Texas Environmental News - Week 42 (courtesy of West Texas Wind)

Protesters disrupted the annual Energy Transfer Partners shareholders meeting last week at a Hilton in Dallas. Holding signs outside the hotel and chanting “Water is Life,” the protesters seemed most irked about the ETP owned Bayou Bridge Pipeline that crosses 700 Louisiana waterways in route to the Mississippi River where North Dakota crude will be exported. Inside the meeting, protesters notified stock holders that ETP had the worst safety record in the industry, with toxic spills occurring every 11 days. The protesters also questioned the complicity of shareholder investment in profitable yet ostensible socially and environmentally bankrupt corporations. Billionaire and Chairman of the Board, Kelsey Warren, reportedly fled the room after a water main burst. Two arrests were made.

The EPA is now considering lowering the definitional standards of clean water under the Clean Water Act according to the Houston Chronicle. Should the water standards be lowered by the Trump Administration, it will enable the oil&gas industry to rid themselves of waste water more conveniently.  Lakes, streams, city water treatment centers and other surface settings could be environmentally challenged. Dirtier clean water discharged back into surface re-circulation keeps the water in the hydrologic cycle but contamination has always been the reason why oil field waste water has been injected into deep disposal wells, some as deep as 15,000 feet. Texas has over 250,000 of them. But now as the supply of deep waste disposal wells shrink as new concerns about earthquake pro-genesis and water table pollution become part of the Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground debate, Permian operators are scrambling to find ways to be rid of the 660 million gallons of waste water generated per day in the region. Waste water pipelines to whoosh waste to cheaper dumping grounds and new filtering processes are some of the potential solutions but none represent as cheap an alternative to the industry as dumping lower quality water onto the surface environment.

Settlement funds for the BP Deepwater-Horizon Oil Spill of 2010 are slowly funding coastal restoration projects in Texas. The Texas share, 238 million dollars, has funded in part four big projects to date according to the Houston Chronicle. The cargo ship “Kracken” was sunk of the coast of Freeport as part of a series of artificial reefs to create habitat for recreational fishing. 10.7 million funded the redevelopment of Galveston Island State Park. Three rookery islands in Galveston and Matagorda Bays are the recipient of $20 million to help protect herons, pelicans and gulls at the Big Bogg National Wildlife Refuge. And another 20 million has been designated for Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle habitat. Although Texas nesting numbers were down for several years after the 3.1-million-barrel oil spill, a record number of nests, 353, were counted in 2017.

Pilgrim’s Pride poultry in Mount Pleasant is the third worst polluting meat packing house in the country according to Environment Texas. A report by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earth Justice, called, “Water Pollution from Slaughter Houses” shows that nearly 75% of the nation’s large meat processing plants have violated their pollution control permits in the last 24 months --with some dumping more nitrogen pollution than small cities. Peter Lehner, senior attorney at Earthjustice, said: “Slaughterhouses are another dirty link in the highly polluting industrial meat production chain.  From polluted runoff from over-fertilized fields growing animal feed, to often-leaking manure lagoons and contaminated runoff at concentrated animal feeding operations, and to industrial slaughterhouses, the way most of our meat is now produced impairs our drinking water and public health. We need to clean up every stage.” The report statistically arranges the slaughterhouse polluters in quantities of released nitrogen --which fuels algae growth and creates low-oxygen dead zones. Pilgrims Pride discharged 1,700 pounds of nitrogen a day, into Lake O’ the Pines last year. Brian Zabcik, a Clean Water Advocate with Environment Texas said, “Texans love barbecue — but nobody orders a side of water pollution with their meat.” He added, “The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality needs to issue stronger water pollution control permits for the slaughterhouses in East Texas and elsewhere — and then enforce them, so they stop contaminating our waterways.”

Physicist and author Jan Dash told the Houston Chronicle this week, “The biggest step in reducing global warming requires transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energies.” He went on to say, “It is scientifically certain that burning fossil fuels increases atmospheric carbon dioxide, which then produces the global warming trend observed over the last 40 years. While fossil fuels made modern civilization possible, fossil fuels have also led to the distinct possibility that the Earth may become unlivable sooner or later.” Meantime the Army Corp of Engineers predicts a 12-inch sea level rise in Houston by 2038. Dash commented, “Another foot of water at the shoreline means another foot of storm surge in a hurricane. One foot of extra water would be enough to flood New York City subways regularly. The U.S. Navy’s scenarios of sea level rise by 2100 go up to 6 feet. Sea level rise of that magnitude will flood coastal cities and farms, producing mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people worldwide with catastrophic consequences.” Meantime Houston city planning continues to issue building permits in flood zones.

Texas Environmental News - Week 40 (West Texas Wind, valentineradio.net)

Gulf Coast Ammonia wants to dump 2.2 trillion gallons of industrial wastewater annually into Galveston Bay, one of the most polluted bays in America. The TCEQ is considering their permit request while Texas City officials are offering the plant, which will employ 25-50 full time employees, a ten-year tax abatement. Anhydrous ammonia, extremely toxic to aquatic life is used most often in the preparation of non-organic fertilizers. Shrimper Roy Lee Cannon told the Houston Chronicle, “I don’t see how they can say nothing’s going to be affected or there will be little effect on the environmental situation for the oysters, fish, shrimp etc because they have no way of knowing.” Buoyed by the Trump Administration’s pro fossil fuel stance, the build out of the Texas Gulf Coast petro-chemical industry is seeing its biggest expansion ever.

