U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Texas' Only Natural Lake Is Polluted With Oil, and the EPA Isn't Paying Attention, Activists Say

Texas has exactly one good sized natural lake that we share with Louisiana, and it's totally not getting flooded with oil right now, officials have assured us these last few weeks. On October 13, workers noticed crude oil leaking out of a pipeline and into a Louisiana bayou. The pipeline operator es ... More >>

Texas Leads the Nation in Illegally Injecting Diesel into Wells, Which Is Not a Good Thing

Regulation of the mysterious chemicals used in fracking fluid used in drilling for oil and gas has been pretty much off limits to the Environmental Protection Agency ever since Congress in 2005 stripped the EPA of its authority to regulate fracking fluid under the Safe Drinking Water Act. In a meag ... More >>

Dangerously Explosive Quantities of Gas Found in Parker County Water at Center of Fracking Controversy

As we reported last summer, the Texas Railroad Commission has agreed to take another look at a case of potential water contamination due to fracking in Parker County. It has been nearly three years since the agency, notoriously chummy with the oil and gas companies it is supposed to regulate, exoner ... More >>

Inspector General May Have Cleared EPA in Flaming Water Case, But Parker County Man Says It Caved to Politics

The EPA inspector general dumped it right before Christmas, when the media had checked out on holiday auto-pilot. Because of this curious timing, the report didn't get nearly the play it should have. But it can be summed up like this -- given the EPA's statutory authority under the Safe Drinking Wat ... More >>

The EPA Says It Was Right About Its Range Resources Investigation After All

When a natural gas company is accused of making an oopsie during fracking, the EPA's response has typically been to come down hard on the company at first but then back away. That was one of the the major plot points of the "Gasland" documentaries. Environmentalists and homeowners accuse the agency ... More >>

Greg Abbott Hits and Misses on Greenhouse Gas Challenge Before Supreme Court

Gubernatorial hopeful and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott probably won't get a chance this time around to roll back every meaningful regulation that curbs carbon-dioxide emissions -- the gas driving climate change -- but he will take a shot at a significant one. The high court announced Tuesday ... More >>

U.S. Supreme Court Has Snubbed Luminant's Petition to Toss EPA Pollution Limits

The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear an appeal from Dallas-based Luminant seeking to topple Clean Air Act limits on emissions increases resulting from planned startups and shutdowns of its power plants. The state's largest generator of electricity sought an exemption for these operations from fines ... More >>

Even Range Resources' Investors Say the Fracking Company Isn't Being Forthright about Methane Leaks

Not long after UT-Austin published an "unprecedented" study (funded by the gas industry, whoops) claiming that fracking wells are safe from methane leaks, a bunch of investors are now accusing one gas company of being dishonest about its methane problem. The natural gas industry has aggressively fo ... More >>

Luminant Will Fight DOJ Clean Air Act Lawsuit, Says it Is "Without Merit"

As we reported last week, the U.S. Department of Justice has sued Dallas-based Luminant, Texas' biggest power generator, for alleged violations of the Clean Air Act. The federal complaint, filed on behalf of the EPA, contends Luminant made major modifications to two of its biggest northeast Texas co ... More >>

DOJ Sues Dallas-based Power Generator Luminant for Alleged Clean Air Act Violations

Last summer, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency put Dallas-based power generator Luminant on notice, warning the utility that its northeast Texas Big Brown and Martin Lake plants were in violation of the Clean Air Act. The company's coal-fired plants, EPA contended, had been modified, resultin ... More >>

In the Fracking Debate, Residents and Politicians Are Turning Up the Heat on the EPA

We wrote last week about how the Environmental Protection Agency is catching heat from both sides of the fracking debate, for its continued backing away from research suggesting that drilling for natural gas can contaminate drinking water. It's happened in Parker County, Texas, as well as in the P ... More >>

