temporarily shut down the plants that use a "wet" production process. Environmentalists say those plants release far more nitrogen oxides into the air than less-polluting dry kilns.

TXI will continue to maintain its dry kiln in Midlothian, company spokesman Randy Jones said.

The kilns will take about 65 days to shut down, Jones said.

After that, some employees will be laid off while others will be furloughed and possibly recalled later, he said.

Though environmentalists were quick to applaud the company’s move, Jones stressed that the decision wasn’t made because of pollution concerns. Rather, it was largely because of a sluggish economy.

"It’s not a secret to anybody that certainly residential construction has slowed down in Texas as well as throughout the United States and that has some impact on other markets like commercial," Jones said.

The dry kiln was selected to remain in operation because it produces more cement than any of the other kilns, Jones said.

Over the past year, several cities including Fort Worth, Arlington and Dallas have passed resolutions calling for the purchase of only "green" cement from less-polluting plants.

Jim Schermbeck with Downwinders at Risk credited the cities’ resolutions with forcing TXI to shut its plants.

"They saw the future coming with more and more of these resolutions coming out from all these cities," Schermbeck said.

Jones wouldn’t speculate when asked whether the decision to stop production at its four wet kilns may turn out to be a permanent break from that production method.

"We’re idling these kilns on a temporary basis and will not make a decision based on what the environmental groups are saying," Jones said.

Schermbeck said groups like his will continue to pressure TXI to permanently shut down the kilns or retrofit them so they produce less pollution, though he doubted that would be necessary.

"I would be very surprised if these wet kilns ever came online again given the economic disadvantage," Schermbeck said. "This is more or less their swan song, but of course TXI is loath to admit that right now."

Tom "Smitty" Smith of the Texas chapter of Public Citizen in Austin said TXI may have been reacting to anticipated action from state officials to achieve federal emissions requirements for the Metroplex that are required by the Environmental Protection Agency.

"You can’t squeeze any more clean air out of the system without going after the kilns," Smith said.

Regardless of TXI’s reasoning, Smith said, he hopes that the plants stayed closed for good.

"It is our hope that they will say we’ve made enough profit out of their kilns and it’s time to retire them," Smith said. "Everyone in the Dallas-Fort Worth area would breathe better if they would."

It’s not a secret to anybody that certainly residential construction has slowed down in Texas as well as throughout the United States and that has some impact on other markets like commercial."

TXI spokesman Randy Jones

This is more or less their [the kilns’] swan song."

of

Jim Schermbeck
Downwinders at Risk

Breathing Easier - Editorial

2008-04-15T10:16:00.000-05:00

Posted on Thu, Mar. 27, 2008

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

The Environmental Protection Agency has adopted a tougher national ozone standard that could prove very difficult for smog-plagued North Central Texas to meet.

Some critics say the new standard, which mandates that the ozone concentration not exceed 75 parts per billion, is too severe. Others say the standard should be even more demanding, allowing no more than 60 to 70 ppb of ground-level ozone, the primary ingredient in smog.

It's difficult to say precisely what the magic number should be. Even highly knowledgeable environmental scientists might disagree.
But we say with certainty that we're pleased the standard has been toughened considerably from the prior level of 85 ppb. The new benchmark will compel the Dallas-Fort Worth area to push harder to improve its air quality.

Why it's important

We need to win the ozone battle because high smog concentrations can trigger asthma attacks, worsen bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses and hinder lung development in children. Ozone exposure can contribute to premature death for people with heart and lung disease. Vegetation and trees can even be damaged by repeated exposure to ozone, new scientific evidence shows.

Nine North Central Texas counties -- Tarrant, Dallas, Denton, Collin, Parker, Johnson, Ellis, Kaufman and Rockwall -- previously were designated as a "non-attainment area" failing to meet the prior ozone standard of 85. The EPA has projected that Hood and Hunt counties also will be in non-attainment under the new 75 standard, although no formal designation has been made.

Meeting the new standard will be a real challenge. But we believe it can be achieved with a determined effort by federal, state and local governments, businesses and individuals.

The solutions

The key to meeting the standard is reducing emissions of nitrogen oxide, which contribute to smog formation. Approximately 73 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions in the D-FW area come from mobile sources, including on-road sources such as passenger vehicles and freight trucks and off-road sources such as construction equipment. Industrial sources also add significant emissions.

The region's best hope for attaining the new 75 standard appears to be continued air quality improvements resulting from new federal rules mandating cleaner fuels and engines for such mobile pollution sources as passenger cars, large freight trucks, locomotives, marine vessels and construction equipment such as bulldozers. Programs that provide strong financial incentives for replacement and retrofitting of older, heavier-polluting vehicles and equipment already are in place.

Further emissions reductions can be achieved by continuing to toughen emissions standards for industrial sources, including cement kilns and power plants.

Expanded reliance on mass transit and car pooling can help. In addition, cities must continue encouraging mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly developments that allow people to live, work and enjoy recreational activities in the same area. That reduces urban sprawl and vehicle miles traveled.

Individuals can help greatly by driving more fuel-efficient cars, keeping vehicles well-tuned, combining multiple errands into single trips and opting to live closer to work. Employers can help by subsidizing employee commutes via bus or train.

Further advancements in automotive technology, including the development of affordable plug-in hybrid vehicles and fully electric cars, also could help in coming years to clean our air.

No deadline has yet been set for smog-plagued regions to comply with the new 75 standard. In general, the deadlines are expected to range anywhere from 2013 to 2030, with the most severely polluted areas having longer periods to reach attainment.

Reason for hope

The Metroplex actually has moderately improved its air quality in recent years. But the difficulty of attaining federal ozone standards has been heightened because the standards periodically have been toughened and the number of pollution sources has expanded because of the area's heavy population growth, which has been exceeding 100,000 annually. In just the past 10 years, the number of registered passenger vehicles has grown by more than 500,000, to approximately 3.7 million.

But there is genuine reason for hope, according to the EPA. It projects that, by 2020, the number of counties nationwide that fail to meet the new 75 ozone standard could be winnowed dramatically -- from 345 to 28.

In Texas, Harris County (Houston) would be the only area remaining in violation of the standard by 2020, the EPA forecasts. The D-FW area, now listed in the "moderate" non-attainment category, finally would be in compliance.

Let's all take a deep breath and relish the thought of clean air -- or, at the least, cleaner air. It's achievable if we put our minds to it.

ONLINE

Environmental Protection Agency: www.epa.gov/air

North Central Texas Council of
Governments: www.nctcog.org/trans/air

Letter from Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck

2008-04-15T10:13:00.002-05:00

http://www.ci.arlington.tx.us/mayor/message.html

March 18, 2008

Air Quality and Energy Savings: Two Smart Moves for the Environment

Recently the City Council and I reviewed an environmental policy to improve Arlington’s air quality. Cement, used in almost every building project, is a wonderful material, but the making of cement can create air borne pollutants.

Over the past several years I have worked toward cleaning up Arlington’s air and this is another step toward keeping that goal. The resolution that Council passed is called the Green Cement Resolution. It essentially allows the City of Arlington to give a preference when bidding for cement to companies that, regardless of production method, reduce high emission rates of nitrogen oxide.

According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, cement kilns produce 43 percent of all point-source air pollution in the DFW area. Technology now exists, allowing cement kilns to produce cement through a process that burns half as much fuel and produces half as much carbon dioxide.

Although cement may not be the first thing that comes to mind when talking about global climate change, the Council and I had the facts about the technology which improves the cement industry’s air quality emissions. That was why we voted unanimously in favor of the Green Cement Resolution. And we are not alone. Similar resolutions have been endorsed by other North Texas cities, including Fort Worth and Dallas.

At the same City Council meeting, we celebrated another milestone event. On February 12, the City of Arlington received its first energy savings check from Oncor Electric Delivery for $24,000.

Arlington joined the Oncor CitySmart Initiative in 2007 to help improve energy efficiency and reduce energy costs in city-owned buildings.

Through CitySmart, the City is eligible to receive incentive checks for implementing energy efficient appliances and equipment. Incentives are paid by Oncor and equal $150 per peak kilowatt of energy saved. The Public Utility Commission of Texas provides the formula for calculating these energy savings. Part of the recent check was for savings achieved by replacing older florescent lighting with new more energy efficient lights.

Energy efficiency and air quality conserve our natural resources and protect our future. The City Council and I believe these projects in city-owned buildings are a great financial investment and a priceless investment for our community’s good health.

Robert Cluck, MD_Mayor_City of Arlington

Air pollution settlement will provide seed money for "green" projects

2008-02-28T10:01:00.000-06:00

Downwind of a Windfall

Air pollution settlement will provide seed money for “green” projects.

By ERIC GRIFFEY
Ft. Worth Weekl,y January 30th, 2008

Generally speaking, when small environmental groups take on gigantic corporations, it usually doesn’t end well for the little guy — or the environment, for that matter. But in 1998, in the middle of a pitched battle with Texas Industries over the burning of hazardous wastes in cement plants near Midlothian, the Downwinders At Risk environmental group set in motion a series of events that would result in an unprecedented opportunity to clean up the air in North Texas.

While the Downwinders were busy battling TXI, Holcim Ltd, one of the world’s biggest suppliers of cement, filed an application with the state to double the output of its Midlothian plant. The company also promised to add equipment that would cut the pollution in half. Seeing as the Downwinders were already busy fighting one cement giant, most people within the organization were willing to take Holcim at its word.

One person remained skeptical. Sue Pope, founder of the Downwinders group, contested the Holcim application with state regulators. She petitioned the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality but was denied a public hearing. As it turns out, her intuition was correct. Because of various problems with vendors and some of the equipment Holcim inherited, the company ended up putting more pollution into North Texas’ air than its permits allowed, particularly nitrous oxide (NOX), one of the major contributors to greenhouse gases that harm the planet’s ozone layer. Downwinders eventually sued, and in 2002, the Swiss-based cement company invited Pope to the negotiating table. After some coercion by the EPA, the skeptical Midlothian rancher agreed.

“I studied the proposal, and I just didn’t think it was possible,” said Pope, a soft-spoken 67-year-old who said that she became active in environmental issues in the late 1980s because she started seeing a marked difference in her livestock and the landscape after the cement plants started operating. “The state neglected to look at it adequately. They [Holcim] operated for quite some time in violation of their permit.”

Three years later, the two sides agreed on a settlement that somehow managed both to make the environmentalists happy and to cast a pretty positive light on a big ol’ corporation. Among its effects, the far-reaching agreement resulted in Holcim installing a type of pollution control that had never been used in Midlothian before. Called Selective Non Catalytic Reduction (SNCR), it has cut pollution at that plant by 40 to 50 percent, Holcim agreed to pay for an independent scientist of Downwinders’ choosing — SMU’s Al Armandariz — to monitor its activities. And in perhaps the most surprising part of the settlement, Holcim gave the environmentalists a $2.25 million fund to be passed out as seed money for other local anti-pollution measures intended to reduce the level of NOX poison in our air, one of the reasons that North Texas is in violation of the federal Clean Air Act.

“There are some adjustments that remain to be made, but I’m very appreciative of the progress we’ve made [with Holcim],” Pope said. This is the [culmination] of all of our work since the ’80s.”

Now, united under the Blue Skies Alliance banner that includes the Downwinders, the Sierra Club, and other prominent environmental groups, the clean-air activists are in the unfamiliar position of sitting atop a giant pile of money, which they call the Sue Pope North Texas Pollution Reduction Program, with numerous different organizations all vying for a chunk of it.

“For a group like us that exists on garage-sale money and very nice individuals who like what we’re doing, to end up with $2.25 million is a very big deal,” said Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders. “We want to make sure that we use the money responsibly.”

The group considered 39 applications — $11 million worth of proposals — and chose six (including one in Fort Worth) that will address everything from pollution by taxis, trolleys, lawn mowers, and school buses to promoting “green” building design. The initiatives include:

• conversion of 325 taxis serving Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport from conventional gas to hybrid power;

• a green building initiative to make possible more energy-efficient construction of lower- to middle-income homes in one Dallas neighborhood;

• creation of a local Sustainable Community Institute to promote environmentally responsible design and construction in North Texas;

• a program to exchange North Texas residents’ gas-powered lawn mowers for discounted electric ones;

• a program to provide air conditioning and other support for Dallas’ McKinney Avenue Trolley, in order to attract more riders;

• a program that would bring the first hybrid school bus to North Texas.

“The truly phenomenal part of this story is that these guys [Holcim and Blue Skies] have often been adversaries,” said Katie Hubener, former executive director of the Blue Skies Alliance. “We still want them to clean up and get greener, but this settlement is the only one of its kind in this country where environmentalists and industry sat down at the table, had a frank conversation, and were able to reach an agreement on how to clean up the air.”

Hubener and Schermbeck said that the decision-making process was lengthy and tough, but ultimately, the deciding factor was lasting impact. Each program will receive seed money only, not annual funding.

The hybrid taxi program, initiated by D/FW Airport and the City of Dallas, involves paying the cost of modifying gas-powered taxicabs to turn them into hybrids, running on a combination of gasoline and electricity. Blue Skies also wants the airport board to adopt a policy that would give hybrids preference in taxi lines. A Dallas ordinance already limits how long taxis can be on the road (two years or 250,000 miles), and Blue Skies is trying to get those numbers raised for hybrids.

Dallas Sustainable Skylines is a green home-building project in the Fair Park area initiated by the city and Habitat for Humanity. The Blue Sky Alliance will pay for additional planning and features needed to qualify the homes for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, which ensures that a building project is environmentally responsible. Holcim has offered to contribute cement to the project.

The Sustainable Community Project is a collaborative effort of Cedar County College and the Dallas County Community College to establish a program that educates builders, designers, and anyone who is interested in LEED certification and other green development practices, including how to transport materials, plan projects, and initiate environmentally friendly revitalization projects in neighborhoods.

Fort Worth and Dallas teamed up to create the Mow Down Air Pollution Project, which involves trading in gas-powered mowers for electric ones. Experts estimate that the pollution created by using a gas-powered lawnmower for one hour is the equivalent of a 100-mile car ride.

Hubener said the McKinney Avenue trolleys were included in the awards because if air conditioning and other upgrades can attract more riders in the summer, the impact on vehicle traffic could be significant. The Sue Pope money will pay to retrofit the entire fleet of historic trolleys.

Also on the list is a plan that would provide one hybrid school bus to the Midlothian school district. The project was chosen so that the Downwinders could create an impact in their own backyards, Hubener said. The school bus isn’t the only way that the Midlothian school district will benefit from the Sue Pope fund: The money has been sitting in an escrow account for about a year and a half, and all of the interest accrued will go to the district’s special needs fund.

Those grants will leave about $1.5 million still in the coffers, and Schermbeck said his organization will try to use that money over the coming year to do more in Tarrant County.

“There is going to be an attempt to reach out to Fort Worth and Tarrant County,” he said. “The city of Dallas was just very, very aggressive in their pursuit of this money, so the result is that a lot of the money is going into grants that came through the City of Dallas. We’re trying to get Tarrant and Fort Worth more interested in applying for the second round of funding. We’re also meeting up with local foundations, even if they haven’t considered anything like this before, just to see if there might be a way to partner up and bring some of these projects to Tarrant for the first time.”

David Bary, spokesman for the regional office of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the historic agreement is a positive step toward cleaner air.

“The result will be steps and strategies that will ultimately improve the air quality here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and will result in improved health for everyone who lives here,” he said.

Report: D-FW smog plan too weak

2008-01-21T11:54:00.000-06:00

SMU professor says area won't reach goals; state defends proposal
08:39 AM CDT on Friday, July 20, 2007

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
rloftis@dallasnews.com

The state's new clean-air plan for the Dallas-Fort Worth area is far too weak to succeed, an analysis by a Southern Methodist University environmental engineering professor has found.

Al Armendariz examined trends in the region's levels of ozone, or smog, and the pollution cuts that the state has ordered over the next two years. He concluded that the plan would not bring ozone down to legal levels by the end of the summer 2009 smog season, the federal target date.

As a result, he found, people in North Texas would continue to breathe hazardous air pollution.

Ozone, the main local pollutant, poses a health risk to a wide range of people, especially children, the elderly and anyone with a respiratory ailment, such as asthma.

"I strongly believe that the [plan] submitted by the state of Texas fails to meet the requirements of the federal Clean Air Act and that the D-FW area will continue to violate the ozone standard," Dr. Armendariz wrote to Richard Greene, regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The state official in charge of the D-FW plan disputed Dr. Armendariz's findings.

"We have looked at his report and at this point don't see anything that would cause us to change our conclusion that the new D-FW [plan] will get the D-FW area into attainment by the ... deadline," said David Schanbacher, chief engineer of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

EPA spokesman David Bary said the agency did not plan a formal response to Dr. Armendariz's report. When the agency proposes a decision on the state's plan, it will consider the report along with other public comments the EPA receives, he said.

The EPA oversees state clean-air plans under federal law. Texas officials approved new plans for the D-FW area and greater Houston and submitted them to the EPA in late May.

Mr. Greene, the EPA regional chief, has threatened to reject the D-FW plan unless the state strengthens it, though a decision is months away. The state environmental commission defends its plan, saying it includes enough pollution reductions to meet federal requirements.

Modified plan

Mr. Greene voiced concerns about changes the state made between the plan's first version in December and the final version in May. Under the draft plan, the state predicted that ozone levels at two regional monitors would violate the federal health limit.

Under the final version, which Texas environmental commissioners adopted May 23, four local monitors would show ozone levels over the limit, revised forecasts showed.

Ozone levels across the region would be higher under the final plan than under the draft.

The changes eased requirements for cement kilns, local power plants, compressor engines for pipelines, and other industrial emissions sources.

Dr. Armendariz's 50-page report endorses Mr. Greene's concerns about the last-minute changes, but it also reaches a broader conclusion. For years, he found, pollution cuts have been much too small to reduce ozone levels.

From 1998 to 2003, emissions of ozone-causing pollutants in the region have been cut by about 23 percent, Dr. Armendariz found. Even with those reductions and additional ones since then, eight-hour ozone levels have remained flat and in some cases have gone up significantly.

"These reductions have been completely insufficient to do anything about eight-hour ozone values," he said in an interview.

"Eight-hour" refers to the way ozone is measured. Levels are measured each hour and then averaged in eight-hour periods.

Ozone forms in the air when summer sunlight reacts with emissions from vehicles, industrial plants and other sources. To reduce ozone levels, states try to reduce emissions of the chemicals that form ozone.

To reach the federal limit by late 2009, Dr. Armendariz found, ozone would have to drop by 12.5 percent from 2006 levels, the steepest plunge yet.

The emissions cuts that the new state plan envisions cannot make that happen, Dr. Armendariz concluded. His analysis called the planned reductions in ozone-causing nitrogen oxides "extremely inadequate" to reduce ozone to acceptable levels.

"The weight of evidence of recent ozone trends shows that ozone design values are increasing across much of the D-FW area and that the area will not achieve attainment by 2009," he wrote.
From 2003 to 2006, the most recent period for which data was available, the increase regionwide was about 0.5 parts per billion per year.

However, ozone levels in the northwestern counties of Tarrant, Denton and Parker increased more than twice that amount, about 1.1 ppb per year.

Ozone levels tend to be higher toward the northwestern part of the area because prevailing winds carry pollutants in that direction.

Suggested changes

Dr. Armendariz is urging the EPA to demand specific improvements to the plan. They include:
•Requiring all coal and natural-gas power plants in East Texas to make the same emissions cuts as those in D-FW and greater Houston. That would cut emissions by about 140 tons a day, more than three times as much as all other cuts the plan now mandates, Dr. Armendariz found.

Dr. Armendariz said the state's computer studies find that further reductions in East Texas power plant emissions would lower ozone levels in D-FW by as much as 1 part per billion – enough, he said, to bring one regional monitor into compliance and bring two others much closer.

State officials said they did not require cuts from East Texas power plants because those plants already have reduced pollution under previous state orders.

