19th January, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
The Statesman has an article today about the Sierra Club appealing 4 coal plant permits granted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), stating that TCEQ did not allow public comment as they should have, or require a technical report. Here’s part of the article:
The environmental group [Sierra Club] is appealing permit amendments approved Dec. 16 by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that allow increased emissions from the plants, in East and Central Texas, during periods of planned startup, shutdown and maintenance.
The issuance of the permits is “invalid, arbitrary and unreasonable,” according to the lawsuit filed in state District Court in Travis County.
The lawsuit comes as coal plants across the state apply for permit amendments for emissions produced during startup, shutdown and maintenance, which were not previously regulated, said Ilan Levin, an environmental attorney representing the Sierra Club.
Environment commission spokesman Terry Clawson said the agency has not received the lawsuit and will not comment on it, but he said the four permits questioned in the lawsuit were issued legally.
Coal plant operators were required to apply for the amendments to authorize increased emissions by Jan. 5, 2011 . The four plants involved in the suit, all owned by the state’s largest generator, Dallas-based Luminant Generation Co., applied for higher emission ceilings and were approved in December.
“We were surprised to find out that, really, just by trolling the agency’s website, that right before the holidays, the TCEQ had issued these permits to Luminant without any public notice or any sort of opportunity at all to file some formal comments,” Levin said.
Levin said more plants could still be getting permits without going through public review and that he and the Sierra Club will look for other plants getting similar treatment.
Not all power plants seeking changes to air pollution permits are required to go through a public process, Levin said, but these permits are for a large enough increase that public notice is required.
The four plants would be allowed to emit at least 11,206 tons of additional particulate matter, a pollutant linked to heart attacks and premature death, the suit said.
The application for the plant northeast of Austin near Rockdale authorizes 958 additional tons of particulate matter, more than a sixfold increase over current startup, shutdown and maintenance limits, according to the lawsuit. That would more than double the plant’s 2010 particulate emissions, according to state data.
The lawsuit also says the environment commission “failed to conduct a Best Available Control Technology analysis,” which pushes plant operators to adopt cleaner — and often costlier — processes and equipment.
You can read the whole article here.
29th December, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Last Wednesday the EPA issued the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, the first mercury standards in the US. Here’s an excerpt from the EPA announcement:
EPA estimates that the new safeguards will prevent as many as 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks a year. The standards will also help America’s children grow up healthier – preventing 130,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and about 6,300 fewer cases of acute bronchitis among children each year.
“By cutting emissions that are linked to developmental disorders and respiratory illnesses like asthma, these standards represent a major victory for clean air and public health– and especially for the health of our children. With these standards that were two decades in the making, EPA is rounding out a year of incredible progress on clean air in America with another action that will benefit the American people for years to come,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards will protect millions of families and children from harmful and costly air pollution and provide the American people with health benefits that far outweigh the costs of compliance.”
This will have a big affect on Texas, which has more coal plants than any other state. From CBS:
Texas environmentalists are cheering new federal standards announced Wednesday that will force coal- and oil-fired power plants to reduce mercury emissions and toxic pollutants or shut down. Power industry leaders, however, said the pricey changes could lead to layoffs and undo strain on the state’s grid.
Texas, which has 19 coal-fired power plants — more than any other state — and plans to build nine more, is among the few states still adding coal-fired plants. It also releases more air pollutants than any other state.
The new standards have an estimated price tag of $9.6 billion, ranking them among the most expensive in the Environmental Protection Agency’s history. The new rules were unveiled in Washington by EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.
“This is big. Texans shouldn’t be living with the health risks of mercury and other pollutants,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of the Texas office of the consumer activist group Public Citizen.
“The only thing more shocking than the large amounts of toxic chemicals released into the air each year by coal and oil fired power plants is the fact that these emissions have been allowed for so many years,” added Ilan Levin, associate director of the Environmental Integrity Project.
According to Levin’s group, Texas is the nation’s top power plant mercury polluter, with its coal-fired power plants emitting 16.9 percent of the total U.S. mercury air emissions for 2010. The Department of State Health Services has issued fish consumption advisories for 300,000 acres of Texas lakes, according to advocacy group Environment Texas.
American Electric Power, the parent company of AEP Texas, has already spent $7 billion to reduce emissions since 1990 in the 11 states it serves, said Gary Gibbs, AEP Texas’ manager of environmental and governmental affairs.
