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1 U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

2

3 PUBLIC HEARING

4 COMMENTS ON PROPOSED CLIMATE, AIR QUALITY, AND

5 PERMITTING RULES FOR THE OIL AND NATURAL GAS

6 INDUSTRY

7

8 WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2015

9

10 9:10 A.M. - 8:00 P.M.

11

12 DALLAS CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS

13 1500 MARILLA STREET

14 DALLAS, TEXAS

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21

22 ATKINSON-BAKER, INC.

COURT REPORTERS

23 (800) 288-3376

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REPORTED BY: LINDA J. WEBSTER, CSR, RPR

25 FILE NO.: A909467
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1 A P P E A R A N C E S

2 HEARING BOARD MEMBERS:

3 MR. FRED THOMPSON

4 MR. ROB LAWRENCE

5 MR. BRUCE MOORE

6 MS. LISA THOMPSON

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25
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1 INDEX OF COMMENTERS

2 Matthew Todd

Bill Stevens

3 Sharon Wilson

David Lyon

4 Gretchen Dahlkemper

David Martineau

5

Mari Ruckel

6 Marc McCord

Zac Trahan

7 Mark Handley

Lawrence Cottle

8 Brent Lammert

9 Luke Metzger

Ed Ireland

10 Jeralynn Jackee Cox

Kim Feil

11 Cathy Wallace

Cyrus Reed

12

Leigh Bailey

13 Amanda Crowe

Krystal Henagan

14 Brandon Morton

Cathy McMullen

15 Eulaine Hall

16 Amy Allen

Darin Schroeder

17 Kim Limberg

Sherrell Blazer

18 Leslie Harris

Paul Wehnert

19

Tricia Cortez

20 Tamara Bounds

Ed Soph

21 Carol Soph

Lance Irwin

22 Harriet Irby

23 David Cozad

Deborah Armintor

24 Mahdi Ahmadi

Helen Bush

25 Kaiba White
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1 INDEX OF COMMENTERS

(Continued)

2

Gene Collins

3 Loni Russell

Will Edwards

4 Neil Carman

Priscilla Villa

5 Gunnar Schade

Hal Suter

6

Linda Cooke

7 Ranjana Bhandari

Jim Schermbeck

8 Molly Rooke

John Lazaration

9 Ingrid Kelley

Ricky Bradley

10

Brett Cease

11 Terry Burns

Jodi Ismert

12 Adam Ringle

Adam Rinkleff

13 Mary Warren

Kelli Barr

14

Elizabeth Riebschlaeger

15 Ingrid Martine

Alan Septoff

16 Ron Seifert

Cindy Spoon

17 Jennifer Hensley

Heather Dowell

18

Adam Barnett

19 Susybelle Gosslee

Gary Hogan

20 Gary Stuard

Lucille Esteban

21 Brian Oliver

Bella Oliver

22

Daniel Melendez

23 Harry Davis

Steve Everley

24 Dewayne Quertermous

Jane Lind

25 Tamika Dickerson
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 (Commencing at 9:10 a.m.)

3 MR. THOMPSON: Good morning, everyone.

4 We're going to get started. So again, good

5 morning. My name is Fred Thompson, and I'm the

6 chair today for the public hearing. Thank you for

7 coming today. Joining me on the panel today are,

8 to my right, Bruce Moore with the EPA's Office of

9 Air Quality Planning and Standards, and to my left,

10 Rob Lawrence, with EPA Region 6.

11 We're here today to hear your comments

12 on EPA's proposed rules relating to the oil and

13 natural gas sector. The specific rules are, No. 1,

14 Oil and Natural Gas Sector Emission Standards for

15 New and Modified Sources; No. 2, Source

16 Determination for Certain Emission Units in the Oil

17 and Natural Gas Sector; and No. 3, Review of New

18 Sources and Modifications in Indian Country;

19 Federal Implementation Plan for Managing Air

20 Emissions from True Minor Sources Engaged in Oil

21 and Natural Gas Production in Indian Country.

22 EPA's administrator signed the

23 proposed rules on August 18, 2015. The proposed

24 New Source Performance Standards will establish

25 methane and VOC standards for hydraulically
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1 fractured wells and require owners and operators to

2 find and repair leaks. The proposed rule also

3 would extend emission reduction requirements

4 further downstream covering equipment in the

5 natural gas transmission and storage segments of

6 the industry that was not regulated in the Agency's

7 2012 rules.

8 The proposed Source Determination Rule

9 clarifies the EPA's air permitting rules as they

10 apply to the oil and natural gas industry. We are

11 also taking comments on the proposed federal

12 implementation plan to implement the Federal Minor

13 New Source Review Program in Indian Country for oil

14 and natural gas production. That plan known as a

15 FIP would be used instead of site-specific minor

16 New Source Review preconstruction permits in Indian

17 country. It would incorporate emissions limits and

18 other requirements from six EPA emission standards

19 including the 2015 proposed updates to the New

20 Source Performance Standards on which we're taking

21 comment today.

22 If you would like more details on the

23 proposed rules, there are fact sheets available at

24 the registration desk. Before we get started, I'd

25 like to go over a few housekeeping items and ground
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1 rules that will help make today's hearing run

2 smoothly. First, please be sure you have checked

3 in at the registration desk even if you are not

4 planning to speak today, and if you signed up to

5 speak online or by phone but haven't told us that

6 you're here, please step outside to the

7 registration desk and let EPA -- EPA staff know

8 that you arrived.

9 I will call speakers up in pairs.

10 When your name is called, please come to the

11 speaker's podium at the front of the room. It is

12 important that you tell us which rule or rules

13 you're speaking about. When I call on you to

14 speak, please state your name and spell it for the

15 court reporter. Your comments will be transcribed

16 and included in the record of comments on the

17 proposed rule.

18 Each speaker will have five minutes to

19 give comments. When you're finished speaking,

20 please remain at the podium until the person next

21 to you has completed his or her testimony. We're

22 here to listen to you today, however, a panel

23 member may ask questions to clarify your comments.

24 I will then call up the next pair of speakers and

25 so on.
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1 If you have brought a written copy of

2 your testimony, please give that to the staff at

3 the registration desk before you leave today. We

4 will put any written comments submitted today in

5 the official docket for the proposed rule. We also

6 have comment cards available at the registration

7 desk if you would like to submit additional written

8 comments today. If you want to comment in writing

9 later, stop by the materials table near the

10 registration desk and pick up a copy of the

11 instructions for submitting written comments.

12 Comments must be received by November 17, 2015,

13 I'll repeat that. Comments must be received by

14 November 17, 2015.

15 Let me assure you that EPA gives just

16 as much consideration to comments we receive in

17 writing as we do to comments we receive at public

18 hearings like this one. So if you have more

19 comments that you would like to provide EPA, please

20 submit them by the comment period deadline. Your

21 comments will be reviewed. If you have any

22 questions during the day, please see the staff at

23 the registration desk and someone will gladly

24 assist you. Thank you again for taking the time

25 today to share your comments on the EPA's proposal.
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1 With that, let's get started; and at this time, I'd

2 like to ask Matt Todd and Bill Stevens to please

3 come forward for testimony.

4 Good morning, gentlemen. Mr. Todd,

5 please state your name and spell it for the court

6 reporter, please.

7 MR. TODD: Matthew Todd,

8 M-a-t-t-h-e-w, T-o-d-d.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Please begin your

10 testimony.

11 MR. TODD: Good morning. My name is

12 Matthew Todd. I'm a senior policy advisor for the

13 American Petroleum Institute. API is a national

14 trade association representing all facets of the

15 oil and natural gas industry, supports 9.8 million

16 U.S. jobs and 8 percent of the U.S. economy. API

17 has more than 625 members that include large

18 integrated companies as well as exploration and

19 production, refining, marketing, pipeline, and

20 marine businesses and service and supply firms.

21 Collectively, they provide most of the nation's

22 energy, and many will be directly impacted by the

23 proposed regulations we're here to discuss today.

24 In five minutes, it's difficult to

25 speak substance -- substantively to the details of
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1 each of these proposed actions, however, API

2 intends to submit detailed comments on each. My

3 first point, our industry has voluntarily led the

4 way in its pursuit of improved operations to safely

5 maximize the recovery and capture of these valuable

6 oil and gas resources. We're incentivized to do

7 that, and many of these leading technologies have

8 been broadly used by industry and were subsequently

9 incorporated by EPA into its Natural Gas STAR

10 Program.

11 My second point, even as U.S. oil and

12 natural gas production has surged, methane

13 emissions have declined significantly. For

14 example, methane emissions from hydraulically

15 fractured gas wells have fallen 79 percent since

16 2005, and total methane emissions from natural gas

17 systems are down 11 percent over the same period.

18 These reductions have occurred during a time when

19 total U.S. gas production has increased 44 percent.

20 This industry has also played a significant role in

21 the 27-year lows in power sector CO2 emissions we

22 see today. These trends are indicative of what our

23 industry, when given the freedom to innovate, can

24 achieve to improve the environment and our nation's

25 energy security. What our industry has and will
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1 continue to achieve on the current regulatory

2 system without directly regulating methane, dwarfs

3 the emission reductions the EPA has estimated in

4 these proposed rules.

5 My third point is that directly

6 regulating methane as proposed in the NSPS rules is

7 unnecessary. The 2012 final rule indirectly

8 regulates methane by regulating natural gas as a

9 surrogate for VOC. Since methane is the primary

10 constituent of natural gas, there are no additional

11 emission reductions that will occur from replacing

12 the surrogate regulatory context with the direct

13 regulation of methane, therefore, the EPA should

14 continue the practice of indirectly regulating

15 methane through the use of natural gas as a

16 surrogate for VOC.

17 My fourth point. We urge EPA not to

18 get in the way of this success story by developing

19 one-size-fits-all regulatory solutions. Our

20 industry is big. It's complex, and operations vary

21 substantially across the nation. As we learned in

22 the development of the 2012 NSPS rule, EPA should

23 exercise caution in the development of these rules

24 to allow operational flexibility as it seeks

25 one-size-fits-all regulatory solutions. Industry
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1 must be able to comply with the requirements of new

2 rules. In the 2012 rule, EPA allowed

3 implementation for storage vessel requirements to

4 be phased in to accommodate the vast number of

5 affected facilities. EPA should consider whether

6 or not a similar compliance schedule is warranted

7 in the proposed NSPS rule. We also urge EPA to

8 accommodate operators that are currently

9 implementing leak monitoring and repair

10 requirements, whether due to existing air permits,

11 state regulations, or voluntary commitments, to

12 satisfy the federal rule requirements and minimize

13 additional regulatory burden for these operators.

14 Finally, we urge EPA to coordinate its

15 efforts with other agencies to avoid implementing

16 duplicative requirements that can potentially

17 hinder the continued production of the energy that

18 our nation will continue to demand. The rules

19 we're discussing today are a small slice of the

20 pending regulations that our industry is facing.

21 The EPA has also released proposed control

22 technique guidelines for the implementation of the

23 pending revised ozone air quality standard and

24 pending regulatory requirements from the Department

25 of Interior's BLM on federal lands will also add to
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1 the cumulative impact to our industry and future

2 operations.

3 We urge the EPA and the administration

4 to coordinate their efforts and strongly encourage

5 EPA to extend its comment periods by 60 days to

6 allow a minimum of 30 day overlap with the proposed

7 BLM rule. Without this overlap, industry will not

8 have the chance to understand the cumulative

9 impacts and provide meaningful feedback to avoid

10 conflicting requirements across several agencies.

11 To close, the API and its members

12 recognize the importance of developing these

13 valuable resources responsibly; however, the last

14 thing we need is more duplicative and costly

15 regulation that could increase the cost of energy

16 for Americans and undermine our competitiveness

17 when the operations that will bear the brunt of

18 these regulatory impacts that represent only

19 1.4 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

20 API remains committed to work with the EPA and the

21 administration to identify additional cost

22 effective control opportunities, which when

23 implemented, don't hinder our ability to provide

24 the energy our nation will continue to -- to demand

25 for many years to come. Thank you.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Todd.

2 Are there any questions?

3 (No response.)

4 MR. THOMPSON: All right. Thank you,

5 sir. Good morning, Mr. Stevens.

6 MR. STEVENS: Good morning. My name

7 is Bill Stevens, S-t-e-v-e-n-s, the last name, and

8 good morning, gentlemen, and I appreciate you being

9 here, and I appreciate you having this hearing in

10 Dallas. My name is Bill Stevens. I reside in

11 Austin, Texas. I'm a government affairs consultant

12 and represent the Texas Alliance of Energy

13 Producers. I've testified before you in earlier

14 years, and I appreciate doing so again today.

15 The Texas Alliance of Energy Producers

16 is an oil and gas trade association with more than

17 3,200 members who operate and produce oil and

18 natural gas throughout the state of Texas.

19 60 percent of our members have fewer than ten

20 employees. Five percent of our members are large

21 public corporations, however. Domestic independent

22 producers drill more than 95 percent of the wells

23 drilled in Texas.

24 Today, these comments are also

25 presented on behalf of two other trade
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1 associations: The Panhandle Producers & Royalty

2 Owners Association in Amarillo and the Permian

3 Basin Petroleum Association in Midland. Combined,

4 these associations represent an additional 2,000

5 members of the Texas oil and gas industry.

6 The Alliance will provide you more

7 detailed technical comments later. In this comment

8 period today, we will provide you with the

9 following assessment, and like the previous

10 speaker, we'd ask that you extend the comment

11 period by at least 60 days to a total of 120 days.

12 We would also suggest the EPA consider delaying any

13 implementation date and consider a phased-in

14 approach.

15 Much of my testimony is very similar

16 in nature to what Mr. Todd just presented, so I

17 won't bore you with the percentages and things

18 which are similar to his. Safe to say that methane

19 emissions have been decreasing from oil and gas

20 drilling and production activities despite record

21 production and drilling activity. Today, drilling

22 is down by 60 percent. Projected production has

23 plateaued for the immediate future. It is

24 anticipated that methane emissions -- additional

25 methane emission reductions will be added to what
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1 has already been accomplished over the last

2 25 years and in particular the last eight years.

3 America's energy producers have

4 demonstrated a commitment to reducing methane

5 emissions and led by EPA in some cases with your

6 rules, it incentivizes us to capture emissions with

7 the help of new and innovative -- with new and

8 innovative technologies.

9 These proposed -- new proposed

10 regulations simply are not necessary, certainly not

11 at this time. The proposed rule is complicated and

12 lengthy. Its 591 pages contain numerous

13 requirements that will be difficult for the

14 industry to implement especially small producers to

15 maintain compliance. That does not mean that we do

16 not agree that this is an important issue for all

17 of us.

18 A few -- overview of a few issues and

19 concerns. Statements in the -- in the rules

20 preamble and other statements -- prior statements

21 by Administrator McCarthy who have acknowledged

22 that state regulatory agencies provide effective

23 tools and specific remedies to the problems to be

24 addressed. We urge the EPA to follow through in

25 its rule by allowing state-level regulatory
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1 agencies to continue to implement the rule and

2 regulate in the field including reporting,

3 inspection, and documentation.

4 Secondly, the cost benefit analysis

5 has several flaws which underestimate the cost of

6 the data collection in reporting. OGI surveys to

7 be performed on multiple occasions throughout

8 the -- throughout the year will necessarily make

9 this effort a full-time year-round endeavor, not a

10 specific-scheduled event. Small producers and even

11 large producers will need to contract with outside

12 third-party vendors to perform the surveys and/or

13 EPA 21 surveys. Availability of FLIR cameras and

14 gas sniffers may well be an immediate problem.

15 Most producers, large and small, will not own the

16 equipment today. The best estimate of a camera is

17 $85,000 to $110,000. However, the most costly item

18 may ultimately be the data systems and/or

19 management of change system that will be required.

20 With the sheer number of valves,

21 connectors, pressure release devices, pumps, seals,

22 diaphragms, all of which you've listed there, and

23 there can be several dozen in each facility, it is

24 highly labor-intensive to implement, report, and

25 replace, document, change, and repair status across
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1 hundreds or thousands of facilities. Sophisticated

2 large producers may have the IT and accounting --

3 and accounting capabilities, but this capability

4 does not exist in smaller companies.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Final thoughts,

6 Mr. Stevens?

7 MR. STEVENS: Okay. Certainly.

8 One -- one point I'd like to get in is that it's

9 essential that the EPA 21 alternative detection

10 procedure be retained for those producers who find

11 it uneconomic for the camera or the sniffer or

12 other things. The sub solution of a spray bottle

13 is a viable alternative. We have used it in the

14 past. It's a good alternative.