•Deeper cuts in emissions from cement kilns in Ellis County. The kilns are the region's biggest industrial sources of nitrogen oxides, created when they burn a variety of fuels, including, in the case of cement giant TXI, commercial hazardous waste.

The state ordered a 36 percent cut in nitrogen oxides from the cement kilns, based on what a pollution-control system called selective noncatalytic reduction, or SNCR, could achieve.

Dr. Armendariz cited his own analysis and a state-sponsored study in supporting the use of other pollution-control technologies, including selective catalytic reduction, or SCR. That system could yield 80 to 85 percent reductions.

State officials rejected the alternative as more expensive and unproven on cement kilns like those in Midlothian. Dr. Armendariz cited statements by CEMEX, one of the world's largest cement makers, that SCR is proven and available.

•A 55-mph highway speed limit across Dallas-Fort Worth. According to a North Central Texas Council of Government estimate, the move could cut nitrogen oxides by 17.24 tons per day, almost twice as much as any other local measure in the state's plan.

State officials previously responded to a similar suggestion by noting that the Legislature in 2003 prohibited state agencies from lowering speed limits to help air pollution. However, Dr. Armendariz wrote to Mr. Greene that that restriction is the state's problem, not the EPA's.

"The state can't exempt itself from the federal Clean Air Act," he said.

State agency, industry on same page in fighting smog cuts

2007-12-16T11:02:00.001-06:00

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-smogmain_25pro.ART.State.Edition2.372a34f.html

State agency, industry on same page in fighting smog cuts
Agency, industry on same page in opposing tighter EPA ozone limit
12:00 AM CST on Sunday, November 25, 2007

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
rloftis@dallasnews.com
Some of Texas' biggest industries have an important ally in trying to keep the Environmental Protection Agency from ordering nationwide smog cuts: the state's top clean-air officials.

At least four times since the EPA previewed its proposal in March, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality – which is responsible for fighting ozone in smog-bound areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth and metropolitan Houston – has urged the EPA not to tighten the federal limit on ozone, smog's chief component.

The TCEQ's arguments closely match those of the heavy industries it regulates, including manufacturers and coal-burning power companies. Last month, two major Texas business groups lifted TCEQ language attacking the EPA proposal and reproduced it, sometimes verbatim, in their own comments to the EPA.

Many scientists and medical groups have concluded that the current ozone limit, set in 1997, can no longer be considered safe. They include the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Society, the American Thoracic Society, the American Lung Association, the administrator and staff of the EPA, and all 23 members of a panel that reviewed the science for the EPA.

The experts' consensus indicates that people in urban North Texas are breathing dirtier air, with a higher risk of lung damage, asthma episodes, heart attacks and even death, than state smog-fighting plans assume. It also indicates that none of the strategies tried so far – ranging from cuts in industrial pollution to voluntary carpooling – is providing deep enough reductions to make the region's air safe.

However, the Texas environmental commission's chairman and his predecessor, both appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, have told the EPA that those experts are wrong. The agency's executive director and its chief engineer, the official in charge of air quality and toxicology, also have delivered that message.

They have urged the EPA to consider costs when setting a new ozone standard, which would be against federal law. They also have argued against a tighter standard using scientific objections that experts have called misinformed.

"In summary, I do not believe that lowering the ozone standard would improve public health in Texas," TCEQ chairman Buddy Garcia wrote to EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson on Sept. 25. "Given the existing scientific debate and the extreme economic impact and obvious difficulties in meeting a new standard, I encourage EPA to maintain the current standard."

Previous TCEQ chairman Kathleen Hartnett White used nearly identical language in an April 19 letter to Mr. Johnson. TCEQ toxicologists wrote the scientific critiques in the officials' letters, said chief engineer David Schanbacher.

The EPA reviewers, drawn from 16 universities, four research centers and two consulting firms, examined medical research and concluded that "there is no scientific justification" for maintaining the current standard. The panel felt so strongly that it put its recommendation for a much lower standard in italics.

"I was frankly surprised at how unanimous the views were [among the panelists] that we need to lower it," said Dr. Rogene Henderson, chair of the panel and of the EPA's main Clean Air Science Advisory Committee.

"Of course, part of the consensus building is that some wanted to lower it a lot more," said Dr. Henderson, scientist emeritus at the private, nonprofit Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, N.M. "And some were right up there at the top."

But in the end, "they all agreed on this."

A court-ordered review
Under a settlement with the American Lung Association and seven other groups, the EPA proposed a new ozone standard in June, with a final decision due in March 2008.

The groups sued in 2003 over the EPA's failure to do a required five-year review of the 1997 standard by 2002.

The limit from 1997 is 80 parts per billion, or 80 molecules of ozone out of every billion molecules of air. With allowed rounding, the actual limit is 84 ppb, 5 percent above the nominal limit.

The EPA review panel examined studies on animals and people in laboratories, as well as data on hospitalizations, asthma incidence and other factors. It found evidence of health effects at and below 80 ppb. The panel called unanimously for a new standard as low as 60 ppb, but in no case higher than 70.

The panel also called for an end to rounding, so a 70 ppb limit would really mean 70, not 74.

Mr. Johnson, the EPA administrator, agreed that medical research clearly showed the need for a lower standard. However, he proposed a new limit between 70 and 75 ppb. He also solicited comments on going as low as 60 or as high as 80, suggesting he could make the biggest possible change or none at all.

Meeting a tighter standard would require North Texans to rethink the state's smog strategies and their own lifestyles, since vehicles are the biggest local polluters, followed by industries. No state plan, including a new one the TCEQ sent to the EPA in May, has yet brought local smog levels down to the current limit, much less a tighter new one.

The new plan predicts ozone above the current limit at four of nine regional monitors by 2009. Ozone levels at all nine would be higher than the EPA panel's recommended range.

Texas officials say they can't fix smog by themselves, since more than 60 ppb of ozone sometimes blows in from other states. Texas environmentalists counter that the state shouldn't blame other regions until it's done a much more aggressive job of fighting smog at home.

Health and money
The Clean Air Act prohibits the EPA from considering cost or difficulty of attainment when it sets a standard, for the same reason that a doctor shouldn't check a patient's insurance coverage before making a diagnosis. Costs and other factors are supposed to come later in strategies for reaching the standard.

That hasn't kept critics, including the TCEQ, from citing costs when trying to talk the EPA out of tightening the standard. Industry groups argue that reducing smog would require unnecessarily expensive changes to vehicles, fuels, electric generating and manufacturing.

"I think it's a pretty big deal [for the Texas economy] because we have about a third of the manufacturing capacity in the United States right here in Texas, and most of the things we manufacture have some impact on ozone," said Mary Miksa, a lobbyist for the Texas Association of Business.

"And we use electricity. We use a lot of electricity. You can't produce electricity – unless you do it with nuclear – [without] generating some of the precursors to ozone."

Wind power is an exception, however.

TCEQ officials have made the same argument. "A new lower standard in the range being considered by EPA ... will have a significant negative consequence to the economy of the state," Mr. Garcia, the TCEQ chairman, wrote to the EPA chief on Sept. 25. "If the standard is lowered [to 60 ppb], every county in Texas with an ozone monitor would exceed the standard."

A top EPA official wrote back to remind Mr. Garcia that the federal agency isn't allowed to let costs skew its scientific judgment. "The administrator carefully considered the full body of available scientific evidence," wrote Stephen D. Page, director of the EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards.

Environmentalists argue that listing more counties as ozone violators would just tell the public what scientists already know: The air in many places, previously labeled as healthy, is actually harmful. Industries, they add, have always said clean air is too expensive.

"It's a classic argument that's been made for four decades," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

"The overarching message for the EPA is that this is all about public health. We need to do what's necessary to achieve that."

A 'not guilty' verdict?
The TCEQ offered several scientific objections to the EPA's ozone proposal. None appears more compelling at first glance than its contention that ozone doesn't put people in the hospital.

Starting with Ms. White's letter of April 19, the TCEQ has asserted that Texas' pattern of asthma hospitalizations – peaking in winter, when ozone levels are low – shows that ozone doesn't send asthmatics to emergency rooms. That would contradict many studies that link ozone to hospital visits, and thus undermine the EPA proposal.

The asthma hospitalization pattern, TCEQ officials said, seems to be a uniquely Texan phenomenon, probably due to the state's combination of weather and emissions sources. Ms. White wrote to the EPA that the pattern was "an example of how Texas is different from the rest of the U.S." and cited it as "indicating that ozone is not a significant contributor to asthma hospitalizations."

The TCEQ's Mr. Shanbacher repeated the argument at an EPA hearing in Houston on Sept. 5. TCEQ executive director Glenn Shankle's formal comments on the EPA plan, dated Oct. 9, also cited it.

Language identical to that in Mr. Schanbacher's September testimony later appeared in letters to the EPA from the Texas Association of Business on Oct. 8 and from the Association of Electric Companies of Texas on Oct. 9.

Mr. Schanbacher said in an interview that he was not aware of a winter peak in asthma hospitalizations being found anywhere else. "I think other states don't keep as good hospital records as Texas," he said.

Actually, the seasonal pattern has been found everywhere it's been studied – "in countries as environmentally, economically, culturally and socially different as Trinidad, Norway, Hong Kong, the United States, and England," researchers wrote in a 2001 study published in BMC Health Services Research, a peer-reviewed online journal.

The winter-peak pattern is common knowledge among asthma researchers, said Dr. Eric Crighton, the study's chief author. His paper cited more than a dozen other studies published since 1984 that found the same seasonal trend.

"Rural, urban – if you go to someplace like northern Ontario, where ozone is certainly not a problem, you'll find this same pattern," said Dr. Crighton, assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Ottawa. "You go to deserts, to unindustrialized [places] – you name it."

The immediate cause of most winter asthma hospitalizations, he said, is almost certainly viruses, which spread among children when school starts and are then passed on to their families and others. Asthma hospitalizations match school dates so well, Dr. Crighton said, that it's possible to tell when semesters start by looking at admissions.

The winter asthma peak doesn't exonerate ozone at all, he said, because lung damage from long-term exposure to ozone, even in amounts once thought safe, puts asthmatics more at risk from other threats such as viruses.

"To eliminate ozone as a determining factor is naïve," Dr. Crighton said. "I wouldn't say that ozone is responsible for the hospitalizations at that time specifically. But I think ozone is leading to other weakened immune systems, lower lung function in general."

Dr. Henderson, the head of the EPA's ozone review panel, concurred. The panel members knew about the winter-peak asthma pattern when they called for a dramatically tighter ozone standard, she said.

"They took into consideration seasonal differences and co-pollutants and other confounders of the data," Dr. Henderson said. "So the panel took those things into account in doing the analysis."

When asked to respond to the TCEQ's argument on hospitalization patterns, Dr. Henderson replied, "Surely they didn't say that it was unique to Texas. That's not too astute, is it?"

The TCEQ's Mr. Schanbacher defended the agency's position, which he said came from a review by the agency's toxicology staff.

"Our toxicology guys reviewed the studies," he said. "It was their conclusion. I will stand by the conclusions of our professionals."

Long-awaited Midlothian health study gives few answers

2007-12-16T10:42:00.000-06:00

By SCOTT STREATER
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Brad Young's property abuts the TXI Operations cement plant in Midlothian. On days when the winds shift out of the west, he says, a plume of pollution sometimes blows over his property, driving him and his three young boys back inside the house.
"I remember one day, it was about a year and a half ago, we were all outside," said Young, 49, who has lived there since 1994. "We were at the back of the property just looking at the horses, and the wind changed. It came up and blew really strong, and a complete cloud of cement-kiln dust blew on us. We all started to choke and cough. We had to pull our shirts up over our faces and run for the house. It was a nightmare."

Young wondered what was in the plume that dusted his family. He was optimistic that he might get an answer when federal health officials announced in 2005 that they would study whether pollution is harming people in Midlothian, southeast of Fort Worth.

But the long-awaited study released Monday -- a day earlier than scheduled after the Star-Telegram reported the results -- reached few conclusions. It classified Midlothian as an "indeterminate public health hazard," a vague finding that has done little to change the views of those who fear that pollution is sickening people or of industry officials who say their operations cause no harm.

TXI officials believe there's enough in the 128-page report to support their view "that there's nothing in the area that would cause a health or an environmental problem," said Randy Jones, TXI vice president of corporate communications and government affairs.

Sal Mier, who with his wife, Grace, spearheaded a petition to persuade federal health officials to study Midlothian pollution, has lined up a team of national and regional scientists to review the study and determine whether researchers used proper methodology. None had analyzed the study closely enough to comment Tuesday.

Meanwhile, questions linger for people like Alexandra Allred, whose 8-year-old son, Tommy, has asthma that she believes is exacerbated by local pollution.
"The study wasn't conclusive, but at least it was another study done of the problem," said Allred, 42, whose family has lived in Midlothian since 2001. "Maybe this study will raise a few more eyebrows."

MIDLOTHIAN HEALTH
The study
After getting a petition signed by 371 residents, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the Texas Department of State Health Services agreed in 2005 to investigate whether air pollution is sickening people in Midlothian.

What the study found
The researchers initially focused on Midlothian's three cement plants -- TXI, Ash Grove and Holcim -- but broadened the study to include all pollution sources affecting the area. The report does not link any pollutant measured in the air to any source. While researchers reported finding high levels of some toxic chemicals in the air, they concluded that more study is needed to determine the health impacts. They also noted large gaps in existing data, including no health-based screening levels for 87 of the 227 contaminants measured, that make it very difficult to draw conclusions.

State response
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has no regulatory power and can only make recommendations. The researchers asked the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to collect more samples to test for chromium -- known to cause cancer in humans -- and to evaluate whether more contaminants need to be studied. Terry Clawson, a spokesman for the state commission, said the agency has not decided how it will respond to the recommendations.

Industry response
Susana Duarte de Suarez, Holcim's vice president of corporate communications, said the company is committed to "utilizing technologies and procedures that protect the environment while reducing our footprint in the Metroplex area."

To obtain a copy
The report is available at www.dshs.state.tx.us/epitox/posted.shtm. You can also view a copy at these locations:
A.H. Meadows Library, 923 S. Ninth St., Midlothian
Midlothian City Hall, 104 W. Ave. E, Midlothian

What's next
Residents, government leaders and business officials have until Feb. 11 to submit comments on the study. A second report, on health effects from ozone, particulate matter and other pollutants, is not expected to be released until at least next year.

To submit comments
E-mail comments to epitox@dshs.state.tx.us or mail them to Health Assessment and Toxicology (MC 1964), Department of State Health Services, 1100 West 49th St., P.O. Box 149347, Austin, TX 78714-9347.

Region's clean-air plan is flawed, engineer reports

2007-12-16T10:35:00.000-06:00

Posted on Sat, Dec. 15, 2007

By SCOTT STREATER
Star-Telegram staff writer

The Dallas-Fort Worth area will never meet federal clean-air standards unless the state targets ozone-forming pollution from cement plants, natural gas compressor engines and other sources that affect Tarrant and Denton counties.

That's one of the findings in a new study by Al Armendariz, a Southern Methodist University chemical engineer who has advised local advocates on ozone issues. Armendariz analyzed ozone patterns over the past 10 years and found that pollution levels have remained the same or risen slightly in Tarrant and Denton counties as they decreased elsewhere.
He attributed this to the increase in compressor engines used to produce natural gas in the Barnett Shale and to the cement plants in Ellis County, southeast of Fort Worth.

Yet a state clean-air plan for the Dallas-Fort Worth region mostly focuses on pollution that affects Frisco, in Collin County, even though the highest ozone levels in the past five years have been recorded in Tarrant County.
Armendariz said the state needs a new plan focusing on "those sources that affect Tarrant County and Denton County, because those are the sources that are putting everybody above the federal standard."
State regulators say revising the plan would take months and delay efforts to clean the air.
"Our thought process is we need to move forward as quickly as possible to bring the area into compliance," said Andy Saenz, a spokesman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

OZONE PROBLEMS
THE STUDY
Al Armendariz, a chemical engineer at Southern Methodist University, studied ozone patterns and ozone-forming pollutants over the past 10 years and concluded that a state plan for reducing ozone in Dallas-Fort Worth is flawed. Armendariz shared his study this week with the Environmental Protection Agency's regional office in Dallas. The EPA, which has expressed concern about the state plan, will not comment until it has finished its review of the plan, EPA spokesman Dave Bary said.

THE PROBLEM
Armendariz's study lists two main reasons that ozone-forming pollutant levels have remained steady, particularly in Tarrant County:

Gas compressor engines: The state has already conceded that it seriously undercounted the engines being used to compress natural gas produced in the Barnett Shale. It is trying to get a more accurate count. The state plan calls for emission controls on these engines.

Cement plants: While automakers and coal-fired power plants have been forced to cut emissions significantly in the past decade, the cement plants in Ellis County have not achieved similar reductions, according to Armendariz's study. The state plan calls for those plants to cut emissions by 40 percent.

THE SOLUTION
Armendariz said the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality must completely revise the State Implementation Plan that it approved in May. Armendariz compared Texas' plan with nine others and determined it "has the weakest computer modeling of any in the country." The problem, he said, is that the model is based on a sequence of high-ozone days in August 1999, when levels were highest in Frisco and Denton. That information is an "abnormality" within the past decade, he said. State regulators say the plan offers the best chance for the D-FW region to meet clean-air standards for the first time in decades.

THE CEMENT INDUSTRY
The three cement kilns in Midlothian -- Ash Grove Cement, Holcim and TXI Operations -- are the largest industrial sources of ozone-forming pollution in Dallas-Fort Worth. But industry officials say they are making significant strides in reducing pollution. Ash Grove and Holcim have installed equipment in the last two years that can chemically alter some emissions into harmless water vapor. This has allowed Holcim to cut emissions of nitrogen oxides -- the principal manmade component of ozone -- by half in the past year, Holcim spokeswoman Susana Duarte de Suarez said. Ash Grove said it has slashed such emissions by nearly half since 1995 and is installing controls that will cut 30 percent more by next year.

LOCAL ACTION
The state plan has been widely criticized as weak. In July, Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley asked Richard Greene, the EPA's regional administrator, to strengthen the plan, in part because he wants cement plants cut pollution more. In September, Dallas County Judge Jim Foster asked Gov. Rick Perry to make the state plan stronger.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
Ozone can trigger asthma attacks and aggravate emphysema, bronchitis and other respiratory problems. Children, older adults, people with respiratory problems and those who work outside are at greatest risk. Dallas-Fort Worth does not meet federal ozone standards and faces a 2010 deadline to meet them or face severe federal sanctions.

Perry urged to take steps to bolster clean-air plan

2007-09-06T09:29:00.000-05:00

By SCOTT STREATER
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
September 5th, 2007

One of the region's top elected leaders has asked Gov. Rick Perry to reject a state-approved ozone cleanup plan for Dallas-Fort Worth. The plan has been widely criticized for not doing enough to clean the air.

Dallas County Judge Jim Foster, in a three-page letter sent Friday, asked Perry to set up a North Texas air-quality summit at which local, state and federal leaders could work together to devise a stronger plan. He also asked Perry to instruct the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to add strong clean-air initiatives developed last year by local elected and business leaders but left out of the state-approved plan.

"If the much-considered suggestions from those on the ground here in D/FW are not adopted, and weaker measures substituted by the state, there is little motive for anyone in North Texas to keep cooperating with the state in trying to reach the goal of clean and legal air," Foster wrote. "The TCEQ will simply do what it wants to do anyway, regardless of the input of local authorities and experts. This is not the path to cleaner air."

The federal Environmental Protection Agency, which has the ultimate say on whether the plan is approved, has been working with the state to revise it.

Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, who in July asked Richard Greene, the EPA's regional administrator, to strengthen the state plan, praised Foster for the letter.

"We need all the help we can get," he said. "We need to do whatever we can in North Texas to get people focused on addressing our air-quality problem."

