Texas part of national push for laws promoting fledgling chemical recycling industry

Written by

Houston Chronicle
By Marissa Luck
Original article here

Photo: MOHD RASFAN, Contributor / AFP/Getty Images

The Texas Legislature has passed a bill that would support a fledgling industry that aims to reduce waste by returning plastic back to its original chemical components, which can then be reused for fuels and feedstocks of new plastic products.

The bill, supported by chemical makers such as Chevron Phillips Chemical of the Woodlands and the Texas oil major Exxon Mobil, is a response to the growing public outcry over plastic waste that is choking the world’s oceans, contaminating soil and threatening marine and wild life. Chemical recycling is not only viewed by chemical makers as a way to reduce plastic pollution, but also as a new and potentially $10 billion industry.

Unlike traditional mechanical recycling, chemical recycling uses chemical processes to convert plastic waste into fuels to use in cars or manufacturing feedstocks that can be turned into new plastics. Although chemical recycling itself isn’t new, more petrochemical companies are investing in improving the technology to make it work on a commercial scale.

The bill, which last week was sent to Gov. Greg Abbott’s office to be signed into law, would regulate chemical recycling operations as manufacturing plants, rather than solid waste disposal sites, a designation that would spare chemical recyclers from many regulations imposed on solid waste sites. The plants would still have to comply with state and federal air, water and other environmental laws.

The regulatory certainty provided by the legislation would make it easier for companies to invest in and obtain financing for chemical recycling agreements, said Craig Cookson, senior director of recycling and recovery at American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry trade group.

“It takes a long time at the beginning stages of an industry to line up investment and secure offtake and feedstock agreements,” Cookson said. “What they don’t want is a shifting regulatory landscape”

The bill is part of a national push by the petrochemical industry to promote chemical recycling. Texas is the sixth state to pass such legislation — joining Florida, Wisconsin, Georgia, Iowa and Tennessee, and similar bills are proposed in Rhode Island, South Carolina and Illinois.

Turning waste into a $501 million industry in Texas

Cookson said the significance of the legislation is especially big in Texas, which as the nation’s largest chemical manufacturing industry. Converting just 25 percent of the state’s plastic waste into manufacturing feedstocks and transportation fuels could support 40 chemical recycling plants and generate $501 million in economic output annually, ACC estimates.

Nationally, the Amerian Chemistry Council estimates that chemical recycling could create $9.9 billion in economic output and generate 38,500 American jobs if adopted more broadly.

New plants likely to face opposition

The Texas legislation was opposed by environmental groups such as Texas Campaign for the Environment and Sierra Club, which argued that chemical recycling projects produce additional air pollution without significantly decreasing plastic waste.

Historically many of these chemical recycling plants have operationally underperformed, failing to produce as much fuel or feedstock as they original targeted due to technological and economic challenges, said Andrew Dobbs, program director at the nonprofit Texas Campaign for the Environment. That means many plants have struggled financially and turned to taxpayers for subsidies to survive, he said.

He pointed to a 2017 study by the advocacy group Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives that found that chemical recycling plants have a similar emissions profiles to garbage incineration plants. Both can emit nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, heavy metals and greenhouse gases.

More fundamentally these chemical recycling plants don’t address what environmentalists say is the root of the problem – the nation’s continuing reliance on fossil fuels and the single-use plastics made from them.

“This is industry’s attempt to try to justify the dramatic ramp up of plastic production we’re seeing now by pretending like there is a solution on hand when there really isn’t,” Dobbs said.

He added that he appreciated the intent behind the bill to reduce plastic waste, but “this technology doesn’t work. It’s a huge waste of money and its bad for the environment.”

A Global Plastic Trash Crisis Is Looming

Written by

Texas Public Radio
By Kim Johnson & Dallas Williams
Original audio story here

PXHERE CC0: HTTP://BIT.LY/307SVXI

 

Plastic is deeply ingrained into the fabric of our society. While it’s been a game changer in terms of facilitating medical, technological and safety advances, plastic has also become a major problem for the planet as waste continues to accumulate.

Listen to the story here

Guests:

Rachel Meidl, L.P.D., CHMM, fellow in energy and environment at the Baker Institute and author of the issue brief, “Plastic Waste Management: Are We on the Right Path to Sustainability?”

Andrew Dobbs, Central Texas program director and legislative director for the Texas Campaign for the Environment

Jen Ronk, sustainability manager for Dow Chemical, a founding member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste

Plastic is a pervasive part of everyday life, from bagging groceries and ordering takeout to buying hygiene or cosmetic products, toys for your kids, a soda from the vending machine, and on and on. An estimated 40 percent of plastic produced is packaging that’s discarded after just one use.

Only 9 percent of the 6.3 billion tons of plastic waste generated since the 1950s was recycled. The other 91 percent ended up in landfills, was abandoned in the natural environment or was incinerated.