He said the company isn’t opposing the new EPA regulations, but rather the time frame. Under the new rules, companies are given three years to decrease emissions of mercury and other toxins, and can apply for a fourth year to install equipment.
20th December, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
This depressing news, courtesy of the Statesman, does not include all of the additional trees that were lost in the wildfires of this year:
The current Texas drought has killed as many as 500 million trees 10 percent of the state’s forest cover and the end is not in sight, according to the Texas Forest Service. Some of the hardest-hit areas are in Central Texas.
The numbers are preliminary, the first results from an unprecedented statewide survey of tree mortality across 63 million acres of forest land this year.
They don’t include trees lost to drought-induced wildfire — an estimated 1.5 million trees burned in the Bastrop Labor Day fires alone — or trees that have succumbed to heat and thirst in urban areas.
Though the estimated range of dead trees varies widely — from a low of 100 million to a high of 500 million — the visible evidence of the die-off is still “very shocking,” said Tom Boggus, director of the Texas Forest Service. “It’s a significant change in the landscape.”
And the stress of the past year of record-setting heat, high winds and low rainfall will continue to take its toll on living trees, whether or not the drought continues as forecast for at least another six months, because they have been too weakened to survive.
14th December, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I saw this article on Fuel Fix today that says that:
The Texas Railroad Commission approved a rule Tuesday requiring oil and natural gas drillers to disclose most of the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing.
The rules also will require companies to disclose the amount of water used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process in which chemicals, water and sand are pumped at high pressure into underground rock formations to aid the flow of oil and gas to the surface.
Drillers will be required to disclose fracking chemicals and water volumes on a website, www.FracFocus.org.
Drilling companies, however, don’t have to list chemicals deemed trade secrets unless the Texas attorney general or a court determines otherwise, the commission said in a statement.
Check out the whole article! The article states that environmentalists are pleased with the rule. Hopefully it works as intended!
8th December, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
You may have heard recently about fracking, a method of extracting natural gas from shale using large amounts of water mixed with sand and chimicals, which is being increasingly used in the U.S, specifically in Texas. There’s been some controversy about it because of claims that the process of extracting the gas can contaminate groundwater, which people end up drinking. Below are two stories, each about a different report (one by the Texas’ Energy Institute, and one by the EPA), which came to different conclusions about the contamination possibilities.
From the Statesman:
Preliminary findings from the [Texas] Energy Institute’s study released Wednesday suggest there is no link between the extraction operations and groundwater contamination, said the study’s leader, Charles “Chip” Groat, a UT geology professor.
He noted that the dangers associated with shale gas drilling — which is accomplished by hydraulic fracturing, a process commonly known as fracking — are largely the same as other oil-drilling operations.
“Hydraulic fracturing doesn’t seem to be of concern to groundwater,” Groat said. “If there has been water contaminated related to shale gas development let’s not look at fracturing, let’s look at surface processes.”
As in other types of drilling operations, poor casing or shoddy cement jobs have often been to blame for regulatory violations or contamination in shale gas drilling, Groat said…
Surface spills of the hazardous chemicals across the country have killed livestock and contaminated waterways, the Houston Chronicle has reported.
Texas is home to one of the nation’s largest shale gas deposits, the Barnett Shale. The Fort Worth area is a hotbed for fracking that shale, and there have been many questions surrounding the process.
Democratic state Rep. Lon Burnam of Fort Worth told The Associated Press in September that in the past five years, air pollution in North Texas has steadily increased, which he said is related to the drilling in the Barnett Shale.
Groat downplayed the problems associated with fracking.
“The violations that we’ve seen are of no, minor or small impact,” Groat said. “The impact on groundwater, the impact on the surface is not of anything substantial, certainly not compared to coal mines or metal mines.”
However, spills have come under closer scrutiny as shale gas drilling occurs in urban and suburban areas, Groat said.
“Fort Worth is the poster child for this,” Groat said. “They are drilling under subdivisions, and those people are asking questions.”
Shale deposits are spread out over broad areas, and drilling operations could easily move out of densely populated areas and stay in the fracking game, Groat said.
Groat briefed government officials, regulators, energy company executives, community group representatives and reporters in Fort Worth about the Energy Institute’s preliminary findings.
Researchers expect to present their final report early next year, looking not only at the environmental effects of fracking but also at policy and regulatory issues as well as media coverage of the controversial technique of capturing natural gas.