TWO REQUESTS, ONE ROAD MAP

Letter to Perry

Dallas County Judge Jim Foster is asking Gov. Rick Perry to:

Appoint a North Texas resident to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's three-member board. "Having someone who is already familiar with the particulars of our air problem and the personalities of the local officials would help expedite this task," Foster wrote.

Convene a clean-air summit at which local, state and federal officials would try to devise a stronger ozone-reduction plan. "This kind of direct communication is long overdue," Foster wrote.

Instruct the environmental commission to include the local ozone-fighting measures in the state cleanup plan. The local initiatives target pollution from cement kilns and East Texas power plants. "These measures may not be a silver bullet, but they are certainly part of the solution to the chronic D/FW air pollution problem," Foster wrote.

Letter to EPA

Foster also sent a letter Friday asking Richard Greene, the Environmental Protection Agency's regional administrator in Dallas, to reject the state plan. "You should demand a new one that actually has a chance of success," Foster wrote.

The state plan

The state cleanup plan calls for:

Reducing ozone-forming emissions from cement kilns by 40 percent, which is less than local leaders had hoped.

Replacing off-road construction equipment or retrofitting it with pollution controls.

Replacing the oldest, dirtiest vehicles.

Helping low-income motorists repair vehicles that fail the annual emissions inspection.

Even with all those steps, as many as four regions in the area, including Fort Worth, might still be in violation after the 2010 deadline.

Perry's response

Perry's office said the governor had not received the letter Tuesday. Andy Saenz, an environmental commission spokesman, said state regulators have met with the EPA twice and are working on amendments that "will make the plan even better. Everybody's on the same page to make this plan even stronger."

sstreater@star-telegram.com
Scott Streater, 817-390-7657

DALLAS CITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION

2007-09-06T09:26:00.000-05:00

Dallas Ordinance:

DALLAS CITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION
ON GREEN CEMENT PURCHASING PREFERENCE
ADOPTED MAY 23rd, 2007

WHEREAS, air pollution is a significant environmental issue that can threaten the health of human beings and impacts the ecological systems of the planet; and

WHEREAS, the primary air pollutants of concern to the Dallas-Fort Worth region (DFW Region) area are nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM), carbon dioxide (CO2), and carbon monoxide (CO) (hereinafter, “Air Pollutants”). These emissions of Air Pollutants are released from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, vehicles, construction equipment, power plants, cement kilns and other stationary sources; and

WHEREAS, emissions of green house gases such as CO2 can contribute to climate change. Climate change may cause the Earth's temperature to rise, leading to a variety of environmental concerns such as changing weather patterns, rising sea levels and extinction of a variety of species; and

WHEREAS, emissions of NOx and VOC, when combined in the presence of sunlight, form ground level ozone, which ozone can cause respiratory problems particularly for the young and elderly; and

WHEREAS, the DFW region is classified as a moderate non-attainment area withrespect to the Environmental Protection Agency's eight hour ozone standard of 85 ppb; and

WHEREAS, a State Implementation Plan (SIP) will be submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in June of 2007 for the purpose of reducing ozone levels in the DFW region to 85 ppb; and

WHEREAS, the Environmental Protection Agency allows the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to take credit as part of the weight of evidence for those measures that can't be easily quantified or regulated and could assist in lowering the levels to below 85 ppb; and

WHEREAS, cement kilns make up 43% of all point sources in the DFW region; and

WHEREAS, wet kilns use more energy and have higher emissions rates, including emissions of NOx, than dry kilns; and

WHEREAS, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has proposed a new rule setting the source cap limit for emissions at 1.7 pounds per ton of clinker produced for dry kilns with a compliance date of March 2009; and

WHEREAS, the City of Dallas has become a leader in environmental stewardship for
promoting better air quality and is recognized for its efforts on a national level; and

WHEREAS, the City of Dallas has made significant progress in addressing air quality issues through purchasing of clean vehicles, construction of green buildings, and reductions in energy consumption; and

WHEREAS, the City of Dallas City Council reviewed numerous short and long term measures for consideration at its May 16, 2007 meeting that will encourage reductions in Air Pollutants in the DFW region;

Now, Therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF DALLAS:
SECTION 1. That the City Manager is hereby authorized to specify the purchase of dry kiln cement as the base bid in City of Dallas bid packages, with an alternative bid for the purchase of cement from a unspecified source and preferential purchasing for bids from a cement kiln with emission rates of 1.7 pounds of NOx per ton of clinker or less.

SECTION 2. That the City Manager will report to the Dallas City Council in nine months on the results of specifying purchase of dry kiln cement and preferential purchasing of cement from cement kilns with emissions rates less than 1.7 pounds of NOx per ton of clinker or less.

SECTION 3. That this resolution shall take effect immediately from and after its
passage in accordance with the provisions of the Charter of the City of Dallas and it is accordingly so resolved.

Dallas City Council Passes Nation’s First “Green Cement” Ordinance

2007-09-06T09:24:00.000-05:00

From the Plume News in June:

Dallas became a national environmental leader May 23rd when its city council voted in favor of an ordinance that gives official preference to the purchase of cement for city projects from newer and cleaner “dry process” kilns over product from more polluting “wet process” ones. It is the first such policy in the U.S. and could have a profound impact on local air quality. (A copy of the "green cement" resolution that Dallas adopted is attached to this e-mail). Downwinders at Risk was a major force behind the ordinance's passage.

Defying a threat from the president of Kansas City-based Ash Grove Cement to sue the city if it went forward with the policy, the council voted 7 to 3 to adopt language that authorizes the City Manager “to specify the purchase of dry kin cement as the base bid in City of Dallas bid packages.” Ash Grove operates three wet kilns. TXI operates four wet kilns and one larger dry kiln. Holcim operates two large dry kilns.

"Wet kilns" are based on a design abandoned by the cement industry over 25 years ago. They use large amounts of water as slurry to mix ingredients for cement. That water then must be evaporated in furnaces, or kilns, to produce the final product, called clinker. They are notoriously energy inefficient and usually lack even the most basic pollution controls such as “scrubbers” for Sulfur Dioxide. In contrast, dry process kilns mix their ingredients without water, usually have modern controls, and produce much less pollution.

Dallas Mayor Laura Miller said she plans to press for adoption of the dry kiln preference among all the cities already aligned against the construction of TXU’s coal plants. “This is a model for the future of environmentalism. Instead of fighting permits, we can change the behavior of these companies in the marketplace directly. We can vote for cleaner air with our pocketbooks.”

Downwinders is looking for any and all North Texas city councils, school boards, hospitals, and educational institutions to follow Dallas' example. We need to keep momentum going. Please contact us about opportunities you may personally know about or with which you have a connection.

2007-09-05T22:03:00.000-05:00

Council: Cement purchase changes will reduce emissions

Thursday, May 24, 2007
By DAVE LEVINTHAL / The Dallas Morning News
dlevinthal@dallasnews.com

It may not instantly scrub Dallas' notoriously smoggy skies of
pollutants, but a change is the city's cement purchasing procedures is
a key step in reducing industrial emissions both locally, and perhaps
nationwide, city leaders say.

The City Council late Wednesday voted to direct construction
contractors to include the price of "dry kiln"-processed cement in
their bid packages to the city. Cement produced in dry kilns generally
produces less total pollution compared to traditional "wet kilns."

"This is a giant step forward for us to tackle our [nitrous oxide]
problem. It's going to be the beginning of a national trend," Dallas
Mayor Laura Miller said. "We can start buying from clean plants and
make it an incentive for businesses to operate and build clean plants
that we'll buy from."

City staff will spend the next several weeks crafting rules for cement
purchasing, said Mark Duebner, Dallas' director of business
development and procurement.

Mr. Duebner expects that the city puts between 150 and 200
construction bids per year that would be affected by the change. It
may take a year or more for longer-term purchasing contracts to come
up for re-bidding under the new rules, he added.

The city will review the new rules in nine months to determine if any
need adjusting, such as a provision to allow contractors to submit
presumably cheaper, secondary bids to the city that may include the
price of wet kiln cement built into them.

Eventually, Dallas should begin supporting aggregate purchasing of
cement, or even energy that rewards plants that produce relatively low
emissions, Ms. Miller said.

The mayor added that she'll urge cities involved in the Texas Cities
for Clean Air Coalition, which have fought for the past year to
prevent TXU Corp. from building new, traditional-style coal-fired
power plants, to adopt similar cement-purchasing practices.

"We'll start to reach out to other cities soon to see if they're
interested in joining us," Mr. Deubner said.

Cement companies in nearby Midlothian could most be affected by the
rule change, particularly the Texas Industries, which uses one dry
kiln among its five. The Ash Gove Cement Company does not use dry
kilns at all, although company officials say their wet kilns feature
emission-reducing technology.

The council should give cement companies more say in the process,
which could significantly affect the Ash Grove Cement Company in
particular, company President Charles Wiedenhoft told the council.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

dallasblog.com
CITY CEMENT GETS CLEAN AND GREEN
by Austin Kilgore Wed, May 23, 2007, 05:46 PM

New buildings built by the city of Dallas will now be built of green
cement.

The Dallas City Council passed a first of its kind resolution changing
its bidding process to require construction bids to include the cost
of "dry processed" cement.

Cement produced in so-called dry kilns uses less energy and pollute less.

Base bids will now include dry cement, and a bidder can include an
alternate bid using cement produced from any source.

In addition, preference will be given to bids that include cement
produced in the cleanest process available.

State law allows preference when a standard is established giving the
council five percent leeway to grant bids that meet the standard.

Three cement companies in Midlothian are affected by the resolution.
One company, Wholecim, has two dry kilns. Texas Industries, the
largest company, has five kilns, one of which is dry.

The smallest plant, Ash Grove Cement Company, is the only Midlothian
facility that does not have a dry kiln. One of its three wet kilns
does have pollution reducing equipment installed.

Ash Grove President Charles Wiedenhoft objected to the resolution,
claiming it put his company at an unfair disadvantage, and the cement
industry did not have enough input on the regulations.

"Ash Grove is a good neighbor and a good operator," he said. "The
cement plants want to help, but must be included in the process."

Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Elba Garcia made several unsuccessful attempts to
encourage the council to send the issue to the Environmental and
Transportation Committee for further revenue.

The resolution includes a review of its impact after 9 months.

Mayor Laura Miller said she hoped the Clean Air Cities Coalition she
helped form would consider adopting similar resolutions. The coalition
consists of various public entities including cities and school districts.

Miller, along with Councilmembers Pauline Medrano, Linda Koop, Leo
Chaney and Ron Natinsky and Mitchell Rasansky and Steve Salizar all
voted in favor of the measure.

Not-So-Clean-Air Plan: EPA should demand revision from TCEQ

2007-07-25T13:45:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, July 25, 2007, Dallas Morning News Editorial

From the get-go, the state's clean-air plan for North Texas should have been a no-go.

When regulators first unveiled a draft of their proposal to reduce ozone, it was evident that state officials were settling for just squeaking by instead of aggressively reducing pollution. Their plan let power plants, cement kilns and cars off easy. Worse, the proposed restrictions fell short of federal air quality standards.

But the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality wasn't done.

Before approving the final version, regulators quietly removed the few teeth included in the original plan. The new-and-inferior proposal was so weak that Richard Greene, the regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, warned the TCEQ that the plan could be rejected.

Still, state officials insisted that, despite evidence to the contrary, Dallas-Fort Worth would somehow comply with ozone standards.

But an in-depth analysis by a Southern Methodist University professor leaves little doubt that North Texas' anti-pollution plan is inadequate. Al Armendariz, an assistant engineering professor, dissected the state's air models and analyzed pollution trend data.

His examination revealed that ozone levels must plummet at an unprecedented pace for Dallas-Fort Worth to come close to meeting federal standards. The state's own models project that four local monitors will exceed ozone limits – two of them by a wide margin.

That alone should disqualify the proposal.

His analysis underscores that for too long, the state has made only half-hearted attempts to reduce pollution, continuing a cycle of delays and failure.

Dr. Armendariz's report is not just an esoteric exercise in trend lines and number crunching. If, as the report predicts, North Texas fails to attain clean-air goals, residents will continue to breathe lung-scarring ozone.
But we could do better.

The EPA should reject the state's plan and require additional pollution cuts. The Armendariz report outlines a game plan for reducing ozone levels that includes expanding emissions restrictions on local power plants to include central and East Texas. Further limiting pollution from nearby cement kilns and regulating natural gas compressor engines also would reduce ozone. And reducing speed limits on North Texas highways would improve our air as well.
The state took the easy way out with its do-little plan. The EPA should demand that North Texas do more.

Al Armendariz: We can't wish our smog away

2007-07-25T13:34:00.001-05:00

Clean-air plan won't keep N. Texas from violating ozone standard. We deserve better.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Dallas-Fort Worth's ozone smog is going to disappear. No more yellow, orange or red alert days. No more concern about children playing soccer at the park during summer and fall afternoons. No more guilt about not carpooling or not riding DART. In 2 ½ years, the lung-damaging, asthma-inducing ozone smog will be as much a part of Dallas' past as the Wright amendment and Cowboys games at the Cotton Bowl.

Why is the ozone problem going away? The state of Texas said so.

On June 15, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality submitted the latest in a long line of Dallas-Fort Worth clean-air plans to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The plan was required by the federal Clean Air Act because North Texas does not meet the ozone air-quality standard.

The plan contains emission reductions that are supposed to ensure that our air quality will meet the ozone standard by the end of 2009. For this to happen, our ozone levels have to drop from the current level of 96 parts per billion to 84 ppb. A drop of 12 ppb is substantial – levels of ozone have never dropped this far in a short period of time in any metropolitan area in the history of the Clean Air Act.

The state's latest clean-air plan for the region targets emissions of nitrogen oxides, one of the two air pollutants that transform into ozone with the help of abundant summer sunlight. Over the next 2 ½ years, the plan will lower emissions from cars, trucks, factories and utilities in North Texas by approximately 5 percent.

The EPA is now evaluating the plan and will approve or reject it, based on whether it believes that the state has demonstrated conclusively that D-FW air will meet the ozone standard.

In contrast to the state's conclusions, I think the evidence is clear that the plan will not succeed and that our area will continue to violate the ozone standard well into the future. There are a number of reasons the plan will fail, including:

•EPA analyses indicate that emissions reductions of approximately 20 percent are required to lower ozone concentrations by 3 ppb. Remember, we need a 12 ppb drop to meet the standard.

•Ozone levels in North Texas would have to begin dropping immediately more than 10 times as fast as the state's own long-term data show is actually occurring to reach the standard by the end of 2009.

•The state's short-term data show that ozone levels are actually increasing in Tarrant, Denton and Parker counties.

•The state has submitted numerous failed ozone plans for our area, including in 1976, 1979, 1984, 1987, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2001 and 2003. Each has not only been a state failure but also a failure by the federal government, since the EPA approved each plan.

It is time for the failure to stop. We pay high taxes and deserve better service from our government administrators and scientists. The EPA should not approve the plan submitted by the state and instead require a new one with emission reductions that ensure that our area will meet the ozone standard.

Everyone who breathes should contact Steve Page, EPA director of the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, at page.steve@epa.gov, and Richard Greene, EPA regional administrator, at greene.richard1@epa.gov, and tell them that it is time for the state to submit a real clean-air plan for our area.

Al Armendariz is an assistant professor in Southern Methodist University's School of Engineering. His e-mail address is aja@engr.smu.edu.

Dallas Mayoral Race/TXI

2007-03-16T09:47:00.000-05:00

http://www.txi.com/company_overview/leadership.html

http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/personinfo/FromMktGuideIdPersonTearsheet.jhtml?passedMktGuideId=1023000

Sam Coats' Dirty Secret - It's Not Little

As he solicits votes from Dallas residents, mayoral candidate Sam Coats portrays himself as a savvy businessman with ties to Continental Airlines and Schlotzky's.

What he doesn't mention is that he's also on the board of directors of North Texas' largest industrial polluter and hazardous waste disposal operation - TXI cement. Or that he's also a director of a company - Safety-Kleen - that pays TXI to burn hazardous waste in their 47 year-old cement plant in Midlothian, just south of Dallas.

Study after study has shown pollution from the TXI Midlothian plant significantly affecting DFW air quality. A recent modeling exercise by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality concluded that the plant could contribute up to 5.5 parts per billion of ozone on the worst summer days-more than any other single industrial polluter in North Texas. EPA included Ellis County, home of the TXI Midlothian cement plant and two others, in DFW's "non-attainment area" for ozone pollution in 2003 because so much smog-forming pollution comes from the cement plants.

Since 1989, citizens living adjacent to, and downwind of TXI have fought to end the practice of burning hazardous waste in facilities now considered obsolete and lacking modern pollution controls. The furnaces, or kilns, TXI uses to burn hazardous waste do not even have scrubbers on them, much less any of the other kinds of controls a typical hazardous waste would have as standard equipment. The plant is the largest hazardous waste disposal operation in the region and is consistently among North Texas' largest toxic air polluters with approximately half-a-million pounds emitted annually. Information about TXI's toxic pollution can be found in the company self-reporting Toxic Release Inventory online at RTK.net or through EPA TRI Explorer at the official EPA website.

Safety-Kleen collects waste of all sorts, including hazardous wastes, mixes them all together in large facilities called "blending plants" (there's one in Denton) and then pays to send that waste to cement plants such as TXI to be burned as "fuel." Such waste contains metals or chlorine which are not flammable. The result is hazardous waste residues going up the stacks in Midlothian and being delivered where ever the wind and gravity take them.

TXI is currently fighting tooth and nail against adding modern smog pollution controls recommended by the state's own experts in a special court-ordered study released last year. These controls have been shown to reduce smog pollution at cement plants in Europe by 80 to 90%. State Senator Kim Brimer of Tarrant County recently filed a bill - SB 1177 - mandating the testing of these controls in Texas. TXI has sent wave after wave of lobbyists to kill it.

How can a candidate for mayor ask for support from voters in Dallas while at the same time making it harder for them to breathe? When his company is actively working against installing modern pollution controls?

Maybe that's why Coats has failed to disclose his ties to TXI and Safety-Kleen on the campaign trial. If he was proud of his connections to these two companies, don't you think it'd be right up there on his public resume with giving people rides on planes and making them sandwiches?

It gets more interesting when you know that the City of Dallas had announced plans last fall to pass a new "clean air" cement procurement spec that would prohibit municipal projects from buying cement from TXI's old haz-waste burning kilns. It's coming up for its first vote before the City Council's Transportation and Environment Committee in the next month. If as expected, this new procurement policy passes the entire City Council, would it be a goal of a Coats Administration to have it gutted?

It's time to ask Coats what he considers more important: keeping TXI's industrial dinosaurs free of pollution controls or improving Dallas public health? Time to ask why his service to TXI is not a direct conflict of interest with the City's goal of cleaning up air that has not been in compliance with the Clean Air Act in 16 years?

Dallas voters and the people who inform Dallas voters need to fully explore whose Mayor Sam Coats would be - Dallas' or TXI's?

Plan targets odors, dust from Frisco industrial plants

2007-03-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

risco: Attorneys for facilities see legal issues with draft of ordinance

09:06 AM CDT on Monday, March 12, 2007

By JAKE BATSELL / The Dallas Morning News
jbatsell@dallasnews.com

FRISCO – City officials have drafted an ordinance to cut down on pollution after years of complaints about odors and dust near three concrete and asphalt plants in southeast Frisco.

FILE 2004/Staff photo
A concrete plant stands near a Frisco subdivision. A proposed pollution ordinance could be passed as soon as March 20.

At a City Council public hearing last week, the draft ordinance drew kudos from nearby elementary school students and residents who said it would help curb persistent dust and breathing problems.

"Vote for the clean air ordinance so the air can be clean, and me and my friends don't have to play in the black dust," said Grace Caputo, 10, a fifth-grader at Isbell Elementary School.

But attorneys for the plants said the ordinance conflicts with state environmental laws and leaves questions about how it will be enforced.