Plastic’s ubiquitous presence in our lives is having detrimental effects on the environment. Eight million metric tons of plastic enters the oceans every year, according to the Ocean Conservancy, affecting nearly 700 species. That’s on top of an estimated 150 million metric tons already in marine environments.

The U.S. ranks among the top 20 countries mismanaging its plastic waste. How is the plastic industry responding to these concerns? Is there a more sustainable solution?

What are the human health and environmental impacts of plastic? What are microplastics and how do they enter the human food chain?

How can we change the status quo for single-use plastics? Do plastic straw and bag bans have a sizable impact in limiting plastic waste?

Are you an environmentally conscious consumer? What else can be done to lessen the burden of plastic in our environment?

 

Environmental leaders say TCEQ failing Colorado County

Written by

Colorado County Citizen
By Vince Leibowitz
Original article here

Photo: Michael Stravato for The Texas Tribune

AUSTIN—Officials with Texas Campaign for the Environment, an environmental protection group in Austin that has provided some assistance to area residents in fighting permit applications by Altair Disposal Services to build a hazardous waste dump near Altair, said last week that the Skull Creek debacle is just another example that the agency has failed at exercising its mandate to protect the state’s environment.

Andrew Dobbs, a spokesperson for the group, said that while there are a lot of good people working at the agency, it is “more interested in protecting the status quo and avoiding conflict between members of the public and big polluters than protecting human health and the environment.”

He said Texans saw that this month with the ITC fire near Houston.

“They were telling everyone, ‘nothing to see here, folks,’ and you can look out the window and see the sky and see a black poison cloud hanging above them and know that’s not true,” Dobbs said.

“This is very typical of them,” Dobbs said.

“Just like the folks in Altair can tell you about fighting the landfill site, TCEQ staff and the waste applicants were collaborating and were essentially working on the same side,” he said.

He said that TCEQ misuses its mandate to protect the economic interest of business in the state.

“Everyone recognizes we need a healthy business climate to be prosperous and have a happy, healthy population,” Dobbs said.

“At the same time, if we don’t have water and land that is safe to live off of, we’re not going to have any prosperity to worry about,” he said. “TCEQ has completely gotten off balance on this stuff,” he said.

Dobbs said TCEQ’s top stars go on to be consultants and lobbyists for polluting industry in many instances. He noted that the agency’s former general counsel represented Clean Harbors/ Altair Disposal Services in the recent contested case hearing on their permit application for the proposed Altair hazardous waste dump.

“There is zero revolving door between TCEQ and the environment, and quite a bit between polluting industry, he said.

“Until that is fixed, there will be a lot of skepticism between them and the public on whether or not they are really protecting our environment,” Dobbs continued.

“People in Colorado County know that protecting the environment is not some abstract ideal. It’s protecting property, quality of life, your investments, and livestock and game and other things that every Texan cares about,” he said.

“I understand that we don’t want to go off on the deep end on environmental protection, but we don’t need to be falling off on the other side of the horse,” he said.

He said other states do a far better job with environmental protection than Texas.

“Others states do it better than we do—with no death and destruction,” he said. “We deserve better. We believe the people deserve better. It is time for this agency to step up and make sure people are being protected,” Dobbs said.

As Houston choked on toxic fumes, Texas legislators targeted air quality programs

Written by

Grist
By Naveena Sadasivam
Original article here

Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call / Getty Images

For most of last week, Houstonians were dealing with the fallout from a chemical disaster. After storage tanks at Intercontinental Terminals Company’s chemical facility in Deer Park, just 15 miles southeast of Houston, caught fire the previous weekend, the fourth-largest city in the country was blanketed by smoke. Several schools in the area canceled classes. Then, on Friday, a containment wall breached, sending toxic chemicals into the Houston Ship Channel. Air quality monitors recorded dangerous spikes in benzene, a carcinogenic chemical. And residents reported headaches, irritated throats, and nosebleeds.

While Houston was enduring the aftermath of the fire, about 200 miles west in Austin, a handful of Republican lawmakers in the Capitol building were pushing to move money out of Texas’ air quality programs. Between Friday and Sunday, representatives in the Texas House filed at least a dozen amendments to the proposed state budget. If any of them pass, they could take away anywhere from $300,000 to $26 million from the state environmental agency and allocate it to other projects, including a controversial state program that discourages women from getting abortions.

Of the dozens of amendments Grist reviewed, four of them target appropriations to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the agency responsible for regulating chemical facilities and protecting the environment. Other amendments would siphon money from dedicated funds that are used to improve ground-level smog and particulate matter levels in Texas cities.

“There is a tremendous disconnect between policymakers in Texas and the lives of people they are impacting every day,” said Andrew Dobbs, legislative director with the advocacy group Texas Campaign for the Environment. “Industry’s ability to make money is still trumping the lives and interests of people that live around there. That’s a tragedy.”

