Back in August of 2010, the city of Fort Worth commenced a third-party air-quality study of its natural-gas-production sites. The study cost more than $1 million to conduct. Well, the results of the big study came in today and … guess what? The report found that these sites pose no significant health threats, and that the existing setbacks (from residential areas) are working just fine, thanks. How soon will it be, though, before the Gasland-style activists find some reason to say it’s all a big bad cover-up?
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the gasland fanatics will ignore the report and somehow say the information is skewed or false. while still pushing their apocryphal stories
I know a lady whose cousin lives in Fort Worth, and he told her that a woman from his bowling league had a baby with eleven toes, all because of natural gas. On one foot, is what he guessed she meant, too! And maybe even the other foot had no toes, so keep on with the industry shilling, you fascists.
It won’t be long at all before they attack the credibility of the report with baseless, conclusory allegations, just as they’ve attacked the practice of hydraulic fracturing as a whole with baseless, conclusory rhetoric.
So, er, Glen, did you read the report? There are actually five sites that registered emissions were above long-term health effects levels set by the state.
The report also mentions that the total of 300 facilities in FW release 57 tons a day of crap into the air, much of which is ozone-forming. This is a major reason why we’re still stuck violating a 1997 smog standard George Bush thought was unsafe.
And what’s with all the hostility? The most conservative areas of North Texas are also the spots where fracking is facing its greatest resistance. Flower Mound, Southlake, Baronville, Argyle, etc. Last time I checked these were not bastions of environmentalism. Even Mark Davis is questioning the practice. You should learn more about Calvin Tillman and Tim Ruggiero view of things. They’re both Rush ditto heads and the most ardent opponents fracking has in DFW.
I would bet money that none of the people commenting so far has any experience living next to a well site or compressor.
PS. About those setbacks, which were deemed “adequate,” but not protective. The FW council has voted numerous times to void that setback distance in favor moving wells and other facilities closer to homes. What do you do now with the folks stuck at “inadequate distances” from heavy industrial sites?
And please look at the chapter on conclusions. I know it doesn’t jive with your spin, but the report actually endorses every air pollution control strategy and device that’s been advocated by all the environmental groups involved in the gas issue. So you know, if you endorse the report, seems to me you also endorse these measures.
@Brown Bess: It’s probably important to mention that the five sites you mention were out of a total of 388 sites, including a couple of thousand wells and storage tanks, examined. (This is called context.) My point was, this new study will be a fly in the ointment of the “environmental activists,” who I believe are basically opposed to traditional fuels and will latch on to any argument–air quality, earthquakes, you name it–to argue against their exploitation. How many “Rush Ditto-heads” agree or don’t agree with natural-gas production is sort of beside the point. Everyone knows care should be taken drilling near where people live. But I think much of the special emissions-capturing equipment you mention is already in use by many of the companies. (You wouldn’t know that listening to the activists and the mainstream media.) There are trade-offs with everything, and “57 tons of crap” emitted a day sounds bad, but–again–what’s the context? I remember an SMU engineer, for example, issued a widely quoted report a few years ago proclaiming that Barnett Shale production was responsible for more summer ozone in North Texas than all the vehicular traffic on the roads here. Wonder if that conclusion might be revisited, in light of the gist of this new info. The TCEQ already said the report was flawed, but of course the environmentalists don’t believe anything the TCEQ says, anyway. (The SMU guy is now in charge of the local EPA.) Lastly, I don’t know how many commenters here live next to a well site, but what’s the difference? Wasn’t aware that personal experience had become a requirement for having an opinion or making an observation about something. If it has, I–and maybe you?–should probably just shut up. My wife tells me to do that all the time anyway.
You just skipped over a huge point of causality.
The Armendariz report actually said the gas industry emits more ozone-forming emissions than all cars and trucks in DFW. The TCEQ now says the same thing Glen.
Armendariz’ numbers have been validated by the TCEQ numbers in their new air “plan” that had a hearing on Thursday.
Since drilling in the DFW area began big-time, roughly 2006-2008, DFW has made zero air quality progress, it’s ozone numbers stuck exceeding a 1997 std. There might be a connection there since the gas industry is the only category of sources for this kind of pollution that have actually grown, and by a lot.
57 tons of crap is more than the total amount estimated by the industry for the whole of the Shale only that morning in testimony. Wonder if that conclusion might be revisited?
And while you may think most companies already use these same control devices, it’s a fact that the industry is still lobbying against using them region-wide, i.e. where we have 20-year chronic smog problem. They’re mandated in Wyo. and Utah because of smog pollution there created by gas, but not in an urban area with 6 million people.
If you were regulating coal mines, or nukes, you’d probably want to know more about them, and part of that is knowing what’s its like to live next door to one. Without such knowledge, your picture is incomplete. Let me set you up to spend a night or two near a compressor I know about in Bartonville, or a well site in Western Denton County and see what you have to say then.
It’s funny how conservatives are always skeptical of government power and expertise except when it’s used to justify their own agenda, then the same bureaucracies that were to blame all of a sudden are full of experts who know much more about these things than just plain ol’ citizens who are living it everyday and might know a bit themselves. But nah, y’all are probably right. There’s no history of Officialdom never missing anything like this.
@Brown Bess: I don’t think things are quite as black-and-white as you state. At the hearing Thursday, an industry group said again that TCEQ and environmentalists are over-stating the air pollution caused by the natural-gas companies by a factor of five or six. Also at the hearing, one of the TCEQ directors conceded that the state may have overstated the VOC emissions (the part coming in part from the natural-gas production). I don’t know where the new TCEQ estimates you mention came from. But I do know that not long after Armendariz issued his big report–funded by the Environmental Defense Fund I think–a few years ago, the TCEQ called the report incomplete and unrealistic, because Armendariz had conflated NOx (the bad stuff from vehicles) and VOC emissions, exaggerating the significance of those emissions in smog formation, leading to “misleading conclusions.” Most important, the agency said then, the Armendariz report ignored data showing that despite huge increases in Barnett Shale production since 2000, “ozone design values” have actually decreased in North Texas long-term. This is a very complicated subject and, again, there’s a lot of emotionalism and knee-jerk reaction out there trying to identify the “villain.” Maybe someone a lot smarter than me can explain the discrepancies.