"If a citation can just be issued based on a phone call from a citizen, we're going to have a lot of effort wasted in jury trials at the city," said Bob Stewart, an Austin-based attorney for the Southern Star concrete plant.

The ordinance appears headed for a vote when the Frisco City Council next meets on March 20. It would ban the burning of industrial waste oils and prohibit plants from emitting strong odors and visible dust particles beyond their property lines.
Council members did not comment on the ordinance during last week's public hearing. But given the history of residents' complaints, council member Matt Lafata said he expects the measure to pass in one form or another. "I see no negative aspect to passing this thing," he said.

While the ordinance would apply to plants citywide, the recent debate has centered on emissions from three plants – the Southern Star and Redi-Mix concrete plants and the APAC asphalt plant. All are near State Highway 121, west of Custer Road.
Tests conducted by a city consultant and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found that the air in southeast Frisco is safe. But the tests also confirmed that dust from the plants could cause respiratory irritation.

Carolyn Lis, a leader of a neighborhood group pushing for better air quality, said the ordinance balances the needs of residents, students and businesses. "We're excited about this ordinance," Ms. Lis said. "It would mean cleaner, healthier air in our neighborhood and at our neighborhood school."

Grace, the fifth-grader, said she and her friends are tired of brushing black soot off their skin.
"When we are playing on the trampoline, we get black dust on us," she said. "When the asphalt plant is in production, it smells really bad. The smell makes it hard to breathe."

Kirk Morris, area manager for the APAC asphalt plant, deferred comment to a company attorney, who could not be reached Friday. Attorneys for the two concrete plants told council members that they would oppose the ordinance because it collides with state regulations.

City Manager George Purefoy said attorneys are reviewing the plants' concerns. But he said the city is committed to reducing odors and dust in the area. "It's not the most pleasant thing to have dust blowing into neighborhoods," Mr. Purefoy said. "I think at the end of the day, we'll be able to work hand in hand with [the plants] and find some common ground."

TALKING POINTS FOR CLEAN AIR HEARINGS

2007-01-30T19:56:00.000-06:00

IT'S TIME TO EXPRESS YOUR CONCERN FOR CLEANER AIR

Because DFW’s air is still in violation of the Clean Air Act for ozone, or smog pollution, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) must submit a new plan to clean it up to EPA by June 2007. The TCEQ has written a draft plan that is now subject to public comment.

Nothing will show the TCEQ, Governor Perry, state regulators, and the state legislature that the public wants a more effective plan for better air quality like your testimony in person at these hearings. Bring your children, your asthma medication, and your stories about how bad air quality has affected your life.

TALKING POINTS -- WHAT THE PLAN LACKS AND NEEDS

1. The plan misses its goal, barely achieving a technical legal solution with no margin of error. It needs to reach the clean air goal with room to spare in order to protect public health.

The TCEQ plan falls short of the requirement for cleaning up the air by the federal Clean Air Act deadline of 2010, with at least two ozone monitors, in Frisco and Denton, predicted by the state to still register levels over the federal limit. A federal provision allows states to argue that their plans are close enough to the goal to deserve approval by the Environmental Protection Agency. And Texas is using that "close enough" clause to seek approval of the Dallas/Fort Worth plan. “Close enough” does not protect public health.

Read the Dallas Morning News editorial on the failure of the plan to reach the goal
(http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/112206dntexsmogplan.32b4ead.html

2. The proposed plan uses an ozone standard allowing up to 85 ppb when scientific
experts are suggesting that air plans at 80 ppb are not even protective enough of
human health. DFW’s new air plan should address a higher standard of 60-70 ppb.

In 2006, the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), a group of 23 independent science and medical experts, recommended that the current 8-hour ozone standard (80 ppb) is not protective enough of human health and recommended that a stronger standard of 60 to 70 ppb be adopted. (see the recommendation letter at “http://www.epa.gov/sab/pdf/casac-07-001.pdf”)

For more information on this lack of protection for public health, read this article in the Dallas Morning News (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/120306dntswunhealthyair.3369cdd.html)

3. The TCEQ plan requires only the industry-supported scheme of a 40% emission reduction from nearby Ellis County cement plants, while an 80 to 90% emission reduction is achievable through cost-effective, available technology.

The proposed plan lets the Midlothian cement plants off the hook...again. This is the second state clean air plan to not require state-of-the-art controls on the cement plants. While letting ozone levels remain at dangerous levels, the air plan doesn’t demand advanced controls on the Midlothian cement plants. These three Ellis County cement plants produce half of all smog pollution emitted by industry in the entire North Texas region. These plants already raise DFW smog levels 3 times as much as ALL the 18 proposed new coal plants combined.
A recent state report concluded that pollution from the cement plants could be cut by 80 to 90% through cost-effective and available technology. State computer modeling shows adding these controls could significantly cut ozone levels in DFW. Yet the TCEQ is ignoring this technology, and is supporting an industry backed plan requiring only 40% reductions from the cement plants. For more information on this report and how the state is ignoring it, read this article in the Ft. Worth Weekly. (http://www.fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=4200)

4. The proposed plan doesn't require existing power plants whose pollution blows into the DFW area, but are located outside of our 9-county nonattainment region, to clean up as much. TCEQ should require the same standards of power plants located outside the non-attainment area as those units located in DFW’s non-attainment area.

Because a key source of emissions leading to elevated background ozone concentrations entering the DFW area is power plants in East and Central Texas, it is critical to require that all major electric generating sources in East and Central Texas meet fuel-specific emission requirements comparable to those in place in the DFW and Houston/Galveston nonattainment areas.

5. The proposed plan DOES NOT address the proposed coal plants. The projected impacts on the DFW area should be fully explored with at least the latest "clean coal" technologies applied to any pending or new power plant permits.

Nothing in the new plan anticipates the emissions of the 18 proposed coal plants that Governor Perry has ordered fast-tracked through the permitting procedure. No one with the state has modeled the cumulative effects to DFW smog levels of all these plants. These plants will not be equipped with the latest "clean coal" gasification technology that would reduce both smog and global warming gases. While TXU promises to reduce emissions by a total of 20%, they won't say how they plan to do that.

6. The TCEQ plan doesn't require stricter auto emission standards. Texas should adopt California Clean Car standards.

Regulators are always quick to blame cars for DFW's smog problems, yet they have never required Texas vehicles to adopt the strict smog-cutting auto emissions standards of California. These California standards would cut smog pollution significantly from one of the largest sources of pollution in North Texas, without adding significantly to the cost of new cars. Since Texas is one of the largest car markets in the U.S., adopting California Clean Car standards would also move the entire country closer to these cleaner new standards.

7. A Better Plan Is Already Written

Last October, the North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee, a body of local elected officials, Chambers of Commerce and environmental groups passed a series of 13 resolutions on what the new DFW clean air plan should have in it, including advanced controls on the cement plants, tougher emissions standards on all new coal plants, and California auto emission standards. To read their resolutions, go to this web site and download the pdf. (http://www.nctcog.org/trans/committees/ntcasc/index.asp).

FOR MORE INFO – AND TO SEND YOUR COMMENTS
You can view the background of the DFW area air problems, strategies and plans for cleaning the air, including the proposed TCEQ plan at http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/implementation/air/sip/dfw.html

If you can't attend these public hearings, please send your comments by Feb. 12th, 2007 to:
Joyce Spencer
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
P.O. Box 13087, Austin, TX 78711-3087
Project number 2006-034-117-EN

Let Governor Perry know about your concerns regarding the DFW air plan. Send them to:
Honorable Rick Perry
Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, TX 78711-2428

AIR POLLUTION: Cement industry lobbies OMB against tighter mercury, HCI rules

2007-01-17T00:30:00.000-06:00

Daniel Cusick, E&ENews PM reporter, Dec. 1, 2006

Industry representatives asked the Bush administration yesterday to forego tighter restrictions on mercury and hydrogen chloride (HCI) emissions from cement kilns, saying new regulation was not needed.

Portland Cement Association and Ash Grove Cement Co. told officials with U.S. EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget that HCI emissions from nearly all U.S. cement kilns "fall well below any threshold of concern for both human and environmental receptors," according to documents filed with OMB.

On mercury, industry reps reiterated their support for an earlier EPA finding that neither a "maximum achievable control technology" (MACT) standard nor a "below the floor" standard is warranted to address emissions from 115 U.S. portland cement factories.

EPA enforces tougher standards for cement kilns that burn hazardous wastes, but facilities that burn primarily coal and gas have not been subject yet to tougher rules for mercury, HCI or other potentially dangerous organic compounds. EPA is under court order to issue a new rule on portland cement facilities by Dec. 8.

Mercury has been of particular concern to regulators and public health officials because it accumulates in certain species of fish and shellfish. Humans who eat mercury-tainted fish are at greater risk of developing neurological problems, and women and children are especially cautioned against eating certain species.

EPA has estimated that portland cement facilities emit roughly 5 tons of mercury per year and as much as 15,000 tons of HCI annually. But such emissions were virtually unregulated until Earthjustice and the Sierra Club filed a 2004 lawsuit forcing the agency to draft more specific regulations.

Last December, EPA proposed a rule calling for no additional mercury reductions from cement plants, saying such action was "not justified." The agency also proposed implementing a risk-based emission standard for HCI, whereby facilities that demonstrated a low risk of adverse effects from HCI could be exempted from tougher standards.

'A more difficult nut to crack'

Yesterday's OMB meeting was criticized by environmental advocates who said it was part of a campaign by cement makers to secure final approval of a weak rule. "It's deplorable that the cement industry would spend its resources lobbying the White House rather than cleaning up the toxic mess it makes," Frank O'Donnell, director of the nonprofit group Clean Air Watch, said in an e-mail.

But Andrew O'Hare, vice president for regulatory affairs at the Portland Cement Association, said the meeting was to update regulators on what steps the industry had taken to address outstanding concerns. He described mercury as "a more difficult nut to crack for our industry because it's so tied to our raw materials."

Most of the mercury emitted from cement kilns comes from limestone, the primary raw material in cement. Limestone contains varying amounts of mercury depending upon its geologic origin, according to EPA's analysis. A secondary source of cement plant mercury is coal, which is burned to achieve high temperatures for converting calcium and silicate oxides into calcium silicate. Finally, mercury can be present in fly ash, an alternative cement-making material that kiln operators acquire from coal-fired power plants.

As with mercury, environmental groups have said the HCI proposal does not go far enough, and some groups have alleged that the risk-based standard, as proposed by EPA, is illegal.

In comments to EPA, the National Association of Clean Air Agencies argued that the agency must first establish a MACT standard for HCI, after which it can address "residual risk" from such emissions. On mercury, NACAA said a final mercury rule for portland cement facilities should require the best available mercury control equipment, including wet and dry scrubbers, sorbent injection technologies and removal of mercury from boiler fly ash.

The cement industry officials yesterday expressed opposition to an industry-wide application of wet scrubbers because, they said, "the technology has not been demonstrated on cement plants for the purposes of controlling mercury emissions."

Industry reps also said there was "insufficient data to establish a specific mercury emission limit for new or greenfield cement kilns," noting that mercury content was strongly associated with the type of raw materials used, and that most plants must rely on local sources of limestone, sand, shale and other raw materials.

The industry does support language that would prohibit use of fly ash from power plant boilers that capture mercury using activated carbon because "it will result in an increase of mercury input into the process."

Experts: Pollution Standards Not Enough to Protect North Texas

2007-01-04T11:48:00.000-06:00

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/120306dntswunhealthyair.3369cdd.html

11:29 AM CST on Sunday, December 3, 2006

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
Texas' new smog-fighting plan would seem to offer hope of health to the 6 million North Texans who have wheezed through decades of dirty air.

State officials promised last month that by 2009, federal, state and local measures would combine to help protect people from breathing unsafe levels of lung-scarring ozone. For the first time, the region would meet one of the nation's most important public-health goals.

But a mountain of medical evidence shows that even if the plan achieved the promised pollution cuts, it would still allow pollution levels that researchers know to be unhealthy. That is because the plan is based on a federal standard for ozone that experts say doesn't protect the public.

Medical studies have found that ozone reduces lung functions and causes long-term health damage even when levels are at or below the current federal limit.

In October, the EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, a group of independent science and medical experts, urged the agency to slash the standard, which dates from 1997, by as much as 25 percent to safeguard people, especially children and the elderly.

"It is the unanimous opinion of the CASAC that the current primary [standard] for ozone is not adequate to protect human health," the committee wrote to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson on Oct. 24. "There is no scientific justification" for keeping the current standard, the experts wrote.

While the EPA considers whether to scrap the current standard, Texas and other states can continue to base their clean-air plans on it. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality did so when it issued proposed smog plans for North Texas and greater Houston on Nov. 21.

The current ozone standard is 80 parts per billion – that is, out of every billion molecules a person breathes in, no more than 80 of those may consist of ozone. Because of imprecise measurement, the EPA does not count a violation until ozone reaches 85 parts per billion.

The Dallas-Fort Worth plan predicts that by 2009, most North Texas communities would have ozone levels just below 85 ppb. Frisco and Denton would still have ozone levels higher than 85.

A review of ozone records for 2004-06 shows that levels in some North Texas communities must come down by as much as 11 percent just to meet the current standard. In all cases, even with the plan in place and working as promised, the region's ozone levels would be far higher than the EPA science advisers said is needed to protect people's health. The advisers said the standard should be as low as 60 ppb and no higher than 70.

The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to consider only medical findings, not the cost of compliance, in setting federal air pollution standards – just as a doctor is supposed to base a diagnosis only on the medical evidence, not on the cost of treatment or the amount of insurance the patient has.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the health-only approach to clean-air standards.

The EPA's science advisers noted that the medical evidence for ozone's harm at or below the current federal limit came from studies of healthy volunteers. People with increased risks – especially children with asthma – face even greater danger, they wrote.

They felt so strongly about the medical need for dramatically lower ozone levels that when they sent their findings to the EPA's Mr. Johnson, they put their conclusions in italics.

The official in charge of Texas' state plans, TCEQ chief engineer David Schanbacher, said the agency doesn't plan to revise its plans in light of the advances in knowledge about ozone's health risks.

"I'm not going to speculate on what they [EPA officials] might do with the standard in the future," Mr. Schanbacher said.

He called the North Texas plan "a pretty aggressive program that addresses all the NOX [nitrogen oxides, a component of ozone] sources that we can control in the D-FW area."

The plan relies heavily on upcoming federal rules on vehicles and fuels along with some state-ordered industrial emissions cuts – not as deep as environmentalists wanted – and voluntary local steps such as van-pooling and HOV lanes.

Critics say planners have erred by focusing narrowly on meeting the federal standard, the minimum required by the Clean Air Act, instead of making a strong statement about protecting public health.

"I think that's one of the things we really have to concentrate on, is letting people know what the cars, automobiles are doing, what the power plants are doing, what the cement kilns are doing," said Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck, a physician and a vice president of Arlington Memorial Hospital.

"They're killing people," Dr. Cluck said.

Other pollutants

Ozone isn't the only air pollutant in North Texas with greater potential health impacts than government standards might suggest.

In September, the EPA took action on its standard for fine particulate matter, or tiny particles of soot, emitted by vehicles, industry, fireplaces and other sources. Medical researchers have linked particulates to heart attacks, lung cancer and premature death.

The EPA lowered the maximum particulate level allowed on any single day by nearly half, from 65 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 35 micrograms. But it kept intact the maximum annual average of 15 micrograms – a measurement with greater health implications because it tracks long-term exposure.

If the agency had adopted the most protective annual standard that its science advisers recommended – 13 micrograms – Dallas and Harris counties would have been in violation. Dallas County's average in recent years has been about 13.8.

Violator status could have triggered mandatory reductions in particulates from local businesses and industries. It also might have added pressure for more stringent measures to control local vehicles' pollution.

Just as significantly, a violator designation would have alerted North Texans that local air pollution levels the federal government labeled as safe might actually pose a health risk.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas pointed to just such a risk.

The study compared the rate of lung cancer in all 254 Texas counties to industrial emissions of particulates that contain metals. Although the EPA says that no Texas county has harmful levels of particulates, the study found a correlation between air emissions of metals and the incidence of lung cancer.

The highest lung-cancer rates were in the most industrialized areas of greater Houston and the nearby Gulf Coast counties, and metropolitan Dallas-Fort Worth.

The study's chief author, Dr. Yvonne Coyle, said she was looking for a possible explanation of rising rates of lung cancer among people who don't smoke, especially women. About 10 to 15 percent of people who get lung cancer have never smoked.

The study, published in September in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology , suggests but does not prove that the particulate pollution is responsible for lung cancer, said Dr. Coyle, a physician and associate professor at UT-Southwestern. Further research will look at the environmental exposures of individual lung cancer patients.

However, there are suspicions that in some patients, particulates are interacting with other cancer-causing environmental factors or are suppressing the body's natural ability to fight off tumors.

"We clearly have decreasing amounts of men smokers, and the [number of] women smokers is leveling off," Dr. Coyle said. "It's not all tobacco smoke. There's something else going on. ... It gets back to the environment."

Political concerns

Ozone and particulates are both byproducts of the way the region's economy is structured. Urban growth has canceled out much of the benefit of tighter vehicle emissions rules; cars are cleaner, but there are more of them, being driven longer distances.

Cars remain the biggest local pollution source, although their share of the total has dropped in recent years. Cement and power plants and other industries are also big sources.

In the proposed smog plan, regional and state planners rejected any restrictions on driving as being unenforceable. The plan does not call for tighter vehicle pollution rules, although several bills filed for the 2007 Legislature would require Texas to adopt California's emissions standards, the nation's strictest.

State environmental commission officials decided not to require the 80 percent to 90 percent emissions cuts for cement kilns that environmentalists wanted, opting for cuts of 35 percent to 50 percent. And they chose not to demand reductions from power plants outside North Texas, although the state's biggest generator, TXU, has promised voluntary reductions from its existing plants as part of its request for permits to build 11 new coal-burning units.

Mike Eastland, the region's chief planner, said he believes the state plan is a good one, given the complexity of controlling big industries as well as millions of motorists. Still, he said, dramatically lower ozone levels might be achievable, but not right away.

"If you're talking about 10 or 15 years from now, maybe 60 or 70 [ppb] isn't an impossible thing," said Mr. Eastland, executive director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which provided staff support to a local committee that worked on the plan. "But if you're talking about in another four or five years, there's just no way the public would tolerate" the drastic steps that would be required, he said.

Dr. Richard L. Wasserman, a Dallas pediatric allergist and immunologist, rejected the idea that achieving healthy air is impossible. Dr. Wasserman, who has a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences in addition to his M.D., said "specific political decisions" have blocked progress.

"The lobbying of the breathing public," he said, "is not as well-funded as the lobbying of the ozone producers."

E-mail rloftis@dallasnews.com

SMOG PLAN TO MISS GOAL, Dallas Morning News

2007-01-04T11:44:00.001-06:00

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/112206dntexsmogplan.32b4ead.html

North Texas proposal affects industry, traffic; foes see no cut in ozone

11:44 PM CST on Tuesday, November 21, 2006

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
A proposed smog-fighting plan for urban North Texas released Tuesday falls short of the requirement for cleaning up the air by the federal Clean Air Act deadline of March 2009.

The plan, which calls for mandatory pollution cuts from local industries and improvements in traffic flows, relies heavily on new federal limits on emissions from vehicles and fuels.

Still, Texas environmental officials predicted that the plan would work.

"It's a pretty aggressive plan," said David Schanbacher, chief engineer for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which released details of its proposal.

But environmentalists branded the plan a failure, saying it does not achieve a clear victory over the lung-scarring ozone pollution that has plagued the North Texas region for decades. It also does not restrict driving or change vehicle standards.

The state predicts that two ozone monitors, in Frisco and Denton, will still register levels over the federal limit in 2009.

A federal provision allows states to argue that their plans are close enough to the goal to deserve approval by the Environmental Protection Agency. And Texas is using that provision to seek approval of the Dallas-Fort Worth plan.