Congress Wants to Know Why the EPA Keeps Backing Off its Own Fracking Research

The Environmental Protection Agency has a tendency to walk away from its own research suggesting that fracking pollutes drinking water. A Congressional hearing scheduled for today will look into why that is. The hearing, called "Lessons Learned: EPA's Investigations of Hydraulic Fracturing," will b ... More >>

Lawmakers More Interested in Horse Crap than Science at Congressional Fracking Hearing

Fracking hearings held by the U.S. House almost always make for fine kabuki theater. Back when Rockwall's skydiving septuagenarian Congressman Ralph Hall ran the show, you couldn't glean much from the proceedings other than the impression that any scientific inquiry into the environmental impacts of ... More >>

In the Wake of Spills, the EPA is Urging Tighter Review of the Proposed Keystone Pipeline

Back in March, the Keystone XL pipeline's approval looked practically assured. Construction of the 1,179-mile leviathan, connecting Alberta's tar sand mines with Texas Gulf Coast refiners, was already well underway in Texas. The State Department said Canadian tar sands production would proceed apace ... More >>

Federal Appeals Court Ruling on Lawsuit Against EPA is a Partial Loss For Dallas-based Luminant and Enviros

The ongoing legal war of many fronts among Dallas-based Luminant, the state of Texas, the EPA and environmentalists is mostly a war of incremental victories.This week, EPA arose victorious. Next month or year? Anybody's guess. Just know that this time, nobody (except the EPA) is totally happy with t ... More >>

Environmental Groups Wants EPA Investigated Over Dropped Parker County Case

Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Public Citizen -- along with more than 80 other groups from across the country -- are calling on the EPA Inspector General to investigate the agency's withdrawal from legal action against a company accused of contaminating a water well through its ... More >>

EPA: Dallas-based Luminant Produces a Hell of A Lot of Greenhouse Gas, And So Does Fracking

The Environmental Protection Agency -- that scourge of freedom-loving Texans -- just released a nifty little interactive greenhouse-gas database that will almost certainly threaten your liberty, the free market and the Second Amendment, somehow. For starters, the data it compiled indicates Dallas- ... More >>

The EPA Cut a Deal To Drop Lawsuit Against Fracker in Parker County Case of Flaming Water

We've long wondered why EPA backed off of a lawsuit against Range Resources, the driller accused of contaminating a Parker County man's water well with natural gas and levels of benzene, a carcinogen, above safe drinking water standards. It issued an endangerment order against the company in Decembe ... More >>

Former EPA Chief Al Armendariz Said Frackers Lit a Well on Fire, So the Frackers Lawyered Up

Range Resources, a company that fracks shale formations across America, wants controversial former EPA regional chief Al Armendariz to shut up about what happened in Parker County. The company's lawyer sent him a letter recently insisting that "(he) cease from making further false and disparaging co ... More >>

Report Predicts More Shutdowns of Coal-fired Power Plants, But Not in Texas

Rock-bottom natural gas prices have forced the wonks over at the Brattle Group to revise their national prediction for the number of coal-fired power plants likely to retire in the coming years steeply upward. And when we say steeply, we mean by some 25 gigawatts, or roughly enough electricity to po ... More >>

EPA Wants to Tangle With Texas Again Over Air Pollution Rules

EPA isn't ready to give up the fight over a rule aimed at curbing air pollution wafting across state lines. The agency filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Friday morning, asking for a re-hearing before the full court. This comes more than a month after, a three-jud ... More >>

Federal Appeals Court Upholds Texas Challenge to EPA Power Plant Pollution Rule

A split three-judge panel of a federal appeals court rejected an EPA rule that would curb the drift of harmful power plant pollutants across state lines. The agency, the majority ruled, had overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act. The legal challenge was mounted by a number of states and ... More >>

The EPA's Photo Exhibit Shows What Texas, Pot Smoking Was Like in the 1970s

Shortly after it was established in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency undertook a project called "Documerica," which paid freelance photographers across the country to document the environmental and human conditions of the country. All told, more than 15,000 images were collected for the pro ... More >>

Wait, Wait, Can We Talk? Before We Dump a Bunch of Chemicals from Planes? Please?