The proposed $115 billion House budget bill is just a starting point for discussions among lawmakers, who have about two more months to hash out the details. At last count, more than 300 amendments had been filed, and the House is expected to debate about them on Wednesday. Ultimately, these amendments may never make it into the final version of the budget, but in the past, last-minute amendments have been effective at scuttling environmental protections. In 2011, for instance, one such amendment in the budget bill transferred oversight of a state endangered species program from the Texas Parks and Wildlife to the comptroller’s office. Then-comptroller Susan Combs was brazen in her dislike of the Endangered Species Act and once compared listings to “incoming Scud missiles.”

Last week, state Representative Drew Darby filed two amendments that would decrease appropriations for TCEQ’s air quality work by almost $29 million. The House version of the budget currently allocates $165 million for this work. The money would be taken out of Clean Air Account 151, a dedicated fund used for air protection activities. According to the Texas Legislative Budget Board, the account funds permitting, enforcement, and inspections for facilities with air permits.

Another amendment by first-year State Representative Jared Patterson shifts $26 million from TCEQ’s air quality planning work to the state’s Alternatives to Abortion program. The program, part of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, largely funds crisis pregnancy centers that have been found to mislead pregnant women about the risks of abortions. In 2017, during the last legislative session, House lawmakers approved moving $20 million from TCEQ’s budget to Alternatives to Abortion.

Spokespersons for Darby and Patterson did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

A few amendments would also decrease funding by tens of millions of dollars for two programs that work to put cleaner vehicles on the roads. The programs are funded by fees from vehicle inspections, registrations, and title changes. The money accrues in a fund and lawmakers decide how much of it is to be disbursed. But in the last few years, they’ve failed to appropriate the money, and the account has ballooned. At the beginning of 2018, the Texas Emissions Reduction Program fund had $1.4 billion sitting unused.

According to a 2016 Houston Chronicle investigation, a major chemical incident occurs in Houston once every six weeks. Dobbs, the environmental lobbyist, said that the fire in Deer Park should be an indication that the state’s approach to regulating industry is clearly insufficient. The lawmakers’ “priorities are completely out of line with reality,” he said.

Opponents say planned ExxonMobil plastics plant would devastate Gulf Coast environment

Written by

Corpus Christi Caller-Times
By John C. Moritz
Original article here

Kevan Drake of the Texas Campaign for the Environment protests the plastics manufacturing plant planned for San Patrico County, Texas, while in Austin, Jan. 24, 2019. (Photo: John C. Moritz/USA Today Network)

AUSTIN — A proposed plastics manufacturing facility in San Patricio County promising to bring up to 6,000 high-paying jobs and pump as much as $90 billion into the Coastal Bend economy would be an environmental nightmare and fall short of its economic forecasts, according to environmental groups.

“They chose to locate where the complex and all of its operational components will have a devastating impact on our environment and public health,” said Errol Summerlin of the Coastal Alliance to Protect Our Environment at a Thursday news conference near the state Capitol.

Summerlin, a retired lawyer, said he lives about a mile-and-a-half from the proposed site. He and others opposing the Gulf Coast Growth Ventures, a partnership between ExxonMobil Chemical Co. and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. to build the word’s largest plastics plant, are urging the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to reject permit applications.

Thursday’s press conference coincided with the first day of a contested case hearing in Austin that will determine whether the TCEQ issues the permits Gulf Coast Growth Ventures needs to begin construction.

According to Gulf Coast Growth’s website, the manufacturing operation would be what’s called an “ethane cracker” and would provide several compounds to produce products like polyester for clothes-making and the plastics used for beverage bottles. The company said it is committed to ensuring the plant would be safe for both its workers and the surrounding community, which is already home to several refineries and other petrochemical industries

“The health and safety of our employees and the community go hand in hand,” the website says. “Many project employees and their families will live in the communities where we operate our facilities, and their goal every day is to work safely, go home safely to their families and make sure their coworkers go home safely too.”

Gulf Coast Growth Ventures said once construction starts and then ramps up, as many as 6,000 construction jobs would open up. Once manufacturing starts, the company “expects to create over 600 new permanent jobs with good salaries and benefits.”

The company has also set up a job application page on its website. The planned site on 1,300 acres near Gregory sits in the part of the Coastal Bend with the region’s highest jobless rates.

But the opponents at Thursday’s news conference organized by the Texas Campaign for the Environment said they were skeptical. Early projections, they said, forecast the creation of about twice that many jobs. However, it was later learned that many of those would actually be off-shore because the products would be exported for manufacturing plants overseas.

They also warned of emissions and plastic waste that would be left behind in the environmentally sensitive coastal region. And that could undermine the economic benefits of recreation and tourism in the region, said Robin Schneider, executive director of the Texas Campaign for the Environment

“There is also the existing economy in terms of fishing — commercial and recreational — the birding, the tourist economy that could be endangered by the build-out of this plant and others that are on the drawing board for the region,” she said.