Even if the plan achieved the current federal limit on ozone, that limit may be too high to protect public health.

Science advisers to the EPA have suggested that the current limit should be reduced by about 10 percent.

The new state plan "really is a slap in the face to the idea that this is a public-health issue" instead of just a legal issue, said Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk, a group fighting for tighter pollution limits on Ellis County's cement kilns.

He called on the EPA to reject the plan.

Under the Clean Air Act, polluted areas must clean up their air or face the threat of new restrictions on industrial expansions. The ultimate federal sanction – the loss of federal highway money – applies only if a state repeatedly fails to submit an acceptable plan. That punishment has never been imposed.

Only once, in 1999, has the Environmental Protection Agency threatened such sanctions. And even then, the threat vanished a year later when state officials submitted a revised plan.

The new state proposal, which covers Dallas, Collin, Rockwall, Denton, Tarrant, Ellis, Kaufman, Johnson and Parker counties, goes before the state environmental agency's three commissioners on Dec. 16. After the commissioners endorse the plan, the agency will accept written public comments from Dec. 29 to Feb. 12.

The agency has scheduled public hearings on Feb. 1 at 2 p.m. at Arlington City Hall and 6 p.m. at the Midlothian Civic Center. Other hearings are set for Longview and Austin.

The state must submit a final version of the plan to the EPA by June 15.

Ozone's effects
Ozone is the most troublesome ingredient of urban smog. The chemical cooks in the atmosphere during the summer when sunlight reacts with pollution from vehicles, industries and other sources.

It causes breathing problems and can trigger asthma attacks, which can be fatal. Children, the elderly and the infirm are at the greatest risk, but ozone can also affect healthy people when levels are highest.

Ozone can't be smelled or seen. However, the brown haze that rings the Dallas-Fort Worth horizon for much of the year is related to ozone; it's nitrogen oxides, ozone-causing chemicals that result from burning any fuel, from gasoline in a car to coal in a power plant.

Although vehicles are the biggest local source of ozone-causing emissions, the typical motorist would have to do nothing different as a result of the state's new ozone proposal.

People in 16 North Texas counties drive more than 106 million miles daily – the equivalent of driving from Earth to the sun and 13 million miles beyond – the Texas Department of Transportation says. Driving has doubled since 1980 and could double again by 2012.

The plan includes no restrictions on driving or drive-through lanes, no changes in state emissions inspections and no California-type vehicle engine standards.

It does include a variety of local voluntary measures, such as more HOV lanes and better traffic coordination. Those with the highest predictions of success in cutting emissions include intersection improvements and voluntary vanpooling efforts.

Much of the plan's predicted improvement in local air quality would come from new federal fuel and vehicle standards being phased in over the next few years.

Heavy-duty commercial vehicles face continued restrictions on extended idling under the state plan.

One project that local officials rank as a high priority, the Texas Emissions Reduction Program, offers companies grants to help them replace older, dirtier diesel engines with new ones. But the Legislature has not released all the money collected for the program.

Kilns, power plants
The plan puts new restrictions on industries in the nine-county area, including power plants and cement kilns. And it limits emissions from pipeline compressor engines across East Texas.

But it does not require power companies to cut emissions from plants outside the nine-county area, despite a state study last year that said such reductions might be needed in order to help clean up Dallas-Fort Worth's air.

Dallas-based TXU says it would voluntarily reduce its pollution as part of its plans to build 11 new coal-burning power plants. Other companies with existing or proposed power plants have not made similar pledges.

The smog plan calls for cement kilns in Ellis County, which are North Texas' biggest industrial polluters, to cut their emissions of nitrogen oxides by 35 to 50 percent. Environmental groups are pressing for cuts of about 85 percent.

The environmental commission's Mr. Schanbacher said the agency rejected the demands for deeper cuts because the equipment that would yield them is unproven. Pollution control systems that can cut emissions by about 50 percent, by contrast, are readily available and can be installed quickly, he said.

Environmentalists dispute that assessment, citing the state agency's own study this summer that said the cement plants could make the deeper cuts. The state commissioned the study as part of a settlement of a lawsuit that environmental groups filed over the previous Dallas-Fort Worth smog plan.

Tom "Smitty" Smith of Public Citizen, one of the groups that filed the suit, called the plan a giveaway to big industries at the expense of public health. "They're protecting these polluters one more time – they're protecting the powerful," he said.

Mr. Schanbacher, however, said the plan covers nearly every source of ozone-causing emissions and would show more success than the critics charged. "I'm proud of this plan," he said.

E-mail rloftis@dallasnews.com

Close Enough?

2007-01-04T11:44:00.000-06:00

Fort Worth Star-Telegram
December 3rd, 2006

"Computer modeling indicates that a proposed new state plan to reduce pollution in North Central Texas could fall short of attaining the federal air quality standard for ground-level ozone by 2010. But state officials appear to be banking on a "weight of evidence" rule that would allow the federal EPA to approve the proposed plan if it concludes that it would at least get the region close enough to meeting the standard and further improve air quality.

...the state and region should err on the side of caution and embrace an air quality plan that is aggressive enough to meet the federal ozone standard outright, without counting on a fudge factor such as the EPA's weight of evidence rule.

'Close' might be good enough in horseshoes and hand grenades, but it's not close good enough to ensure easier breathing and better health for the region's residents.

That's why the state plan should include tougher pollution control measures, such as requiring larger reductions in cement kiln and power plant emissions than are called for in the TCEQ proposal."

Smoke and Mirrors: TCEQ's taking the easy way out on air quality

2007-01-04T11:43:00.000-06:00

Smoke and Mirrors: TCEQ's taking the easy way out on air quality
Dallas Morning News, November 28th, 2006

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality settled for the path of little resistance, forgoing restrictions that might curb our car culture. The agency rejected calls for deeper cuts on cement plant emissions. And regulators did not require power plants outside the nine-county non-attainment area to reduce emissions at all.

The TCEQ sought only small sacrifices from both industries and individuals. As a result, we will see limited improvement to the air we breathe. The state expects that monitors in Frisco and Denton will still register ozone levels above federal limits in 2009.

Instead of complying with the federal Clean Air Act deadline, the TCEQ is relying on a provision that allows the states to make the case that pollution cuts are within striking range of the goal and should gain the EPA's approval.

Call it the 'close enough' clause.

Using this easy way out provides little assurance that the state is serious about clean air. This plan suggests that regulators were more concerned with clearing this legal hurdle than with protecting public health.

Settling for a plan that doesn't meet federal standards is not only disappointing - it's dangerous. When it comes to public health, 'close enough' is not nearly good enough."

Greenwire pm on cement industry lobbying, Dec. 1, 2006

2006-12-03T10:50:00.000-06:00

AIR POLLUTION: Cement industry lobbies OMB against tighter mercury, HCI rules

Daniel Cusick, E&ENews PM reporter

Industry representatives asked the Bush administration yesterday to forego tighter restrictions on mercury and hydrogen chloride (HCI) emissions from cement kilns, saying new regulation was not needed.

Portland Cement Association and Ash Grove Cement Co. told officials with U.S. EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget that HCI emissions from nearly all U.S. cement kilns "fall well below any threshold of concern for both human and environmental receptors," according to documents filed with OMB.

On mercury, industry reps reiterated their support for an earlier EPA finding that neither a "maximum achievable control technology" (MACT) standard nor a "below the floor" standard is warranted to address emissions from 115 U.S. portland cement factories.

EPA enforces tougher standards for cement kilns that burn hazardous wastes, but facilities that burn primarily coal and gas have not been subject yet to tougher rules for mercury, HCI or other potentially dangerous organic compounds. EPA is under court order to issue a new rule on portland cement facilities by Dec. 8.

Mercury has been of particular concern to regulators and public health officials because it accumulates in certain species of fish and shellfish. Humans who eat mercury-tainted fish are at greater risk of developing neurological problems, and women and children are especially cautioned against eating certain species.

EPA has estimated that portland cement facilities emit roughly 5 tons of mercury per year and as much as 15,000 tons of HCI annually. But such emissions were virtually unregulated until Earthjustice and the Sierra Club filed a 2004 lawsuit forcing the agency to draft more specific regulations.

Last December, EPA proposed a rule calling for no additional mercury reductions from cement plants, saying such action was "not justified." The agency also proposed implementing a risk-based emission standard for HCI, whereby facilities that demonstrated a low risk of adverse effects from HCI could be exempted from tougher standards.

'A more difficult nut to crack'

Yesterday's OMB meeting was criticized by environmental advocates who said it was part of a campaign by cement makers to secure final approval of a weak rule. "It's deplorable that the cement industry would spend its resources lobbying the White House rather than cleaning up the toxic mess it makes," Frank O'Donnell, director of the nonprofit group Clean Air Watch, said in an e-mail.

But Andrew O'Hare, vice president for regulatory affairs at the Portland Cement Association, said the meeting was to update regulators on what steps the industry had taken to address outstanding concerns. He described mercury as "a more difficult nut to crack for our industry because it's so tied to our raw materials."

Most of the mercury emitted from cement kilns comes from limestone, the primary raw material in cement. Limestone contains varying amounts of mercury depending upon its geologic origin, according to EPA's analysis. A secondary source of cement plant mercury is coal, which is burned to achieve high temperatures for converting calcium and silicate oxides into calcium silicate. Finally, mercury can be present in fly ash, an alternative cement-making material that kiln operators acquire from coal-fired power plants.

As with mercury, environmental groups have said the HCI proposal does not go far enough, and some groups have alleged that the risk-based standard, as proposed by EPA, is illegal.

In comments to EPA, the National Association of Clean Air Agencies argued that the agency must first establish a MACT standard for HCI, after which it can address "residual risk" from such emissions. On mercury, NACAA said a final mercury rule for portland cement facilities should require the best available mercury control equipment, including wet and dry scrubbers, sorbent injection technologies and removal of mercury from boiler fly ash.

The cement industry officials yesterday expressed opposition to an industry-wide application of wet scrubbers because, they said, "the technology has not been demonstrated on cement plants for the purposes of controlling mercury emissions."

Industry reps also said there was "insufficient data to establish a specific mercury emission limit for new or greenfield cement kilns," noting that mercury content was strongly associated with the type of raw materials used, and that most plants must rely on local sources of limestone, sand, shale and other raw materials.

The industry does support language that would prohibit use of fly ash from power plant boilers that capture mercury using activated carbon because "it will result in an increase of mercury input into the process."

Smog Plan to miss goal, Dallas Morning News

2006-12-03T10:40:00.000-06:00

Smog plan to miss goal
North Texas proposal affects industry, traffic; foes see no cut in ozone
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News

A proposed smog-fighting plan for urban North Texas released Tuesday falls short of the requirement for cleaning up the air by the federal Clean Air Act deadline of March 2009.

The plan, which calls for mandatory pollution cuts from local industries and improvements in traffic flows, relies heavily on new federal limits on emissions from vehicles and fuels.

Still, Texas environmental officials predicted that the plan would work.

"It's a pretty aggressive plan," said David Schanbacher, chief engineer for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which released details of its proposal.

But environmentalists branded the plan a failure, saying it does not achieve a clear victory over the lung-scarring ozone pollution that has plagued the North Texas region for decades. It also does not restrict driving or change vehicle standards.

The state predicts that two ozone monitors, in Frisco and Denton, will still register levels over the federal limit in 2009.

A federal provision allows states to argue that their plans are close enough to the goal to deserve approval by the Environmental Protection Agency. And Texas is using that provision to seek approval of the Dallas-Fort Worth plan.

Even if the plan achieved the current federal limit on ozone, that limit may be too high to protect public health.

Science advisers to the EPA have suggested that the current limit should be reduced by about 10 percent.

The new state plan "really is a slap in the face to the idea that this is a public-health issue" instead of just a legal issue, said Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk, a group fighting for tighter pollution limits on Ellis County's cement kilns.

He called on the EPA to reject the plan.

Under the Clean Air Act, polluted areas must clean up their air or face the threat of new restrictions on industrial expansions. The ultimate federal sanction – the loss of federal highway money – applies only if a state repeatedly fails to submit an acceptable plan. That punishment has never been imposed.

Only once, in 1999, has the Environmental Protection Agency threatened such sanctions. And even then, the threat vanished a year later when state officials submitted a revised plan.

The new state proposal, which covers Dallas, Collin, Rockwall, Denton, Tarrant, Ellis, Kaufman, Johnson and Parker counties, goes before the state environmental agency's three commissioners on Dec. 16. After the commissioners endorse the plan, the agency will accept written public comments from Dec. 29 to Feb. 12.

The agency has scheduled public hearings on Feb. 1 at 2 p.m. at Arlington City Hall and 6 p.m. at the Midlothian Civic Center. Other hearings are set for Longview and Austin.

The state must submit a final version of the plan to the EPA by June 15.

Ozone's effects

Ozone is the most troublesome ingredient of urban smog. The chemical cooks in the atmosphere during the summer when sunlight reacts with pollution from vehicles, industries and other sources.

It causes breathing problems and can trigger asthma attacks, which can be fatal. Children, the elderly and the infirm are at the greatest risk, but ozone can also affect healthy people when levels are highest.

Ozone can't be smelled or seen. However, the brown haze that rings the Dallas-Fort Worth horizon for much of the year is related to ozone; it's nitrogen oxides, ozone-causing chemicals that result from burning any fuel, from gasoline in a car to coal in a power plant.

Although vehicles are the biggest local source of ozone-causing emissions, the typical motorist would have to do nothing different as a result of the state's new ozone proposal.

People in 16 North Texas counties drive more than 106 million miles daily – the equivalent of driving from Earth to the sun and 13 million miles beyond – the Texas Department of Transportation says. Driving has doubled since 1980 and could double again by 2012.

The plan includes no restrictions on driving or drive-through lanes, no changes in state emissions inspections and no California-type vehicle engine standards.

It does include a variety of local voluntary measures, such as more HOV lanes and better traffic coordination. Those with the highest predictions of success in cutting emissions include intersection improvements and voluntary vanpooling efforts.

Much of the plan's predicted improvement in local air quality would come from new federal fuel and vehicle standards being phased in over the next few years.

Heavy-duty commercial vehicles face continued restrictions on extended idling under the state plan.

One project that local officials rank as a high priority, the Texas Emissions Reduction Program, offers companies grants to help them replace older, dirtier diesel engines with new ones. But the Legislature has not released all the money collected for the program.

Kilns, power plants

The plan puts new restrictions on industries in the nine-county area, including power plants and cement kilns. And it limits emissions from pipeline compressor engines across East Texas.

But it does not require power companies to cut emissions from plants outside the nine-county area, despite a state study last year that said such reductions might be needed in order to help clean up Dallas-Fort Worth's air.

Dallas-based TXU says it would voluntarily reduce its pollution as part of its plans to build 11 new coal-burning power plants. Other companies with existing or proposed power plants have not made similar pledges.

The smog plan calls for cement kilns in Ellis County, which are North Texas' biggest industrial polluters, to cut their emissions of nitrogen oxides by 35 to 50 percent. Environmental groups are pressing for cuts of about 85 percent.

The environmental commission's Mr. Schanbacher said the agency rejected the demands for deeper cuts because the equipment that would yield them is unproven. Pollution control systems that can cut emissions by about 50 percent, by contrast, are readily available and can be installed quickly, he said.

Environmentalists dispute that assessment, citing the state agency's own study this summer that said the cement plants could make the deeper cuts. The state commissioned the study as part of a settlement of a lawsuit that environmental groups filed over the previous Dallas-Fort Worth smog plan.

Tom "Smitty" Smith of Public Citizen, one of the groups that filed the suit, called the plan a giveaway to big industries at the expense of public health. "They're protecting these polluters one more time – they're protecting the powerful," he said.

Mr. Schanbacher, however, said the plan covers nearly every source of ozone-causing emissions and would show more success than the critics charged. "I'm proud of this plan," he said.
E-mail rloftis@dallasnews.com

Trouble in the Air, Dallas Morning News

2006-12-03T10:34:00.000-06:00

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/120306dntswunhealthyair.3369cdd.html

Trouble in the air
D-FW is on track to meet EPA pollution standards, but experts say that's not enough to protect public
08:29 AM CST on Sunday, December 3, 2006

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
Texas' new smog-fighting plan would seem to offer hope of health to the 6 million North Texans who have wheezed through decades of dirty air.

State officials promised last month that by 2009, federal, state and local measures would combine to help protect people from breathing unsafe levels of lung-scarring ozone. For the first time, the region would meet one of the nation's most important public-health goals.

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11/22: Smog plan to miss goal

But a mountain of medical evidence shows that even if the plan achieved the promised pollution cuts, it would still allow pollution levels that researchers know to be unhealthy. That is because the plan is based on a federal standard for ozone that experts say doesn't protect the public.

Medical studies have found that ozone reduces lung functions and causes long-term health damage even when levels are at or below the current federal limit.

In October, the EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, a group of independent science and medical experts, urged the agency to slash the standard, which dates from 1997, by as much as 25 percent to safeguard people, especially children and the elderly.

"It is the unanimous opinion of the CASAC that the current primary [standard] for ozone is not adequate to protect human health," the committee wrote to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson on Oct. 24. "There is no scientific justification" for keeping the current standard, the experts wrote.

While the EPA considers whether to scrap the current standard, Texas and other states can continue to base their clean-air plans on it. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality did so when it issued proposed smog plans for North Texas and greater Houston on Nov. 21.

The current ozone standard is 80 parts per billion – that is, out of every billion molecules a person breathes in, no more than 80 of those may consist of ozone. Because of imprecise measurement, the EPA does not count a violation until ozone reaches 85 parts per billion.

The Dallas-Fort Worth plan predicts that by 2009, most North Texas communities would have ozone levels just below 85 ppb. Frisco and Denton would still have ozone levels higher than 85.

A review of ozone records for 2004-06 shows that levels in some North Texas communities must come down by as much as 11 percent just to meet the current standard. In all cases, even with the plan in place and working as promised, the region's ozone levels would be far higher than the EPA science advisers said is needed to protect people's health. The advisers said the standard should be as low as 60 ppb and no higher than 70.

The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to consider only medical findings, not the cost of compliance, in setting federal air pollution standards – just as a doctor is supposed to base a diagnosis only on the medical evidence, not on the cost of treatment or the amount of insurance the patient has.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the health-only approach to clean-air standards.

The EPA's science advisers noted that the medical evidence for ozone's harm at or below the current federal limit came from studies of healthy volunteers. People with increased risks – especially children with asthma – face even greater danger, they wrote.

They felt so strongly about the medical need for dramatically lower ozone levels that when they sent their findings to the EPA's Mr. Johnson, they put their conclusions in italics.

The official in charge of Texas' state plans, TCEQ chief engineer David Schanbacher, said the agency doesn't plan to revise its plans in light of the advances in knowledge about ozone's health risks.

"I'm not going to speculate on what they [EPA officials] might do with the standard in the future," Mr. Schanbacher said.

He called the North Texas plan "a pretty aggressive program that addresses all the NOX [nitrogen oxides, a component of ozone] sources that we can control in the D-FW area."

The plan relies heavily on upcoming federal rules on vehicles and fuels along with some state-ordered industrial emissions cuts – not as deep as environmentalists wanted – and voluntary local steps such as van-pooling and HOV lanes.

Critics say planners have erred by focusing narrowly on meeting the federal standard, the minimum required by the Clean Air Act, instead of making a strong statement about protecting public health.

"I think that's one of the things we really have to concentrate on, is letting people know what the cars, automobiles are doing, what the power plants are doing, what the cement kilns are doing," said Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck, a physician and a vice president of Arlington Memorial Hospital.

"They're killing people," Dr. Cluck said.

Other pollutants

Ozone isn't the only air pollutant in North Texas with greater potential health impacts than government standards might suggest.

In September, the EPA took action on its standard for fine particulate matter, or tiny particles of soot, emitted by vehicles, industry, fireplaces and other sources. Medical researchers have linked particulates to heart attacks, lung cancer and premature death.