15 Thank you very much. As I said, I've

16 appreciated testifying before you, and I'm happy to

17 do that today. We will submit detailed technical

18 comments within the next 30 days.

19 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Stevens.

20 Thank you for your testimony.

21 Okay. At this time, I'd like to ask

22 Sharon Wilson and David Lyon to please come

23 forward, and, Ms. Wilson, you have a video; is that

24 correct?

25 MS. WILSON: Yes.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you.

2 MS. WILSON: Sharon Wilson,

3 W-i-l-s-o-n. I'm Texas organizer for Earthworks'

4 Oil and Gas Accountability Project. Thank you for

5 hearing our comments. If you can listen and watch

6 the video. What you see now is pollution from a

7 natural gas line compressor in a Denton

8 neighborhood. Either EPA rules must cover

9 compressors like these, or these compressors must

10 be kept out of neighborhoods. There is no third

11 choice. This is a compressor station blow down in

12 a Mansfield neighborhood. This facility is

13 permitted for 104 blow downs a year. This is

14 reckless. Either EPA's rules must cover all

15 pollution from facilities like this, or facilities

16 like this should stay out of neighborhoods.

17 There's no third choice.

18 Flowback tanks are allowed to vent in

19 neighborhoods. Cover pollution from flowback tanks

20 on EPA rules to prevent pollution of neighborhoods

21 or keep flowback tanks out of neighborhoods.

22 There's no third choice. Drilling rig gas busters

23 separate gases from drilling rigs and then vent

24 those gases to the air. Cover all pollution from

25 drilling operations in EPA rules to prevent
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1 pollution of neighborhoods or keep drilling

2 operations out of neighborhoods. No choice.

3 Over a year ago, I received my optical

4 gas imaging thermographer certification. With that

5 certification, I had used a FLIR camera to record

6 methane pollution in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio,

7 Colorado, New Mexico, California, and Texas.

8 Industry is not containing methane pollution

9 anywhere, but no other state has come close to what

10 Texas allows. Methane pollution brings with it

11 volatile organic compounds that expose the public

12 to carcinogens like benzene and other hazardous

13 chemicals, but Texas regulators are not responsive

14 to complaints from public about this pollution.

15 I called the San Antonio TCEQ office

16 with a complaint from Karnes County where I

17 recorded a massive release. I was told all -- all

18 investigators were in a workshop and unavailable

19 for the day. 24 hours later, the release continued

20 and was even worse, so I called again. This time,

21 I spoke with the region director who refused to

22 investigate because I was not a Karnes County

23 resident. TCEQ's own air monitors recorded a

24 hydrocarbon spike on these same two days. We know

25 this because three months later, a Texas A&M
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1 atmospheric chemist found the data.

2 TCEQ's air monitor, which TCEQ staff

3 ignored, is 20 miles downwind from the pollution

4 source, meaning people for 20 miles were impacted;

5 yet, TCEQ refused to investigate. At least nine

6 workers have died recently from exposure to oil and

7 gas air pollution. These videos prove that oil and

8 gas development pollute neighboring communities,

9 our backyards, our playgrounds, our schools.

10 Standing on the parking lot of

11 Northridge High School in Greeley, Colorado, I

12 recorded a massive release when a worker opened a

13 tank hatch for liquids unloading. The methane and

14 VOCs blew out into the neighborhood across the

15 street. Industry and regulators said these

16 emissions are allowed during liquids unloading.

17 How often and in how many neighborhoods does this

18 happen?

19 Please include emissions from liquids

20 unloading in these rules. Voluntarily compliance

21 does not work. When the Flower Mound mayor asked

22 Williams Petroleum why they weren't using the vapor

23 recovery units they use in Wyoming, the Williams

24 representative replied, we don't use them unless

25 they are mandated, and Texas does not mandate them.
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1 Industry showered our legislators with

2 over $21 million to pass HB 40 that stripped from

3 cities a 100-year tradition of concurrent state and

4 city regulations of oil and gas development. Now

5 cities cannot require protective setbacks without

6 the threat of lawsuits. Families are too close to

7 these facilities with no way to get protection and

8 no help from state regulators.

9 You are our last hope. We are

10 counting on you to make these methane rules strong

11 to keep pollution out of our neighborhoods. We

12 need these rules now. We need them to cover

13 existing sources. We have no other choice. If

14 industry can't afford -- afford a FLIR camera, I'm

15 available.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Ms. Wilson.

17 Thank you for your testimony. Sit tight just one

18 second. Are there any follow-up questions from the

19 panel?

20 (No response.)

21 MR. THOMPSON: All right. Thank you

22 again.

23 MR. LYON: David Lyon, L-y-o-n. I'm

24 speaking on the EPA standards for new and modified

25 sources. My name is David Lyon. I'm a scientist
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1 for the Environmental Defense Fund where our work

2 focuses on the quantification and mitigation of

3 methane emissions in the oil and natural gas

4 sector. On behalf of EDF and our more than one

5 million members nationwide and 62,000 here in

6 Texas, thank you for the opportunity to testify

7 today concerning the Environmental Protection

8 Agency's proposed standards to address methane

9 emissions from the oil and natural gas sector.

10 We strongly support the EPA's proposed

11 standards and identify several areas where the

12 standards must be further strengthened to ensure

13 they are rigorous.

14 Methane is a potent climate pollutant.

15 In fact, over the first 20 years after it's

16 emitted, methane has over 80 times the climate

17 impact of carbon dioxide. The oil and natural gas

18 sector is the largest industrial source of methane

19 in the United States. EPA's most recent inventory

20 estimates methane emissions from these sources

21 exceeded 7 million metric tons per year, equivalent

22 to the 20-year climate warming effect of 160

23 coal-fired power plants.

24 The recent scientific studies suggest

25 that methane emissions may be substantially higher.
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1 In 2013, I was part of the study team that measured

2 methane emissions in the Barnett Shale using

3 simultaneous top-down and bottom-up approaches.

4 That research, which was published in the

5 peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Science &

6 Technology, concludes that emissions from the oil

7 and gas sector were 50 percent higher than

8 estimates based on the EPA greenhouse gas inventory

9 due to our more comprehensive data on the number of

10 facilities and the inclusion of high emission

11 sites.

12 Fortunately, there are readily

13 available, low-cost technologies that can

14 substantially reduce these emissions. A study by

15 IPS International concluded that the industry could

16 cut methane by 40 percent for the cost of only a

17 penny per 1,000 cubic of natural gas produced.

18 Many of these measures capture gas that would

19 otherwise be wasted, therefore, implementation

20 reduces pollution, increases production, and in

21 some cases, it even saves money. And for no extra

22 cost, these technologies can also capture other

23 pollutants like ozone-forming VOCs and hazardous

24 air pollutants such as benzene.

25 States like Colorado, Wyoming, and
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1 Ohio have already developed many of these solutions

2 in a commonsense way that has helped to protect the

3 environment in a manner conducive with economic

4 development. For example, strong standards in

5 Wyoming contributed to a reduction in ozone levels

6 in counties previously exceeding health standards.

7 As a leading producer of the country's

8 oil and natural gas, Texas is also one of the major

9 contributing sources of methane, accounting for

10 almost 30 percent of the upstream and midstream oil

11 and gas sector emissions reported to EPA's

12 greenhouse gas reporting program. Applying these

13 commonsense measures in Texas will not only reduce

14 methane emissions, but also capture valuable

15 natural gas. These standards can also address

16 harmful ozone levels in places like Dallas, Fort

17 Worth, and the San Antonio metropolitan areas where

18 oil and gas emissions contribute to ozone

19 formation.

20 And Texas companies are producing many

21 of the solutions that can help reduce pollution. A

22 recent study of the emerging U.S. methane

23 mitigation industry found that Texas is home to

24 almost half the country's methane mitigation

25 technology and service companies. Of the over 75
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1 companies in the U.S. working this industry, 28 are

2 headquartered in Texas providing highly skilled,

3 well-paying jobs to Texans all the way from Midland

4 to Beaumont.

5 EPA's proposed standards for new and

6 modified sources and CTG's for sources in ozone

7 nonattainment areas are an important step forward,

8 though we urge the Agency to strengthen them in

9 certain ways to ensure they help deliver cleaner

10 air to Texas and the nation. I will highlight

11 three specific issues. One, we support EPA's

12 proposal to cover new and modified sources and to

13 apply requirements to equipment across segments

14 including production, gathering and boosting,

15 processing, and transmission and storage. The

16 Agency has developed a rigorous scientific and

17 technical basis for addressing these sources

18 through its peer reviewed white paper process.

19 Two, we urge the EPA to strengthen the

20 leak detection and repair provision. The proposed

21 standards call for semiannual LDAR monitoring with

22 opportunities for facilities to reduce the

23 frequency of monitoring even further. But a common

24 finding of EPA methane studies is that a relatively

25 small number of high emitting components and sites
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1 contribute a large fraction to the total emissions.

2 Frequent LDAR to find and fix these leaks is

3 critical to mitigating methane emissions as leaks

4 can emerge anywhere at any time and can be

5 difficult to predict.

6 States like Colorado and Wyoming have

7 recognized that more frequent monitoring is

8 necessary and cost-effective, and accordingly, we

9 urge the EPA to finalize a program that requires

10 quarterly monitoring -- monitoring and is not

11 subject to frequency adjusting based on a

12 facility's percentage of leaking components.

13 And finally, we respectfully urge the

14 EPA to build from this important step and take

15 action to address emissions from existing sources.

16 ICF found that existing sources account for almost

17 90 percent of emissions from the oil and gas

18 sector. Moreover, the same technologies and

19 practices that can minimize emissions from new

20 sources are likewise capable of reducing emissions

21 from existing sources. Building from these steps,

22 the EPA proposal will help reduce emissions across

23 the country where there's oil and natural gas

24 development. I thank you.

25 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Lyon.
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1 Are there any questions?

2 (No response.)

3 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you for

4 your testimony.

5 At this time, I'd like to ask

6 Gretchen -- and forgive me here on the last name --

7 Dahlkemper, it appears.

8 MS. DAHLKEMPER: Close enough.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Please -- come

10 down, please. And David Martineau. Good morning.

11 MS. DAHLKEMPER: Good morning. That

12 was pretty good.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Show us how it's

14 done now. Will you please state your name and

15 spell it for the court reporter.

16 MS. DAHLKEMPER: Gretchen Dahlkemper,

17 G-r-e-t-c-h-e-n, D-a-h-l-k-e-m-p-e-r.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

19 MS. DAHLKEMPER: Going a little off

20 the record because I just saw the words that Pope

21 Francis spoke at the White House just about an hour

22 ago, and I want to start this out with one of my

23 favorite hymns. We are called to act with justice,

24 and I am here today because I am called to act on

25 climate. This is a simple -- this is a simple
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1 thing that we're talking about today. Do we have

2 the right to pollute, or do America's children have

3 the right to breathe?

4 My name is Gretchen Dahlkemper, and

5 I'm the national field director of Moms Clean Air

6 Force. Thank you for having me this morning. Moms

7 Clean Air Force is a group of over 570,000 parents

8 across the country who banded together four years

9 ago to protect our children from toxic air

10 pollution. Today, I'm here to applaud you at EPA

11 for taking a step, albeit a baby step, to protect

12 American families from the health and climate

13 impact of methane pollution from the oil and gas

14 industry, and I call on EPA to quickly address the

15 methane leaks from existing sources.

16 So why do parents like myself care

17 about air pollution from the oil and gas industry?

18 The answer is simple. Industrial pollution from

19 the oil and gas industry harms our children's

20 health, it fuels global warming, and it wastes

21 billions of dollars in natural gas each and every

22 year.

23 Standards that reduce methane

24 emissions from oil and gas development will

25 simultaneously reduce emissions and formation of
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1 health-damaging air pollutants, including volatile

2 organic compounds, hazardous air pollutants,

3 particulate matter, and ozone. Benzene,

4 formaldehyde, and other toxic pollution does not

5 belong in the air our children breathe. Reducing

6 methane would reduce the exposure of nearby

7 communities to hazard pollution and the subsequent

8 risk of health effects including respiratory

9 morbid -- morbidity -- morbidity and premature

10 death.

11 Oil and gas wells, pipelines,

12 compressor stations, and other infrastructure are

13 major sources of air pollution that can harm public

14 health. Voluntary measures do not work.

15 Communities across America are suffering under the

16 burden of increased air pollution as a consequence

17 of this industry.

18 Most alarming to parents like myself

19 are recent studies that indicate that pregnant

20 women and their unborn children living near natural

21 gas infrastructure run a higher risk of heart

22 defects, neural tube defects, premature birth, low

23 birth weight, stillbirth, and even perinatal death.

24 Children five and under living near natural gas

25 infrastructure have a higher risk of childhood
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1 cancers such as leukemia.

2 Natural gas is mostly methane which

3 can leak all along the oil and gas supply chain.

4 Methane is a powerful greenhouse -- greenhouse gas

5 and a big contributor to the danger of climate

6 change. Pound for pound, methane pollution is 25

7 times more potent than CO2 over a hundred year

8 period. The oil and gas -- oil and gas sector is

9 the leading industrial source of methane pollution.

10 There are simple, effective, and efficient ways to

11 stop these methane leaks. Fixing methane leaks

12 will cut other air pollutants as well because

13 methane is not the only pollution that leaks from

14 infrastructure in the oil and gas industry.

15 Fixing the methane pollution will cut

16 smog-forming pollution that triggers asthma

17 attacks. It will cut toxic benzene which is a

18 known carcinogen. Children and the elderly are

19 among the most vulnerable to the health hazards of

20 the oil and gas industry. Our children will suffer

21 the most from runaway climate change. This is a

22 national problem. It needs a national solution.

23 Today I urge the Environmental

24 Protection Agency to enact the strongest possible

25 rules to reduce methane emission from the industry.
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1 This rule is important as it lays the foundation

2 for cutting methane pollution from existing

3 sources, something that American families like my

4 own desperately need to protect us from industry

5 that operates literally in our backyards and next

6 to our schools.

7 They act like it's the wild west, that

8 there are no consequences, but our families are

9 feeling the consequences each and every day.

10 Parents need to stand strong against polluters to

11 protect their children's rights to clean air and a

12 stable climate. Parents ask that the Environmental

13 Protection Agency cut through the noise created by

14 political infighting, monetary influence of the

15 fossil fuel industry, and the fear mongering from

16 both sides of this argument. Ignore the noise and

17 do what is right for American families. Today I

18 ask that you cut methane emissions from the oil and

19 gas industry, both from new and existing sources.

20 America's children are counting on you. Thank you.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

22 testimony. Are there any follow-up questions,

23 panel?

24 (No response.)

25 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much.
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1 Mr. Martineau, please. Good morning, sir.

2 MR. MARTINEAU: Excuse me. Good

3 morning. My name is David Martineau,

4 M-a-r-t-i-n-e-a-u.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

6 MR. MARTINEAU: And I'm from Dallas,

7 Texas. I'm a geologist, and I have worked in the

8 oil and gas exploration business for 55 years. I'm

9 currently employed as an exploration manager for

10 Pitts Oil Company and the past chairman of the

11 Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners

12 Association, better known as TIPRO. TIPRO is a

13 statewide organization with approximately 3,000

14 members.

15 Having seen many of the ups and downs

16 over the years, I'm delighted to see that oil

17 imports dropped from 70 percent to 30 percent

18 because of the recent shale revolution. Now we

19 live in a safer and more secure country especially

20 in light of what's happening in the world today,

21 and we can buy gasoline for almost $2 a gallon,

22 less than we could when we were importing

23 70 percent of our crude.

24 Fossil fuels have made this the great

25 industrialized nation we live in. I'm sure today
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1 you will hear from the climate change alarmists,

2 the anti-oil, oil and gas alarmists that want to

3 blame every illness in their family on pollution or

4 global warming. Asthma, cancer, tuberculosis have

5 been around forever, but when someone gets sick

6 today, they want to blame the oil industry.

