Jim Schermbeck

DFW Breathes Some of America's Worst Air, and Fracking May Be Partially to Blame

Of North Texas' 7 million residents, 1.5 million have asthma, lung disease, heart disease or diabetes. Simply by living here those residents suffer the risk of additional complications beyond those that would normally accompany their diagnoses. According to a report by the Texas Tribune, the Dallas ... More >>

Texas Freezes Agency's Funding Over Release of Data Linking Fracking to Ozone Pollution

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has consistently said that fracking has no significant impact on air quality, not in the Barnett Shale. Not in the Eagle Ford Shale. Not anywhere. It was news, then, when a TCEQ-funded study, performed by the Alamo Area Council of Governments, a San Ant ... More >>

Why Denton's Air Quality Is the Worst in Texas

Here's another reason why Texas should secede: we'll avoid getting in trouble for repeatedly violating the Clean Air Act. New data shows that North Texas is continuing its sixteen-year-streak of failing to be in compliance with the federal law. The Clean Air Act stipulates that ozone pollution does ... More >>

Trinity East's Fracking Plans Might Be Screwed with the New Dallas City Council

Even with two seats in limbo, the complexion of the new Dallas City Council looks decidedly unfavorable for Trinity East, the would-be fracker from Fort Worth that paid the city millions for the rights to its natural gas. Because the Plan Commission voted against the company's drilling permits, four ... More >>

Take a Video Fracking Tour with Dallas Environmentalists. And the Beatles

At the end of January, city staff arranged to have the entire City Plan Commission bused to three city-owned sites where Trinity East Energy hopes to drill for natural gas on parkland. This was so commissioners could see for themselves just how drab, un-park-like and eminently frackable they all are ... More >>

Drilling Opponents: Plan Commish Chair Pushed Commissioners to Support Fracking

Opponents of Trinity East's plan to drill for natural gas inside the Trinity River floodplain say Plan Commission Chair Joe Alcantar of pressing his fellow commissioners outside of public meetings or lawful closed-door deliberations to reconsider the permit. In a complaint filed with the District A ... More >>

Plan Commission Puts Off Vote on Fracking Permits, Begging City Council to Do Something

The Dallas Plan Commission voted to delay any decision on permitting natural gas wells in the Trinity River floodplain, telegraphing a clear message Thursday to City Council: Your move. Commissioner Gloria Tarpley remains none too pleased about being asked to consider a permit that currently runs af ... More >>

Chaos as Plan Commission Votes to Give Trinity River Floodplain Fracking Another Look

Any attempt to explain the goat-fuck at that Dallas Plan Commission meeting Thursday afternoon, I fear, may not do it justice, but here goes: A few weeks ago commissioners concluded that approving a special-use permit to allow driller Trinity East to hydraulically fracture the Trinity River floodpla ... More >>

Proposed Frack Site on Trinity River Floodplain Will Include a Gas Processing Plant

Trinity East intends to sink natural gas wells in the Trinity River floodplain, but it isn't the well pad itself that will consume most of that controversial real estate -- it's the natural gas processing plant they plan to set up right next to it. According to site plans for the Elm Fork lease, T ... More >>

Plan Commission Punts Floodplain Fracking Proposal To City Council, Where They Might Finally Have To Make a Decision

If you could make it through the interminable hours of debate regarding the virtues of video boards; the dire necessity of liquoring up establishments zoned dry; and what sounded like a monolithic Oak Lawn apartment building, something interesting did in fact transpire during a Plan Commission meeti ... More >>

All Sides Are Pissed at City Council as Fracking Debate Comes to a Head

Over Thanksgiving weekend, the Morning News' Randy Lee Loftis posed a question we'd been wondering about ourselves: Just what the hell happened to that fracking ordinance the City Council was supposed to pass, the one that would finally and completely resolve all those unanswered questions about gas ... More >>

New Study Shows Fracking is Bad For Dallas' Air Quality. Environmentalists Want City Hall to Take Note

Much of the fracking debate has focused on if and how carcinogens like benzene and hexane find their way into the air and water supplies. Less attention has been paid to the impact of gas drilling on ozone levels, which is significant. Just how significant is hinted at in a new study published in th ... More >>

The EPA Wimped Out on Cement Plants, but the Fight Continues in DFW Next Week

Just south of Dallas along Highway 67 in Midlothian is perhaps the country's largest concentration of cement plants. TXI, Holcim, and Ash Grove all operate facilities within a couple of miles of each other, and the emissions they pump into the air tend to waft over Dallas when the winds are right, a ... More >>