Dewey Magee protests the plastics manufacturing plant planned for San Patrico County, Texas, while in Austin, Jan. 24, 2019. (Photo: John C. Moritz/USA Today Network)

Gulf Coast Growth has an application pending before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which will decide if the plant would comply with sundry state and federal regulations. The permitting process is already about a year-and-a-half in the making and could still be several months away from final resolution.

Even though permit applications are pending, construction work is under way at the site near Farm-to-Market Road 2986 and U.S. Highway 181 in San Patricio County.

“They said they would only be doing dirt work until the permits are completed, but there are buildings and infrastructure being erected all around us,” said Dewey Magee,a retiree-turned-metal artist who lives about a half-mile from the site. “Everything they have said has been skewed. It is no wonder we have trouble trusting them.”

Neighbors gear up to oppose Austin Community Landfill expansion

Written by

KXAN News Austin
By Alyssa Goard
Original article here

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Wednesday, people living in Northeast Austin and Travis County gathered at Barr Mansion to align their vision for stopping an expansion of the Austin Community Landfill. Residents nearby have complained of strong smells from the landfill, as well as buzzards circling and large feral hogs running around. But more recently, they have started to mobilize with concern about the long-term health and environmental impacts of the contents at the landfill.

The Austin Community Landfill (ACL) is in Northeast Travis County off of Highway 290 and has been used as a landfill since around 1970. The site has been owned by a company called Waste Management since the 1980s. It’s no secret that Waste Management is looking to expand the ACL landfill, they estimate there is enough space left currently to last for another six to eight years.

Colleen Mikeska, a resident of the nearby Colonial Place neighborhood, planned to attend the meeting Wednesday. Mikeska moved into the neighborhood a year and a half ago, she grew up in Austin and chose to move there because it was one of the last “affordable-ish” neighborhoods she could find.

Mikeska knew the landfill was there when she moved and even said her son was entertained by the buzzards flying overhead, but she grew concerned in the fall of 2018 when she learned of the possibility that the landfill might expand. She grew even more worried when she learned about the history of what had been disposed of there.

“Every once in a while it smells really bad, a lot of the time it doesn’t, but sometimes it does, and it seems to have gotten more frequent in the last six months,” she said.

A consulting report from 2003 shows that Industrial Waste Materials Management was allowed to dispose of liquid and drums of waste at ACL in the 1970’s, materials which would be considered hazardous by current standards. The consulting report calculated that more than 19,000 tons of industrial/ hazardous waste were disposed of by IWMM in unlined pits at ACL.

“It doesn’t take a scientist to know it’s not healthy to be surrounded by toxic chemicals all the time,” Mikeska said. She wonders if the contents of the landfill could have long-term consequences for her or her family.

Mikeska learned about the efforts to expand the landfill through the Texas Campaign for the Environment, a non-profit which works on health and environmental issues. Andrew Dobbs, the program director for the Texas Campaign for the Environment, said his organization has been looking into health and environmental concerns tied to this landfill for more than a decade.

Photo: Alyssa Goard

“Most of what we have can stay out of the landfills if we compost and recycle, reuse the way that we know we can and should, there’s no reason why facilities like this should continue,” he said of the ACL landfill.

Dobbs is also worried by a new city policy which shifts the way the city selects landfills to work with. “We believe the setup would score [the ACL landfill] better than other facilities.”

His organization has been involved with neighborhood groups to oppose the landfill expansion. Dobbs said the goal is to stop Waste Management from getting an expansion permit from the state, then to make a remediation plan for the pollution on site.

“There are thousands and thousands of hazardous industrial waste on-site underground there, and this is something that we’re going to have to clean up sooner or later, we’re hoping that it will be sooner,” he said.

Back in 1982, Tom Clark with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency called the landfill Austin’s Love Canal, comparing the industrial waste site at the ACL to the landfill in a Niagra Falls neighborhood where hazardous waste led to a pollution and health disaster.

Waste Management

Lisa Doughty, a spokesperson for Waste Management in Texas, explained that her company is in the early stages of researching for the expansion, a process which they expect to take three to five years.

When asked if Waste Management would want to have more of the city of Austin’s waste directed there, she said, “we’re always happy to service the community.”

She added that Waste Management has processes in place to address odors at the ACL landfill, including driving the area several times a day, monitoring wind direction through their weather station and covering smelly loads right away with dirt. Additionally, Waste management has stopped taking the more “odorous loads” to the ACL landfill including sludges, she said.

She also noted that the landfill is highly regulated and monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

The City of Austin’s use of the landfill

“No one wants a landfill in their backyard it’s understandable,” said Richard McHale is the assistant director for Austin Resource Recovery, the branch of the city of Austin focused on collecting and finding ways to reuse waste.