The EPA lowered the maximum particulate level allowed on any single day by nearly half, from 65 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 35 micrograms. But it kept intact the maximum annual average of 15 micrograms – a measurement with greater health implications because it tracks long-term exposure.

If the agency had adopted the most protective annual standard that its science advisers recommended – 13 micrograms – Dallas and Harris counties would have been in violation. Dallas County's average in recent years has been about 13.8.

Violator status could have triggered mandatory reductions in particulates from local businesses and industries. It also might have added pressure for more stringent measures to control local vehicles' pollution.

Just as significantly, a violator designation would have alerted North Texans that local air pollution levels the federal government labeled as safe might actually pose a health risk.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas pointed to just such a risk.

The study compared the rate of lung cancer in all 254 Texas counties to industrial emissions of particulates that contain metals. Although the EPA says that no Texas county has harmful levels of particulates, the study found a correlation between air emissions of metals and the incidence of lung cancer.

The highest lung-cancer rates were in the most industrialized areas of greater Houston and the nearby Gulf Coast counties, and metropolitan Dallas-Fort Worth.

The study's chief author, Dr. Yvonne Coyle, said she was looking for a possible explanation of rising rates of lung cancer among people who don't smoke, especially women. About 10 to 15 percent of people who get lung cancer have never smoked.

The study, published in September in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology , suggests but does not prove that the particulate pollution is responsible for lung cancer, said Dr. Coyle, a physician and associate professor at UT-Southwestern. Further research will look at the environmental exposures of individual lung cancer patients.

However, there are suspicions that in some patients, particulates are interacting with other cancer-causing environmental factors or are suppressing the body's natural ability to fight off tumors.

"We clearly have decreasing amounts of men smokers, and the [number of] women smokers is leveling off," Dr. Coyle said. "It's not all tobacco smoke. There's something else going on. ... It gets back to the environment."

Political concerns

Ozone and particulates are both byproducts of the way the region's economy is structured. Urban growth has canceled out much of the benefit of tighter vehicle emissions rules; cars are cleaner, but there are more of them, being driven longer distances.

Cars remain the biggest local pollution source, although their share of the total has dropped in recent years. Cement and power plants and other industries are also big sources.

In the proposed smog plan, regional and state planners rejected any restrictions on driving as being unenforceable. The plan does not call for tighter vehicle pollution rules, although several bills filed for the 2007 Legislature would require Texas to adopt California's emissions standards, the nation's strictest.

State environmental commission officials decided not to require the 80 percent to 90 percent emissions cuts for cement kilns that environmentalists wanted, opting for cuts of 35 percent to 50 percent. And they chose not to demand reductions from power plants outside North Texas, although the state's biggest generator, TXU, has promised voluntary reductions from its existing plants as part of its request for permits to build 11 new coal-burning units.

Mike Eastland, the region's chief planner, said he believes the state plan is a good one, given the complexity of controlling big industries as well as millions of motorists. Still, he said, dramatically lower ozone levels might be achievable, but not right away.

"If you're talking about 10 or 15 years from now, maybe 60 or 70 [ppb] isn't an impossible thing," said Mr. Eastland, executive director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which provided staff support to a local committee that worked on the plan. "But if you're talking about in another four or five years, there's just no way the public would tolerate" the drastic steps that would be required, he said.

Dr. Richard L. Wasserman, a Dallas pediatric allergist and immunologist, rejected the idea that achieving healthy air is impossible. Dr. Wasserman, who has a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences in addition to his M.D., said "specific political decisions" have blocked progress.

"The lobbying of the breathing public," he said, "is not as well-funded as the lobbying of the ozone producers."

E-mail rloftis@dallasnews.com

TXU threatens suit over Perry float

2006-11-05T12:47:00.000-06:00

TXU threatens suit over Perry float
Environmental group calls demand to remove energy firm's logo 'meaningless'
08:56 AM CDT on Tuesday, October 24, 2006

By DAVE LEVINTHAL / The Dallas Morning News

Electricity giant TXU Corp. is threatening to sue an environmental group for trademark infringement over an anti-Rick Perry float the group is towing around the state.

LISA LeVRIER / DMN
Midlothian-based Downwinders at Risk's float criticizes TXU Corp. and Gov. Rick Perry for plans to build new coal-fired power plants.
TXU says the float, an 8-foot Styrofoam head of the governor sucking fumes from a smokestack, violates its trademark because it features the company's blue-and-white starburst logo.

In a certified letter, David Poole, TXU's executive vice president and general counsel, asked Midlothian-based Downwinders at Risk to stop using the logo or the company "will have no choice but to protect its trademark from infringement and pursue all available legal remedies."

"We're very hopeful they will simply stop using our logo," TXU spokeswoman Kim Morgan said Monday, adding that the group has until today to confirm, in writing, that it will comply.

The environmental group says its use of the logo is protected political satire under copyright and free speech laws.

"They will receive something in writing telling them that their demand is silly. Mr. Poole is a small man ... he should be ashamed of himself," says Paul Levy, of Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy organization aiding Downwinders at Risk.

"It's hard to imagine they'd file a lawsuit. And if they do, it'll be thrown out and we'll be awarded damages. It's that frivolous."

Downwinders at Risk leader Jim Schermbeck said the letter from Mr. Poole "is meaningless."

"We're going to continue on as is," Mr. Schermbeck said. His group plans to tow the smokestack float atop a hay trailer this month to events in Austin, Waco and the Dallas-Fort Worth region.

Downwinders at Risk accuses Dallas-based TXU of environmental indifference in trying to build new coal-fired power plants, and it likewise pans Mr. Perry for what the group says are energy policies overly friendly to the company.

Mr. Perry, a Republican, is seeking a third term in a field that includes Democrat Chris Bell, independents Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Strayhorn, and Libertarian James Werner.

TXU officials contend they want to improve Texas' air quality while reducing energy prices and meet the state's power demands.

Mr. Poole told the group that TXU does not "in any way object to your organization engaging in the debate regarding ideas on energy and environmental issues."

E-mail dlevinthal@dallasnews.com

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-perryfloat_24tex.ART.State.Edition1.3e68694.html

WCNC.com Carolinas' News Channel

2006-11-05T12:45:00.000-06:00

To Downwinders, Perry has been a bust

http://www.wcnc.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/local/stories/DN-protest_07tex.ART.State.Edition2.3ead326.html

Somervell County Salon 10.24.06

2006-11-05T12:05:00.000-06:00

http://salon.glenrose.net/default.asp?View=plink&id=2036

Heh! TXU Threatens to Sue over the Perry Float-Remember this? From Midlothian, Texa

Regional leaders call for pollution cuts

2006-11-05T12:03:00.000-06:00

REGIONAL LEADERS CALL FOR POLLUTION CUTS

Panel asks state to act on cement and power plants, diesel vehicles
12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, October 21, 2006

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
Clean-air plans for urban North Texas moved forward Friday when local planners asked the state for a raft of cuts in pollution, including cement kiln and power plant emissions and the black smoke from big diesel trucks and trains.

The North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee, a group of local government and business officials, environmental activists and others, adopted resolutions that seek action by the Legislature, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality or the Texas Department of Transportation to address the region's smog problem.

Dallas County Judge Margaret Keliher, the panel's co-chair, said the requests mark a major turning point in regional clean-air efforts.

"This is the most comprehensive step forward I've seen us being able to cooperate on," Ms. Keliher said.

The resolutions deal with diesel emissions, cement and power plants, and other pollution sources.

The panel called on the Legislature to provide full state funding of programs that help low-income motorists repair or replace old, high-polluting vehicles and help businesses upgrade to new, cleaner-burning diesel equipment. Other resolutions seek full state funding for programs to clean up diesel school buses and locomotives.

The committee also wants the state to start including diesel trucks and cars in annual emissions inspections. In addition, it asked the state Transportation Department to expand the number of highway lanes where big trucks are banned, and it asked the Legislature to speed Texas' compliance with a new federal standard for diesel fuel.

Another resolution calls on the Legislature to adopt California's low-emitting vehicle II (LEV II) standard for cars and light trucks sold in Texas, and to exempt cars meeting the California standard from state sales tax.

The group asked the environmental commission to require all Ellis County cement kilns to install a pollution control system called selective noncatalytic reduction, or SNCR, to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions.

Another resolution calls for a test of other pollution systems – selective catalytic reduction, or SCR, and low-temperature oxidation, sold under the trade name LoTOx – which a state study concluded could reduce emissions further. Environmentalists want the plants to install those systems.

The committee also "strongly encouraged" North Texas local governments to favor cement companies with the lowest nitrogen oxide levels when they buy cement for public projects. A cement industry lawyer, however, branded such purchase preferences a violation of low-bid rules.

Another resolution calls on the state to put power plants across East Texas under the same strict emission limits that govern plants in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metropolitan areas. The committee also wants emission controls on stationary combustion engines in East Texas, which operate at many pipeline pumping stations, and statewide emissions standards for portable engines.

E-mail rloftis@dallasnews.com

Waxahachie Daily Light 11/1/06

2006-11-05T11:03:00.000-06:00

http://www.waxahachiedailylight.com/articles/2006/11/01/dailylight/news/06-11-01-protest.txt

Environmental group takes Perry protest on the road
By JONATHAN BLUNDELL Daily Light staff writer
Wednesday, November 1, 2006 11:40 AM CST

It’s been said that politicians are great at blowing smoke, and a new 12-feet by 16-feet caricature of Gov. Rick Perry hopes to show just that across the state during the next month.

What has been described as a "rolling editorial cartoon" of Perry, depicts him kissing a large industrial smoke stack as smoke billows out from a smaller industrial plant.

The float, built by Midlothian’s Downwinders At Risk, made an appearance in downtown Waxahachie on Monday as part of a seven-day trip through Central Texas and on to New Braunfels.

"We wanted to bring attention to Perry’s inaction," Downwinders board member Jim Schermbeck said. "We've been working on raising awareness of the pollution from the cement kilns and coal plants around the state. The governor’s own environmental agency produced a report saying the plants can economically cut their emissions by 80 to 90 percent. Yet Perry refuses to require the filters necessary."

According to Schermbeck, the latest draft in the clean air plan for the North Texas area only requires a 40 percent reduction in air pollution from the area’s cement kilns.

"We're not making requirements of industrial polluters," Schermbeck said. "But at the same time we’re expecting personal vehicles to meet higher standards. These guys have been polluting the air for over 16 years without a catalytic converter installed. The new technology is not included in any of the state’s current clean air plans."

Schermbeck said Downwinders At Risk is not hoping to close the cement kilns down, but as neighbors of the plants, the group wants Perry to require new pollution controls to be installed in each kiln.

"TXI operates a very good, new kiln in Midlothian," Schermbeck said. "But there's a real disparity between the older kilns in the area and the newer ones. We want the older ones brought up to the new standards."

Despite the timing, less than a week from Election Day, Schermbeck said the tour across the state was not planned to coincide with the election.

“The new clean air plan is being assembled now and will likely be voted on in December,” Schermbeck said. “It’s just been a coincidence that the election is taking place now and we’ve been lucky enough to be able to follow Perry on some of his campaign stops around the area. We’re both anti-smog and against Perry’s fondness for the oldest smoking kilns in Dallas which have no more pollution control than the day they were first built.”

The North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee, which Ellis County Judge Chad Adams is a part of, voted to approve pilot testing of the new technology but, according to Schermbeck, Perry refuses to enforce implementation of the plan.

“The people want the technology but the state’s not doing anything about it,” Schermbeck said. “We hope that by raising awareness people will see what’s going on and write their state representatives, senators and Perry. Local officials, including Republicans, back the new controls. The regional EPA favors them. Citizens want them. Only Rick Perry and the industry are fighting the idea.”

Schermbeck acknowledged he had not contacted the governor’s office directly and had received no comment on the float from the governor.

“The only people we’ve talked to are Perry’s security folks at different events," Schermbeck said. “We haven’t heard anything from Perry or his office and he has a long standing practice of protecting the kilns in Ellis County. So we decided to take a more humorous approach in raising awareness. We can’t afford television ads or ads in the big daily papers, so we’re rolling our message all over the state."

For more information on the group, visit downwindersatrisk.org.

E-mail Jonathan at j.blundell@thedailylight.com

Bryan College Station Eagle 11/1/06

2006-11-05T11:02:00.000-06:00

Photo: Up in smoke
Bryan College Station Eagle - TX, United States

Paul Rolke (left) and Jim Schermbeck stand by a Texas-sized caricature of Gov. Rick Perry kissing a smokestack outside the Memorial Student Center on the Texas A&M University campus Tuesday evening. They were in town promoting what they call "The Rick Perry Smoke Stack Love World Tour," a demonstration against what they call the governor's support for industrial polluters in Texas.

http://www.theeagle.com/stories/110106/local_20061101034.php

You are now entering the ozone zone

2006-10-01T10:51:00.000-05:00

The link is this:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-schermbeck_26edi.ART.State.Edition1.3edd484.html

You are now entering the ozone zone

Texas is doing all it can to avoid cleaning up cement plants

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Heard about the three power plants proposed just south of Cedar Hill? They're burning coal. Used oil, too. And tires. And toxic waste.

Most are being built with the best technology 1960s dollars could buy. When they open, they'll double the inventory of smokestack pollution in North Texas. They'll be the region's largest single sources of smog, airborne carcinogens and global warming gases.

You hadn't heard? That's because there aren't really three new huge power plants slated for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I was just trying to get your attention.

Because there are already three huge cement plants doing all of that damage and more in Midlothian. They belch out tons of poisons that impact your health more than all of the new TXU power plants combined.

Unfortunately, the blunt political force that Gov. Rick Perry is using to help these cement plants avoid modern pollution controls is a scandal you haven't heard about in Dallas. But you should – because the favoritism Mr. Perry has bestowed on the cement plants is every bit as transparent as his fast-tracking of new power plants.

Winks and nods between regulators and the regulated at Mr. Perry's Texas Commission on Environmental Quality have warped that agency into some kind of parallel "Bizarro World" mirror image of itself. The mission of this Bizarro TCEQ seems to be to resist 21st-century pollution control technology and make sure that the cement plants are never forced to clean up.

Controls that can cut cement plant smog pollution 85 percent? Won't even consider them.

Burning tires in cement plants? Here's a million-dollar subsidy from the state.

Report from TCEQ confirming modern controls can be economically installed? Buried.

Report from cement companies concluding same modern controls won't work? Gospel.

Burning toxic waste in 50-year-old cement plants with no modern pollution controls? Approved.

Replacing 50-year-old toxic waste-burning cement plants with ones using modern pollution controls? Strongly disapproved.

Apply less protective air pollution standards to the oldest, dirtiest cement plants? Absolutely.

Apply the latest engineering breakthroughs to reduce the public's exposure to pollution from the oldest, dirtiest cement plants? Not so much.

See? Mr. Perry's TCEQ is doing exactly the opposite of what you'd expect an agency charged with cleaning up the air in Dallas-Fort Worth to do.

Clearly, we must devise a way to send these TCEQ doppelgängers back through whatever multidimensional portal they popped out from and replace them with regulators who want to clean up our air.

Which is why this all leads back to Mr. Perry. I think that portal might be in his Capitol office – or maybe at his campaign headquarters. He's received more than $150,000 in contributions from the cement plants.

The state will propose a new clean air plan for Dallas-Fort Worth by December. We must act now or forever hold our breath. Besides voting for non-Bizarro candidates in November, there are things that you can do now to help make the new clean air plan actually, you know, clean.

First, contact your city, county, state and federal elected leaders to investigate which dimension they're from. Urge them to commit to cracking down on the cement plants. Now would be a good time to get involved with local groups like Downwinders at Risk that are watch-dogging the TCEQ.

It wouldn't hurt to remind local media to pay proportional attention, either. See, it's important we use the clean air plan being written now to bring the cement plants into the modern era. They've gotten a free ride for the last 16 years, and if nothing's done to make them install state-of-the-art controls, it will be a decade before we get another chance.

TCEQ's own studies prove that putting such controls on the cement plants would reduce smog enough to lower ozone levels in large sections of Dallas-Fort Worth – enough to almost comply with the Clean Air Act. That means thousands fewer emergency room visits for asthmatics, fewer heart attacks, fewer strokes, fewer miscarriages, fewer birth defects and fewer cancers.

Of course, you might as well have just stamped "radioactive" on those studies when the Perry-Bizarro TCEQ saw them. "Improve public health? Heads will roll."

Jim Schermbeck is a Texas filmmaker who serves on the board of Downwinders at Risk, based in Dallas-Fort Worth. His e-mail address is schermbeck@aol.com.

Lost in the Ozone

2006-09-28T09:07:00.000-05:00

http://www.fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=4200

Lost in the Ozone
A report on ways to cut local air pollution is getting buried in state agency smog.
By BETTY BRINK

It didn’t come as a big surprise to physician and asthma specialist John Fling that the American Lung Association’s 2006 State of the Air report card for Fort Worth gave the city an F; it’s the same grade the city’s gotten for six years now. Or that the Fort Worth-Dallas metropolitan area is eighth on the association’s list of the worst ozone-polluted cities in the nation. Or that Tarrant ranks as the group’s 11th worst county. Fling is seeing the results every day in the University of North Texas Health Science Center’s neighborhood health clinics where he treats his asthma patients.

“In the last two years, I’ve seen many more cases of asthma than ever before in the summer,” he said. “It has to be the pollution.”

The increases are particularly significant, specialists say, because asthma is normally a winter disease. In fact, to Fling and his colleagues, summer isn’t vacation or grass-cutting time — it’s ozone season. “We’re still seeing a big increase [in new childhood cases] during the ozone season, and adults are having more problems as well,” he said.

Another anomaly, UNT public health professor Dr. Yu-Shend Lin said, is the rapid onset of the disease that they are seeing. Asthma that develops from other causes takes several years to appear, said Lin, a pollution exposure specialist. “Exposure to ozone causes symptoms very quickly.”

Healthcare providers, environmental groups, and a growing number of local elected officials believe that the smog that caused a record number of health-alert days this summer is also causing dramatic increases in asthma and other upper respiratory diseases across North Texas. And they believe the smog in turn is being fueled, in no small part, by toxic smokestack emissions from three cement plants in Ellis County, Tarrant’s upwind neighbor. Cement company spokespeople point out correctly that 70 percent of the ozone problems here come from our gasoline-burning vehicles. But the cement plants near Midlothian annually release ozone-making gases equivalent to that from about half a million cars — or almost half of the ozone pollution from all industrial sources.

So a study showing that emissions from the three plants could be cut by 85 percent or more, by installing devices that have been operating in some plants for years, should be big news, right?

Wouldn’t that report, which conceivably could affect the cement industry nationwide, get a warm welcome from the environmental agency in a state with major air pollution problems?

No — at least not according to local officials and to the clean-air advocates whose lawsuit brought about the study. Both groups accuse the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality of downplaying the report, minimizing public debate about it, and helping one cement company in an attempt to avoid having to install the recommended anti-pollution devices.

TCEQ officials declined to directly answer Fort Worth Weekly’s questions about its attitude toward the study, which the agency paid for. A commission spokesperson’s response boiled down to reiterating that various pollution control strategies for the Midlothian plant will be considered, and a decision made, at a meeting in December.

The Dallas-Fort Worth kiln study didn’t come about as a result of TCEQ suddenly developing a get-tough enforcement attitude. It was forced on the agency as the result of a lawsuit filed by a tenacious group of citizen activists who have been fighting the polluting plants for years. Two years ago they sued to force the EPA “to do its job” — that is, to enforce the Clean Air Act — and to force state and regional authorities to get serious about cleaning up the region’s air, considered some of the dirtiest in the nation.

In an unprecedented settlement with the federal agency last year, the citizens got commitments from the EPA, TCEQ, and local governments to take new, tough steps to bring the region into compliance with EPA clean-air standards by 2010. As part of the settlement, TCEQ agreed to pay for the cement kiln study; the agency also chose the scientists, engineers, and cement experts who conducted it.