The yearlong $330,000 study was paid for entirely by the University of Texas, Groat said.
The study’s early stages have looked at regulatory violations and frameworks in states with major shale drilling operations, including Texas, Louisiana, New York and Pennsylvania, Groat said.
And from NPR
In a draft report (pdf) released today, the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed what many residents of Pavilion, Wyoming have been complaining about for some time now: Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is responsible for polluting the area’s drinking water.
Fracking is a controversial method used to make it easier to extract natural gas, petroleum and other substances. As the AP explains, this is the first time the EPA has linked the practice to the contamination of drinking water. The gas industry has denied any responsibility.
The wire service adds:
“The EPA’s found that compounds likely associated with fracking chemicals had been detected in the groundwater beneath a Wyoming community where residents say their well water reeks of chemicals.
Health officials advised them not to drink their water after the EPA found hydrocarbons in their wells.
The EPA announcement has major implications for the vast increase in gas drilling in the U.S. in recent years. Fracking has played a large role in opening up many reserves.
The industry has long contended that fracking is safe, but environmentalists and some residents who live near drilling sites say it has poisoned groundwater.”
Before issuing this report, the EPA had advised residents not to drink their water, because, as MSNBC says, the EPA “said it had found benzene and other hydrocarbons in wells it tested.”
MSNBC adds that Pavillion residents welcomed the report.
31st October, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Elections are November 8, and early voting is ongoing throughout Austin. One of the propositions on the ballot, Proposition 8, involves water conservation. Check out this wiki article on Proposition 8 and read about the pros and cons, educate yourself, and take the opportunity to vote. Check out this link for a list of early voting locations.
16th September, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I posted several times (see here) about the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission voting earlier this year to allow importing of and burial of radioactive waste in Texas from 36 other states. In light of scrutiny of Perry contributions and the HPV vaccine during the Tea Party Presidential debate on Monday, that decision by the Waste Commission as it relates to the Perry campaign contributions of Harold Simmons (owner of a radioactive waste disposal company) is starting to receive national attention as well, including being one of the headline stories on NPR yesterday. You can see that story here, but here’s an excerpt:
Perry donor Harold Simmons, an 80-year-old billionaire, is a political player. He gave millions of dollars to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, financing ads that knee-capped Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
For Perry, Simmons has anted up roughly $3 million worth of support over the past decade — some of the money going to Perry’s campaign committee, other dollars going to the Republican Governors Association when Perry was fundraising for it.
Simmons also owns Waste Control Specialists LLC, working in the heavily regulated industry of radioactive waste disposal.
Craig McDonald, of Texans for Public Justice, says those two facts go together.
“There has been no secret that Harold Simmons’ direct self-interest lies in building, permitting and operating his hazardous waste dump and low-level nuclear waste dump in West Texas,” he says. “And the wheels have been greased at every turn.”
In 2003, the Texas Legislature took the state-run radioactive waste program and made it a private monopoly for Waste Control Specialists. Simmons later bragged about the lobbying that accomplished that.
Waste Control Specialists owned the site in West Texas. But it needed an environmental review. A panel of eight state employees fended off corporate lobbyists and the Perry administration for four years to produce their report.
“We knew from the beginning that this permit was intended to be issued,” says Glenn Lewis, who was on the panel.
And they understood why.
“The realization that Harold Simmons was a top campaign contributor to Gov. Perry,” Lewis says.
Despite that, the panel said that radioactive waste should not be buried so close to big aquifers.
“I am frankly surprised even now that a team of engineers and geologists, knowing what the political expectations were, still worked up the nerve to say, ‘No, it’s not safe,’ ” Lewis says.
Next, Waste Control Specialists needed license approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. All three commissioners were Perry appointees. The commission chose to ignore the environmental review.
10th May, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I wrote earlier here about how a bill proposed in the house (and backed by Walmart), which would require grocery stores to provide recycling for plastic bags and sell reusable bags, but which would also preempt local governments from having stricter plastic bag regulations (such as an outright ban on the use of plastic bags). The Texas Tribune had a nice update, focusing on how various residents of the city of Brownsville view their city’s ban on plastic bags. The article also had this little excerpt (but you should check out the whole article here):
State Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, who sponsored the Senate legislation, said that his bill was “not moving” right now, but that a House version had made more progress. Fraser said he did not intend to overturn policies of cities with existing bans. In the long run, he said, “we would like to wean people off the using of not only plastic but paper” and shift Texans toward reusable bags.