“The issue with the Austin Community Landfill, initially when it was sited there was nothing around it, and as Austin has grown the population has encroached on it,” McHale continued, “and that’s when we started seeing issues with landfills and land use nearby.”

He explained that the city of Austin uses two landfills. The majority of the city’s waste goes to the Creedmoor Landfill south of Austin, including residential, curbside trash. McHale said only waste from city facilities and a small residential dumpster contract the city maintains is sent to ACL, a much smaller percentage of the city’s waste.

“That landfill had a separate industrial waste unit,” he said. “But all landfills have accepted some sort of hazardous waste in the waste that they collect, so as far as we’re concerned.[hazardous waste at ACL] is something we’re concerned about, but its something all landfills have to reckon with.”

He added that Austin has had “no issues” in the past with the health or safety standards at the ACL landfill.

“We’ve looked into issues that have been brought up, we’ve contacted EPA about any issues with us having liability and they’ve told us there’s no issue at this point,” McHale said.

McHale explained that there’s been a recent change to Austin Resource Recovery’s “matrix” or method for prioritizing which landfills it sends waste too. Under this new change, he said it’s possible that the city could send more waste to the ACL landfill, but it’s also possible the city could send less. That would depend on the contracts that come up for approval through the city council, he said. Additionally, he said the landfill matrix is a new tool and it’s likely there will be some changes in the future.

McHale said he understands why residents might have concerns about the landfill, “especially if it’s expanding in that area, so we would just tell them to contact their council member and whenever contracts come up, they might use that contract to voice their concerns.”

KXAN told McHale about some of the worries residents near ACL landfill have expressed.

“If those issues are occurring, we encourage folks to contact the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to make complaints with them,” he said. McHale added that the state regulates permitting and expansion for landfills like ACL.

Back in the Colonial Place neighborhood, Mikeska said she is concerned both about the potential landfill expansion and in the change of the city’s “matrix” for landfills. “The city needs to do something to make sure the area is safe for people who live there– whether it’s them or the waste management company [making the change].”

“We need to be working towards zero waste, not just expanding a huge dump,” Mikeska added.

She plans to keep speaking up, and said many of her neighbors will too.

Op-Ed: This new coastal alliance aims to protect South Texas’ natural gifts

Written by

Op-Ed for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times
By Errol Summerlin

Photo: Rachel Denny Clow, Corpus Christi Caller-Times

The Coastal Bend of Texas is one of the premier places to live and recreate in Texas. With miles of beaches, pristine waters teeming with aquatic life, areas designated by the EPA as essential fish habitats, and home to more than 400 resident and migratory bird populations including threatened and endangered species like the whooping crane, the Coastal Bend attracts new residents and visitors from all around the world.

The quality of life in the Coastal Bend now faces its greatest challenge. It has been targeted as fertile ground for an industrial build-out that will impact the entire region. The Port of Corpus Christi Authority, Regional Economic Development Corporations (EDCs), and industry are engaged in an unprecedented expansion that includes the construction of massive new industrial and maritime complexes, dredging deep channels in the bay, and building seawater desalination facilities to accommodate industry’s thirst for freshwater as the amount of water required by the petrochemical industry to operate is staggering.

Emitting millions of tons of greenhouse gases and thousands of tons of harmful contaminants into our air, these new industries threaten the health of residents, particularly the elderly and children. Billions of gallons of contaminated industrial wastewater will be discharged into our waterways.

This rapid, unfettered, and reckless activity will have an unprecedented impact on the delicate ecosystems in the Coastal Bend area of Texas. It ignores the combined effects of these efforts on the quality of the air we breathe, the impacts of deep channel dredging and brine plumes on our wetlands, estuaries and bays, and the proliferation of plastic pellets that will have killing effects on our birds and aquatic life.

The danger of this massive expansion to our environment is not receiving the attention it deserves. Many have bought in without understanding the collective consequences to the quality of life we have known for so long.

To meet this challenge and protect our environment, a number of individuals, grass roots initiatives and local chapters of state and national organizations have come together to form the Coastal Alliance to Protect our Environment (CAPE). We are profoundly concerned the uncontrolled quest for growth and profit is an ecological disaster in the making.

Individual members of this Alliance come from all walks of life. Alliance organizations are newly formed grassroots groups, and longstanding allies of the environment and wildlife. Each individual, group or organization has his, her or its own focus. It may be the air we breathe and the health of a loved one; recreational and sport fishing; commercial fishing; greenhouse gases; water supply; effluent in the bays; plastic pellets on the beaches; endangered species; tourism and alternative economic growth; the ecological impact and dangers of large crude oil carriers.

While each will continue to have a specific focus, we all share a common concern that the current industrial build-out, land-based and maritime, presents multiple challenges that must be met. We are aligned in purpose to protect the health of our residents and our delicate and beautiful ecosystem in the Coastal Bend.