The resulting study recommended a pollution-control system that researchers said has been proven to work and is “affordable, available, and must be seriously considered” for the Midlothian plants. The scientists estimated that the system could remove 20 tons of nitrogen oxides — NOx, the main ingredient in ozone — from the air over North Texas each day. That’s nowhere near the 166 tons of NOx per day that the EPA mandate says must be cut within the next four years — but it could be one of the largest jumps toward that goal.

This is a “landmark study,” said an SMU chemical engineering professor who has reviewed the report and concurs with its findings. Installing the controls “would go a long way toward cleaning up the air over North Texas,” he said.

Despite such comments, there is no indication that TCEQ intends to adopt the study’s findings.
“TCEQ has a dismal record on the cement kilns,” said Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, who is working with a consortium of area mayors to find ways to clean up the region’s air. “Clearly, [the agency] is not interested in forcing the companies to spend the money to make their emissions cleaner.”

Jim Schermbeck, co-chair of one of the groups that sued, is more blunt: “TCEQ is deliberately suppressing the report to protect the polluters, just as it’s always done,” he said.

Unless you’ve spent the summer in an air-conditioned subterranean vault, you know this has been North Texas’ hottest and one of the area’s driest years on record. For Fort Worth and Tarrant County, it’s also been the worst air pollution year yet. The ozone alerts started earlier than ever, in May; by Sept. 4, with a month still to go (the ozone “season” ends in October), the area has racked up a record 80 days of harmful ozone levels, based on TCEQ data: 69 “orange” days, meaning that the outside air is dangerous for kids, anyone over age 50, and those with chronic lung diseases; nine “red” days that were bad for everybody; and two “purple” alerts, which means you better hold your breath even stepping out for the mail.

EPA standards set 85 parts per billion as the highest level of ozone that is not likely to trigger asthma or emphysema attacks. This year, ozone levels ranging from 101 to more than 200 ppb were recorded in some parts of Fort Worth.

The Ellis County cement plants are owned by TXI, which also operates a steel plant on the site; Holcim, Inc.; and Ash Grove Cement. They sit in close proximity to one another along the western boundary of the small town of Midlothian, about 10 miles past Fort Worth’s southeastern city limits. Together, according to TCEQ, they dump up to 11,000 tons of NOx into the atmosphere each year, accounting for almost 50 percent of the industrial pollution that is helping turning North Texas’ blue summer skies to brown.

TCEQ data show that, on most of Fort Worth’s high-ozone days, the plumes of pollutants blow from the cement plants directly toward Tarrant County. The plumes’ ozone levels increase when they reach Fort Worth’s southeast side and continue to remain high as they wend westward toward Parker County. If the winds are weak, as they often are in the summer, TCEQ spokesperson Andrea Morrow said, the ozone pollutants simply hang over the city in the stagnant air.

Environmental groups say the plants not only threaten the health of their downwind neighbors but also have been the single most important force in blocking officials’ admittedly slow efforts to find ways to bring the region into compliance with EPA’s air quality standards. After four extensions since 1990, the latest deadline for attainment is 2010.

During that time, the plants’ resistance to cleaning up their smokestacks or even admitting that their pollutants are part of the problem has drawn powerful support from an influential Ellis County Republican — U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, head of the House Energy Committee. For years, Barton, who has received millions in campaign dollars from the cement companies, helped keep Ellis from being included in the EPA list of counties that must meet federal air quality standards. That exclusion ended a couple of years ago when the EPA finally put Ellis on its non-attainment list.

Fort Worth State Rep. Lon Burnam is one of those who think the plants have also had a “free regulatory ride” from the state. Several years ago, a Texas clean air plan that called for a 30 percent reduction in NOx emissions from cement plants was scrapped, specifically — according to TCEQ staff e-mails released to the Weekly under an open records request two years ago — to “avoid making TXI too unhappy.” The e-mail exchanges also noted that the agency would “get raked over the coals” by citizens when they discovered that TCEQ was approving a permit for a new plant for Holcim that would double its capacity without forcing the company to use “best available technology” to control pollution, as required by the Texas Clean Air Act.

This time around, local elected officials are convinced that the EPA will give no more extensions, meaning they’ve got very little time left to do what needs to be done. Nine counties with a population totaling 6 million — Tarrant, Dallas, Collin, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, and Rockwall — are now under the EPA gun to clean the region’s air in less than four years “or else.” Or else North Texas will face economic sanctions that could bring progress to a standstill: no more federal highway funds, mass transit dollars, or economic development money for projects like the Trinity River Vision, Fort Worth’s grand plan to turn downtown Fort Worth into Venice West.

The cement kiln study has provided regulators with at least one tool to perform the clean-up — and possibly the most powerful tool they’ve ever had to force smokestack improvements at the kilns. But it was produced only because citizens groups — Downwinders at Risk, Blue Skies Alliance of Duncanville, and several state clean air groups — sued the EPA.

It was the first lawsuit ever filed over dirty air in Texas, said Schermbeck, co-chair of Downwinders, the Midlothian citizens group that’s been fighting the plants for more than 15 years. Although the suit was filed against the EPA, Schermbeck and Wendi Hammond of Blue Skies said its aim was to get all the stakeholders in the area to the table to hammer out a truly workable plan.

Under terms of the agreement, the EPA, TCEQ, and local county governments committed to meet the EPA’s 85 ppb ozone standard by 2010. Included was a requirement that TCEQ conduct a study of the most modern and effective pollution controls for cement plants from around the world and the effect that installation of such controls would have on the region’s smog. Local governments also promised to review cement purchasing policies that would reward the least-polluting cement plants. “The power of the purse,” said Schermbeck. “If the local governments would form a purchasing group that would agree to buy cement only from plants that have the cleanest smokestacks, the Midlothian plants would clean up overnight.” So far, no local government has made such a commitment.

TCEQ however, met its commitment. Since January, it has had in its hands the study done by a group of scientists and engineers from a Cincinnati, Ohio, company called ERG, Inc. Their mandate was to study the feasibility of installing several different pollution control devices on the kilns of all three plants and to document the resulting effects each technology would have on the ozone levels in the Fort Worth-Dallas area. Their findings were consistent for each plant: a state-of-the-art pollution control system called selective catalytic reduction (SCR) would lower the nitrogen oxide emissions from those plants by at least 80 to 85 percent. The system works much like the catalytic converter in an automobile, by changing NOx into harmless nitrogen gas and water vapors. It doesn’t produce “corrosive byproducts,” the report stated, and wastewaters from the scrubbers are rich in nitrates that can be used as fertilizer for erosion-control landscaping at the cement plants.

SCR was the most expensive of the systems tested, according to the report, with a price tag of $5 million to $11 million in capital costs per plant — about twice as expensive as the next most effective system. Still, the authors concluded, for cement factories turning out a million or more tons of Portland cement a year, as the Midlothian plants do, SCR is affordable. Documents show it has been proven effective in more than 200 coal-fired power plants in this country and 18 cement plants in Europe, with reductions in nitrogen oxides as high as 90 percent. SCR, the researchers wrote, “must be seriously considered” for the Midlothian plants.

“SCR alone is not a silver bullet,” Hammond said. “There are still the cars to deal with, but SCR would play a significant role in getting the Dallas-Fort Worth air cleaned up.”

Al Armendariz, a chemical engineer at SMU’s graduate school of engineering, is an advisor to the groups who brought the lawsuit and is currently observing the cement operations at the Holcim plant as part of the agreement. “I have had complete access to plant records. The staff has been completely open,” he said, and he has seen enough of the cement-making process to know that “SCR technology could be made to work” in the two dry kilns at Holcim. The plant produces more than one million tons of clinker — the basic ingredient of Portland cement — annually. The other plants have not opened their doors to Armendariz. Still, he is convinced from what he’s seen at Holcim that the technology will work at the other plants, just as the authors of the study concluded.

Armendariz agrees that SCR would be just one step in the now almost desperate rush by area leaders to find ways to get the region’s air up to EPA standards in four years. “But it is the right step, and it is not an insignificant step,” he said. Installing the pollution controls on the cement kilns would reduce the plants’ emissions from around 10,000 tons a year to a little more than 2,000, he said.

The environmental staff he works with at Holcim “all seem like good, reasonable people” who want to clean up the air, Armendariz said. “However, they have legitimate concerns that if they spend the money to retrofit and their competitors don’t, they will lose money. If something like SCR is to be done, it will have to be done by all the companies. No one is going to volunteer.”

And that means the decision is back in TCEQ’s court. The only way SCR is going to be installed in the kilns of Midlothian, Armendariz believes, is if it is forced on the plants by federal and state regulators.
The plants and the Portland Cement Association, fearing just such a regulatory attempt, have mounted a campaign to discredit the report, putting out claims that it is inaccurate and dismissing the European experience with SCR as unreliable and unworkable in U. S. plants.

The last thing the cement plant group wants, Schermbeck said, is to have the state mandate installation of SCR systems for its plants and set a precedent that other states might then have to follow. “That’s why what happens here in Texas is so important,” he said. “It will have impacts all across the country.”

In May, representatives from the Midlothian plants and PCA traveled, uninvited, to a German cement plant outside of Nuremberg that was cited in the report as having a successful SCR installation that had reduced NOx emissions by more than 85 percent. But at the time of the unannounced visit, the plant was testing another system as a back-up. Called “Selective Non-Catalytic Reduction,” that system also was analyzed by the authors of the TCEQ study and found wanting, with NOx reductions of no more than 50 percent. Nonetheless, the cement industry group sent TCEQ a negative report on the German plant, stating that the German plant manager said that “SCR is no longer operational.”

The letter indicated that SCR was not reliable and that the cheaper non-catalytic system had been found to work just as well.

The facts were misrepresented, said Armendariz, who has been in contact with those involved. “The plant manager spoke no English, and there were obvious misunderstandings. He was in fact very proud of SCR,” and there are no plans to shelve it.

The industry is working the political system hard, said Schermbeck, trying to stave off efforts by clean air advocates and elected officials to pressure TCEQ into funding even a pilot SCR program at one of the Midlothian plants. The obvious reason is money. While the non-catalytic process is the cheaper of the two systems by about half, it also cuts only about half the emissions of SCR.

EPA director Richard Greene and members of the North Texas Council of Governments clean air steering committee, which includes county judges from Dallas and Collin counties and representatives from citizens groups, want the agency to test SCR in at least one of the plants in real-world conditions before TCEQ issues any more permits for less-efficient pollution-control technologies.

Schermbeck and his colleagues are convinced, he said, that TCEQ is going along with the cement companies’ plan to “sabotage this landmark report by keeping it out of the public discussion with stakeholders in this region” while the cement companies work with TCEQ to get permits for cheaper but less-effective NOx-reducing systems.

In December, when the first draft report was ready, TCEQ made it available to cement plant executives but not the members of the clean air steering committee. The reason, the group was told, was to “protect proprietary information.”

Then in June, after the final draft was published, Schermbeck attended a public meeting in Irving called by TCEQ to talk to local officials, the clean air steering committee, and members of the public about the report and the effect of the kilns on the region’s air. “The meeting was taken over by the agency bureaucrats and two industry reps, who didn’t mention the report until near the end of the meeting, and then just in passing, in spite of many of us who were there asking about it,” Schermbeck said. “Our questions were ignored.” A report of the meeting on the agency’s web site, he said, doesn’t mention the kiln study or the criticisms of those in attendance who questioned the lack of discussion about it. But it did devote a lot of space to the statements of the two cement industry reps. “It was incredible,” he said. “A meeting that was called specifically to discuss the kiln report ignored it completely.”

The Weekly’s questions to TCEQ about the meeting went unanswered.

Now, Schermbeck said, documents obtained by Downwinders under the Texas Open Records Act indicate that the agency is going to let TXI fast-track a permit that will allow the plant to burn tires and install the less expensive non-catalytic control system.

“Unfortunately, instead of choosing to join the EPA, local officials, and citizens groups in organizing a pilot test of an SCR system promising 80 percent-plus removal,” Schermbeck said, “TXI unilaterally opts for an alternative that is approximately half as effective as SCR and that has no hope of reducing NOx levels in their Midlothian wet kilns.”

On June 29, TXI requested a permit from TCEQ — without public hearings — that would allow it to test the cheaper non-catalytic pollution control system on one of its kilns. TXI wrote that the system would reduce nitrogen oxides by 10 to 30 percent. “This would have been progress 10 years ago,” Schermbeck said. “Now it’s a transparent attempt to derail the application of the more effective, groundbreaking SCR.”

Asked to comment on the charge that their agency is helping TXI bypass the most effective pollution-control system, TCEQ officials first asked for questions in writing and then gave no clear answers to them.

The agency provided only a vague response by e-mail, noting that “proposals for control strategies, including SCR and SNCR, to address the DFW non-attainment area will go before the commission in December.” TCEQ public information staffer Andrea Morrow wrote, “The commission will make the decision about what requirements [for pollution controls] will be proposed at that time.”

When Downwinders co-chairman Becky Bornhorst was picking up documents released to her group under the open records act, she said an agency staffer whom she knows well “quietly told me that TXI was ‘trying to beat the calendar’ with its permit request.”

TXI’s strategy is obvious, said Schermbeck. “If a permit for another type of pollution control has been approved, there is no way TCEQ is going to force TXI to switch to SCR no matter what the local officials want.”

TXI attorney Al Axe confirmed to the Weekly that the plant has asked for the permit to install the non-catalytic technology. In addition, he said, TXI is seeking a permit to burn tires in another of its kilns.
“This technology is safe,” Axe said, and “has been proven to reduce nitrogen emissions by as much as 30 percent.”

“Only in the minds of cement executives is 30 percent better than 85 percent,” Schermbeck said, with a humorless laugh.

TCEQ rules provide that if there is a tie vote on a permit, it is denied. The TCEQ board was down to two commissioners, meaning a tie vote might be a possibility. But recently Gov. Rick Perry filled the third slot on the commission. Schermbeck is sure that means the cement company will get its permit. “There is no way this governor would have appointed someone without knowing how he’s going to vote on a TXI request,” Schermbeck said. “That company, after all, has put more than $150,000 into Perry’s campaigns.”

Perry spokesperson Kathy Walt said that the governor “never gets involved in TCEQ issues. He leaves decisions about particular cases up to the regulators. He expects them to enforce the environmental laws of the state.”

Don’t believe it, said Austin Public Citizen head Tom “Smitty” Smith, whose group was a party to the Downwinders’ lawsuit. “The power and influence of this industry [cement] has gotten the sweetest ride of any in the state with Perry’s backing. But then, Perry has never met a polluter he didn’t like.”

Midlothian, whose economy is heavily dependent on the three plants, touts itself as the “Cement and Steel Capital of Texas.” In all, the 10 kilns operated there by the three companies produce almost 6 million tons of Portland cement a year, pumping $245 million into the town’s economy, including an annual payroll of $22 million.

But there’s a dark side to that shiny coin. Of the 223 known industrial sources of air pollution in the region, the Midlothian cement plants are the three largest contributors.

“We are committed to cleaning up the air,” said Axe, the Austin attorney for TXI and the Portland Cement Association.

In addition to asking state permission to install the non-catalytic pollution control system in two of its older kilns, Axe said, the company will also ask TCEQ to approve a plan to start burning tires in another kiln. Tire burning reduces NOx, he said, because the process uses a secondary combustion to burn the tires, which reduces the excess heat, a major contributor to the formation of NOx. The company is already burning hazardous waste in its kilns, and if the state approves its tire-burning permit, it will join the other two plants that already use tires for fuel. A reduction in NOx emissions may not be the only reason TXI applied for the permit. As part of the settlement of an old lawsuit between TXI and the state, TXI “is eligible for a $1 million grant to retrofit their kilns to burn whole tires,” Morrow, the TCEQ spokeswoman, wrote.

Burning tires and hazardous wastes in the kilns releases more than nitrogen oxides into the air — those fuels also emit mercury, benzene, chromium, lead, and scores of other toxins that cause cancer, birth defects, auto-immune-deficiency diseases, and mental retardation.

Axe said the cement plant emissions are only minor contributors to the area’s bad air. “If all three plants shut down tomorrow, the air quality in Dallas and Fort Worth would not improve enough to be measurable,” he said.

The kiln report says otherwise, but Axe dismisses the report as “not accurate.” As for the dramatic reductions in nitrogen oxides cited at one German cement plant and the coal-fired plants here, Axe said “the kilns are different in Germany” and “you can’t compare a cement plant operation to those of an electric plant.”

While the debate goes on among industry reps, state regulators, and elected officials over how to best bring North Texas into compliance with EPA ozone standards, healthcare providers like Fling continue to do what they’ve been doing every day for years: treat the victims of the region’s decades-long failure to clean up its air. In Tarrant County, more than 37,000 children have asthma, according to the American Lung Association. Data from Fort Worth health department surveys show that a disproportionate number of asthmatic kids live in predominantly poor minority neighborhoods.

“It’s a significant problem for our children that’s been too long ignored,” said Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Brooks, another person who sees the results first-hand in the neighborhoods he represents and where he grew up. Brooks has worked for years to get more public health clinics established in low-income neighborhoods and to call attention to the high number of asthma cases in those communities. Many of the neighborhoods with the largest population of asthmatic children are on the city’s far southeast side, a fact that Brooks thinks has more to do with location and wind direction than the traditional asthma triggers such as viruses, allergies, and indoor air pollution. “Those neighborhoods take direct hits from the pollution from the cement plants,” he said, when the wind is blowing from the east-southeast toward the city.

The dramatic rise in the debilitating and often deadly lung disease here and across the country is well documented and is a public health crisis of enormous significance, Fling and Brooks said. There is no doubt in their minds that ozone and other airborne pollutants from industrial sources such as the cement plants are playing a major role in the crisis. “Only a fool would think otherwise,” Brooks said.

But no matter how dedicated health- care providers are to treating the disease, the crisis here will only continue to get worse, Fling said, until the environmental regulators in Austin begin to care more about the health of the citizens than the bottom-line health of the polluters.

“The cost of doing nothing,” he said, “is immeasurable.”

You can reach Betty Brink at bcbrink@earthlink.net.

Kilns Being Pressed to Cut Emissions

2006-08-27T22:49:00.000-05:00

Sunday, Aug. 27, 2006
Kilns being pressed to cut emissions
By SCOTT STREATER
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

From a remote site in the heart of Bavaria, in southern Germany, the modest Solnhofen cement plant is a model for reducing pollution.

Once a dirty industrial facility, the plant has dramatically slashed lung-scarring emissions with a cutting-edge technology that converts pollutants into water vapor.

The technology’s success in Germany, however, has placed the Solnhofen plant at the center of an increasingly contentious debate in Texas over whether cement kilns in Ellis County — long a target of local clean-air advocates — should follow their German counterparts’ lead.

The outcome could have serious implications for local residents, who face the possibility of severe driving restrictions if air pollution cannot be reduced in other ways. The decision will rest with state and federal environmental regulators.

But a growing number of cement kiln experts and engineers say installing the new pollution control technology at the three Midlothian kilns should be part of any plan to bring Dallas-Fort Worth into compliance with federal ozone standards by a 2010 deadline.

“As far as I can see, there is not a technical reason that it will not work,” said Al Armendariz, a chemical engineer at Southern Methodist University who is advising local clean-air advocates on pollution control alternatives.

The technology could cost tens of millions of dollars to install. And industry officials say that it’s still unproven for use in cement kilns and that there are differences between the local and German kilns that may prevent the pollution controls from working.

“I think there is a basic disagreement about whether this will work in Texas,” said Al Axe, an Austin lawyer representing the Portland Cement Association, the national trade group of cement kiln operators.

The debate has been going on behind the scenes, overshadowed by the controversy surrounding 17 proposed power plants and whether they will hurt Dallas-Fort Worth air quality.

Studies show that installing the pollution controls in the cement kilns would improve air quality in Fort Worth and Arlington.