Try Not To Breathe Too Much Today, DFW

Take a look outside your window. You've probably gotten used to that omnipresent, smoky haze that hangs over the Metroplex like a pall of economic viability -- upwind power plants a'chugging; cars snaking down tangles of toll roads and highways; shale gas production amid the cities and 'burbs slowed ... More >>

Amidst Activist Outbursts, Task Force Finalizes Its Suggestions for Gas Drilling in City Limits

A few major issues, including set-back distances from drill sites and whether to protect parks from fracking, have plagued the Dallas gas drilling task force for months ... and months. (Keep in mind: Yesterday's final meeting was more than three months past the scheduled end date.) At meeting after ... More >>

Dallas-Fort Worth's Air Could Be Cleanest Ever By Next Summer. He Said Sarcastically.

It was early November when watchdog group Downwinders At Risk found out that Dallas-Fort Worth had set off air-quality monitors more times than Houston in 2011. Yep, America's petrochemical hub violated EPA standards less often than we did. Depressing, right? As you may recall, the Texas Commission ... More >>

Dallas-Fort Worth's Air Now Dirtier Than Houston's? Yep, Air Quality Watchdogs Say.

​In Texas, Houston and filthy air have always been synonymous. But the Armpit of Texas has just been dethroned. For concentrated, ozone-laced air pollution, Dallas-Fort Worth has outstripped the country's petrochemical hub as the EPA's worst offender. According to watchdog group Downwinders a ... More >>

At Arlington City Hall, Locals Hammer TCEQ Panel for Stricter Gas Drilling Regulations

Photos by Leslie MinoraA panel of TCEQ reps maintained their poker faces for about two hours as citizens took the mic, almost all demanding tighter fracking regulations.​Shortly after the release of that Fort Worth air study, three reps from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality took a ... More >>

In Legislature's Final Days, Lawmakers Extend Court Protections for Polluters

Rep. Dennis Bonnen​Amid these "late nights and high feelings" of the tail end of the 82nd Texas Legislature, House lawmakers took a little time to pay the bills yesterday, tying up one last niggling loophole that was letting property owners sue polluters that were contaminating their land. As it ... More >>

Fracking Chemical Disclosure Bill Blasts Through Texas House, Enviros Unimpressed

From the rapidly spreading "Fracking Song" from ProPublica and Studio 20 NYU.​In these final days of the 82nd Texas Legislature, lawmakers in Austin are throwing support behind Eastlake Rep. Jim Keffer's bill that'd require drillers to report the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing at each of t ... More >>

Activists Hail Dallas County Commissioners Court For Demanding State, Feds Clear the Air

​Anti-gas drilling activist Raymond Crawford sends word this morning: Moments ago the Dallas County Commissioners Court voted to adopt a resolution demanding the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency do something about cleaning up Dallas's air. Long ... More >>

New Study From Gas Drilling Activists Gathers Decade of Industrial Woes in the Barnett Shale

​Natural gas activist and blogger Sharon Wilson was among the environmentalists out at Earth Day last weekend -- not far from the EPA's six-foot cardboard Al Armendariz -- and she was passing out copies of a new report she'd helped produce on gas drilling in the Barnett Shale. Produced by the Fort ... More >>

Raymond Crawford, Actual Citizen, Fought the City on Fracking -- and Won

When Dallas' drilling rules get tougher, you'll have a professional needlepointer to thank.

Environmentalists, NAACP Unite To Ask Council For Strong Gas Drilling Task Force

Photos by Patrick MichelsRaymond Crawford unfurls a 21-foot scroll of signatures from folks concerned with gas drilling in Dallas during this morning's press conference..​It's The Big Day today for gas drilling activists here at City Hall, and as Robert mentioned yesterday, the environmentalist se ... More >>

As Council Tackles Fracking, Groups Marshal Forces Against City's Natural Gas Policies

Photo by Patrick Michels​As Patrick mentioned yesterday, the city council will at long last debate that gas-drilling task force Angela Hunt pitched only after Dave Neumann promised but failed to deliver his own proposal. In advance of The Big Day, several groups -- Downwinders at Risk, Dallas Area ... More >>

Maybe City Council Should Have Asked Some Questions Before Taking Drillers' Money.

Toxic Avenger: In the War Between the Feds and Texas, EPA Chief Al Armendariz has Science on His Side. Is That Enough?