Our mission is simple… to protect our environment in challenging times. We include:

Portland Citizens United, Port Aransas Conservancy, Texas Campaign for the Environment, Earthworks, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, Clean Economy Coalition, Surfrider Foundation – Texas Coastal Bend Chapter, Sierra Club, San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper, For the Greater Good, Islander Green Team, Texas Drought Project.

Errol Summerlin is a longtime resident of Portland and a member of Portland Citizens United.

Travis County works to address lack of recycling receptacles at 26 area parks

Written by

Community Impact
By Taylor Jackson Buchanan and Sally Grace Holtgrieve

AUSTIN – Only six of 26 parks managed by Travis County have recycling receptacles, and many of those bins are dated and in need of replacement, said Shaun Auckland, conservation coordinator for the county.

“Implementing a robust recycling program and educating the public on what can and can’t be recycled is substantial for us to be able to reach our 90% zero-waste goal,” Auckland said.

The county joined the city of Austin in 2014 with the goal of diverting at least 90% of discarded materials from landfills by 2040. To reach this goal Travis County created a Green Team that has helped increase the diversion rate of the waste produced by the county from 5% to 34%, Auckland said. The county also purchased recycling and trash containers for public spaces at county facilities in 2016.

However, nearly 3 out of every 4 county-maintained parks do not provide recycling options. With 500,000 annual visitors to parks in the western part of the county alone, few options exist to recycle materials at the parks, said Timothy Speyrer, Travis County Parks district manager.

Resident Joan Quenan said it is difficult to recycle in many county parks.

“I usually have to take my stuff home to recycle it, which most people won’t bother doing,” said Quenan, who often utilizes hiking trails at several county parks. “We should be teaching people how to recycle by having it readily available in the parks.”

Rethinking recycling

Public access to recycling services sends the message that recycling is something one should always do, said Andrew Dobbs, Texas Campaign for the Environment Central Texas program director and legislative director.

“It takes [recycling]from this luxury process or something that’s a nice thing to do to a basic service done because it’s the responsible thing to do,” Dobbs said. “It shouldn’t be a moral behavior or cultural touchstone. Recycling is the basic way of handling materials that still have valuable life left in them.”

Recycling can also have a positive impact on the economy, according to a 2015 study done by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. During each stage of the process, from collection to manufacturing, economic activity is generated in the form of employment and workers’ wages, the report states.

However, when a person goes to a government facility—whether a park, office building or other center for services—and recycling receptacles are not available, this reinforces the idea that throwing materials into a landfill is an appropriate step to take, when in actuality it is a waste of energy and resources, Dobbs said.

As someone who works with government entities on environmental issues, Dobbs said it did not surprise him that only 23% of the county’s parks have recycling. An unfortunate reality in Texas is that landfill disposal of waste is cheaper and easier than recycling, which has not been a priority for waste management, Dobbs said.

“It’s a long-term struggle,” he said. “But the county is looking to change and clearly asking the right questions.”

Addressing the issue

As a first step in providing more recycling options, the county is collecting data using a geographic information system, or GIS, application. The “Collector” app keeps track of containers and production of waste at parks. To date 13 county parks are mapped, Speyrer said.

“We are using the GIS information to look at how many trash cans and recycling receptacles are in the park, if we’re missing certain areas and if we have enough receptacles,” Speyrer said. “From that data, we will develop a waste management plan to address this moving forward.”

Auckland said county staff will start the process of creating the solid-waste management plan in January. The plan will outline anticipated costs and provide a suggested timeline to expand recycling services, remove substandard containers, and implement uniform signage to designate waste and recycling receptacles. Improving recycling services and waste management across all the county-maintained parks will likely happen in phases, she said.

Taking inventory is just one element of the conversation. The county is also exploring different types of containers for proper disposal of both trash and recyclables.

“It’s not just a matter of going out and buying a Rubbermaid trash can,” Speyrer said. “These durable, weather-resistant containers are not cheap. We are piloting a few different types to determine what is the most durable and works the best.”

In flood-prone locations concrete containers are less likely to be whisked away in floodwaters, Auckland said. For sports complexes and other parks with flat, open fields, the county is researching sturdy but easily-relocated bins. Wooded parks need containers that can prevent animals from getting inside the bins, she said.

The county has ordered several new models of “twin bin” containers that pair recycling on one side and trash on the other. This side-by-side pairing promotes proper placement of both waste and recyclables and reduces potential misplacement of the different materials, Speyrer said.

“We are aware of human nature,” he said. “It has to be easy to recycle, or people won’t do it.”

Consistent, uniform signage in English and Spanish that includes clear illustrations is another aim of the county’s recycling effort. Without clearly depicting which materials can and cannot be diverted from the landfill, recycling efforts could still fall short, Auckland said.