7 Probably those people must have ridden

8 a bike here or either walked here because they

9 don't like gas, and they wouldn't be in a car. I

10 guess they slept in a tent last night because they

11 don't want air conditioning or heating in their

12 house, and, of course, they must have cooked their

13 food this morning on wood if they don't like

14 natural gas. They probably don't use any plastic

15 products either like cell phones, computers,

16 bottled water, or anything else.

17 There are over one million existing

18 oil wells in the U.S. 90 percent of these wells

19 are being drilled by independent oil and gas

20 operators. Administration that -- the Obama

21 Administration is proposing a costly and

22 complicated regulatory program for few

23 environmental benefits. The EPA's latest proposed

24 rules would only change global temperature .015

25 centigrades based on EPA's climate model. If
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1 that's true, there's an inconvenient truth here

2 that needs exposure. The EPA's new plan to reduce

3 methane emissions does not make sense.

4 According to the EPA's own greenhouse

5 gas inventory, methane emissions from natural gas

6 production have fallen 35 percent since 2007, even

7 as natural gas production has increased 22 percent.

8 The EPA data also shows methane emissions from

9 hydraulically fractured gas wells have fallen

10 73 percent from 2011 to 2013, meanwhile, carbon

11 dioxide emissions are at their lowest levels in

12 20 years because of the shift in power from coal to

13 natural gas.

14 Do you want to know where the major

15 carbon and nitrogen dioxides come from? Volcanoes

16 and brush fires. There are around 200 active

17 volcanoes around the world that spew volcanic ash

18 every day.

19 The oil and gas exploration and

20 production sector accounts for only 1.07 percent of

21 the total U.S. gas -- greenhouse gas emissions

22 according to y'all's reports. The administration

23 worked with the agriculture industry which produces

24 three times the amount of methane emissions as the

25 oil and gas sector, and the EPA determined that a
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1 voluntary program was sufficient to achieve

2 emission reductions.

3 Since the oil and gas industry is

4 already controlled by state agencies like the TCEQ

5 and the Railroad Commission of Texas, why didn't

6 the EPA want to work with the oil industry for less

7 burdensome and more cost effective initial

8 reduction programs like they did with the

9 agriculture industry?

10 The oil and gas markets are

11 struggling. Prices have dropped in half, and the

12 rigs are in half right now. OPEC and Saudi Arabia

13 by not reducing their productions have achieved

14 their goal of shutting the U.S. drilling and

15 production down which will have a major downward

16 economic effect on the U.S.

17 These proposed rules and potential

18 carbon tax will do nothing but be an economic

19 detriment for our economy. As stated in a recent

20 report from the Center for Regulatory Solutions,

21 and I quote, the EPA's plan to move the ozone

22 goalpost threatens Pennsylvania's economy,

23 especially the transportation, construction, and

24 energy industries. Pennsylvania is the center of

25 the great Marcellus natural gas production. The
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1 statement by the Regulatory Solutions is true for

2 every state in the U.S.

3 Speaking of global warming, since the

4 planet has cooled .07 degrees in the past century,

5 they now call it climate change. A few years ago

6 even the climatologists with their major computer

7 projections could not come up with an agreement if

8 there is such a thing as global warming.

9 We all know the biggest cause of

10 so-called global warming was the hot air that Al

11 Gore put out to promote his movies and books and

12 help pay for his divorces. We do not need change

13 to the existing EPA rules. Thank you for my time.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much.

15 Thank you for your testimony. Are there any

16 follow-up questions from the panel?

17 (No response.)

18 MR. THOMPSON: Again, thank you for

19 your time, sir. Okay. At this time, I'd like to

20 invite Mari Ruckel and Marc McCord to please come

21 forward for testimony. Good morning.

22 MS. RUCKEL: Good morning.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Please state your name

24 and spell it for the court reporter, please.

25 MS. RUCKEL: My name is Mari Ruckel.
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1 The first name is M-a-r-i. The last name is

2 R-u-c-k-e-l.

3 Good morning. Again, my name is Mari

4 Ruckel. I'm vice president of Government and

5 Regulatory Affairs for the Texas Oil and Gas

6 Association. TXOGA is the largest and oldest

7 petroleum organization in Texas representing more

8 than 5,000 members. The membership of TXOGA

9 produces in excess of 95 percent of Texas' crude

10 oil and natural gas, operates nearly 100 percent of

11 the state's refining capacity, and is responsible

12 for the vast majority of the state's pipelines.

13 TXOGA appreciates this opportunity to

14 provide our initial views on the recently proposed

15 rule-making packages that are the subject of

16 today's hearing. Given the more than 1,000 pages

17 of combined text in the proposed rules and the

18 proposed CTG, TXOGA is in the early stages of fully

19 understanding the rules, their interrelationship

20 and their potential impact on our industry.

21 However, what is clear from our

22 initial review is that the cost of the rules as

23 proposed far outweighs the environmental gains.

24 TXOGA plans to respond in more detailed responses

25 to the numerous issues on which EPA has solicited
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1 comment and to the proposed regulatory --

2 regulatory language in its formal written comments

3 and hopes to offer constructive suggestions for

4 improvement.

5 With extensive expertise regarding the

6 practical effects of regulations on both small and

7 large oil and gas producers, TXOGA strives to be a

8 constructive stakeholder in the rulemaking process.

9 For example, TXOGA worked extensively with EPA on

10 the promulgation of the original NSPS Quad O rules

11 in 2012, throughout the subsequent reconsideration

12 processes in the three years following

13 promulgation.

14 Those efforts resulted in a -- in key

15 improvements from the proposed version of Quad O

16 and later from the final and revised versions that

17 EPA issued. Today, I would like to highlight a few

18 key issues raised by the proposed regulations.

19 First, oil and gas producers are

20 highly incentivized to recover methane as EPA

21 itself indicates in the Quad O subpart A proposal.

22 Thus, to a large extent, regulatory requirements to

23 recover or prevent the loss of methane will not

24 achieve additional meaningful emission reductions,

25 and EPA should retain -- retain the concept of
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1 regulating natural gas as a VOC surrogate rather

2 than directly regulating methane as no additional

3 benefits will occur from regulating methane

4 directly.

5 EPA acknowledges this for Quad O in

6 the regulatory impact analysis, and the same will

7 be true for Quad O, subpart A. These regulations

8 will impose substantial costs simply by virtue of

9 the extensive systems that will be required to

10 document and certify compliance. This concern is

11 pronounced for smaller operators for whom the

12 real-world economic resource burden of

13 recordkeeping and compliance have the potential

14 to -- have the potential to disproportionally

15 outweigh predicted benefits. TXOGA believes that

16 the additional costs will be substantial,

17 particularly for smaller operators and remote

18 operations.

19 We urge EPA to consider whether

20 formalizing these requirements and regulations is

21 truly necessary given the costs that compliance

22 demonstration will impose on our members, and to

23 the extent EPA finalizes these requirements, we

24 urge EPA to reduce the monitoring of the compliance

25 burdens that they will impose.
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1 Second, EPA must consider the

2 potential impacts of the proposed CTG in light of

3 the proposed lower ozone standard which is

4 scheduled to be issued in just over a week from

5 today. To the extent that areas of the country

6 that are currently in attainment with the ozone

7 standard will be designated nonattainment at a

8 moderate or more serious classification if the

9 standard is lowered, the CTG costs will be far more

10 widespread and significant. This is a particularly

11 acute concern given that minor New Source Review

12 requirements would come into play for these sources

13 in light of the CTG regs requirements, meaning that

14 modifications of these sources could introduce

15 significant delay in obtaining permits.

16 As TXOGA has explained and commented

17 on the original Quad O regulations, the industry

18 needs to be able to timely develop resources given

19 the contractual leasehold requirements for

20 continued development and restricting license.

21 Third, with respect to the source

22 determination -- determination proposal also known

23 as the aggregation rule, TXOGA appreciates the

24 EPA's desire for clarity on source determinations

25 but a rule isn't necessary as oil and gas states,
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1 including Texas, manage this issue quite well. We

2 do not believe that sources under common control

3 located within a quarter of a mile should

4 automatically be considered or even be presumed to

5 be adjacent. While we would support a presumption

6 that sources separated by more than a quarter mile

7 are separate, the converse is not true.

8 I think I'm running low on time, so I

9 might skip a couple. We also urge EPA to consider

10 the potential permitting indications of these new

11 tests given the permitting delay concerns I've

12 discussed with respect to CTG. Two, the extent

13 this rule would artificially treat multiple sources

14 as a single source, the delays associated with

15 Title I and Title V permitting and modifications

16 could not only delay the necessary changes but

17 could result in failure to meet operation

18 requirements and leasehold contracts leading to

19 loss of interest in a well.

20 In closing, TXOGA is focusing on these

21 rules identifying additional improvements as we

22 analyze and develop detailed comments on the

23 proposed rule.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Ms. Ruckel, your time

25 has expired. Are there any questions?
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1 (No response.)

2 MS. RUCKEL: Thank you.

3 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much for

4 your testimony.

5 MS. RUCKEL: We look forward to

6 commenting further.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Mr. McCord,

8 good morning.

9 MR. MCCORD: Good morning. My name is

10 Marc McCord, M-a-r-c, M-c-C-o-r-d. I'm the

11 director of Frac Dallas. I'm also the director of

12 Citizens for Local Control. I had prepared

13 statements to make, but from what I've heard today,

14 I'm going to have to modify what I intended to say.

15 I don't even know why we're going to continue this

16 hearing. We've already heard from the industry

17 that everything they're doing is good and there's

18 no need for any further regulations.

19 The simple truth of the matter is, if

20 there was any truth to that, we wouldn't be here

21 today. We're here because their emissions from oil

22 and gas operations are outrageously out of control,

23 and they make no attempt whatsoever, unless it's

24 mandated by law, to do anything about it.

25 Methane is a highly potent greenhouse
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1 gas. Over a 20-year time span, it has a 70 to 105

2 times more powerful component, and over a 100-year

3 time scale, 20 to 35 times more powerful component

4 at trapping heat and carbon dioxide resulting in

5 catastrophic climate change.

6 The oil and gas industry is the

7 largest industrial source of methane pollution. In

8 2013, the sector emitted 7.3 million metric tons of

9 methane. From the standpoint of climate

10 disruption, that's equivalent to CO2 emissions from

11 over 160 coal-burning power plants. Now, that's a

12 pretty serious thing to do considering what effects

13 it has on the health of citizens. And if you'll

14 notice, the oil and gas industry people don't live

15 near where they operate. We do. They come into

16 our neighborhoods. We never said anything when

17 they were out in the middle of nowhere drilling and

18 doing everything they did and producing the

19 pollution they did. But now they have encroached

20 on our residential neighborhoods and our densely

21 populated urban areas, and they tell you that these

22 regulations are burdensome, that they're costly,

23 and that they're unnecessary. Taking that same

24 logic, I suppose we don't need any kind of

25 inspections or regulations on the building of
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1 aircraft or automobiles or food inspection or

2 testing our water to make sure it's safe.

3 The simple fact of the matter is,

4 every industry has regulatory stipulations on it

5 that it must abide by in order to comply with what

6 is healthy and safe for the environment in which it

7 operates. To do anything else is just sheer

8 hypocrisy and completely off the scale in what we

9 would expect in a civilized society. If the

10 industry cannot afford to operate safely in a way

11 that does not harm other people, then it should not

12 be allowed to operate at all. If small operators

13 have to go out of business, so be it. That's

14 competitiveness.

15 They'll tell you how much they

16 appreciate the free enterprise system, how they

17 believe that regulation and government should not

18 dictate anything, that competition should dictate

19 everything, but all competition is based on

20 offering the very best product and services for the

21 amount of money being paid.

22 The oil and gas industry has been

23 extremely successful. The big companies are raking

24 in tens of billions of dollars a year in profit,

25 and yet, they're getting corporate welfare from our
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1 government. Why? EPA is our only source that we

2 can turn to for protection from the industry. We

3 have the Texas Railroad Commission. The

4 commissioners are all former oil and gas industry

5 people. Because Texas has no law prohibiting

6 conflicting -- conflicts of interest and vested

7 interest in being involved in rulemaking, the

8 Railroad Commission, the commissioners themselves,

9 own a vested interest in oil and gas operations to

10 this day.

11 And over 70 percent of the campaign

12 contributions to the Railroad Commission of Texas

13 come directly from the oil and gas industry, so we

14 have a regulatory agency regulating the industry

15 from which is a part itself, and it's kind of like

16 the fox guarding the henhouse. I don't think we're

17 going to be able to count on the Railroad

18 Commission of Texas doing anything to look out for

19 citizens. Their own history and track record shows

20 that to be the case.

21 The Texas Commission on Environmental

22 Quality is exactly the same way. I have personally

23 filed complaints about problems from oil and gas

24 wells only to have TCEQ respond three days later

25 looking in an area on the opposite side from where
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1 the pollution came when the wind was blowing

2 46 miles per hour, gusting at 53, and I gave them

3 three GPS way points to target the area from which

4 they needed to be looking. I'd like to believe

5 that the oil and gas industry would do what's

6 right. I would like to believe that they're

7 honorable people. They just have not shown any

8 sign of it.

9 If they were, they would voluntarily

10 use vapor recovery systems because it recovers the

11 escaping methane that they're spending millions of

12 dollars to produce. If you're going to let it get

13 away, why drill the hole in the ground in the first

14 place? Why not just leave it down there where the

15 earth protects it from us and we're safe?

16 For now, we need EPA regulations, and

17 we need you to modify and amend these to also

18 include existing infrastructure because that's

19 going to produce 90 percent of the pollution going

20 forward. Thank you very much for your time.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. McCord.

22 Before you take off, sir, are there any questions

23 from the panel?

24 (No response.)

25 MR. THOMPSON: Again, thank you for
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1 your testimony. Okay. Before I call the next

2 speaker, just a reminder that if you are a

3 registered speaker, please be sure to check in at

4 the registration desk so that the folks out front

5 will know that you're here. All right? Thank you.

6 At this time, I'd like to invite Zac

7 Trahan and Mark Handley to come forward for

8 testimony. Zac Trahan. Good morning.

9 MR. TRAHAN: Thanks very much. My

10 name is Zac Trahan. You've got the records. I

11 live here in Dallas, Texas, and I work with the

12 Texas Campaign for the Environment.

13 MR. THOMPSON: And please spell your

14 last name for the court reporter.

15 MR. TRAHAN: T-r-a-h-a-n.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir.

17 MR. TRAHAN: To pick up where Marc

18 left off, existing sources are a really important

19 thing to cover in these rules. Well, first of all,

20 I should say thanks for proposing these rules. We

21 support them, but we want them improved before we

22 finalize. If you've driven around the Metroplex or

23 if you get an aerial shot of it, you know that D/FW

24 is wrapped already. They're estimating 17,000 gas

25 wells on-site throughout the Metroplex in people's
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1 neighborhoods less than a football field away from

2 bedrooms where our children sleep. So for rules to

3 not cover these existing sources, which would be

4 the majority of the methane pollution and other

5 toxic air pollution, volatile organic compounds,

6 formaldehyde, benzene, it seems ludicrous on its

7 face. We would really strongly urge you to cover

8 existing sources either with this rule or another

9 rule very similar to it.

10 The previous regime of the federal

11 administration's EPA allowed this to happen and

12 have allowed our neighborhoods to be affected this

13 way. And even though this current EPA didn't cause

14 that problem, you now have the responsibility to

15 clean it up; and if you don't, no one else will.

16 These rules are critically important.

17 Also, of course, you can't meet your

18 climate change goals, the stated goals that we have

19 nationally from CO2, from methane, we can't meet

20 our own goals for reducing the source of climate

21 change gases if we don't cover existing sources.

22 Another thing that was brought up

23 earlier by Sharon Wilson is the compressors and

24 compressor stations. Once the oil rig, the gas

25 drilling rig, has come and gone, these compressors
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1 are a major permitted source of air pollution and

2 methane pollution; and so for the rules not to

3 cover them again for people that live with this on

4 a daily basis, it seems ridiculous. Why even

5 bother if you're not going to cover one of the

6 largest permitted sources of air pollution from

7 this industry?