As the Permian fracking boom gets closer to the Big Bend so too the night lights. We should not feel alone. Today over 80% of all humans and more than 99% of people in the US and Europe live under light polluted skies according to the Scientist magazine. Kevin Gaston, a UK scientist told the magazine, “It’s become clear that light pollution is a major anthropogenic pressure on the environment.” Its effect on humans and other species is still being studied. Theresa Jones of the University of Melbourne said, “We have nothing in our genetic make-up that has been exposed to this type of challenge. It’s completely unprecedented in the history of the Earth.” Most humans and animals evolved with night and day perception, creating the circadian rhythms. Some fear this loss or modification of perception may link us to catastrophe. Franz Holker, a German scientist who was part of a study that reported a loss of nearly 75% of flying insects in parts of Germany over 30 years, warned that such declines have set the Earth on course for an “ecological Armageddon.” “When this study came out, they were thinking about land-use change, climate change, and pesticides,” Hölker said. “But these factors alone could not explain the population plunge. Light pollution might be the missing piece of the puzzle.” Holker’s team recently discovered that the regions of decimated insects also had high levels of night time illumination.

The EPA has rated Texas as the No.1 polluter in the country, siting the large scale petro-chemical industry along the Gulf Coast, fracking and a lax regulatory environment as the spawning ground for the state’s colossal anthropological footprint. But natural causes of pollutants, including the greenhouse gas CO2 in high latitude areas may soon give man-made sources, a run for their money. As temperatures increase, tundra in Alaska is off-gassing. A recent study, led by Harvard University, found that long-term records at Barrow, AK, suggest that CO2 emission rates from North Slope tundra have increased during the October through December period by 73% ± 11% since 1975, and are correlated with rising summer temperatures. Together, the report reads “these results imply increasing early winter respiration and net annual emission of CO2 in Alaska, in response to climate warming.”

Vicki Hollub, CEO of Houston-based Occidental Petroleum and Darren Woods, of Dallas-based Exxon-Mobil, joined 11 other CEOs from major oil companies worldwide at the first US meeting of a four-year-old group called Oil and Gas Climate Initiative. One hundred fifty people including high-ranking green group members, asked questions of the CEO panel in what Axios Magazine described as a “rare and surprising candid discussion.” Axios went on to say that “under pressure from investors and lawsuits, oil companies are starting to acknowledge climate change and slowly shift their business models in response.” The member companies including Saudi Aramco, Shell, Chevron represent a third of the world’s oil&gas production, and pledged last week at the Manhattan meeting, to cut their methane emissions by one fifth. Nigel Topping, CEO of a nonprofit coalition called We Mean Business, noted that the companies were still overwhelmingly investing in finding new oil and gas over cleaner energy resources.  But each of the members have ponied up their share of money creating a substantial fund managed by the group for alternative energy investments. Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, who attended, said, “The first thing they started tackling when they were formed four years ago was methane, and they’ve taken that issue very seriously. We think they are doing good things with the billion-dollar fund. We will keep watching. We will keep encouraging.”

Chair-lady of the Texas Railroad Commission, Christi Craddick, never met a flare she didn’t like or so it seems. In fact, the 3 member TRC board has approved 20,000 flaring permits in the past 5 years according to the Wall Street Journal and not one has been denied. Including a drill site known as Ringo 9. Christi Craddick has an interest in Ringo 9 and 174 other wells according to the Austin-Statesman. So does she have a conflict of interest? Should she have recused herself from approving flaring at Ringo 9? Oil, the gold, comes with associated gas including the greenhouse gas methane, carcinogens toluene and benzene, and VOCs hydrogen sulfide, nitrous oxide and others. If a gas pipeline is not available at the drill site the driller asks the TRC for a permit to flare. The problem is the TRC doesn’t distinguish between flaring and venting and flares don’t always work. In light of the overwhelming evidence of climate change and the role these gasses play, perhaps not issuing a flare permit is the responsible thing to do. Get the pipeline in to take away the associated gas before producing oil. Craddick is up for re-election this November.

Prisoners at Karnes County Residential Center, a privately-operated prison for immigrants seeking asylum, are at risk for cancer, brain damage and respiratory problems according to Deceleration News. Twenty-three-hundred active oil&gas wells are spewing tons of toxins in Karnes County and some wells are as close as 100 feet to the facility. Unlike the 15,000 residents of the county, the asylum seekers have no place to escape the fumes. Priscilla Villa, of Earthworks told Deceleration “The prisoners have no choice but to inhale the toxic fumes coming from these sites. Fracking emissions are harmful to human health and especially hazardous to vulnerable populations, which includes all children, newborns and pregnant women at this detention center.”

Sempra LNG also known as Port Arthur LNG is hoping to build an LNG export terminal at a wildlife management area on the Sabine River. Texas Parks & Wildlife are, behind closed doors, considering trading 120 acres of the JD Murphree Wildlife Management Area to the corporation for an undisclosed property elsewhere. Sempra plans to produce 13.5 million tons of liquified methane at the facility. Three compression stations will be required and horsepower sufficient to cool the methane to a negative 265 degrees below zero for liquification of the gas. Texas Parks & Wildlife have yet to provide information on how they plan to manage this piece of the people’s land.