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.

Weekly Texas Coal News - April 14, 2018

Reggie James, ED of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club spoke at the Crowley Theater last Tuesday night in Marfa. James suggested that the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign that closed or phased out 240 coal plants in the country between 2009 and 2013 saved Americans 100 billion dollars in health costs. He said the legal strategy simple used laws already in place, primarily the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the Nixon administration. The coal companies could not meet the pollution standards. US electricity generated by coal dropped from 50% in 2005 to less than 1/3 in 2012. James went on to say that fossils fuels, primarily gas and oil will likely die out in the next 30 years with the present level of subsidies and exclusions from environmental regulations. “Without the subsides and artificial support,” he said, “I would think fossil fuels dies 10 years earlier.” James said that renewable energy is already cheaper pointing out that 2/3 of all new electrical capacity installed in 2015 was wind or solar.

 
Coal Extractors in the Powder River Basin, a strip of land running through Montana and Wyoming that produces 40% of America's coal, were stunned last month when US District Court Judge Brian Morris ruled that the Bureau of Land Management officials must plan reductions in coal mining. Environmentalists who were pushing for complete closure of coal mining were cautiously optimistic. Mike Scott of the Sierra Club Montana said in a press release, “For decades, the federal government has kept their head in the sand over the climate impacts of fossil fuel extraction on public land. This ruling is the latest example of courts forcing the federal government to be honest with the American public about how coal, and oil and gas leasing is contributing to the growing impacts of climate change.”

The Dos Republicas coal mine near Eagle Pass Texas continues to export low quality lignite coal to the Mexican Electricity company known as CFE. The coal is burned at

Carbon 1 and Carbon 2, in Piedras Negras 10 miles from the Texas border, 20 miles from the Texas mine sight. The plant is the largest coal fired electricity plant in Central America. They are not fitted with anti-pollution scrubbers. According to the Bravo Study of 2004, Carbon 1 and Carbon 2, are the primary source of air pollution in the Big Bend region. National Parks Service stated that air quality in the BBNP is consistently the worst of all national parks.

Report from Two Rivers - (a version of this appeared in the Sierra Club Lone Star chapter newsletter 2017)

The road drops 1500 feet in elevation from the mile-high plateau of Marfa on route south toward Two Rivers Camp. You might pass a car or two and sometimes none at all on the 41 mile drive toward the Rio Grande. Creosote Bush, a few mesquite, a long horn, no fences and mountains, the Sierra Ricos in the Mexican distance, Chinati to the east and San Jacinto a 5000 foot peak, 7 miles from camp, stands aloof, jagged, a beacon that has been known by humans for 12,000 years.

January at camp was cold. Nearly every night saw temps drop to freezing or below. But the hearty souls that live there and those that come out for the weekend, carry on, because in many ways that is what the camp is about – to carry on.

The drums beat. Sunrise. We gather in a circle near the sweat lodge as the native led ritual begins. A ceremony to the great spirit. A sprinkling of tobacco. A smudge. Another day. A new day.

Donations have been generous. Food is plenty. We eat. We plan. How better to use the gray water? The compost needs more heat. When can we plant the watermelon seeds?

We talk of a day when the rich humble and the poor rise, a day when who we are as a people reflects across borders and the world is at peace.

The temp rises. Its 70. A Border Patrol helicopter circles overhead.

We gather firewood and stoke the flame of the sacred fire.

We carry on.

Pablo Who? (a version of this article appeared in DECELERATION)

The new guy poured Karo tinged with black over my head and it dripped into my beard. It stuck there. Crude oil. At the pipeline construction site across Highway 67 five others from camp wore gas masks and held banners. It took DPS less than three minutes to show. The sheriff showed in ten followed by the Border Patrol and a Texas Ranger. They read our FB posts.

Richard Mark Glover

We pulled off the stunt, then the new guy bellows, “See, no arrests.” He’d assured us it was a non-arrestable event. We let him orchestrate it. Now, I studied his face and tried not to use his high-amped confidence against him. We’re all brothers and sisters here united in the fight against corporate greed.

The post-protest crowd laughed, smiled easily, the drum beating in victory while a group of cops led by a thin deputy with Sheriff written across his T-shirt walked toward us. They stopped in front of Pete Hefflin.

Pete has been with Two Rivers Camp since it opened in late December. He was an elder of the Society of Native Nations, the Big Bend Defense Coalition’s partner at camp. Steely-eyed, sure, tough, with a menacing scar etched on his neck. He was in charge of camp security and had sent at least seven packing for various infractions including smoking weed at our drug-free, alcohol-free camp.