8 And then, of course, for people who

9 live in more rural areas, not necessarily here in

10 D/FW is a big problem, but flaring is a huge

11 problem in other parts of Texas, the Eagle Ford

12 Shale, especially south of San Antonio, and West

13 Texas, too, Cline Shale. The idea that I

14 understand in these rules is that flaring is only

15 restricted or regulated if you're in a

16 nonattainment area, such as D/FW. And flaring will

17 cause more nonattainment areas if it's not

18 restricted and regulated now. So we're not going

19 to solve the problem until we've already allowed it

20 to happen? That also is very counterintuitive,

21 very illogical.

22 If we're going to have rules to cover

23 air pollution and methane and other toxic emissions

24 from oil and gas, they should cover all of it in

25 all areas of the state not just areas that are
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1 already so bad they are violating the Clean Air

2 Act. Why would we allow more and more areas like

3 that to development and go into nonattainment in

4 the first place and then say, okay, now we'll stop

5 the problem of flaring.

6 As several speakers have pointed out

7 and I'm sure you'll hear all day long, our state

8 agencies are not going to deal with this. Our

9 state government is completely aligned with the oil

10 and gas industry. The Texas OGA speaker before me,

11 their association essentially controls the state

12 legislature at this point, the state Railroad

13 Commission, the state environmental agency when it

14 comes to rules like this, when it comes to

15 pollution problems from industry, and so the only

16 way for most residents in Texas to have any kind of

17 relief from these problems is through federal

18 rules.

19 Now, some local governments have

20 wanted to help and have tried to help. That's

21 true. But as we saw earlier this year, our state

22 legislature is trying as hard as they can to make

23 that impossible. So if you're serious about

24 meeting climate change mitigation goals, reducing

25 emissions by the percentages that we need to
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1 globally, and if you're serious about protecting

2 residents in the D/FW Metroplex and throughout the

3 country, you've got to adopt these rules in

4 stronger form. You've got to approve them and

5 adopt them, and you can't delay them.

6 You can't extend the comment period to

7 120 days and have phased-in implementation and

8 enforcement. That's absurd. The State of Texas

9 will drag it out for as long as you possibly allow

10 them to. Any deadlines that are set, the state

11 agencies or our attorney general, for instance,

12 will make sure that deadline -- we go up to

13 midnight of the day of that deadline, and they'll

14 drag it out even further in court if they can. So

15 keep the deadlines as short as you can, knowing

16 that that's the only chance for most residents in

17 the state to see relief someday. Thanks very much

18 for being here, and thanks for working on this.

19 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Trahan.

20 Any questions for Mr. Trahan? Bruce?

21 (No response.)

22 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir.

23 MR. HANDLEY: Yeah. Mark Handley.

24 That's H-a-n-d-l-e-y. I work for Lasen, and we own

25 and operate a methane detection system, the ALPIS
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1 system, which is -- which is what we own and

2 operate, and it was developed with funds and under

3 the direction of the Department of Transportation.

4 Since the ALPIS system was developed,

5 it has inspected over 200,000 miles of pipeline and

6 identified over 16,000 methane indications. My

7 comments for the time I have here are about the oil

8 and natural gas sector emission standards for new

9 and modified sources. It seems to be the popular

10 thing to talk about at this meeting. My comments

11 focus on the fact that optical or OGI, optical gas

12 imaging, is, really, the only method identified in

13 the rule for reducing methane emissions, and I have

14 a bunch of quotes from the proposed rule, page 17.

15 EPA is "proposing that new and modified well sites

16 and compressor stations (which include the

17 transmission and storage segment and the gathering

18 and boosting segment) conduct fugitive emissions

19 surveys semiannually with OGI."

20 Now, OGI and Method 21 alternatives

21 are the only options listed in the proposed rules.

22 These proposed rules under the proposal seems to

23 single out a small number of companies. There are

24 many other alternatives that can -- that can find

25 fugitive emissions. Some of these alternatives
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1 with LDAR, PBLAS systems, these alternatives, due

2 to the use of active illumination of hydrocarbons,

3 can detect much lower levels of fugitive emissions.

4 Again, on page 106, "we solicit

5 comments on whether to allow the EPA -- the EPA

6 Method 21 as an alternative to OGI" monitoring.

7 Why not mention all of the other, I think, more

8 effective technologies that are out there for

9 finding methane emissions?

10 Again, page 107, "we are proposing to

11 allow the use of either Method 21 or OGI for

12 resurveys." Again, this excludes a wide variety of

13 proven fugitive detection technologies that are out

14 on the market.

15 Page 109, "the monitoring plan must

16 also include a description of how OGI surveys will

17 be conducted that ensures fugitive emissions can be

18 imaged effectively." Again, this assumes the use

19 of a single technology and excludes -- excludes a

20 wide variety of proven fugitive detection

21 technologies.

22 Page 111, "we have identified OGI

23 technology with semiannual survey monitoring as the

24 BSER," which means best system for emission

25 reduction, "for detecting fugitive emissions from
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1 new and modified well sites." The BSER analysis in

2 the proposal does not include a large number of

3 available technologies for fugitive emission

4 detection. Rather, it seemed to compare Method 21

5 technologies versus OGI. The study is not

6 complete. We believe it's inaccurate.

7 On page 115, "the monitoring plan must

8 also include a description of how OGI surveys will

9 be conducted." I can continue with quotes, but the

10 main issue with OGI is angle of sun, wind, and

11 ambient temperature differentials. It's not an

12 easy technology to use. We own and operate our own

13 FLIR camera, and the least size that you can see,

14 it's got to be huge. I mean, here in the report,

15 page 239, "EPA's recent work with OGI indicates

16 that fugitive emissions at concentrations of 10,000

17 ppm are generally detectable using OGI

18 instrumentation."

19 Now, 10,000 ppm levels represent in

20 our business enormous leaks. Now, in a study

21 finding by the AAGL and DOD (phonetic), leaks were

22 detected down to the 4 ppm level. With our

23 technology -- here's a quote from that report. "It

24 is remarkable that a 4 ppm methane plume could be

25 detected by a helicopter at a 50 meter altitude."
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1 And finally, page 322, "the EPA is

2 proposing the use of OGI as a low cost way to find

3 leaks." Low cost versus aid (phonetic), a limited

4 sampling of available technologies in my opinion.

5 Again, the proposal did not include a large number

6 of available technologies with fugitive emission

7 detection, rather it seemed to compare Method 21

8 technology versus OGI. That's all I have. Any

9 questions from you?

10 (No response.)

11 MR. HANDLEY: Thanks for your time.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir. Thank

13 you for your testimony.

14 Okay. At this time, I'd like to

15 invite Lawrence -- it looks like Cottle,

16 C-o-t-t-l-e, if it's spelled correctly here, and

17 Brent Lammert to please come forward for your

18 testimony. And if Luke Metzger is in the audience,

19 if you could come on down, you're going to testify;

20 and then we're going to take a break afterwards, so

21 queue you up.

22 Good morning, sir.

23 MR. COTTLE: Good morning, sir. My

24 name is Lawrence Cottle, C-o-t-t-l-e, I'm a private

25 citizen. I'm here in Dallas, and I come here today
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1 both as a doctor and an 18-year cancer survivor.

2 Shortly after I was diagnosed with an incurable

3 blood cancer in 1997, specialized medical studies

4 revealed traces of benzene and toluene in my blood.

5 These probably came from extended exposure to

6 environmental contaminants. Fortunately today

7 after years of lost career time, many hospital

8 stays, and successful natural approaches to health,

9 I'm much better. I'm very thankful to be able to

10 come before you today to give you my statements

11 and, as you can appreciate, my orientation in

12 environmental issues is primarily health-related.

13 The EPA's newest recommendation to

14 raise the bar in making the oil and gas industry

15 responsible for a greater percentage of its

16 emissions is indeed commendable, but it is only a

17 good start. A new report out by the environmental

18 consulting group, ICF International, states that

19 the methane leaks from natural gas sites make this

20 process of hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural

21 gas, quote, nearly as carbon intensive as coal, end

22 quote. The report states that, quote, the EDF

23 found that 65 billion cubic feet of natural gas was

24 released into the air on federal and tribal lands

25 in 2013 amounting to about $360 million of lost
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1 gas. That, as EDF says, is not only an economic

2 loss but an environmental problem, end of quote.

3 Now, this leakage is a problem because

4 methane in the gas is 84 times more potent than

5 carbon dioxide over short periods of time and 30

6 times more potent over the long term, end quote.

7 What the EPA is proposing is certainly

8 welcomed by many in this room today, however, it

9 doesn't go far enough. The reason is quite simple.

10 In Texas, nearly -- in Texas, by the year 2018,

11 nearly 90 percent of oil and gas emissions will

12 come from drilling sources already in existence and

13 not covered by the proposed regulations.

14 We appreciate the presence of the EPA

15 here today for another reason. Texas House Bill 40

16 passed and was signed into law this last spring

17 taking away the home rule right of local

18 communities to control emissions to the extent

19 deemed necessary to protect local citizens. While

20 this law likely will eventually be found to be in

21 violation of the Texas Constitution's home rule

22 provision, this could take a long time and possibly

23 at great expense. There is one possible quasi

24 remedy, however, while we wait. It is simply the

25 need for greater federal regulations of the amounts
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1 of methane gas that can be released into the air.

2 This can be achieved by simple,

3 low-cost methods of regular leak detection and

4 vapor recovery and enforced cleaning up of older

5 equipment all achieved at a greater level than

6 currently. Doing so will capture more natural gas

7 released into the air, thus both saving the

8 environment and having more gas available for

9 consumption. In other words, tighter caps to

10 capture more gas.

11 This is a commonsense approach that

12 you would think would be followed by the oil and

13 gas industry, but not so in Texas. Instead, it

14 will take compulsory compliance by the EPA to make

15 this happen. I feel sure that many today in our

16 community hope that the EPA will consider extending

17 these regulations beyond just newly established

18 drilling operations. Not doing so will only

19 minimize both the intent to reduce drilling

20 operations emissions and the more favorable results

21 that we are all hoping for.

22 Gentlemen, we don't have much time

23 left to do something significant to clean up our

24 world. You surely are aware of that. I hope that

25 you will reconsider doing an even better job.
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1 Thank you very much.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you -- thank you

3 Mr. Cottle. Are there any questions from the

4 panel?

5 (No response.)

6 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

7 testimony, sir. Good morning.

8 MR. LAMMERT: Good morning. My name

9 is Brent Lammert. I'm with FLIR Systems. Lammert

10 is spelled L-a-m-m-e-r-t.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

12 MR. LAMMERT: In my role as vice

13 president of sales, I'm responsible for our optical

14 gas imaging business in the USA. Reducing fugitive

15 emissions of VOCs and methane is critical for our

16 environment, for the responsible development of

17 natural resources, and for the continued success of

18 the U.S. oil and gas industry.

19 Optical gas imaging, OGI, has an

20 important role to play in reaching the goal of

21 reducing emissions by 40 to 45 percent within the

22 next ten years. In the proposed rule, the EPA has

23 named OGI as the best system for emissions

24 reduction. As the pioneer for this technology, we

25 are as proud to be contributing a solution to our
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1 customers with a highly effective, highly

2 efficient, and low-cost method for reducing

3 fugitive emissions. I heard earlier this morning a

4 question of, will there be availability of OGI

5 technology?

6 As the manufacturer of -- the leading

7 manufacturer of optical gas imaging worldwide, I

8 can tell you that we are ready with operations to

9 build the cameras required to meet the necessary

10 goals. All of the critical components are ones

11 that we build ourselves and can ramp up and scale

12 that production. I've also seen where there's

13 questions of will there be enough trained

14 operators. Our FLIR training center offers a

15 three-day certification class, and that's something

16 where we can immediately scale that operation to

17 double or triple. What we're doing right now can

18 go beyond that for training operators very quickly

19 and training consultants.

20 I'd like to go into a few of the

21 advantages of OGI. First, it's highly effective.

22 Since the introduction of our first OGI camera, our

23 customers have found thousands of leaks each year

24 and have significantly reduced their fugitive

25 emissions. Many customers have found significant
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1 leaks that have paid for their investment quicker

2 than expected, some within a few days of the

3 startup of their camera.

4 Recently, Jonah Energy from Wyoming

5 shared their experience in public comments to the

6 Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, Air

7 Quality Division, saying, each month, Jonah Energy

8 conducts infrared camera surveys using a FLIR

9 camera at each of our production facility

10 locations. Since the implementation of Jonah

11 Energy's enhanced direct inspection and maintenance

12 program, EDINN, in 2010, we have conducted over

13 16,000 inspections and repaired thousands of leaks

14 that were identified by the FLIR camera. Based

15 upon the market value of VOC emissions that have

16 been eliminated, they have paid for their entire

17 leak detection and repair program.

18 In Suffolk County, Wyoming, as part of

19 the Upper Green River Basin, it's classified as a

20 large ozone nonattainment zone. Jonah's program,

21 including OGI, had as one of its goals to reduce

22 VOC emissions by 75 percent. They've exceeded that

23 goal, and in 2012, 2013, 2014, and so far in 2014

24 [sic], they've had zero days above the 75 parts per

25 billion for ozone in that area. That's a wonderful
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1 success. While achieving that goal, they have been

2 profitable. It's actually reduced their costs and

3 increased their profitability by operating a

4 monthly OGI program.

5 OGI's efficiency is due to its unique

6 ability to be able to visualize gas leaks and see

7 their source. Estimates for the speed of OGI

8 compared to Method 21 vary, but our most

9 conservative estimate is that it's nine times

10 faster to use an OGI camera versus traditional

11 Method 21 instruments.

12 In addition, since the operator can

13 see the source of the leak, they're in a great

14 position to be able to make the repairs on site.

15 At Jonah Energy, initially their goal was to make

16 70 percent of their repairs during the survey with

17 the camera operator. What they're finding after

18 five years is that they're repairing 90 percent at

19 the well site by the camera operator.

20 We found the cost of operating the OGI

21 program to be very affordable even for smaller

22 producers and low-producing wells. In a survey of

23 consultants that offer third-party services, we

24 have seen prices in the range of 250 to $350 per

25 site survey. When surveying people with in-house
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1 programs, they're running about half that rate in

2 the 150 to $170 per site survey.

3 Most of the leaks are caused by a very

4 small portion of components, .13 -- .13 percent.

5 One of the critical things that we'd like addressed

6 is the --

7 MR. THOMPSON: Final thoughts.

8 MR. LAMMERT: We'd like the frequency

9 of inspections at a quarterly rate. We would like

10 that not to be tied to a percentage of leaks, and

11 we'd like to have resurveys done with the same

12 technology that found the leak.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Okay.

14 MR. LAMMERT: Thank you.

15 MR. THOMPSON: I have a question for

16 you, if you don't mind. Because I was trying to

17 catch this here, you said that repairs were made at

18 90 percent at the well site by the camera operator?

19 Could you repeat what you said on that front,

20 please?

21 MR. LAMMERT: Yes. At Jonah Energy,

22 their original goal was to have the camera operator

23 perform some of the leak repairs while on site.

24 Their initial goal was 70 percent of the leaks.

25 They're finding that they're able to make
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1 90 percent of those repairs during the course of

2 their inspection, and that's increasing the

3 efficiency of their team.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you for

5 clarifying that. Are there additional questions?

6 (No response.)

7 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you for

8 your testimony, sir.

9 MR. METZGER: Good morning.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Good morning.

11 MR. METZGER: I'm Luke Metzger. I'm

12 the -- it's M-e-t-z-g-e-r. I'm the director of

13 Environment Texas. We're a nonprofit advocate for

14 clean air, clean water, and open spaces.

15 Earlier this year, President Obama

16 remarked that we are the first generation to

17 experience the impacts of global warming, and we're

18 also the last generation with the chance to do

19 something about it; and we are very much feeling

20 the impacts of global warming right here in Texas.

21 Of course, in 2011, we went through the worst

22 single-year drought in our history which cost more

23 than $8 billion in damage to farmers and let some

24 towns' drinking water wells to go dry.

25 Just in May, we experienced the
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1 wettest May in Texas history, which led to historic

2 and devastating flooding throughout the state

3 costing more than 20 Texans their lives including

4 an entire family in Wimberley, Texas, whose house

5 was ripped from its foundation by the floodwaters

6 and taken down the river where they met their

7 death.

8 I met with some of the families in

9 Wimberley who told me that if it weren't for the

10 screams from the family in that house, they would

11 have -- they wouldn't have woken up, and they, too,

12 would have succumbed to those floodwaters.