Downwinders at Risk Launches First-Ever TV Campaign Against TXI, TCEQ and Rick Perry

Two months ago, TXI made a big deal out of shutting down four wet-process cement kilns in Midlothian -- a move hailed by Jim Schermbeck, head of Dallas-based Downwinders at Risk, as "the culmination of a 21-year fight that began in 1989 by a group of residents who found that burning hazardous waste ... More >>

Clean-Air Fund to Stop Funding Natural Gas Projects Till Industry Cleans Up Its Act

Click to expand this map provided last week by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality​Way back in '97, and again last June, we told you the story of Sue Pope -- a Midlothian rancher who became legendary for taking on pollution-spewing TXI -- and the genesis of the fund named in her honor, w ... More >>

Don't Want TXI to Burn Tires in Midlothian? Too Bad. TCEQ Doesn't Wanna Hear About It.

In April, public ire rose when Texas Industries scored a 10-year air permit renewal -- no public comment period required -- for its notoriously toxic Midlothian cement operation. The renewal came with one condition: TXI's cement kilns, the only ones in North Texas authorized to burn hazardous waste, ... More >>

Clearing the Air Over EPA's News Concerning DFW's Clean Air Plan

So, the Environmental Protection Agency has approved the Dallas/Fort Worth region's plan to reduce air pollution from ozone, making us the first in the nation to win the EPA's nod for a "state implementation plan." That's nice an all, but don't jump up and shout, "Woo-hoo, We're No. 1!" just yet.Oh, ... More >>

Kick in the Ash: Cement-Maker Takes Dallas, Tarrant Counties to Court

The day before Thanksgiving, Kansas-based Ash Grove Cement Company filed a suit against, among others, the City of Dallas, claiming that the city's desire to go green will take the green right out of Ash Grove's wallet. The lawsuit, which also names Plano and Fort Worth and Arlington and Tarrant Cou ... More >>

Green Cement Plants Could Mean Cleaner Air and Lower Costs

Economic pressure from local cities helps clean up smoky kilns

Clearing the Air

Former County Judge Margaret Keliher keeps trying to blow away the smoke over pollution plans

Wonders a Downwinder: A Bad Wind A-Blowin' In From Midlothian?

As those crushed cars continue to burn, baby, burn at that steel plant in Midlothian, Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk asks that we share the part of the story going "completely unreported," as he puts it in a missive sent Unfair Park's way: "Contamination from this fire could easily reach Dall ... More >>

DFW Coughs Up Its Last Environmental Beat Journalist

Sierra Club A Friend of Unfair Park sends word today that Scott Streater, who's done important, top-notch and well-circulated work covering the environmental beat for both the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and its Planet DFW blog, is shuffling off to Colorado, where his missus got a new gig. Streater, ... More >>

Choke On It

North Texas gets schooled on the nasty politics of dirty air

Re: Sam Coats' Concrete Problem

Until Unfair Park called him at home this afternoon, mayoral candidate Sam Coats had only heard about Jim Schermbeck's missive in which the enviromentalist and filmmaker brands Coats a hypocrite. As you no doubt read in the post below, Schermbeck is furious that Coats is running for mayor while also ... More >>

Sam Coats' Concrete Problem

A Fallen Star Is Born

Tom DeLay's scandals are a gold mine for two Texas filmmakers

Time for "The Times" To Weigh in on DeLay Doc

Yesterday's New York Times' Arts & Leisure section had a small piece on a movie we've written since last summer--and just about every week since we started this danged blog. Stephanie Goodman asked: What becomes of local filmmakers Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck's movie The Big Buy: How Tom DeLay ... More >>

The Truthiness Is, He's Scary

Robert Greenwald's best known as the agit-doc filmmaker behind such fists-in-yer-face as Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism and Uncovered: The War on Iraq. But as we reported last week, Greenwald, through his Brave New Films production and distribution ... More >>

The Hammer and the Nailing

What's bad news for Tom DeLay is good news for Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck, the Dallas-based documentary filmmakers whose movie about Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle's investigation into the doings of DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee (TRMPAC) has ... More >>

No DeLay

Bad politics is good business for filmmakers

Trip to Bountiful

Oh, the talent given us at this year's remarkable Dallas Video Festival

Made on the Margins

For 15 years, the Dallas Video Fest has flickered on the fringe

Letters

Something In The Air

Downwind of TXI's Midlothian cement plant, people and animals keep getting sick. Instead of investigating whether the plant is to blame, state regulators appear ready to let TXI burn even more hazardous waste. Part two of A Dallas Observer Special Report

Ill Wind Blowing

Texas Industries wants permission to burn 270,000 tons of hazardous waste each year at a concrete plant 30 miles from Dallas. That would make it the nation's largest incinerator of toxic waste. Despite stunning ignorance about what this will do to your he

Companies that whore

Channel 8 sells its name to advertisers, including one of the state's biggest polluters