He led sunrise ceremonies and sang. His guttural hoops sparked the little bit of Quachita in me. Many of the men in camp looked up to him as a leader. I was one of them. He and I agreed: whoever died first, the other would sing at the funeral.

The questioning went on. Too long. Something was wrong. Then the deputies handcuffed Pete Hefflin.

Four women from camp, trained in these situations, swarmed Pete and the arrest party. “What’s the charge? Why’s he being arrested?” They demanded. The camp cook yelled, “Come on. Get outta here. Lets go!” One of the women turned to the cook and shot him the bird.

We piled in the van and headed to the checkpoint following the paddy-wagon. The sheriff suspected an out-of-state warrant and would finger-print Pete Hefflin there. The checkpoint had not been good to us. The dog always seemed to smell something. The week before a Border Patrolman told me, as he rifled through my Toyota, that the dogs were trained to “sniff out illegal drugs and odors from human beings.” Check the latter.

The driver shouted, “Anybody else got a warrant?” We stopped at 169, a mile before the check point and eight of us got out and into the res-truck. We headed back to camp, while the van and the rent-a-car with the new guy and the cook drove on.

I checked the gauge – less than an eighth. I let out seven in the middle of nowhere, U-turned back to Marfa, and gasoline. Luck through the checkpoint, then the new guy and the cook stood waving beside the rent-a-car on the side of the road. I picked them up and we all went to re-fuel.

Clouds streaked the sky. Black Karo hardened in my beard. I pumped gas, that which we are against. I want it in the tank—fast. Dave, the former mayor of Marfa slows, rolls down his window, gestures. I shout out, “Don’t ask!” Then: “Performance Art – Highway 67.”

We made it back to camp. Sullen. Unsure. The cook says he wants to talk and sequestered me to the side. “Those women are spies, infiltrators!”

I listened.

“It’s me or them,” he said. 

I didn’t want to lose him. He’s the cook and I like him, but this time he’s wrong.

“Any word from Marfa?” I asked nobody in particular.

Then the news.

Pete Hefflin is not Pete Hefflin. He is Pablo Gutierrez. A rap sheet a mile long—but as Pete Hefflin, clean in Texas for the last 12 years.

I believe in redemption. I believe in Pete Hefflin. Pablo Who?

Review; Bedouin band - "Tinariwen" (a version of this appeared in the Big Bend Sentinel 2011)

Taureg energy metered over the Capri stage last Thursday night in Marfa as the motor coach traveling Bedoiun band “Tinariwen” pumped the sound of a different desert into the West Texas air. Surreal, at times you expected the six man band to drop their electric guitars, pull off their kufeyas and reveal L.A. smiles, but the music, strange and bent was too far out to be a charade.

They call it “Desert Blues” but you didn’t hear a turn-around, no 12 bars to rely on for your dance rhythm – this was different, like 11 beats to a measure if anybody was counting. At times there was a riff you might nail, Almond Bros? Stevie Ray Vaughn? – But like a North African sirocco it was gone with the wind into the strange.

A consciousness mulled in their beat – distinct from much American hip-swaying, sex-drive pump. Tinariwen’s was blue nights, blue stars, but not the blues we know – happy, sad and hypnotic at times. Hands at their side, they received their praise with apparent aplomb but their eyes told us “it is good.” Steel balls on ceramic occasionally feathered the beat in a wavy motif and the bass player charmed some songs with a one-two that captured a sitar like buzz, perhaps a root that checked their music in the dry white Sahara.

In Mali, the founder of the band, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib witnessed his Taureg rebel father’s execution in 1963 after a failed coup d’tat. The family fled to the vast expanse of the open desert sojourning in the shadow of sand dunes, along ancient camel-hoofed trade routes south of the Atlas Mountains. Refugee camps sprung up in southern Libya as Taureg clans and others from neighboring countries took advantage of Muammar al-Gaddafi’s apparent generosity. The band members met in these camps in 1979 and soon became known as “Kel Tinariwen” a Tamashek phrase meaning “Desert Boys”. Playing Tuareg and Arab pop at the refugee camps, they began to explore “chaabi” protest music of Morocco, Algerian pop-rai and later Presley, Santana, Led Zepplin, Boney M, Marley and Hendrix. They gained international recognition in 2000, won Germany’s prestigious Praetorius Music Award in 2008 and have toured and released a number of CD’s including their latest “Tassili”.

Outside the gabion-walled Capri courtyard a slick motor coach await these Bedouin musicians. The Tuareg tour on. Other great music towns beacon outside the desert: New Orleans, Atlanta, London

The State of Oil & Gas (A version of this article appeared in the Big Bend Sentinel, 2017)

Smog. A lot of it lately. Almost every time I drive in the Texas Big Bend country I see less blue, less mountain.