13 We also know that global warming is

14 causing the heat to rise here in Texas. A study by

15 Risky Business, a project of former Mayor Bloomberg

16 and Treasury Secretary Paulson found that in Texas,

17 you know, we know it's hot here. We're used to

18 that, but it's going to get much hotter. An

19 average of the last 30 years, we experienced

20 43 days over 95 degrees in temperature. But by mid

21 century, we will get up to more than 106 days of

22 temperatures over 95 reaching Arizona levels of

23 temperature, and that hotter temperature is going

24 to come with more heat-related deaths.

25 The study found that in the next five
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1 to 25 years, rising heat from global warming will

2 add 2,500 deaths -- heat-related deaths going up to

3 4,500 deaths in the next 25 to 45 years. And we

4 also know recent research shows that sea levels

5 while -- they're going to significantly rise if we

6 burn the earth's remaining oil, gas, and coal

7 deposits, leading the entire Antarctica ice shelf

8 to melt, which would raise sea levels up to

9 200 feet and putting much of Texas under water, so

10 we know that oil and gas are a big part of the

11 problem. They have said today they have taken

12 steps to reduce emissions, but we know that recent

13 research confirms that many leaks go undetected

14 and, in fact, actual emissions are much higher than

15 we know.

16 A study published last month in

17 Environmental Science & Technology found that

18 gathering equipment and processing facilities are

19 leaking natural gas at rates eight times of the EPA

20 estimates. As you've heard, Texas is not

21 addressing the problem. Our regulators are captive

22 regulators and allow the oil and gas industry to

23 get away with very serious pollution problems.

24 I've over -- seen them issuing permits to expand

25 the use of flaring. Operators at the Eagle Ford
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1 Shale flare up to eight percent of all the gas. In

2 some counties, it's as high as 30 percent. So

3 given all of the catastrophic impacts we're seeing

4 from the burning of oil and gas, the real solution

5 is to leave most of the earth's fossil fuels where

6 they belong in the ground, but we know that this

7 rule is an important step forward to help minimize

8 some of the damage.

9 Unfortunately, it doesn't go far

10 enough. You know, the President has committed to

11 reduce methane emissions from oil and gas by 40,

12 45 percent. This rule gets us, you know, about

13 half the way, but there's more to be done. We do

14 need the rule -- this rule or subsequent rules to

15 address not just new oil and gas facilities but

16 existing facilities, as well. That's all I've got.

17 Thank you.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, Mr. Metzger.

19 Before you go, are there any questions?

20 (No response.)

21 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, sir. Thank you

22 for your testimony. Okay. At this time, we're

23 going to -- we're going to take a 15-minute break,

24 but before we -- before we leave, Dr. Ed Ireland

25 and Jeralynn Jackee Cox will be testifying after
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1 the break. Okay? So let's return at 10:45. Thank

2 you.

3 (Break was had from 10:29 a.m. to

4 10:45 a.m.)

5 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. So we'd like to

6 continue with the hearing, so at this time, I'm

7 going to reinvite Dr. Ed Ireland to come forward

8 and testify. And following Dr. Ireland, will be

9 Jeralynn Jackee Cox.

10 MS. COX: My name is Jeralynn Jackee

11 Cox.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. You're behind

13 Dr. Ed Ireland. Dr. Ireland is next. Thank you.

14 If you'd just -- yeah, right there. Good morning,

15 Dr. Ireland.

16 DR. IRELAND: Good morning. My name

17 is Ed Ireland, I-r-e-l-a-n-d, and I'm the executive

18 director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education

19 Council based in Fort Worth, Texas. That

20 organization is a nonprofit energy education and

21 community outreach organization focused on the

22 Barnett Shale. And, by the way, I do live where I

23 work, and, in fact, I live just down the street

24 from multiple pad sites with multiple wells --

25 natural gas wells on them as do my son and my
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1 grandson.

2 The American economic system has made

3 the United States a world leader in abundant and

4 low-cost energy thanks in no small part to

5 contributions from Texas. The proposed EPA rules

6 pose a direct threat to the shale energy revolution

7 that is strengthening U.S. energy security while

8 reducing energy costs for Americans. Even worse,

9 the EPA rules you're proposing are largely a

10 Washington-designed solution that is searching for

11 a problem. EPA's own data shows that methane

12 emissions from oil and gas exploration are only

13 1.07 percent of total greenhouse emissions, meaning

14 that methane regulations would impose significant

15 new costs for minimal benefit.

16 Second, at least five recent

17 peer-reviewed studies have found that methane leaks

18 from natural gas development are already well below

19 the 3.2 percent leakage threshold, the rate at

20 which scientists believe natural gas may lose its

21 greenhouse gas advantage.

22 Third, according to EPA's own data,

23 natural gas producers have reduced methane

24 emissions by 35 percent since 2007 even as the

25 production of natural gas has increased by more
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1 than 20 percent over the same period. EPA data

2 also shows methane emissions from fracking have

3 fallen 73 percent from 2011 to 2013, which is

4 significant because over one-half of all natural

5 gas produced in the United States is the result of

6 hydraulic fracturing or fracking.

7 In fact, the enormous new supplies of

8 clean-burning natural gas as unlocked by fracking

9 have helped the energy-generating sector replace

10 older coal-fired plants reducing carbon dioxide

11 emissions to their lowest level in 20 years since

12 natural gas emits about half the carbon of coal on

13 the average.

14 The UN Intergovernmental Panel on

15 Climate Change has also credited fracking with

16 reducing emissions in the United States which has

17 led the world in reducing CO2 in recent years.

18 Simultaneously, technological innovation and

19 enhanced regulations by the Texas Commission on

20 Environmental Quality have allowed more produced

21 gas to be captured reducing emissions in methane in

22 one of the most heavily drilled parts of the

23 Barnett Shale here in North Texas. Oil and gas

24 producers have reduced methane emissions by

25 37 percent since 2011.
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1 Instead of allowing these

2 accomplishments to continue, the EPA has apparently

3 decided to arbitrarily insert itself by unleashing

4 a trifecta of unnecessary and costly regulations

5 driving up the cost of energy and slowing new job

6 creation. These include not only new mandates on

7 methane emissions but also for ozone and carbon

8 dioxide.

9 The primary reason why methane

10 emissions are falling is because it is in the

11 economic interest of the oil and natural gas

12 industry to capture as much methane, the primary

13 component of natural gas, as possible. The EPA

14 baselessly claims that methane emissions will rise

15 over the next decade even though the current

16 trajectory is downward. More importantly, the

17 EPA's proposed methane rules may actually stem the

18 methane reductions by interfering with industry

19 successes.

20 Instead of investing in new

21 technologies, companies will have to divert their

22 investments to compliance and reporting. In fact,

23 financial analysts have already said that EPA's

24 methane rule could wipe out small drillers, the

25 same family-owned businesses that drill a
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1 significant number of wells here in Texas.

2 In summary, methane emissions are down

3 35 percent since 2007. Ozone levels have fallen by

4 17 percent since 2003, and carbon dioxide emissions

5 are at a 20-year low. We all support cleaner air

6 and smart regulations, but the EPA would do better

7 to pursue a more balanced and cooperative approach

8 that doesn't threaten to undermine the significant

9 progress already underway. Thank you.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Dr. Ireland.

11 Are there any questions?

12 MR. MOORE: Dr. Ireland, you had

13 mentioned there was some studies that had shown

14 that the smaller driller would be forced out?

15 Without -- not at this moment, if you would put

16 that information in your written comments or

17 provide it later in the public comments, that would

18 be fine.

19 DR. IRELAND: Okay. I will be happy

20 to do that.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Additional questions?

22 DR. IRELAND: It was reported by

23 Bloomberg, and it was an Oppenheimer study, but

24 I'll get it for you.

25 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your
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1 testimony. Ms. Cox, please come forward. Thank

2 you for your patience.

3 MS. COX: Good morning, gentlemen.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Good morning.

5 MS. COX: Can you hear me well? Is

6 this the right angle for the microphone?

7 MR. THOMPSON: Yes.

8 MS. COX: Thank you. My name is

9 Jeralynn Jackee Cox. I live in Fort Worth, Texas,

10 Tarrant County, and so I suppose I'm here this

11 morning to represent persons of a certain age, 65

12 and above, who have to breathe the air in Tarrant

13 County. If you were to see a map of Tarrant County

14 put out by the Railroad Commission with little dots

15 representing every place there's a gas well, it

16 would look like somebody just bled all over that

17 little map. Tarrant County is -- it would depend

18 on the scale to which the map is blown up or

19 reduced, Tarrant County is just blobs of red

20 everywhere, which means we have lots of methane.

21 This was not always true, but it's

22 been true since 2010, 2011. We are also downwind

23 from the East Texas coal plants, the coal-fired

24 plants in East Texas, which means we cast -- I

25 realize that today we're talking about methane
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1 pollution, but it all dumps in together as one

2 toxic mix. We get emissions from cars. We get

3 methane. We get coal. So everything you can do to

4 mitigate any of those factors might help to make

5 life better for us.

6 Studies have been done by the Dallas

7 Medical Association recently on how much more

8 asthma -- what they did was measure the incidents

9 of asthma attacks correlated with the incidents of

10 bad air days in Dallas. And sure enough, you know,

11 a lot more people were hospitalized for asthma.

12 And when we measure the cost of things, there are

13 direct costs to an industry, and the oil industry

14 is -- the gas industry is correct to say that the

15 pollution produced by gas is less than the

16 pollution produced by coal, but it's all getting

17 into our lungs; and so whatever you can do to

18 reduce methane emissions may also help to reduce

19 the number of attacks of asthma which will help to

20 reduce the cost of Medicare and Medicaid and health

21 insurance and all of the other factors that measure

22 the costs of our individual health.

23 It is because I care about the quality

24 of the air that I have to breathe and the quality

25 of the air that we get in Dallas and Fort Worth
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1 that I ask you all -- first, I thank you for your

2 concern about reducing methane emissions because if

3 it isn't in my backyard, I'm still impacted by

4 whatever happens throughout the country.

5 And if you can't cut the emissions

6 from what is already in place with this set of

7 regs, I hope you can do it with a new set of regs

8 because for me in my neighborhood already on the

9 ground and pushing out poison are the plants that

10 would not be affected by your current regs; so

11 hopefully, in the future, you can reach all of it

12 because truly, global warming is a matter about

13 which we have to be concerned.

14 And I watch the videos of the icebergs

15 melting, and of the walruses crawling up on the

16 rocks because their environment in the Arctic is

17 disappearing, and I realize that some major changes

18 are on their way. And we are now in a position of

19 just trying to hold the line and mitigate as much

20 as we can. I appreciate what you're doing, and I

21 hope that in the future you can also come up with

22 some proposed regs that will help Fort Worth,

23 because Fort Worth, the production is already on

24 the ground and if the regulations don't reach

25 controlling emissions from what's already on the
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1 ground, less good is done for Fort Worth than would

2 be possible. Thank you. Please address as much as

3 you can that's possible. I appreciate your time.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

5 time, Ms. Cox. Are there any questions?

6 (No response.)

7 MR. THOMPSON: Again, thank you for

8 your testimony. Okay. At this time, I'd like to

9 invite Kim Feil and Cathy Wallace to please come

10 forward for testimony.

11 MS. FEIL: I'm Kim Feil from

12 Arlington. In the ERG Fort Worth million dollar

13 air study done a few years ago, it said that

14 methane was two to ten times more than the world

15 background levels. Now, the EPA says in the NSPS,

16 during the initial flowback stage, there's no

17 requirement for controlling emissions from the

18 vessel and any gas in the flowback during this

19 stage may be vented. And you admit yourself that

20 your inadvertent NSPS coverage tank where they

21 exceed six tons per year could discourage recycling

22 of flowback into wastewater due to the huge

23 throughput of these fracking tanks. These are

24 flowback tanks.

25 I'm asking you to consider these
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1 flowback tanks to be mandated to be pressurized

2 with gas busters so they don't vent in our

3 neighborhoods in that the initial flowback stage

4 all the way to the separator ready stage because no

5 one is regulating the unknown flow that's emanating

6 from the stale waters coming up from the bowels of

7 the earth in our neighborhoods. And we have seen

8 those air testing instrumentations doesn't pick up

9 these inorganics and frac chemicals that are

10 disclosed on the frac chemical disclosure registry.

11 A couple of years ago, that stale

12 water odor came into my home with my windows and

13 doors closed and burnt my eyes near the AT&T

14 stadium. Initial flowback needs to go into the

15 tanks because no one regulates the stale water

16 odors and collecting all methane release is

17 important. If the NSPS is to be protective of

18 public health, then this is relevant to the

19 revisions because, additionally, the problem with

20 the EPA discouraging or encouraging recycling

21 wastewater is that unintended byproducts of the

22 water treatment disinfectants are not recommended

23 by scientists because they can make what I call

24 frac on crack. Think of it how the term norm

25 becomes T-norm when man adds his touch, so too,
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1 does the flowback waste being recycled under those

2 dangerous fracking steins can cause chemical

3 reactions.

4 Avner Vengosh, a geochemist studying

5 gas wastewaters at Duke University says that the

6 disinfection process generates byproducts if the

7 water contains two components. One, organic

8 matter, which is common in many of the streams and

9 rivers. The other component is halogen, which

10 means bromide, iodine, that's in our drilling rigs.

11 They did some experiments with halogen that showed

12 a tiny amount of hydraulic fracking fluid mixed

13 with surface water could trigger the formation of

14 disinfection byproducts.

15 Some components such as hydrogenated

16 trihalomethane which are extremely toxic, are not

17 being regulated by the EPA, and this could generate

18 from the reduction of wastewater into drinking

19 water utilities. Even the tiniest spill with a

20 small amount of bromide and iodine could trigger

21 the formation of these highly toxic disinfection

22 byproducts in drinking water. If the onsite

23 recycling cannot remove the fracking stein

24 constituents, then transporting this waste into

25 injection wells presents a risk that outweighs the
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1 rewards.

2 Posted today on SkyTruth, scientists

3 in Siberia are closely monitoring a series of

4 rising mounds as a spate of fresh craters prompt

5 warnings of spontaneous explosions in the

6 permafrost landscape. They have discovered a mound

7 of soil-covered ice which they believe is set to

8 explode at any moment. This is this morning's news

9 on SkyTruth. It's potentially bigger they say than

10 the 80-meter-wide crater which sparked the whole

11 investigation last year. Up to 20 more have since

12 been identified. Scientists have established these

13 craters are linked to underground methane ponds

14 which appear to be warming and releasing gas due to

15 rising temperatures.

16 Now there are warnings that the

17 escaping methane poses a threat to nearby natural

18 gas pipelines and infrastructures for possibly a

19 chain-reaction event, so the unnatural melting

20 causing natural methane releases is out of our

21 control; so all steps to curb manmade methane leaks

22 is more dire now than ever. Thank you.

23 MR. THOMPSON: And thank you for your

24 testimony. Ms. Feil, could you state and spell

25 your last name for the record.
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1 MS. FEIL: Feil, as in F,

2 Frac-en-stein, e-i-l.

3 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Are there

4 any questions from the panel?

5 (No response.)

6 MR. THOMPSON: Again, thank you for

7 your testimony. Cathy Wallace, please. Hi. Good

8 morning.

9 MS. WALLACE: I'm Cathy Wallace from

10 Irving, Texas, and I remember back in the early

11 '70s when the EPA was founded, how wonderful a

12 government agency that will come in and protect and

13 ensure our health from harmful effects from

14 industry. Future generations can flourish in an

15 environment that is safe.

16 After the EPA opened an office in the

17 middle of an industrial area in Kansas City, we saw

18 our air quality improve greatly. Fast forward

19 40 years, and I'm here today to support your

20 proposed rules to cut methane and VOCs from our air

21 to ensure the future of our planet.

22 Our state of Texas has been inundated

23 with air, water, and land contaminants by the

24 fossil fuel industry. Our state agencies, the

25 TECQ, the Texas Railroad Commission, ignore these
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1 issues that are created by oil and gas wells that

2 surround us in the D/FW area. The oil and gas

3 industry refuse -- I'm sorry -- refuses to use best

4 practices unless they are required. There are not

5 enough regulations in place to protect the citizens

6 from harmful air quality. There are 98 producing

7 gas wells at the D/FW airport and one injection

8 well near where I live. With our prevailing south

9 winds, we have 400 producing wells in Arlington

10 directly to the south of us.