Walmart has backed Fraser’s legislation, which it sees as more workable than all-out bans.
“Walmart is committed to reducing its plastic bag waste, but we would rather see voluntary programs to reduce plastic bag use” instead of stricter policies like Brownsville’s, said Daniel Morales, a company spokesman in Texas.
….So Fraser says his legislation isn’t intended to overturn policies of cities with existing bans, yet that is exactly what it would do???…
8th April, 2011 - Posted by katherine - 1 Comment
KUT had this article today about a law proposed in the Texas House which, if approved, would require grocery stores to recycle plastic shopping bags and put reusable bags up on the shelf. It sounds like a good thing, but the law would preempt local governments from having stricter regulations than the Texas law. So if, for example, Austin decided it wanted to ban the use of plastic bags completely, it wouldn’t be able to because that would conflict with the Texas state law.
An excerpt from the KUT story is enlightening:
But bill supporters say if towns are allowed to regulate plastic bags themselves it could hurt the state’s economy. Doug DuBois is a lobbyist with the Texas Petroleum Marketers and Convenient Stores Association.
“One thing too to point out about the difference between reusable bags and plastic bags: reusable bags are an overseas import, they’re made in China…Plastic bags are a Texas industry. They’re manufactured in Texas, we recycle them in Texas, we make recycled material out the plastic bags, durable material like decking and fence posts that’s sold by local Texas retailers. Plastic bags are a positive impact to the Texas economy, reusable bags are not,” he said. “Our intent is to be able to talk with city council in jurisdictions who are considering a ban on plastic bags and talking to them about the options of increasing recycling and use of reusable bags versus a ban.”
Click on the tag to this post “plstic bags” for more austin news on the issue.
17th March, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I saw several articles today about the Japan nuclear disaster and the effect it is having on nuclear plans in the U.S. I have highlighted the parts I thought were interesting.
The Texas Tribune had this article about a hearing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission held yesterday to hear testimony regarding early-stage approval to a site for a new nuclear plant in Victoria Texas filed by Exelon. Here is an excerpt:
Exelon is not currently seeking a full permit to build a plant in Victoria County — an expensive proposition even before the Japanese tragedy. The purpose of the early permit is so officials can vet all of the safety and environmental concerns about a site before a company invests significant capital there…
TSEP [Texans for a Sound Energy Policy, a group opposed to the plant] is neutral on the use of nuclear energy but opposes the site chosen in Victoria County. The D.M. O’Connor family, landowners who have lived in Victoria for generations, has invested millions in TSEP to hire lawyers and engineers to conduct geological studies of the area.
A Nuclear Regulatory Commission attorney said the review of the permit application in Victoria is ongoing, and that “no final decisions have been made about the substance of that application.” Several other new reactors — including two at Comanche Peak in Somervell County — have also been proposed for Texas.
The geology of the proposed South Texas site in Victoria County has been called into question by TSEP, which argues that geologic activity, combined with the lack of an adequate water supply, could pose a threat to safety. The area is not prone to earthquakes or tsunamis, but Victoria County has another sort of fault, called a growth fault, that can still shake things up. Unlike the sudden, jarring shift of tectonic plate movements, the shift of growth plates happens slowly over time. They won’t abruptly topple buildings, but they do create cracks in the sidewalk, for example.
There’s also this article by Fuel Fix, comparing the Fukushima plant to 2 existing South Texas Project plants (located about 90 miles southwest of Houston near Bay City; STP has also proposed building 2 additional nuclear plants in the same area):
On Location: “Fukushima is on the coast in one of the most active seismic zones in the world, while STP is about 11 miles inland from Matagorda Bay in a seismic zone rated zero – signifying the lowest earthquake probability. Fukushima’s coastal location probably contributed to the catastrophe there. Officials reported that diesel generators responsible for providing backup power to cooling pumps were swamped by tsunamis that followed last Friday’s massive earthquake.The South Texas Project is about 29 feet above sea level, spokesman Buddy Eller said, and appears capable of withstanding the extreme storm events that are most likely for the region.
A study looking at the possible impacts of a combined Category 5 hurricane storm surge and a 100-year flood on the Colorado River that runs adjacent to the plant site found water levels would rise to just under 28 feet.”