By chance I got a call from Texas Sharon of Earthworks. “Wanna go for a drive?” She asked. We head toward Balmorhea in her Dodge with Wilma Subra, a renowned chemist, filmmaker Joe Cashiola and Sharon’s FLIR video camera that makes visible the invisible air pollution coming from oil&gas facilities. We’re looking for leaks. Smog makers. Methane.

The shale play region around Balmorhea State Park, known as the Alpine High, is the most active fossil fuel hunt in the world right now. John Christman, CEO of Apache Corp., pledged to his shareholders last year he’d spend two billion dollars in 2017 exploring there for oil & gas. $2B is a lot of combustion.

Sharon stops the Dodge on the side of Highway 17, 30 miles south of Pecos and focuses the FLIR lens toward an oil well tank battery that seemed benign but in the camera’s black&white monitor we see clouds of gas rise from the tanks. “See that one,” she points. “Not only is it venting through the pipe but the top of the tank is leaking too.”

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TECQ) allows up to 25 tons of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s) to be released from existing sources yearly. This allows harmful gases from hydrocarbon production including ethylacetate, hexane, and 2-butanone to vent into the atmosphere, adding to the Green House Effect, that human induced phenomena that keeps heat trapped in our atmosphere creating global warming. Sharon is sure that most sources in Texas exceed this yearly limit. And that quantity does not even include methane aka natural gas. Unlike Colorado and some other hydrocarbon producing states, methane, in Texas is unregulated. “But the real problem,” she said. “Is they’re not even monitoring. I’ve sent them clips of leaking gas but seldom do they take action.”

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality production permits allow many other air pollutants such as nitrous oxide to be released which combined with VOC’s and sunlight create the ozone smog we see on the horizon.”

We look toward the Davis Mountains but they are not there.

This year the State of Texas cut the TECQ air pollution budget by $20million per year guaranteeing an even more passive approach to air pollution. Oil&Gas doesn’t seem to like regulation, moreover enforcement. And with Governor Abbott leading this charge, motivated perhaps by half million dollar campaign contributions from the likes of pipeline giant Kelcy Warren – what can we expect, ethical behavior? Or should we rejoice in behavior deemed legal by rich lawyers in office conjuring for their oil&gas buddies?

We drive north and scope another tank battery. All leaking, all venting. Then we check a flare, from a distance - the roar of pressure pushes the base of the flame 20 feet from the top of the flare stack.

“That one relieves pressure directly from the underground formation,” Subra said. The flare next to it black smokes but mildly pyrographic compared to the devil next to it.

We turn down another road and watch through the FLIR camera monitor another set of tanks off-gassing. With the methane comes carcinogens including toluene, benzene, and sulfuric acid. If you’re unfortunate enough to live in the vicinity of oil&gas production, common health effects include respiratory impacts, sinus problems, throat irritation, allergies, fatigue, eye and nasal irritation, breathing difficulties, vision impairment, severe headaches, swollen joints, and sleep disturbances.

We stop now at a frack on a Rosetta Corporation wellhead. Fracks are generally a 3 day operation. Ten million gallons of water are lost to the hydro-logic cycle forever. Five hundred tons of special sand along with blends of various “proprietary” chemicals including diesel, pesticides, detergents, solvents, and carcinogens like benzyl chloride, formaldehyde, and napthalene are mixed into the fracking solutions.

Trucks smoked as they lined up in a snaky half mile queue ready to discharge their goo into the crevices of our earth.

“They’re going to frack tonight Joe,” I whisper in Joe’s ear as if conscience will be struck from all moral codes for the next few hours.

Eight thousand miles away, a New York Times article reports this week, that a laboratory off the Tasmanian coast is monitoring our air, air that should be some of the cleanest on the planet as it sweeps across thousands of miles of ocean.

It appears, however, according to the article by Justin Gillis, that over the last two years atmospheric Carbon Dioxide concentrations, the No.1 source of the Green House Effect, have accelerated. Consequently global warming/climate change, will accelerate, and Mother Nature may become Mother Strange.

The NYT article suggests that the natural sponges, likes trees and oceans have been absorbing much fossil-fuel generated CO2 over the years of the industrial age but are now saturated. And methane, 80 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than Carbon Dioxide over a twenty year period, flows like no tomorrow in the once pristine area of the Big Bend.

We climb back in the Dodge now. I have a headache. There is less talk. We head back to Marfa, as the mountains, cleft and everlasting, slowly re-emerge through the smog.