11 When driving by the airport, there's a

12 distinct odor now, and when flying into D/FW

13 airport when the ozone levels are high, there's a

14 brown haze hanging over our city. In the past few

15 years, there is a noticeable difference when

16 exercising outdoors. It is difficult to breathe.

17 There's a pressing need for improved air monitoring

18 around D/FW. We need more regulations on existing

19 gas well operations as well as new facilities to

20 stop leaks from emitting into the air.

21 In Texas, we are exposed to many

22 dangers and injustices from gas well production

23 that puts the economic burden on the people. We

24 are left to deal with our property values in

25 decline, repairs to our property from damages and
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1 mounting health costs. There's a sign at a

2 fracking site that is 200 feet from a family's back

3 door. It says, "Danger, Do Not Enter." This tank

4 contains fatal vapors. It is dangerous and

5 irresponsible for the industry to put these

6 operations so close to homes and families. We look

7 forward to the EPA to protect the environment of

8 this nation and its people. Thank you.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you,

10 Mrs. Wallace. Are there any questions?

11 (No response.)

12 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Again, thank you

13 for your testimony.

14 At this time, I'd like to invite Cyrus

15 Reed and Lee Bailey to come forward for testimony.

16 MR. REED: Did I win anything?

17 MR. THOMPSON: Come on down.

18 MR. REED: First of all, my name is

19 Cyrus Reed. C-y-r-u-s, R-e-e-d. I'm speaking here

20 on behalf of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra

21 Club. My brief comments are about it's past time

22 to act on methane, and let me give you the three

23 reasons why before I get into the specifics of your

24 rule.

25 First, it's a valuable product we're
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1 wasting. While we're in the process of

2 transitioning our economy off of fossil fuels, for

3 the time being, the honest truth is, we use them

4 and we're using them; and so it makes no sense to

5 allow methane to escape. Instead, it should be

6 captured, sold, and taxed and help our schools and

7 help our state budget. To flare it, or worse, vent

8 it or allow fugitive emissions is not a good option

9 for anybody.

10 Here in Texas, we appear to be the

11 king of waste. I was looking at the Railroad

12 Commission website the other day, and, you know,

13 they have Rule 32, which says companies that want

14 to flare a well have to get a permit from the

15 Railroad Commission. Fiscal year 2009, 158 permits

16 were issued. Fiscal year 2012, 1,963 permits.

17 Fiscal year 2014, 5,207 permits. Now, most of

18 those obviously were flares, but that's still a

19 wasted product, some of which is escaping into the

20 atmosphere; and those aren't the only permits.

21 If you're going to flare or vent past

22 a certain amount of time, you have to have a

23 special permit from the Railroad Commission. We

24 have companies -- companies which I consider fairly

25 good companies like Pioneer asking the Railroad
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1 Commission to be able to flare for two years -- for

2 over the next two years for multiple wells. That's

3 not a good outcome for anyone.

4 The Railroad Commission estimates just

5 from these, you know, the estimate is about one

6 percent of our gas overall that we produce is lost

7 through flaring and venting, and obviously as we've

8 heard before in certain counties, it's much, much

9 higher.

10 The second main reason to deal with

11 this is obviously climate. Methane cooks our

12 climate. There are a whole lot of estimates, but

13 we all agree that it's worse in the short term than

14 carbon dioxide, so if we're going to deal with

15 climate, we've got to deal with methane, and the

16 way to deal with it is partially the oil and gas

17 industry.

18 And the third main reason is because

19 these gases also have other impacts, public health

20 impacts. Captured methane can also capture gases

21 that cause ozone. We have big problems in Texas,

22 in Dallas, in Houston, in San Antonio, and Austin,

23 and it appears from various studies that part of

24 the culprit is emissions from oil and gas.

25 The second big point I'm going to
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1 make, Texas doesn't seem likely to deal with

2 methane emissions on its own. We've got a Railroad

3 Commission which we had a commissioner back in 2012

4 said, time to look at our flaring and venting

5 rules. Let's bring people together, stay together,

6 do something about it. Nothing has been done.

7 Fast forward to 2015, that same commissioner is now

8 the chairman and says, EPA, stay out of our

9 business, what is this ridiculous war on fossil

10 fuels doing here in Texas? We don't want them.

11 Well, the Railroad Commission doesn't

12 appear to want to deal with this issue. TECQ did

13 back in 2011 adopt new permits by rules for gas and

14 oil facilities in that area of the Barnett Shale,

15 but they didn't extend it to the rest of the state.

16 In fact, the legislature stepped in through SB 1134

17 in 2011, and basically told TECQ don't do any

18 further air emission regulations unless you do, you

19 know, monitoring data, you don't use worst case

20 modeling and you do a full cost benefit analysis;

21 so the legislature has basically tied the hands of

22 TECQ to deal with this issue, and the Texas

23 legislature through not only Senate Bill 1134 but

24 HB 40, which will make it more difficult for cities

25 and counties to do any of these on their own.
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1 So we need you guys to step in with a

2 strong rule, and your rule before you today is your

3 good first step. As mentioned by multiple people,

4 it could be made stronger if it applies not only to

5 new facilities but also existing ones, so I would

6 say on this idea of the CTG's and smog-producing

7 counties, that's not enough. This should really be

8 a requirement throughout Texas because a lot of

9 these counties do contribute to ozone formation and

10 smog formation.

11 Leak detection and repair, we think

12 that's one of the most important things you can do.

13 We would suggest monthly or, at a minimum,

14 quarterly required inspections, and we don't think

15 those should be reduced over time. We think those

16 should be constant, and we think those programs

17 will pay for itself. It's way too long to allow

18 industry up to six months to repair leaks. We need

19 a more reasonable time to repair these leaks.

20 More flaring is not needed in Texas.

21 We would like the rule not to emphasize flaring as

22 an outcome but emphasize capture as the best

23 outcome. Flaring is obviously preferable to

24 venting, but it's often done incorrectly. Anyone

25 driving down 183 can see it being combusted
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1 inaccurately and we don't have the number of

2 inspectors to make sure it's actually happening, so

3 and finally, last point, we suggest in the rule and

4 making description of rules, you look at cost and

5 the cost benefit analysis of actually the gas

6 that's been saved. That is a benefit, as well as

7 the other benefits from reducing ozone and smog and

8 haze, so we would like you to include that in the

9 final description of the rule. Thank you very

10 much.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Reed.

12 Are there any questions?

13 MR. MOORE: Yes, one. You had

14 mentioned that you believe that the time for repair

15 of leaks following the survey is too long. Do you

16 have a suggestion?

17 MR. REED: So we'll be -- the Sierra

18 Club will be submitting detailed comments, but six

19 months just seems like a long time. And I know

20 that's only for certain kinds of leaks, but it just

21 seems like an awful long time, but I'll let the

22 experts handle that particular question, but we

23 will -- we will be addressing that.

24 MR. MOORE: Thank you.

25 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again for
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1 your testimony, yes, sir. Good morning.

2 MS. BAILEY: Good morning. Hello. My

3 name is Leigh Bailey. I'm an attorney. I have my

4 own law firm specializing in family law. I'm here

5 today really just to thank you, thank you so much

6 for this proposal. It means a lot to me because

7 I'm a mother of two, and I really feel like our

8 local leadership has failed.

9 The prior speaker talked about HB 40.

10 We knew we didn't have -- we weren't going to have

11 any luck cleaning up the air, helping kids not have

12 asthma at the state level. We knew we wouldn't be

13 able to get enough ledge (phonetic), so we tried

14 pushing forward legislation at the city council

15 level and recently, our last session, our ledge

16 said that cities and counties no longer can pass

17 ordinances such as no fracking. So thank you. I

18 know Texas has a certain reputation, but I promise

19 you, there are mothers such as me who are so

20 grateful for this proposal.

21 Let's see. Some talking points.

22 Texas regulators have expanded the use of permits

23 to allow extended flaring, issuing more than 3,012

24 permits in the financial year 2014. Compared to

25 2015, so far, we've had 5,207 permits. It's out of
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1 control. We really need your help.

2 The other point I wanted to make is

3 analysis has shown that operators in the Eagle Ford

4 Shale south of San Antonio are flaring or venting

5 up to 8 percent of all gas produced. In some

6 counties, it is as high as 30 percent of all gas.

7 Again, I really just came here to

8 thank the EPA. One small consideration, I hope you

9 will please consider expanding this proposal to all

10 existing oil and gas facilities. By 2018, nearly

11 90 percent of all methane emissions in the oil and

12 gas sector will come from existing facilities. The

13 U.S. cannot meet its international greenhouse gas

14 commitments unless it cuts methane from gas sources

15 from 40 to 45 percent from 2012 by 2025, so at

16 best, the core proposal, which I am so thankful

17 for, will keep methane emissions flat. So just a

18 humble suggestion, please consider expanding it to

19 existing oil and gas facilities. Thank you.

20 That's all.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

22 testimony. Questions?

23 (No response.)

24 MR. THOMPSON: Again, thank you very

25 much. Okay. At this time, I'd like to invite
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1 Amanda Crowe. Please come forward for your

2 testimony. Good morning.

3 MS. CROWE: Good morning. Thank you

4 for having me. I'm here on behalf of Congresswoman

5 Eddie Bernice Johnson, and my name is Amanda Crowe.

6 That's A-m-a-n-d-a, C-r-o-w-e.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

8 MS. CROWE: The Congresswoman regrets

9 that she couldn't be here today as she is in

10 Washington, DC. We are here today to discuss EPA's

11 proposal to reduce methane, a potent greenhouse gas

12 from one of the largest sources, the oil and gas

13 industry. Today's proposal is one piece of the

14 broader effort we need to undertake to ensure a

15 healthy environment and future for our children and

16 grandchildren.

17 Methane is 20 times more potent than

18 carbon dioxide in its greenhouse gas effect, and as

19 such, cutting methane emissions is critical to

20 addressing climate change. This proposal has the

21 added benefit of reducing harmful organic compounds

22 which are a precursor to smog. Unfortunately,

23 those of us from the Dallas-Fort Worth region are

24 very familiar with the negative effects of smog and

25 are accustomed to seeing orange and red alerts
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1 warning us about being outside because the air is

2 too polluted for it to be safe.

3 As a Texan, I know well the importance

4 and the impact of oil and natural gas development

5 in this country. Our economy has relied on fossil

6 fuels to power our manufacturing base, our

7 transportation and agricultural sectors, and more.

8 And for the foreseeable future, the country will

9 continue to develop these resources and

10 technologies to achieve our energy, economic,

11 national security, and in some cases our

12 environmental objectives.

13 However, we must acknowledge that the

14 development of any fossil fuel resource can have a

15 significant negative environmental impact. I'm not

16 speaking about the environment in the abstract but

17 about the very oceans we fish, the air we breathe,

18 and the water we drink. These, too, have real

19 economic value. While few people get rich from

20 clean air and water, as a former nurse I know that

21 everyone benefits from a healthy environment.

22 As a ranking member on the Committee

23 on Science, Space, and Technology, I have heard

24 from countless experts about the risks associated

25 with climate change. Record temperatures, an
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1 increase in heavy rain events, and rising seas are

2 a few examples of what Americans are confronting

3 now and can expect to see more frequently in the

4 coming years. The scientific evidence shows we

5 cannot afford to wait, but we must act now if we

6 are to see -- if we are to stand a chance of

7 lessening the impact of climate change.

8 Leaders of the faith community have

9 also been calling on us to address climate change.

10 Tomorrow, Pope Francis will speak to a joint

11 session of Congress, and in his recent encyclical,

12 Pope Francis notes that climate change represents

13 one of the principal challenges facing humanity and

14 that the poor will be disproportionately affected

15 by its impacts. Pope Francis also states the very

16 urgent need to develop policies so that in the next

17 few years the emission of carbon dioxide and other

18 highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced.

19 We will likely hear from some today

20 that EPA regulations are killing the economy and

21 jobs and that the proposal won't make any real

22 difference in addressing climate change and that

23 industry and the State of Texas do not need the

24 federal government to tell them how to protect

25 public health and the environment. As much as some
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1 might wish for a world where big environmental

2 issues are addressed voluntarily by industry or

3 through the workings of the free market or through

4 individual state regulations, we all know from

5 experience it does not work that way.

6 Instead, we need to listen to our

7 scientists, to our religious leaders, and the

8 American people by supporting broad-based national

9 policies that will cut greenhouse emissions because

10 acting on climate change is not only an

11 environmental imperative but both in near-time and

12 long-term public health and economics imperative,

13 as well. Thank you.

14 MS. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you,

15 Ms. Crowe for being here. Are there any questions

16 from the panel?

17 (No response.)

18 MR. THOMPSON: And please pass along

19 our thanks to Congresswoman Johnson for providing

20 testimony today. Okay? Thank you.

21 Okay. At this time. I'd like to

22 invite Krystal Henagan and Brandon Morton to please

23 come forward for testimony. Hi. Good morning.

24 Please state and spell your name for the court

25 reporter, and then you can give your testimony.
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1 MS. HENAGAN: Krystal Henagan,

2 K-r-y-s-t-a-l, H-e-n-a-g-a-n.

3 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Please

4 proceed.

5 MS. HENAGAN: My name is Krystal, and

6 I'm from San Antonio, Texas. I am -- I represent

7 Moms Clean Air Force, but I'm also a mother. In

8 San Antonio, we're starting to see the effects of

9 pollution from the Eagle Ford Shale. Recent photo

10 chemical models is showing pollutants coming up

11 from the Eagle Ford Shale, and then they're

12 combining with the NOx emissions because we are

13 saturated with NOx in San Antonio, and they're

14 forming ozone right over our city. San Antonio is

15 quickly becoming the second worst city in our state

16 for ozone pollution. This year we have surpassed

17 Houston, so we're right behind Dallas.

18 And what that means for our kids is a

19 couple of years ago, we moved to San Antonio from

20 West Texas. Our family relocated there, and my son

21 started to develop severe asthma. He was four

22 years old at the time. His asthma became

23 uncontrolled in San Antonio. He was put on seven

24 different medications at their highest dosages to

25 control his asthma, and it would still not control
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1 it to the point where the pharmacist thought that

2 the dosages were a mistake and wouldn't fill them

3 at first. So he contacted the doctor, and the

4 doctor said, yeah, that's correct, that's seven

5 medications at their maximum dosages, so I saw him

6 in states of being medicated to control his asthma

7 that, as a parent, you never want to see your child

8 in. It was almost a -- kind of a different

9 consciousness that he was in because the Albuterol

10 and everything was so hard on his system.

11 And we realized whenever we left for

12 vacation one time that his asthma started to go

13 away. His oxygen levels were also in the 80's

14 whenever we lived in San Antonio, so once we

15 realized that his oxygen levels and his asthma was

16 controlled outside of San Antonio, at the time I

17 was trying to finish my degree, so we shuttled him

18 between extended families' homes between Houston,

19 which is normally known for bad air, and Lubbock;

20 and that was very hard on our family. We saw the

21 health and financial burdens that asthma caused us.

22 Additionally, there have been

23 exhaustive efforts by school districts in the

24 San Antonio area to combat the kids that have

25 asthma that are suffering like my son did, so North
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1 East Independent School District and Northside ISD

2 both have asthma prevention programs where they

3 have staff -- full-time staff, registered nurses,

4 to implement asthma programs because what was

5 happening before is kids were being sent from

6 school in an ambulance to the hospital, more missed

7 days of class.

8 So they decided to have to be reactive

9 instead of proactive, and so they're having to

10 react to this pollution that -- a lot of it is

11 being seen coming from the Eagle Ford Shale, and

12 there they're having to implement these programs

13 and policies just to combat how bad our air is

14 actually becoming in San Antonio. So I'm really

15 thankful for this new methane rule because it seems

16 like it is something that can be proactive so that

17 parents like me and schools district don't have to

18 implement or go through a reactive process because

19 of air pollution because it completely tore our

20 family apart, and the economic burdens to families

21 of kids with asthma is very, very hard to go

22 through when you're just trying to get on your

23 feet. Thank you so much for your time.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

25 testimony, and before you go, how is your son
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1 today?