“There has to be a substantial amount of education for the public and [parks]staff in order to have successful buy-in,” she said.

One park alone can have 100 or more units, Speyrer said. Twin bins can range from $642 to upwards of $1,000 each. This adds up quickly when implementing a new program in 26 public parks.

Why recycle?

Resident David Mack Endres said it would be great for the county to provide more recycling containers in the parks, but he doubted the recycle stream would be very clean.

“Many people disregard the need to segregate [recyclables],” he said. “If [the county]could provide true single-stream recycling for everything but organic waste, it might be useful.”

Harry Cleaver, an associate professor of economics at The University of Texas at Austin, said he wondered why so few parks offered recycling bins.

“If containers can be made available to every resident, why not to the parks?” Cleaver said.

Determining how to prioritize recycling in county parks depends on where funds would come from, he said, adding he wondered if new taxes would be levied to fund recycling efforts.

Dobbs said it is important to remember when throwing trash away, there is actually no such place as away.

“When trash is thrown away, it is actually being sent to someone’s neighborhood,” Dobbs said. “A lot of our landfill stuff goes to low-income communities— places where people are vulnerable to the harmful impacts of waste.”

With landfills come associated odor, noise, vermin and other issues, Dobbs said.

“It’s important we minimize what we discard,” he said. “If we recycled everything, we wouldn’t need the landfills.”

Victory! Austin Parks Will Have Recycling

Written by

TCE Blog
By Andrew Dobbs, Central Texas Program Director

Julia Reihs/KUT News Austin

Over the next two years every park, pool, rec center, cultural facility, sports field, and trail in the Austin will have recycling everywhere they have trash bins. In a community with as many outdoors enthusiasts as Austin this is a crucial step towards ensuring diversion opportunities everywhere we live, work, and play. This victory is the fruit of many years of work by TCE and our allies, including a generous grant to TCE Fund from the Patagonia Foundation.

How did we win? Public pressure and persistence. Here’s how we did it.

Austin’s Zero Waste Goal

The roots of the parks recycling effort go all the way back to the last decade when TCE led the effort to commit the City of Austin to Zero Waste. This is “a goal that is ethical, economical, efficient and visionary, to guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use,” according to the Zero Waste International Alliance. It means a commitment to “not bury or burn” our discards.

Zero Waste—which is defined as reducing 90% of waste sent to landfills or incinerators—is possible because most of what we throw away can be recycled, and most of what’s left can be composted. Most of the fraction that’s left could be eliminated, especially if the companies that make it had to take it back. There is only one thing standing between our communities and Zero Waste: political will.

By securing an ambitious Zero Waste goal of 90% diversion by 2040, we got the political leadership of Austin to put their will towards keeping materials out of the trash. This policy has been the foundation for many TCE accomplishments since then, including universal recycling for all residents and businesses, curbside composting, Austin’s single-use bag ordinance (since pre-empted by the Texas Supreme Court), and a visionary Construction and Demolition debris ordinance.

Unfortunately one of the easiest pieces in the plan was skipped over when the City of Austin failed to meet one of its commitments: to lead by example. This means making City government operations Zero Waste as quickly as possible. Almost seven years after the Austin Zero Waste Plan was first adopted, the City is still throwing away valuable recyclables and compostable materials.

We made a decision to hold them accountable on the most public-facing department of all, Parks and Recreation.

The Drive for Parks Recycling

Austin has 300 parks and dozens of other facilities maintained by the Parks and Recreation Department. Millions of people visit Austin parks facilities every year, and in almost none of them could they have found a recycling container before our efforts began. Now they will find them everywhere.

When we began this effort more than four years ago City of Austin staff were very hesitant. We pushed back and got city commissions to demand recycling at all parks. Over time their hesitancy gave way to acceptance and then enthusiasm. Today the Austin Parks and Recreation Department is a key ally in this effort, and worked closely with TCE and our allies—especially the Austin Parks Foundation—on developing the policy options for bringing recycling to all parks.

Previous TCE efforts had prompted the Parks and Recreation Department to launch a pilot program, but still only 7 out of 300 parks had any recycling. They needed more money to get the rest, and when it comes to the Austin city budget in general, there are far more needs than money.

So we worked with Austin Parks Foundation and recycling advocates on the Zero Waste Advisory Commission (ZWAC) to secure an authorization from the City Council for a special task force on parks recycling. We had less than two months to craft a proposal that could show the City Council how to pay for parks recycling without taking money from other important programs. In the end we came up with a menu of good options, and won unanimous support for them from the Zero Waste Advisory Committee and the Parks Board.

Getting It Passed

TCE, Austin Parks Foundation, the respective commissioners and board members then began talking with members of the Austin City Council about why recycling in parks was so important and the simple ways they could fund it in a fiscally responsible manner. There was a great deal of concern about competing priorities and affordability impacts, but we demonstrated how this goal could be reached with minimal costs to taxpayers and ratepayers.