Regional and state leaders have discussed restricting driving to every other day and banning drive-through windows during ozone season as part of a federally mandated plan now being drafted that will outline steps the region must take to meet the ozone standards.

The less regulators require of major industrial polluters like cement kilns, the more will get passed to motorists and other businesses, officials say.

“If we talk to people about changing their behavior in the way that they conduct their daily lives, they’re rightfully going to want to know if we have gotten the maximum reductions from industry sources,” said Richard Greene, the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s regional administrator.

“We have to be able to say yes to that.”

Meeting the standard

For years, the Solnhofen cement plant belched out thousands of tons of smog-forming pollutants over a tree-shrouded valley.

The plant, in the Altmuhltal Nature Park, about 50 miles southwest of Nuremburg, was not even equipped to control ozone-forming pollutants when German regulators began to crack down on the industry. In 2001, Solnhofen plant operators decided to roll the dice on a pollution control system that could virtually eliminate ozone-forming emissions.

Selective catalytic reduction chemically alters pollutants into harmless nitrogen gas and water vapor. It had been used for years at power plants, waste incinerators and other industries but never at a cement plant. No one was sure it would work.

But it did, consistently slashing ozone-forming emissions by nearly 70 percent, German regulators reported.

“We proved the applicability of this technology in the cement industry,” said Sebastian Plickert, a cement industry specialist with the German Federal Environmental Agency.

It should work in Midlothian, too, according to a state study by a group of cement kiln experts that said the system could cut smog-forming pollutants at local kilns by as much as 85 percent. The technology, they reported, is available, affordable and “must be seriously considered.”

That was good news to some Ellis County residents and regional leaders who have long complained about cement kiln pollution.

The three kilns — TXI Operations, Holcim and Ash Grove Cement — are the region’s largest industrial source of nitrogen oxides, the chief man-made component of ozone.

The nine-county region needs to cut an estimated 166 tons a day of nitrogen oxide emissions. Installing the pollution controls could slash as much as 20 tons per day of the ozone-forming pollutant, according to studies.

“I don’t want to create the impression that the cement plants have the power with their operations to solve the [ozone] problem, because they don’t,” Greene said. “But for our assignment here in North Texas, we have to get 166 tons of reduction and right now we don’t have 166 tons of reductions.”

Past efforts to increase kiln restrictions have met stiff resistance, mainly from U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Barton, whose committee has legislative oversight of the EPA, thinks regulators need to look elsewhere.

“There has been a big whoop-tee-do about the cement plants here in Midlothian, that we ought to shut them down,” Barton told the Midlothian Chamber of Commerce this month.

“You could shut them all down and you wouldn’t decrease the ozone one-tenth of 1 percent,” he said.

The studies, however, indicate that reductions could be as high as 12 percent of the total needed to reach compliance.

Industry fights back

In May, a group of cement industry representatives and their consultants traveled to Germany to check out the Solnhofen plant.

But at the time of the visit, the plant was not using the system. It was testing a different technology that the plant operators are considering as a backup. The system remains off-line, though German officials say it will soon go back into use.

The industry representatives wrote an unflattering report and submitted it in June to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Among other things, they reported that the less expensive pollution control system being tested as a backup at the kiln was working just as well. German regulators disagree, saying that if regulations required it to, the selective catalytic reduction system could easily reduce pollution to a greater extent than it does.

The American cement industry officials also raised concerns about reliability. The system at Solnhofen was found to have worked only 72 percent of the time in 2004 and 92 percent of the time in 2005, said Bob Schreiber, a St. Louis-based chemical engineer and the lead consultant for the cement industry trade association.

“That doesn’t work in the U.S.,” he said.

German officials were not pleased. They said the U.S. industry representatives misled the plant manager, Gerd Sauter, who does not speak English.

“Mr. Sauter was really upset” with the report, said Plickert, the German cement kiln regulator. “He had simply told them the facts and showed them the plant, and they didn’t tell him what they really were about to do.”

The cement industry wants to install the cheaper pollution control system, which is similar to selective catalytic reduction in that it chemically alters emissions. But the EPA says the alternative system would curb ozone-forming pollution only about one-third as much as the costlier system.
One local kiln is already reporting success with the alternative, however.

Holcim installed the cheaper system at its Midlothian kiln this year in settling a legal challenge from environmental groups that were fighting the company’s efforts to increase emissions.

The system came on line in April and halved emissions of nitrogen oxides, said Nick Tzourtzouklis, the environmental manager at Holcim’s Midlothian kiln.

“It’s been a definite success,” he said.

TXI and Ash Grove are making moves to test that technology at their plants this year, according to the companies’ officials.

If it works, “we will make it permanent,” Grove said in a statement. Looking ahead
For now, the state continues to draft its plan for meeting the federal ozone standards, with restrictions on residents and businesses still up in the air. That plan will eventually be forwarded to the EPA for final approval.

“I think we’ve definitely got the cement kilns recognizing the fact that they’re going to have to do something,” said Dallas County Judge Margaret Keliher, co-chairwoman of a group of local leaders, advocates and industry representatives studying cement kiln pollution.

Greene wants to see selective catalytic reduction tested at the local kilns. And if it works, he said, “we need to encourage them to use that technology and come up with some reasonable time frame to put it into place.”

But it doesn’t appear likely.

State regulators have not even talked to the cement industry about a pilot study, said David Schanbacher, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s chief engineer.

“I’m not ruling it out,” he said, “but it’s not where we are right now.”

Ground-level ozone

The federal government regulates ozone levels as a health concern.

At high concentrations, ozone can trigger asthma attacks, stunt lung development in children, and aggravate bronchitis, emphysema and other respiratory problems.

Ozone — the main ingredient in smog — needs lots of sunlight and heat to form. For that reason, ozone season in Dallas-Fort Worth runs from May 1 through October.

Ozone is produced when nitrogen oxides mix with volatile organic compounds. The nitrogen oxides and organic compounds come mostly from automobile exhaust and industry smokestacks. Trees also produce the organic compounds as part of photosynthesis.

SOURCE: Environmental Protection Agency

Scott Streater, 817-390-7657
sstreater@star-telegram.com

EPA, Clean up our air!

2006-01-24T16:23:00.000-06:00

North Texas homemaker will attend today's hearing on kilns, but many Americans can't
Dallas Morning News
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
by Becky Bornhorst

Every night I walk down my street, I can see the tall smoke stacks rising up into the sky. What I can’t see, but I know is there, is the pollution coming out of these stacks as a result of cement manufacturing. The Environmental Protection Agency has reported that cement kilns nationwide emitted nearly 13,000 pounds of mercury in 2002. Mercury results when coal is burned to heat kilns in the cement making process; it is released into the air where it travels into streams, lakes and rivers and eventually into our fish supplies.

But although EPA knows cement kilns are a dangerous source of mercury, they continue to give the industry a pass when it comes to cleaning up this pollution. On Dec. 2, 2005, EPA announced that although cement kilns are responsible for mercury pollution, EPA decided it was unnecessary to require limits on mercury from these coal-fired kilns. Mercury is most dangerous to women of childbearing age, young children, babies and even fetuses. Exposure can cause nervous system damage, and possibly delay learning motor functions like walking, talking and speaking.

After the rule came out in December, EPA said it would hold a public hearing at its facility in Research Triangle Park, just outside Raleigh, North Carolina, on January 24. As interest in the hearing began to grow and more and more people from across the country began to organize, including myself and other members of Downwinders at Risk, we realized not everyone could afford the plane ticket to get to Raleigh. People living next to cement kilns know how dirty they can be and that something needs to be done to curb this pollution. Many people wanted to take part in the hearing but just couldn’t afford the time and cost to go. This hearing is taking place in a state where no cement kilns exist, so local attendance will likely be low. We want EPA to realize this is an important issue to many people all over the country.

We asked EPA to set up a call-in number, where people could at least listen to what was being done to protect our health, the air we breathe and our environment. Initially, EPA said they would try to get something set up. But unexpectedly, EPA said in an email, “We will not be able to offer a phone line to submit testimony at the public hearing for the proposed amendments to the Portland Cement NESHAP. If you wish to submit testimony during the public hearing you must attend in person.”

There are over 100 cement kilns across the country. In Midlothian alone, there are three cement makers operating a total of ten kilns. California and Texas have 11 cement kilns each, Florida has nine and Pennsylvania has ten. While people in these states and in dozens of other states are forced to breathe dirty air from these facilities, EPA cannot even provide a telephone line that these people can call in to tell EPA, “Clean up our air!” Forty states currently have warnings about eating mercury-contaminated fish caught in streams, rivers and lakes. Every American has the right to tell EPA to stop this pollution, but EPA says that in order to exercise that right, you’d better be ready to pay the cost to travel to their offices on their schedule.

It is a shame that EPA has taken such a relaxed approached at limiting mercury pollution from cement kilns. It is a shame that my daughter and son, and the children of Midlothian and Gainesville and Pittsburgh are routinely forced to breathe this dirty air when they play outside. It is a shame that the federal agency that is supposed to protect our health and our environment is doing such a poor job. But most of all, it is a shame that EPA does not see the importance of allowing everyone to have the chance to speak. A simple phone number for people to call in was all we asked. Instead, EPA shamed it self again, and many Americans will not have the chance to tell EPA to start cleaning up the air we all breathe.

Becky Bornhorst is a native Texan and a homemaker who volunteers for the nonprofit group Downwinders at Risk. She and at least ten other citizens from across the country will travel to North Carolina January 24 to testify at the EPA hearing.For More Information on Mercury and Cement Kilns click here >>

EPA proposes settling lawsuit over area air

2005-03-02T16:01:00.000-06:00

By Scott Streater
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed settling a contentious lawsuit that accuses it of endangering the health of millions of Dallas-Fort Worth residents by failing to clean the air.

Richard Greene, the EPA's regional administrator in Dallas, has made what he termed an "informal" offer to begin settlement discussions in a Feb. 18 letter to Marc Chytilo, a Santa Barbara, Calif., lawyer representing the four environmental groups suing the agency.

Greene's offer includes a pledge that the EPA will work with the state to quickly devise a detailed plan to reduce Metroplex ozone. It also includes a promise that the agency will place more emphasis on cement-kiln and power-plant pollution in the region, a major sticking point with environmentalists who say regulators aren't doing enough to control ozone-forming emissions from these sources.

"We were heartened and encouraged by the letter," Chytilo said. "The EPA letter was a very positive step, and it showed that they recognize these are real issues that need to be addressed."

A resolution to the lawsuit, filed in October in U.S. District Court in Dallas, is viewed by all sides as crucial to local clean-air efforts. Since the lawsuit was filed, regional air-quality planning efforts have slowed as environmentalists, elected leaders and government regulators await the outcome of the suit.

The nine-county Dallas-Fort Worth region must comply with federal ozone standards by 2010. If it cannot, the region could suffer severe sanctions, including the potential loss of tens of millions in federal highway dollars.

Chytilo declined to say whether a settlement is near. Greene said both sides are trying for one.

"Obviously, what we'd like to see is the lawsuit dismissed and to reach agreement," Greene said. "We're working on clean air for Dallas and Fort Worth. "This is an important point in the process to achieve agreement and hopefully a resolution of the suit."

Perhaps the biggest obstacle is the development of a federally approved plan to clean the region's air. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is responsible for developing the plan but has not yet done so.

The environmental groups sued after the state decided to delay by as long as three years the completion of a clean-up plan.

State officials say they have been delayed by problems with computer models used to identify the pollution's sources. The problems have limited the state's ability to offer solutions for reducing ozone, they said.

One of Greene's settlement proposals would commit the EPA to work with the state commission to complete the computer models and finalize a comprehensive clean-up plan.

The state would welcome the help, said Andy Saenz, a commission spokesman. "We just want to clean up the air," he said.

Another of Greene's proposals calls for the EPA to provide federal grants for a detailed study of how cement-kiln and power-plant pollution affects the region's air.

In Ellis County, southeast of Fort Worth, three cement plants -- North Texas Cement Co., TXI and Holcim Cement -- discharged 11,680 tons of ozone-forming pollutants in 2002, according to the latest state statistics.

Ellis County's impact on the region's ozone problem was the focus of an intense political battle last year between local elected leaders and U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis.

Barton lobbied the EPA to exclude his home county from stiffer ozone regulations.

In April, the EPA included Ellis among the counties facing the stiffer regulations after studies showed that pollution from the kilns and other industry in the county blows into Dallas-Fort Worth.

"It's not a mystery as to where this stuff is coming from," said Jim Schermbeck, a board member of Downwinders at Risk, one of the four environmental groups involved in the lawsuit.

"The question is, does the state have the political backbone to bring itself to the table and do something about them after not doing anything about them for such a long time?"

Ground-level ozone
• Ozone is regulated by the federal government because it is a health concern.
• At high concentrations, it can trigger asthma attacks, stunt lung development in children and aggravate bronchitis, emphysema and other respiratory problems.
• The main ingredient in smog, ozone needs a lot of sunlight and heat to form, which is why ozone season in Texas runs from spring through early fall.
• Ozone is produced when nitrogen oxides mix in the presence of sunlight and heat with volatile organic compounds. The nitrogen oxides and organic compounds come from automobile exhaust and industry smokestacks. Trees also produce the organic compounds as part of photosynthesis.
• About 170 million people live in more than 470 counties nationwide that the federal government estimates have dirty air. SOURCE: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Scott Streater, (817) 390-7657 sstreater@star-telegram.com

Officials, groups seek to settle clean air suit

2005-01-25T16:12:00.000-06:00

Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Tue, Jan. 25, 2005

By Scott Streater
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Federal officials met with local and state environmental groups last week in an effort to settle a lawsuit that accuses the government of endangering millions of people in Dallas-Fort Worth by failing to take action to clean the air.

The meeting, which included representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice and local environmentalists, was the first to discuss settling the lawsuit filed on Oct. 6 in U.S. District Court in Dallas.

The lawsuit claims that the EPA has missed numerous deadlines to lower ozone in the Metroplex, "thereby depriving the people of Texas ... of clean and healthy air."

All sides said they were encouraged but declined to discuss details of the meeting, which was held Thursday in Dallas.

"We are hopeful that this can be used to reinstitute what we consider to be a stalled process of air-quality planning in the region," said Marc Chytilo, a Santa Barbara, Calif., lawyer representing the environmental groups.

EPA spokesman Dave Bary said, "I would characterize the meeting as very positive and successful, and we hope through our efforts to reach a settlement and avoid litigation."

The Dallas-Fort Worth region has until 2010 to comply with tough new federal ozone standards or face severe sanctions, including the possible loss of tens of millions in highway transportation dollars.

As state regulators continue to work on computer models designed to identify specific sources of ozone-forming pollution, regional air - quality planning efforts have slowed. The North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee, a group of elected officials, environmentalists and business leaders that has coordinated regional planning, has not met since the lawsuit was filed.

"Until we can negotiate this [settlement], we're sort of at a standstill," said Mike Eastland, executive director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, a regional planning group.

Eastland, who attended last week's meeting, acknowledged that if the lawsuit is not settled and a long court fight ensues, bringing the region into compliance could be more difficult.

"We're certainly trying to guard against that happening because we've all got to be part of the solution," he said.

Even before the lawsuit was filed, the relationship between federal regulators and environmentalists was tense.

The environmental groups had been threatening since December 2003 to file the lawsuit but held off in hopes that the two sides would work together to improve air quality. In January 2004, clean-air activists, elected leaders and government regulators stood side-by-side at a ceremony at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport and announced a new spirit of cooperation.

But environmentalists were angered last summer by a state decision to delay by as long as three years the completion of a federally mandated, comprehensive plan to lower Metroplex ozone -- a major health concern linked to asthma and other lung diseases.

The 19-page lawsuit accuses the EPA of failing to punish the state after it missed deadlines to improve local air quality.

The EPA in 1991 classified the Metroplex as violating ozone standards and gave it until November 1996 to comply. It did not, and the region was ordered to comply by November 1999, according to the lawsuit.

That deadline was also not met, requiring the EPA to reclassify the area as a "severe" ozone violator.

The EPA, however, did not reclassify the region, and it did not mandate that the state and the Dallas-Fort Worth region develop a plan to clean the air. No formal cleanup plan has ever been finalized, and as a result, environmental groups say, there have been no meaningful improvements in local air quality.

Larry Soward, a commissioner with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who attended the meeting in Dallas, said the state will work with the EPA and environmentalists "to find a positive resolution to this lawsuit."

Ozone
• Ground-level ozone is regulated by the federal government because it is a health concern.
• At high concentrations, it can trigger asthma attacks, stunt lung development in children and aggravate the conditions of those suffering from bronchitis, emphysema and other respiratory problems.
• Ozone, the main ingredient in smog, needs an abundance of sunlight and heat to form, which is why ozone season in Texas runs from the spring through summer. It is produced when nitrogen oxides from automobile tailpipes and industry smokestacks mix in the sunlight and heat with volatile organic compounds, a group of pollutants originating from automobile emissions, smokestacks and even trees as part of photosynthesis.
• More than 170 million people live in more than 470 counties nationwide that the federal government estimates have dirty air.

Scott Streater, (817) 390-7657 sstreater@star-telegram.com

Holcim, Not So Wholesome TNRCC Needs to Do More!

2002-09-23T17:40:00.000-05:00

Dear Editor:

I think it is time that the people of Midlothian need to start speaking out about all the emissions that the 3 cement kilns & 1 steel mill emit. We have North Texas Cement burning tires and now TXI is burning them, also. Every evening that you walk out side you can smell them burning.

You can also smell sulfur odors, burnt metal, different chemicals, and etc. What is the city of Midlothian doing about this? NOTHING!!. For the last 2 years Holcim has violated their permit. What kind of health effects has this or will be caused on our health. What about all the children of Midlothian that have asthma? Has anyone told the employees & their families of Toys R Us or the new Target warehouse about what they will be breathing in Midlothian? For the year 2000, the 4 industries have emitted 1,502,123 pounds of air emissions in Midlothian In that Chromium 573 lbs, Lead 3923 lbs, Manganese 7998 lbs, Mercury 774 lbs, Sulfuric acid 1,416,045 lbs. Also, the worst of it all was 1.64 lbs of Dioxin. Holcim was fined very little for what damages they have caused this community. Out of this Midlothian will receive $111,562 for fire equipment. This money should be spent on the health care cost of the people that it has affected and enforcement by the City to stop this. Midlothian is a great town to move to if you want to increase your chances of cancer or other health effects on your life. If I was told all this,

I would have NEVER moved here.

Debra L. Markwardt

New Name, Same Game!

2002-09-23T17:39:00.000-05:00

The Dallas Morning News deserves a special bravo for their recent editorial Air pollution: New name, same game! Thank you for taking a bold stance about the newly named state environmental agency-Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).

Your editorial highlighted what environmentalist and air huggers have been saying all along “its time that the agency get serious about clearing our air and do something to address pollution coming from Ellis County.” According to agency data there’s enough evidence to suggest that Ellis County be incorporated into the four county clean air plan. In addition to being the home to the top industrial smog producers in North Texas, Ellis County has violated the three strikes law for ozone but yet the governor, nor the TCEQ, nor the EPA has taken the necessary steps to declare the region a clean air felon--even though it is.

The $223,125 fine and a perpetual pollution extension of more than a year and a half is a gift from the TCEQ to Holcim and a literal “gag” gift from the agency to breather’s in North Texas. If the agency were really serious about reducing pollution then Holcim’s fine would be closer to $3.6 million and they wouldn’t be able to operate until they complied with their agreement with the state.

Meanwhile, while they’re given another year and a half to reach their permitted levels Holcim has applied for a “permit amendment” to challenge the conditions of their agreement. TCEQ this is very simple, Holcim broke their agreement, they reneged on a formal process, the hurled additional smog forming pollution into North Texas, and it’s time that you as the state’s environmental agency enforce the law. Anything else is irresponsible.

Becky BornhorstSubmitted to the Dallas Morning News 9/23/02