2 MR. HENAGAN: Excuse me?

3 MR. THOMPSON: How is your son?

4 MS. HENAGAN: He's doing better. His

5 asthma is better controlled, but it's not nearly as

6 bad as it used to be. We ended up moving, so thank

7 you very much.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Questions from the

9 panel?

10 (No response.)

11 MR. THOMPSON: Again, thank you for

12 being here today.

13 Good morning.

14 MR. MORTON: Hello. Good morning.

15 Thank you for allowing us to speak today. I think

16 it's a very important topic. My name is Brandon

17 Morton. That's M-o-r-t-o-n, like the salt or the

18 steakhouse for those of you who are thinking about

19 lunch soon. I'm representing several different

20 organizations today. My full-time job is for North

21 Lake College as a sustainability officer. That's

22 part of the Dallas County Community College

23 District. One of my jobs is to help manage the

24 greenhouse -- the major six greenhouse gases of the

25 college including all staff, employees, and
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1 students, which also includes things like commuting

2 to campus, which is a very difficult challenge, as

3 you might imagine.

4 All seven colleges in the Dallas

5 County Community College District are committed to

6 carbon neutrality by the year 2040, so you might

7 say we have an interest in this EPA methane rule in

8 terms of helping us accomplish our goals to reach

9 carbon neutrality.

10 I'm also on the Executive Committee

11 for the Texas Regional Alliance for Campus

12 Sustainability. This is a statewide consortium of

13 colleges and universities. It includes major

14 universities like Rice, Texas A&M, and UT Austin,

15 all of which are committed to reducing carbon

16 emissions and gases like methane and VOCs. And

17 kind of linking it from the education sector to the

18 industry, I also serve on the board of directors

19 for the Sustainability Management Association.

20 This is an international group that is committed to

21 sustainability as a trade. It is a 501(c)(6)

22 organization. Members of that organization include

23 waste management, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company,

24 Sustainable Silicone Valley, California State

25 University, University of Washington, University of
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1 Johannesburg in South Africa, and now Dallas County

2 Community College District.

3 I very much support the new EPA rules

4 for methane management. It has to do with

5 environmental health, public health, safety, and

6 preventing ozone and other formation of harmful

7 greenhouse gases. Thank you very much.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

9 testimony. Are there any questions?

10 (No response.)

11 MR. THOMPSON: Again, thank you.

12 Okay. At this time, I'd like to

13 invite Cathy McMullen to please come forward for

14 testimony. Good morning.

15 MS. MCMULLEN: My name is Cathy

16 McMullen. I'm a registered nurse -- home health

17 nurse, and I live in Denton, Texas. One year ago,

18 the voters of the City of Denton passed a ban on

19 hydraulic fracturing by 59 percent. We had to do

20 this because state regulators and politicians

21 refused to enact adequate rules governing oil and

22 gas development. This ban upset the oil and gas

23 industry so much that they paid $12 million to

24 politicians to overturn our democratically elected

25 ban. The ban was the last resort. It was after
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1 industry, state regulators, state politicians, and

2 our local municipalities failed us.

3 The State of Texas cannot be trusted

4 to protect its most precious asset, and to me, that

5 is not oil and gas. That is the children and the

6 environment of this state. The citizens of Texas

7 have tried to protect ourselves by following the

8 rules. We don't follow the rules when someone is

9 looking at us. We are not talking about following

10 the -- not paying politicians to change the rules,

11 and we're not talking about intimidating local

12 municipalities to bend the rules. This is the

13 industry playbook.

14 The oil and gas industry has broken

15 all of the rules, and now they're asking the EPA to

16 make rules they want even though the average

17 citizen of Texas needs stronger protections that

18 rule changes will bring.

19 Methane control measures must be

20 included in all existing equipment. Denton, Texas,

21 has a population of 120,000 people and is

22 approximately 84 square miles, so we're not a very

23 large city. Within the city limits of Denton, we

24 have 300 gas wells. Denton has been informed by

25 one single company that they plan on developing
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1 another 500 gas wells in the City of Denton. There

2 are approximately ten production companies in the

3 City of Denton, so that's just one company's plan.

4 Denton has the worst air quality in the state of

5 Texas. Our air quality is worse than the Houston

6 Ship Channel. This has been a consistent theme in

7 Denton for the last three years. Denton is going

8 to be polluted out of existence if help does not

9 come soon.

10 We need the EPA to enact and enforce

11 the strongest rules possible to reduce methane

12 emissions. It is not about jobs creation.

13 California has more stringent methane emission

14 capture rules than the EPA is imposing, yet their

15 job growth has outpaced Texas. This is about a

16 greedy industry's bottom line.

17 We are asking the EPA to do what Texas

18 politicians and state regulators have refused to

19 do, protect the people of Texas and its

20 environment. Thank you very much for your time.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, as well.

22 Could you just state and please spell your name for

23 the court reporter.

24 MS. MCMULLEN: Cathy, C-a-t-h-y.

25 McMullen, M-c-M-u-l-l-e-n.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: E-N. Thank you.

2 MR. MOORE: I wanted to ask you if you

3 could repeat what you said about the area of

4 Denton. I think you said it's 84 square miles?

5 MS. MCMULLEN: Yes.

6 MR. MOORE: How many wells now are

7 projected?

8 MS. MCMULLEN: We have 300 wells now

9 in an 84-square-mile area. We have one production

10 company who told us when we had to repeal the ban,

11 they are projecting developing another 500 wells in

12 the city limits, and we have basically ten

13 production companies working in the city limits of

14 Denton, so that's just one company.

15 MR. MOORE: Thank you.

16 MS. MCMULLEN: Thank you.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Okay. I'd

18 like to, at this time, invite what appears to be

19 Eulaine Hall and Amy Allen to please come forward

20 for testimony.

21 MS. HALL: My name is Eulaine Hall.

22 I'm a resident of Dallas, Texas. I have some

23 respiratory problems. That's not why I'm here. I

24 grew up in Pampa, Texas, oil and gas country. I

25 remember as a child not understanding why they were
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1 wasting the gas with those flares that I grew up

2 with. I still to this day wonder that question

3 because I understand now after 82 years there's

4 money to be had if they would capture the flaring.

5 It doesn't make sense to us citizens who are

6 ignorant of the technical aspects of it all.

7 You know, I speak to you only as a

8 citizen. I could testify for an hour about my

9 personal experiences especially as a full-time

10 RV'er for 15 and a half years traveling the United

11 States, watching things depreciate. Acid rain, do

12 you remember acid rain? The Glacier National Park.

13 Oh, you know, we could see things happening in

14 pollution -- all kinds of pollution, but now to

15 learn that methane -- I wrote to the Dallas News

16 and said, I'm embarrassed because I thought carbon

17 emissions was a big danger. Methane is, what, 86

18 times? I don't know technically. I'm no good at

19 this, but I know it's greatly more dangerous, and I

20 don't understand why the state of Texas can't do

21 something to protect its own citizens, but they

22 won't.

23 And they approved that with the House

24 Bill 40 that says we don't even have the right to

25 say whether we want a gas well in our city limits.
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1 We don't have that right anymore, so believe me, we

2 thank you. Oh, we bless you for coming to Dallas,

3 letting us hear from you. I hope you understand

4 that the EPA is our last line of defense and wish

5 you everything well, and we so appreciate you.

6 Thank you.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. And we

8 thank you for letting us hear from you today. Are

9 there any questions?

10 MR. MOORE: No, but I appreciate her

11 testimony.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Absolutely. Thank you.

13 Good morning.

14 MS. ALLEN: Good morning. As a

15 solutions provider with proven technology to help

16 reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas

17 sector, Rebellion Photonics stands today to help

18 provide comments on EPA's draft rules in order to

19 ensure it reflects the current state of methane

20 science and technology to address this issue.

21 We realize that oil and gas companies

22 emit 7 million tons of methane from their

23 operations every year. These emissions are

24 currently projected to increase 25 percent over the

25 next decade. Methane emissions are a significant
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1 climate and energy waste problem that's only going

2 to continue to grow. We believe there are ways the

3 draft rules could be improved and our technology

4 could help solve this problem. Gas cloud imaging

5 technology such as Rebellion's photonic camera is

6 available, it's cost-effective, and it's a proven

7 solution for detection and reduction of methane and

8 other VOCs of the installation of new equipment,

9 upgrades, and modified sources in the oil and gas

10 industry.

11 While we credit the EPA with their

12 initial proposal for leak detection inspections,

13 the step up and down provisions based on a number

14 of leaky components is based on faulty logic.

15 Studies have shown that leaks by nature are random

16 and thus make comprehensive and frequent

17 inspections critical. Emerging data shows that a

18 disproportionate share of fugitive emissions can

19 come from a relatively small percentage of leaks

20 and that these can appear almost anywhere at any

21 time.

22 More frequent intervals such as

23 monthly or quarterly inspections is what is needed

24 and can be just as cost effective. Stepping up the

25 frequency of inspections allows for better
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1 identification and fixing of leaks which will

2 greatly impact the overall reduction of methane.

3 Rebellion's GCI gas cloud imaging camera employs

4 advanced hyperspectral infrared imaging technology.

5 We engage in advanced detection algorithms and we

6 employ powerful data storage and transmittal

7 technology.

8 The GCI is different from other leak

9 detectors in the fact that the leak detection is

10 automated. It can be identified and quantified,

11 and we can monitor wide areas from a safe location.

12 With the ability to see the leak, operators can

13 pinpoint the leak and initiate repair on the spot.

14 The GCI also has the potential to catch leaks early

15 and help operators avoid walking into hazardous

16 situations.

17 We have seen in Colorado where some of

18 the state regulations are the strictest in the

19 country that significant reductions can be made in

20 a cost-effective manner. Our technology, which is

21 an approved instrument there in Colorado by the

22 Colorado Air Quality and Control Commission around

23 their Reg 7 STEM and LDAR program, is cost

24 effective at only $250 per site. This is

25 affordable even for some of the lower-producing
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1 wells. We believe that Colorado regulations could

2 be a model for the nation.

3 Customers there are complying with the

4 law, reducing emissions in a very cost-effective

5 manner. With some of our customers there, we see

6 that we can cover upwards of 25 sites per day, and

7 in one week we have looked at over 1,100 pieces of

8 equipment. Our camera allows for speedy, efficient

9 leak detection with the ability to scan sites

10 easily, and it enables companies to perform

11 inspections more often. It also supports our

12 customers' ability to prioritize those leaks and

13 those repairs and thus reduces the spent labor,

14 time, and the gas losses that we see in the

15 environment.

16 When putting all of these factors

17 together in dollars and cents, it pays for the

18 service operation of the camera itself. Well site

19 inspections in Colorado have also offered us

20 numerous examples of the importance of more

21 frequent LDAR inspections. We have seen with

22 something as simple as a speed patch that you may

23 look at it today and it may have a dirty seal

24 that's leaking, but you could have looked at it

25 yesterday or a month ago and you wouldn't have seen
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1 that very same seal.

2 A seal that can be leaking now is,

3 again, that random act of nature, so inspecting a

4 piece of equipment appears to be something where

5 you need it on a more increased basis versus a

6 stepdown biannual basis. The importance of

7 follow-up surveys after repair is just as critical

8 to ensure correct maintenance and correct repair of

9 the equipment and to also ensure that one leaky

10 component didn't create another hazard.

11 Again, this is where Colorado has led

12 the nation in their approach to regulations. They

13 have their companies keep logs of their

14 inspections, their leaks, their first, second, or

15 third attempt at repair, and then finally

16 inspection of that fixed equipment.

17 Rebellion has created a turnkey

18 approach to this for our customers. We create a

19 web portal for every one of our customers as part

20 of that $250 per site. We store all of their well

21 inspection videos, and we also will then store all

22 of their maintenance logs. In the end, we are

23 finding the forward charge of the EPA and the

24 thought of potentially stricter methane emissions

25 have companies taking note and beginning to
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1 implement actions with their sites by utilizing our

2 proven technology and others in an attempt to

3 capture fugitive emissions and reduce lost product.

4 In the end, lower emissions are good

5 for companies, the industry as a whole, the people

6 of this world, and the environment of all. Thank

7 you.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Just two

9 things from me.

10 MS. ALLEN: Sure.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Would you remind me,

12 who are you representing, and also, could you state

13 and spell your name for the court reporter?

14 MS. ALLEN: Sure. It's Amy Allen,

15 A-l-l-e-n, and it's Rebellion Photonics.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

17 MR. MOORE: You had mentioned earlier

18 in your testimony your statement that your

19 technology can also quantify the leaks?

20 MS. ALLEN: It can.

21 MR. MOORE: Do you plan to provide

22 information regarding that in your public comments?

23 MS. ALLEN: I can, if needed to, yes.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much.

25 MS. ALLEN: Thank you very much.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. At this time,

2 I'd like to invite Kim Limberg and Darin Schroeder

3 to please come forward. Kim Limberg? Okay.

4 Mr. Schroeder, please. Good morning.

5 MR. SCHROEDER: Good morning. Almost

6 afternoon.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Almost.

8 MR. SCHROEDER: My name's Darin

9 Schroeder. That's D-a-r-i-n, S-c-h-r-o-e-d-e-r,

10 and I'm an attorney at Clean Air Task Force, and on

11 behalf of Clean Air Task Force, I would like to

12 congratulate and thank the EPA and everybody

13 involved on taking the incredibly important step to

14 reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas

15 including many sources that are not covered by the

16 2012 NSPS. Stationary sources within the oil and

17 gas sector are the leading -- leading industrial

18 emitters of anthropogenic methane, a powerful

19 greenhouse gas that, according to the most recent

20 report from the IPCC, on a pound-for-pound basis,

21 impacts the climate 36 times more than carbon

22 dioxide, and the impacts are even larger in the

23 short-term, 87 times more powerful over a 20-year

24 time frame.

25 Not only will the proposed standards
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1 reduce methane emissions, they will also reduce

2 smog-forming pollution and toxic air pollutants

3 like benzene and hexane limiting the public's

4 exposure to these dangerous pollutants.

5 The Agency's proposal represents the

6 first direct and enforceable regulation of methane

7 and, indeed, of greenhouse gases from the oil and

8 gas sector. This is important and commendable and

9 is an absolutely critical first step toward

10 achieving President Obama's goal of reducing

11 methane emissions from this industry to 40 to

12 45 percent below the 2012 levels by the year 2025.

13 I intend to raise three issues,

14 although there's much more I could say and that we

15 will say in detailed written comments preferably on

16 November 17th.

17 First, the scope of the rule must be

18 expanded to include additional important emission

19 sources that were not included in the proposal.

20 Second, the EPA must change the leak detection and

21 repair requirements, and sometimes we'll call that

22 LDAR, to require fixed inspections at frequent

23 intervals as opposed to the proposal's -- the

24 proposal's preferred variable frequency. And

25 third, while this is an important first step, the
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1 Agency must quickly follow it up by taking action

2 under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act to

3 address methane emissions from existing sources in

4 the sector.

5 The first point, EPA must expand the

6 methane standards to apply to methane emissions

7 from liquids unloading operations, intermittent or

8 snap -- snap-acting pneumatic controllers,

9 compressors at well sites, and storage vessels.

10 None of these coverage -- these sources are

11 currently covered -- are currently covered by the

12 current methane proposal, and only storage vessels

13 have standards imposed on them under the 2012 VOC

14 rule.

15 In order to ensure the most protection

16 to the public from the industry's air emissions,

17 EPA should expand the methane proposal to address

18 emissions from each of those sources.

19 Second, EPA's preferred work practice

20 standard for fugitive emissions from well sites and

21 compressor stations does not go far enough. EPA

22 states in its proposal that it believes a facility

23 with proper operation would likely find one to

24 three percent of components to have fugitive

25 emissions. Following this line of reasoning, EPA's
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1 proposal will allow an owner/operator that finds

2 less than one percent of a facility's equipment to

3 be leaking to decrease the frequency of their LDAR

4 inspections to annually for as long as the

5 proportion of equipment leaking at the facility

6 remains below one percent.

7 Under the Clean Air Act, EPA's work

8 practice standards must reflect the best

9 technical -- technological system of continuous

10 emission reduction. EPA's proposed standard for

11 fugitive emissions does not rise to this level.

12 Besides incentivizing an owner/operator to not

13 discover leaks, the Agency's preferred work

14 practice standard assumes that there is a

15 relationship between the percentage of pieces of

16 leaking equipment and the actual emissions from the

17 facility.