At the same time, our canvass teams organized grassroots support in every corner of the city, especially the districts of possible swing votes, to get constituents to write letters to and call their City Council members to demand parks recycling. Thousands of people reached out, and the impact was real—by the time the votes on the budget were held, City Council knew this was something that had to get done.

Throughout this process we had a vital ally in City Council member Leslie Pool, from District 7 in North Austin. Council member Pool made parks recycling her top priority, and her staff stayed creative and committed when seeking ways to make it happen.

In the end they found a way nobody had anticipated: using a somewhat obscure debt mechanism called contractual obligations (called KOs to distinguish from COs, certificates of obligation, a different kind of local debt). They secured the full $1.8 million for recycling container purchases and installation with this tool, and it will be paid off over a long period at low interest rates, meaning it will have very little budgetary impact over time. We got more than we expected!

Where We Go Now

Now we are watching closely to see just how the City implements this program. We know we have good allies in the Parks and Recreation Department, and ongoing leadership from the Austin Resource Recovery Department. It will take a little time to purchase the containers and finish plans on where exactly to put them and how to collect them, but we are mere months away from fulfilling a crucial part of our Zero Waste vision.

Thao Nguyen/Austin American-Statesman

A grateful thanks again to Austin Parks Foundation, Council member Pool, as well as Parks Board Commissioners Rick Cofer, Randy Mann, and Dawn Lewis, ZWAC Commissioners Kaiba White and Amanda Masino, as well as staff from Parks and Recreation and Austin Resource Recovery. Most importantly thank you to YOU, as a TCE supporter for carrying us to victory. It’s the voices of thousands of Austin residents and your ongoing support that makes it possible for us to win these kinds of fights. This is YOUR victory.

Thanks for making it possible, and when you see the blue recycling bins in your local park soon make sure to tell people “I did that.” We’re honored to have helped you make it happen!

Grand Prairie industrial site that leaked cancer-causing chemicals under homes gets Feds’ attention

Written by

Dallas Morning News
By Jeff Moseir

A Grand Prairie industrial site that leaked cancer-causing chemicals under more than 100 homes is now eligible for cleanup funding, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday.

The 1.1-acre Delfasco Forge property has been placed on the Superfund National Priorities List, which features some of the nation’s most polluted sites. Still, funding and cleanup of the toxic groundwater and soil could take 10 to 15 more years, said Jim Cummings, Grand Prairie’s environmental services director.

“It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s just a step,” said Grand Prairie Mayor Ron Jensen. “I don’t want anybody to think that everything is going to be good next year. It’s a long process. We’re going to have to be patient and vigilant.”

The owner of the Delfasco Forge plant, which made practice bombs for Navy and Air Force pilots, filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Officials at the Hurst-based company blamed its bankruptcy on liabilities from the contamination as well as reductions in military training.

They also claimed that the pollution was caused by previous owners or other industrial sites.

Testing at the time found trichloroethylene in 10 nearby businesses and homes. The EPA concluded that the site was a threat to public health.

The bankruptcy court set aside money to temporarily protect some properties near the plant at 114 N.E. 28th St. Trichloroethylene, or TCE, used as a degreaser, along with other hazardous chemicals were found in groundwater underneath 65 acres of a mostly residential area of Grand Prairie.

Cummings said scientists realized that there was still a danger from the pollution even if the groundwater wasn’t used. Fumes from the TCE and other chemicals that evaporate quickly migrated into the soil and then leaked into the structures above ground.

The groundwater is about 18 to 32 feet below the surface, according to EPA records.

Some property owners were provided equipment to vent fumes outside their homes or businesses, although installation wasn’t mandatory. Four exhaust fan systems were installed in 2008 and 31 more in 2014. The owners of nearly 50 more homes located above the toxic underground plume were offered these systems but declined, according to the EPA.

Agency officials on Tuesday said this was the first time these vapor concerns had been used as a factor for inclusion on the Superfund list. Previously, there was less concern about groundwater contamination if the properties didn’t use well water.

The EPA has proposed banning the use of TCE in commercial vapor and aerosol degreasing and dry cleaning because of its health risks. Besides causing cancer, the chemical can also harm fetuses, irritate the respiratory and central nervous systems and harm the liver, kidneys and immune system.

The site’s soil and groundwater is tainted with five other toxic chemicals known to harm most organ systems and also cause cancer.

The plant opened in the 1950s near Dallas’ former Naval Air Station and was bought by Delfasco in 1980. The Grand Prairie plant, which also had metal fabrication and forging operations, shut down in 1998. The owner then leased it to an auto repair business.

Jensen said the city plans to use mailers, door hangers and social media to alert nearby residents and businesses about the progress. Informational meetings and hearings will also be planned.