Age: “There’s also an age difference. The Fukushima units are 30 to 40 years old. South Texas Project Unit 1 went online in 1988 and Unit 2 in 1989, making them the sixth- and fourth-youngest units in the U.S.”
Reactor Designs: “The Japanese and Texas plants also use different reactor designs. In Fukushima’s Boiling Water Reactors (BWR), water runs through the nuclear reactor and boils into steam that turns power generation turbines. In STP’s Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), reactor water is heated under pressure but does not boil, and moves in a closed loop. The hot water in the loop boils water in a separate vessel into steam that runs the electric turbines.
In both designs, steam flows from the turbines to a condenser that cools it into a liquid to repeat cycle.”
Finally, there’s this Wall Street Journal article, noting that the Japan crisis is putting focus on plants in the US that have the same reactor design:
Japan’s nuclear crisis is drawing attention to aging U.S. reactors, especially the 23 most similar to reactors at the Japanese plant where workers are racing to avoid a full-scale meltdown.
Eleven U.S. utilities, including industry giants such as Southern Co., Entergy Corp. and Exelon Corp., own similar reactors in 14 states. Most of them are operating beyond their initial 40-year licenses and have been granted 20-year extensions by federal regulators.
The Japanese crisis, in which problems at four reactors have led to dangerous releases of radiation in the surrounding area, could lead to safety-related changes at similar U.S. plants. Operators said that, even if they’re not ordered to make changes by regulators, they might do so to restore public trust.
U.S. regulations require plant owners to make sure plants can survive any expected threat, even if that means they have to retrofit facilities that already have licenses.
“If there’s a change in a significant safety rule, it can be imposed retroactively,” said Richard Meserve, a physicist and former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Plant operators already are pledging to learn from Japan’s accident.
“We want to look at our systems and procedures and operator training to prevent a complete loss of power to our units” in a natural disaster, said Jeff Gasser, executive vice president of Southern Co.’s nuclear division. Its Edwin Hatch plant in Georgia has two reactors similar to the Fukashima Daiichi plant’s reactors.
Some critics say the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission should rethink the way it assesses risks and create even more conservative safety standards.
One former nuclear plant operator who opposed the license extension at Entergy Corp’s Vermont Yankee plant in Vermont, one of those similar to Japanese units, thinks the NRC and utilities will have to take a hard look at the “design basis threat”—or the maximum threat—that plants face.
“What used to be considered a non-credible threat is now credible, given what’s happened in Japan,” said Arnie Gundersen, a former senior vice president of Nuclear Energy Services, a provider of engineering and technical assistance to nuclear plants. He said he thinks safety margins should be increased.
15th March, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Today KUT and the Statesman both have articles about the nuclear disaster in Japan and the implications it has for the use of nuclear in Texas. The Statesman article focuses in a little more detail on the financial uncertainty of Japanese investment in the South Texas Project (a nuclear power plant near Matagorda Bay that currently has two reactors, with the building of another two additional reactors under consideration) while the KUT article is more general (the KUT article states “Currently Austin gets about 27% of its power from the nuclear plant. Over the years the city has flirted with the idea of increasing nuclear power’s percentage in Austin Energy’s portfolio. Karen Hadden is executive director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development or SEED Coalition. Her group has been battling against nuclear expansion in Austin and Texas. She points to the earthquake as an example of what can go wrong. ‘In Texas we may not have the risk of earthquakes at least at the South Texas Project site, but we do have hurricanes and we do have droughts that could impact our ability to cool reactors,’ said Hadden.”)
Click on the above articles for more details. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, with some arguing that when all goes as planned, nuclear can be a much cleaner energy source than other options such as coal , but can obviously have very disasterous consequences when things go wrong.
8th March, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
The ABJ has this story about the Fayette power plant (the Fayette Power Plant provides power to Austin Energy):
Three anti-pollution groups have filed a federal lawsuit against the Lower Colorado River Authority’s coal-fired power plant near La Grange, about 70 miles southeast of Austin.
The lawsuit was filed Monday by Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Integrity Project, Austin-based Environment Texas and Texas Campaign for the Environment, which has offices in Houston, Dallas and Austin.
The groups claim LCRA’s Fayette Power Project has violated the federal Clean Air Act thousands of times. The plaintiffs allege LCRA ramped up capacity and increased levels of dangerous particle pollution, which is not always visible to the eye but is linked to asthma and heart and lung disease….