So I was right yesterday. As Eric just reported, the pressure is on to escalate the local war on West Nile from truck spraying of pesticides to airplane spraying. This decision will be left to that august body the Dallas County Commissioners Court, scheduled at its next meeting to take up a proposa ... More >>

What We're Spraying for West Nile Doesn't Work, Isn't Safe and Kills Every Bug in its Path

So on the radio this morning I hear all about the spike in West Nile deaths in Dallas and how the county health department will be on the job tonight protecting us by sending the pesticide trucks through three more neighborhoods, this time in North Dallas. I just hope we all understand the spraying ... More >>

Spraying to Stop West Nile - Is It Safe?

EPA Accuses Dallas-based Luminant's North Texas Power Plants of Clean Air Act Violations

Dallas-based Luminant, the electricity generation arm of Energy Future Holdings, got hit with a violation notice from the EPA Friday, accusing it of completing major modifications to its northeast Texas coal-fired plants, Big Brown and Martin Lake, without installing modern pollution control devices ... More >>

Texas Senators Demand EPA Review of Fracking Endangerment Order in Parker County

Six Republican members of the U.S. Senate -- including Texas' Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn -- have requested an investigation of the EPA's decision to accuse a natural gas producer of contaminating a North Texas water well. In a letter sent last week, the senators asked the EPA inspector ge ... More >>

Politics of Misdirection: Dallas-based Luminant and Coalition of Utilities Blame the EPA for Coal's Creeping Demise

Dallas-based Luminant, the electricity generation arm of Energy Future Holdings, and a number of other utilities that own coal-fired fleets are attempting to head off an EPA rule that would curb the amount of nervous system-disrupting mercury, cancer-causing dioxin, arsenic and lead emitted from the ... More >>

How One Man's Flaming Water Fired Up a Battle Between Texas and the EPA

Steve Lipsky's epic battle and what it means for the future of fracking.

A Less-Than-Crushing Blow for the EPA

Last week, in response to a post Brantley Hargrove wrote about power giant Energy Future Holdings' slow death waltz with potential bankruptcy, a commenter gently smacked him for ignoring some Major News related to power plants, smokestacks, etc. "And in other [news] this kid refuses to cover. The ... More >>

Texas' Biggest Power Supplier Wants to Blame the EPA for Future Blackouts

So, New EPA Regs Won't Cause Apocalyptic Blackouts in Texas After All?

Luminant's Monticello​Over the course of the last month, both ERCOT and the North American Energy Reliability Corporation have warned of outages as early as next summer, due in large part, they say, to new regs issued by the EPA aimed at reducing the amount of mercury, sulfur dioxide and other ... More >>

Report: Texas Power Plants (Well, Luminant's, Really) Biggest Emitters of Mercury in U.S.

How now, Big Brown?​Emissions of cancer- and central nervous system defect-causing toxic air pollution put Texas power plants atop the pile of serial polluters, a report based on EPA data finds. Nationwide, pollution controls such as smokestack scrubbers have reduced the rates at which air tox ... More >>

EPA Report Ties Fracking To Groundwater Contamination in Wyoming. But What Does That Mean For Texas?

Photo by Taryn Walker A gas well in Arlington​For folks in Dallas, where the council-appointed gas drilling task force is running to stand still, or in Southlake, the subject of a recent cover story on towns grappling with urban drilling, this EPA report released today tying fracking to ground ... More >>

Energy Dept. to Texas: Chill Out. You Can Keep the Lights On And Still Meet Pollution Regs

​Ever since the EPA announced new pollution regs that would come down hardest on dirty power plants, there's been considerable Sturm und Drang from the industry, who've been making all sorts of dire predictions about rolling outages resulting from burdensome, onerous, expensive federal regulat ... 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 NAACP Will Meet With Local EPA Officials to Discuss City's Flow Control Proposal

