Texas Environmental News - Week 40, 2018

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 Texas Commission on Environmental Quality 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.

To many in the Big Bend region who fear the night lights of the Permian Fracking Boom getting closer and brighter, 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 Volatile Organic Compounds 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 liquefied 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 liquefaction of the gas. Texas Parks & Wildlife have yet to provide information on how they plan to manage this piece of the people’s land.