14th February, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
ABJ had an article today that says that Texas will become the third state with a plastic bag recycling program, which is in conjunction with the national “A bag’s life” program. The article says:
In Texas, the program entails about 1,800 retail drop-off locations. An introduction to the recycling program will be held at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday in the agricultural museum at the Texas Capitol, which is on the first floor of the West Wing.
The program uses social media to get the word out about plastic bag recycling, It has a website www.abagslife.com for more details, and a smartphone app helps consumers locate the nearest place to drop off used plastic bags.
Read more about the statewide Texas program: Texas launching plastic bag recycling program | Austin Business Journal
Austin already has many spots you can take your used plastic bags – HEB is my usual choice because I’m there so often. Look for a big bin at the enterance of any major grocery store for plastic bag recycling.
28th January, 2011 - Posted by katherine - 1 Comment
This article from today in Test Country says that:
Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia occupied the top four spots in a list that ranked mercury emissions by state, according to a feature on Bloomberg Businessweek.
In a report released Wednesday by Environment America, the aforementioned states led the nation in mercury emissions, which carries with it associated impacts to the environment and human health. Group spokeswoman Lauren Randall said that their findings were based on the Toxics Release Inventory, which contains pollution data provided by power companies annually to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The article goes on to state the following about West Virginia’s mercury listings, but doesn’t go into any detail about Texas’ high listing:
Environment America attributed West Virginia’s fourth-place ranking in the list to the mercury emissions from the state’s coal-fired power plants. The state is the second-largest coal-producing state in the country, and a significant portion of the coal that is produced is used to generate electricity, through coal-fired power plants. According to Environment America, Dominion’s Mount Storm power station is ranked 9th of the Top 10 power plants that emit the most mercury.
In 2009, the 12 coal-fired power plants in West Virginia released 6,795 pounds of mercury.
26th January, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) today approved an air quality permit for construction of a coal-fired power plant in Corpus Christi. Previously, two adminsitrative law judges had concluded that the permit should be denied. The Houston Chronicle has this summary:
The administrative law judges initially found fault with the way the Las Brisas developers had conducted air pollution modeling, saying the emissions estimates in the permit application were done in a “reckless manner.”
Despite the concerns, TCEQ urged the judges to complete a second review of the project in time for the commission to grant the air permit before Jan. 2, when new federal rules for carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases took effect. The judges returned a decision — another recommendation for denial – 10 days before the TCEQ’s deadline, but the commission was unable to get the permit on its agenda until today.
The developers have said in legal filings that the project could suffer financial harm if it didn’t have an air permit in advance of the greenhouse gas rules…
In its second ruling, the judges, Tommy Broyles and Craig Bennett, concluded that TCEQ improperly helped the developers with the required modeling for tiny airborne particles linked to respiratory ailments and heart disease.
TCEQ executive director Mark Vickery, in written responses to the judges’ ruling, said its modeling was not done as a substitute for the developers’ analysis. He also turned away other technical arguments made by the public and environmental groups.
The Statesman also had an article on this issue today, following the decision by TCEQ. Here is an excerpt:
The EPA asked the Texas commission earlier this week to deny the permit application so that the two agencies could work together to resolve various issues. The federal agency wrote in the letter dated Monday that it was concerned about a lack of consultation with them and that the plant could violate federal clean air standards.
The EPA wrote that it has “strong concerns about the public health and environmental impacts” the plant would pose.
(TCEQ Chairman) Shaw said the EPA’s letter could not be considered because it was not part of the official record of Wednesday’s proceeding so it had no impact on their decision…
“This is just another example of why Gov. (Rick) Perry’s appointed commissioners are nothing but a rubber stamp for industry,” said Jennifer Powis, the Sierra Club’s senior regional representative.
“It’s really Gov. Perry standing in the way of federal law. That’s a problem on multiple levels. You can’t have a state cherry pick which law they want to apply,” Powis said.
Texas is home to 19 coal-fired power plants, more than any other state.
The $3 billion Las Brisas project that will “provide much-needed low-cost, reliable electric power for users throughout Corpus Christi and South Texas at competitive prices,” according to the company’s website, which also touts economic and job benefits. “It will be a state-of-the-art facility utilizing highly sophisticated equipment to generate clean energy and protect the region’s environment.”
But some residents questioned the company’s positive view, expressing concern that the plant would emit high levels of toxic substances like mercury.