​Speaking of flow control ...On the other side you'll find a letter that Juanita Wallace, president of the Dallas branch of the NAACP, sent to Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 chief Al Armendariz in which she decries the city's proposal that would force all solid-waste collectors to dump t ... More >>

EPA to Study Whether Hydraulic Fracturing Taints Drinking Water in North Texas

Photo by Patrick MichelsAt the EPA's public hearing in Arlington in August of last year​All at once the in-box filled up with releases from the Environmental Protection Agency, both the national HQ and the regional offices. Long story short: After a series of public hearings held last year, includ ... More >>

More to Read With This Week's Feature on Al Armendariz, the Environmentalist and Engineer in the Middle of State Leaders' Fight with the EPA Over Texas Air.

​This week the Paper Version of Unfair Park's cover is a profile of Al Armendariz, who took a leave from his gig as a Southern Methodist University engineering professor to run the Environmental Protection Agency's regional office in Dallas, stepping right into a simmering fight between the agenc ... More >>

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

A Month After EPA's Emergency Order Against Barnett Shale Gas Driller, a Federal Suit

​A little more than a month ago -- and before the Environmental Protection Agency assumed control of Texas's greenhouse gas permitting -- the EPA looked to be drawing a line in the sand over water contamination from gas drilling in the Barnett Shale, with an emergency order for Fort Worth-based Ra ... More >>

Downtown Tomorrow, It's an EPA-Sponsored Open Season on Texas's Greenhouse Gas Regs

​If you were all revved up yesterday for a few solid hours of public debate on the environment, only to be abruptly denied, well, take heart -- at the Crowne Plaza Hotel tomorrow, the Environmental Protection Agency's holding an all-day hearing on its proposals for regulating greenhouse gases. Fro ... More >>

Dallas EPA Office Agrees With Downwinders: TXI's Request to Burn Car "Fluff" Is Toxic Stuff

Courtesy Downwinders at Risk​A couple weeks back we ran that Downwinders at Risk ad taking the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and Governor Rick Perry to task for "conspiring" to keep out of sight TXI's request to burn plastic trash and so-called "auto fluff" (such as "all the non-steel ... More >>

Got Something to Say About Coal Ash Pollution? The EPA Wants to Hear From You Today.

Lower Colorado River AuthorityA new Sierra Club report says coal ash from Central Texas' Fayette Power Plant is polluting the groundwater nearby.​One month since the EPA's stolid road warriors blew threw Arlington to get your thoughts on pollution from gas drilling, the agency's making its triumph ... More >>

At EPA's Public Comment Session Over Gas Drilling Regulations, An Airing of Grievances

Patrick MichelsEPA representatives hear concerns over current air pollution regulations for the natural gas industry Monday night.​They came in striped ties and checkered ties, sport coats and shirtsleeves and the beard stubble of Washington operators on the road. The four white-collar grunts from ... More >>

Environmentalists Plenty Steamed About Possible Nominee to Head EPA's Dallas Office

EarthFirstWhen it comes to the new regional Environmental Protection Agency head, environmental groups are tired of sending pointed letters. Tomorrow, the campaign to dethrone John Hall as the front-running potential nominee for administrator of the EPA's Region 6 (which includes Texas, Oklahoma, Ar ... More >>

Strange and Passioniate Emissions From Yesterday's EPA Cement Kiln Hearing

Alexa SchirtzingerIf this picture were at all legible, you'd see Deirdre Tinker testifying while dressed as a cement kilnAmong the first 60 commenters at yesterday's public hearing on proposed Environmental Protection Agency regulations intended to reduce emissions from cement kilns, there was obvi ... More >>

Following USA Today Report, EPA to Test Air Quality Around DISD's Harllee Elementary

This morning, the Environmental Protection Agency released a list of 62 schools around the country set to have their air quality studied as part of what the agency calls "a new air toxics monitoring initiative." And there's a Dallas Independent School District elementary on the list: N.W. Harllee, s ... More >>