The Statesman also notes that “[a]lthough the permit is important for clearing the way to building the plant, other permits are still needed, including a water discharge permit from the state and possibly a greenhouse gas permit from EPA.”
25th January, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
The Texas Tribune has a good article that lays out where Texas is getting its power from. It states that 39.5% of our power comes from coal, and 7.8% comes from wind. Here’s an excerpt:
When Texans turn on their lights, run their air conditioning or plug in their iPads, they are getting an increasing amount of power from the wind — and from coal plants.
Figures released earlier this month show that last year, nearly 8 percent of the power on the state’s electric grid was generated by wind. That’s more than three times the national average. And because Texas recently added several coal-generating units, coal plants — for the first time in recent memory — produced more power than any other electricity source. Nuclear power’s contribution held about steady, at 13 percent of generation.
The big loser was natural gas. While natural gas is abundant in Texas, less polluting than coal and substantially cheaper than it was jut a few years ago, it is also easily replaced by the wind. The percentage of power on the grid generated from natural gas dropped from 42 percent in 2009 to 38 percent in 2010; coal, at 39.5 percent, slightly edged it out.
Check out the whole article for more info on natural gas and to see a neat chart of the different types of power sources.
21st January, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
The Statesman had this article today, which states that according to a new study, Austin has the third worst traffic in the U.S.:
That would mean Austin’s traffic is worse than in not only Dallas and Houston, but also New York and Chicago. Only Los Angeles and Washington have worse traffic than Austin, according to the Urban Mobility Report released Thursday.
That is a notable departure from the last such report, put out in July 2009, by the Texas A&M University-based research institute, which said Austin’s 2007 “travel time index” — the percentage increase for a trip at rush hour compared with an identical trip in the middle of the night — ranked 20th in the country.
The article goes on to describes the methods used by the reporters, and also says:
Politically, the No. 3 ranking counts as something of a mixed blessing. For years in the mobility report, Austin’s congestion was the worst among a list of medium-sized cities. (Austin is no longer considered mediumsized in the report.) Officials pushing for various transportation initiatives — such as toll roads, commuter rail and higher gas taxes — pointed to that dubious honor to support spending for their agendas.
This ranking could serve as an even more dramatic rhetorical tool. Urban rail advocates and supporters of more highways have already seized on the report as justification for more rail or roads to alleviate congestion.
For others, the traffic itself is what matters, not the ranking.
The article also notes that “several of the report’s other rankings, which take into account the actual distance people commute, tend to put Austin and its suburbs somewhat farther down the list.”
5th January, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
The Statesman had this article today, which says that the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission, made of members from Texas and Vermont, has voted to allow importation of radioactive waste from 36 other states into Texas, to be buried in Andrews County in West Texas. The article states:
The low-level dump can be used to bury radioactively contaminated trash such as rags, syringes and protective clothing from nuclear plants or hospitals. The vast majority of it, if sealed in a drum, would be safe enough to sit atop the site and will lose its radioactivity within a century, according to state environmental officials.
Environmental groups had argued that the waste could imperil water quality in the nearby aquifers….
The final vote on importation was 5-2, with two of the Texas commissioners, Bob Gregory , who runs a landfill southeast of Austin, and Bob Wilson, an Austin attorney, opposed.
But the disposal of the waste became a story as much about money and connections as about radioactive syringes and beakers.
Waste Control is a subsidiary of Valhi , whose board chairman is Harold Simmons , a Dallas investor who has given at least $1.12 million to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaigns since 2001, making him the second-highest individual donor during that period . He gave Perry’s campaign $500,000 in 2010. That year the company spent as much as $430,000 on lobbyists, according to a review of campaign records.
All the commissioners were appointed by Perry.
Read the whole Statesman article for more info. Additionally, here is an older post about the proposal.
14th December, 2010 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
ABJ has an article today that says that Austin Solar LLC will break ground tomorrow for its $200 million solar farm, which will be the largest solar farm i n texas when built. The project is expected to create 350 jobs over the next 2 to 3 years. Check out the whole article for more details.
9th December, 2010 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
The Statesman had a short article today that says that:
The U.S. Drought Monitor on Thursday indicated 85 percent of Texas is between abnormally dry and in extreme drought, compared to about 29 percent a year ago.
Tropical Storm Hermine drenched Central Texas in September. Since then large swaths of Texas have received less than 10 percent of normal rainfall levels.
I am not surprised – it really hasn’t rained much at all in the last 2 months.
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