18 However, data from the City of Fort

19 Worth Natural Gas Air Quality study and the

20 University of Texas study show that the magnitude

21 of emissions from facilities can be largely

22 independent of the percentage of leaking equipment.

23 The total fugitive emissions are not tied to the

24 number of pieces of leaking equipment and thus the

25 variable frequency that would be required by the
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1 proposal does not constitute the best technological

2 system of continuous emission reduction as required

3 by section 111(h).

4 Indeed, the best system to reduce

5 emissions from fugitive -- excuse me. The best

6 system to reduce emissions from fugitive emissions

7 is to implement a fixed quarterly inspection

8 frequency at a minimum.

9 And third and finally, methane New

10 Source Performance Standards trigger mandatory --

11 mandatory duty for EPA to regulate emissions of

12 that pollutant from existing sources within the oil

13 and gas sector. EPA must now begin work on

14 establishing emission guidelines for existing

15 sources within the sector for every non-HAP

16 pollutant for which no NAAQS is promulgated.

17 Because methane is not a HAP and no NAAQS have been

18 issued for methane, EPA must issue guidelines under

19 section 111(d) for this pollutant if and when the

20 New Source Performance Standards are finalized.

21 In order to meet the Administration's

22 goals for reducing methane pollution from this

23 sector, EPA will need to act diligently to address

24 emissions from existing sources with enforceable

25 standards. Others today have mentioned the recent
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1 report by ICF International has found that

2 90 percent of the industry's emissions in 2018 will

3 result from sources that existed in 2011. This is

4 significant because it means that 90 percent of the

5 emissions come from sources that are not subject to

6 regulation by either the 2012 VOC-based NSPS or the

7 Agency's methane proposal. EPA must quickly issue

8 emission guidelines addressing methane emissions

9 from the oil and gas sector under 111(d).

10 Thank you for the opportunity to

11 comment today. You've take a much-needed step

12 forward in deciding to directly regulate methane

13 from the oil and gas sector. These issues and

14 others which my limited time here today won't allow

15 me to cover will be discussed in written detailed

16 comments that we submit to the Agency. Thank you.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you,

18 Mr. Schroeder. Before you go, are there any

19 questions?

20 MR. MOORE: Yes. I have one brief

21 one, yes. You had mentioned that well site

22 compressors should be covered?

23 MR. SCHROEDER: Yes.

24 MR. MOORE: Do you have further

25 information you can provide in your comments that
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1 would indicate that those compressors (inaudible)

2 than what we previously believed?

3 MR. SCHROEDER: Yeah, I do. I don't

4 have the information in front of me right now, but

5 I anticipate being able to submit that later on

6 down the road. Thank you.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

8 testimony.

9 I'd like to invite, if she's here, Kim

10 Limberg. Okay. Very good. Good morning.

11 MS. LIMBERG: Good morning.

12 MR. THOMPSON: I was going to say,

13 could you state and spell your name for the court

14 reporter, and then proceed with your testimony.

15 MS. LIMBERG: Yes. Kim Limberg,

16 K-i-m, L-i-m-b-e-r-g. Okay. I live in Irving,

17 Texas. I think this movement to -- to have more

18 strict regulations on methane emissions is critical

19 for our clean air. As a mom, I think it's critical

20 for the future of future generations. I recently

21 found a report in the -- on the oil and gas field

22 operations violations enhancement. There's a chart

23 at the Texas Railroad Commission oil and gas field

24 operations data which stated that since January of

25 this year, out of 104,108 inspections, 46 percent
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1 were found in violation. This is oil and gas

2 enforcement data, and I can give you a copy of that

3 after I'm done. This percentage has held steady

4 since 2012, roughly half of all their inspections

5 show a violation on oil and gas field operations.

6 In the Environmental Science &

7 Technology study, we found it's titled, "Methane

8 Emissions for the Natural Gas Transmission and

9 Storage System in the United States," the largest

10 emission sources were found to be fugitive

11 emissions from compressor-related equipment and,

12 quote, super emission facilities. The study

13 estimates that there are 250 percent times the

14 typical transmission storage emissions that are

15 required to be reported to the EPA, so the gap in

16 the estimates is equal to a gap in the required

17 reporting. So I think we need to have them report

18 everything, not just the transmission and storage

19 time.

20 Then I want to give you an example of

21 flaring, which I witnessed on my way to a funeral

22 in Houston somewhere between Madisonville and

23 Huntsville down I-45 on the southbound side close

24 to the freeway. It was visible, a dramatic flaring

25 of a gas wellhead. And it was continuously flaring
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1 on my drive down. Of course, I didn't stay and

2 watch the whole time. Then on my return from the

3 funeral, it was still flaring the next day; so I

4 don't know how long these kinds of things are

5 allowed to go on.

6 But about three years ago, we took a

7 family trip to Corpus, and I wanted to visually see

8 if there's a place in Texas where the air was

9 cleaner. So Texas is pretty flat, so you can see

10 the horizon well and you can see the brown haze in

11 the ozone layer. I watched the skyline all the way

12 from Dallas to Corpus, and it never stopped being

13 brown; so you can see it's -- it's something I

14 think that we really need to pay attention to. And

15 hearing the studies say that methane is 86 times or

16 87 times more potent over a 20-year period in

17 reacting and creating ozone, I don't think we can

18 wait to be as stringent as we can in creating

19 regulations to reduce and stop that.

20 And another point is, the Texas

21 Railroad Commission seems to allow a lot of reports

22 to go directly from industry to them. And when I

23 was -- when I found this data that said they had

24 found -- in 104,000 inspections they found these

25 violations, I don't know what percent of the entire
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1 industry that is. I don't know how many

2 investigations that requires, so I'm interested in

3 the EPA finding out do they look at two percent of

4 these kind of inspections over a certain period of

5 time, or do they look at 80 percent? I think the

6 EPA should know. That's something that maybe Texas

7 should be reporting to the federal level.

8 And I would like to see the Texas

9 Commission on Environmental Quality take more of a

10 hands-on control over all of our environmental

11 concerns. I don't think that some of our things

12 should be in a different agency like the Texas

13 Railroad Commission that issues the permits. There

14 should be a separation between who is watching the

15 pollution and regulation controls and who is

16 divvying out permits.

17 So one of the greatest concerns I have

18 is our water, so everyone knows that in 2011, we

19 had Fukushima, and a lot of that radioactivity

20 entered the Pacific Ocean and started hitting the

21 California coast in 2013 and in large quantities.

22 It contaminated our fish population, salmon, cod,

23 all sorts of fish, and Canada said that it reported

24 a tremendous contamination of fish. Then we had

25 the rain, so when the atmospheric cycle starts
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1 taking in ocean water and it starts raining and

2 traveling eastwards with the current, then that

3 rain is hitting in Arkansas and Texas and I think

4 we may have had some of that.

5 Some reports from Arkansas, increased

6 radiation, rainfall, and I think one way you can

7 tell just from a laymen's standpoint, if you're an

8 organic gardener, all of a sudden your produce is

9 giant sized because radiation tends to multiply

10 cells very fast. You, might want to get a Geiger

11 counter to see if that produce is radioactive.

12 MR. THOMPSON: I don't mean to cut you

13 off, but your final notes, please. There's a timer

14 right in front of you on your monitor, so your

15 final thoughts in 30 seconds.

16 MS. LIMBERG: Oh, okay. 30 seconds?

17 Okay. So if the surface water is contaminated,

18 lakes, rivers, and stuff with the radioactive rain,

19 we must protect the groundwater even more so, and

20 the hydraulic fracturing impacts that dramatically

21 if there are any kind of breaks and so forth in our

22 fracturing, so please take control back from the

23 Texas Commission of Environmental Quality and the

24 Texas Railroad Commission. Thank you.

25 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your
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1 testimony. Before you go, there was a question

2 here from the panel.

3 MR. MOORE: I have one question. You

4 had mentioned that there were some inspections that

5 were done. Of the inspections, 46 percent yielded

6 a violation? Can you clarify for me? I didn't get

7 it down when you were going through it. Who was

8 doing the inspections? Was it the Railroad

9 Commission or TECQ?

10 MS. LIMBERG: Okay.

11 MR. MOORE: What regulations were

12 violated?

13 MS. LIMBERG: Okay. I will give it to

14 you. It's the report on oil and gas field

15 operations violations and enforcement found on the

16 Texas Railroad Commission's website. Chart one,

17 oil and gas field operations data, and I have it

18 right here, and then they break down what kind of

19 violations those are in the next three pages, so

20 I'll hand that over to you.

21 MR. MOORE: That will be fine. Turn

22 it in to the registration table.

23 MS. LIMBERG: Okay.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

25 testimony, Ms. Limberg. Okay. At this time, I'd
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1 like to invite Sherrell Blazer to please come

2 forward for testimony.

3 MS. BLAZER: Hi. Hello. My name is

4 Sherrell Blazer. I'm here with Sierra Club Beyond

5 Coal Campaign. I'm the organizer in Dallas, and I

6 really want to thank you all for being here to take

7 public comments today. See, there's so many --

8 there's so many different ways that we can

9 appreciate these new rules, and I'm really hoping

10 that they're going to be as stringent as possible,

11 as protective as possible of public health and of

12 the environment not only because of greenhouse

13 gases and how they're impacting cities, especially

14 urban areas.

15 I work with communities in Dallas, and

16 especially children. There are 90,000 uninsured

17 children in Dallas who have asthma, and there are

18 citizen groups that work with them that will

19 volunteer with them, that try to help them to

20 control their health and try to keep them as

21 healthy as possible.

22 But when you look at something like

23 the Cook County, you know, Hospital, when you look

24 at that study, you know, those -- all of those

25 90,000 children without healthcare translates into
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1 statistics that we see about children who go into

2 the hospital and don't check out, right? I think

3 the statistic is one in six black boys check in for

4 asthma and pass away due to uncontrolled asthma.

5 Those are real statistics. Those are real

6 children. Those are real families that have to

7 take care of them. The burden on the families in

8 Dallas is enormous.

9 I happen to know that many people here

10 know my personal story, but my family has also been

11 impacted by air quality in Dallas, by pollution in

12 Dallas, by respiratory illness in Dallas. Well,

13 actually out of Mansfield. We were living out of

14 Mansfield and near a lot of gas drilling, near a

15 lot of the same kind of pollution that would be

16 controlled with these new rules. And I was eight

17 months pregnant. My husband went into an asthmatic

18 coma. He had an asthma attack and went into a

19 coma.

20 The stress of the situation made me go

21 into premature labor, and I've always worked in air

22 quality; so I had seen all of these statistics

23 about, you know, so many lives saved by these

24 rules, so many days off of work missed, so many

25 days from school missed. You know, but being in
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1 that position of feeling like I could lose my

2 husband and my child at the same time, it's a very

3 powerless feeling thinking that you're doing

4 everything you can to protect your family and

5 realizing that it's actually out of your hands,

6 right?

7 If the politicians don't get it right,

8 if the EPA doesn't get it right, if the regulators

9 don't get it right, no matter what you do, no

10 matter how hard I work at my job to try to convince

11 the people to have the best policies as possible,

12 no matter how much we go out and talk about the

13 dangers of air pollution and what you can do to

14 protect yourself, no matter whether I'm watching,

15 you know, the television to figure out is it an

16 orange day or is it, you know, a red day or, you

17 know, what kind of a day is it, is it safe to be

18 outside and breathe today, you know, if I'm buying

19 organic, if I'm filtering my water, if I'm sending

20 my children outside the city to the best schools,

21 you know, what does it matter if we don't get these

22 policies right? It doesn't.

23 Women like me, men like my husband,

24 will be in the hospital fighting for their lives,

25 and I say it all the time that the world is not a
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1 magical place for a child who is fighting just to

2 be in it. We need to not rip their childhoods away

3 from them. We need to be protective of children

4 and of families. We need to be protective of all

5 of the citizens who live here and pay their taxes

6 to be here and are doing the best they can from

7 where they are.

8 And if people don't know the real

9 dangers of air pollution and if uncontrolled

10 methane releases and all of the co-pollutants that

11 go with that, that's okay because they don't have

12 to be experts. Y'all are the experts, right? This

13 is why you're here is to protect us, and I just

14 really hope and pray that these rules are the most

15 protective they can be because it can be life and

16 death every day actually for some people.

17 Actually, it is. Thank you very much.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Thank you

19 for your testimony. Are there any questions?

20 (No response.)

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again for

22 being here today. Okay. At this time, I'd like to

23 ask Leslie Harris to please come forward, and I can

24 officially say good afternoon.

25 MS. HARRIS: Good afternoon. I'm
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1 Leslie Harris. I live in Flower Mound, and I can

2 see from the people in the room that you guys have

3 heard all of the statistics and technical things

4 that, you know, way more than I can provide, but I

5 just wanted to talk about things from a personal

6 level. Ever since I moved to Flower Mound, I've --

7 well, you know, Flower Mound is one of the cities

8 that was first -- one of the first cities in which

9 drilling started, and I have had constant sinus

10 infections. I've had bronchitis a couple of times,

11 pneumonia.

12 I have a friend whose family was

13 having so many health problems, and she noticed the

14 fracking rigs around her, and she went to the TECQ;

15 and they tested her home and found that the air was

16 46 times -- had 46 times more pollutants in it than

17 the average urban air. She subsequently went and

18 she and her daughter had their blood tested, and

19 they found such disturbing levels of fracking

20 chemicals in their blood that they actually moved

21 right out of Flower Mound and later, I think, out

22 of the state.

23 I was in a gathering in Flower Mound

24 where a woman came up to me and introduced herself

25 by saying, hi, I'm one of the cancer moms. And I
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1 hadn't heard that expression before, so I asked her

2 what that meant. And she said, well, there's about

3 ten women who meet at the elementary school where

4 my kids go, and they're all under the age of 40;

5 and they all have breast cancer, and, you know, it

6 turns out that right next to that school was one of

7 the first fracking setups that was done in Flower

8 Mound. They all were, I think almost all of them,

9 were under 40, so they all found the breast cancer

10 from self-examination or doctor's examinations.

11 Not mammograms because they're really too young to

12 have mammograms every year.

13 You know, I'm really worried about

14 what these chemicals are doing to the planet. We

15 can't deny it anymore. There is global warming and

16 methane and all of these other chemicals are

17 helping cause it, and it's -- it's an emergency, so

18 I'm so thankful that you are here and you are going

19 to put in these new rules which I hope will be as

20 stringent and as helpful to people's health and

21 welfare and I hope that you will -- it sounds like

22 a cliche, but this is the time to put people over

23 profits, and I'm here for my kids who live in

24 Dallas.

25 I have considered moving, but my
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1 children live here. They have businesses and jobs

2 here, and I think we need to stay and fight. We

3 need to fight for our planet and our -- our air and

4 our water, so thank you very much. I hope -- I

5 want -- I want a clean and safe environment for not

6 just my kids but your kids and grandkids. Thank

7 you.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Harris.

9 Before you go, are there any questions from the

10 panel?

11 MR. MOORE: I have one quick one. You

12 mentioned the school where the ladies were. Do you

13 know how close to any of the wells or other oil and

14 gas facilities were to that school?

15 MS. HARRIS: I do not know. I do not

16 know the exact. I know they were close, and there

17 are maps. If you Google it, they are maps of where

18 the clusters were, and my friend who moved lived

19 about a mile from one.

20 MR. MOORE: What's the name of that

21 school.

22 MS. HARRIS: Liberty Elementary

23 School, I believe. Thank you.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for being

25 here today, Mrs. Harris.
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1 Okay. At this time, we're going to

2 break for lunch. We'll reconvene back in this room

3 promptly at 1:00 p.m. Thanks, everyone.

4 (Break was had from 12:04 p.m. to

5 1:06 p.m.)

6 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Folks, we're

7 going to get started. So good afternoon. My name

8 is Fred Thompson, and I'm the chair for today's

9 public hearing. Thank you for coming today.

10 Joining me on the panel are, to my right, Bruce

11 Moore with the EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning

12 and Standards, and to my left, Rob Lawrence with

13 EPA Region 6.

14 We're here today to get your comments

15 on EPA's proposed rules relating to the oil and

16 natural gas sector. The specific rules are, No. 1,

17 Oil and Natural Gas Sector Emission Standards for

18 New and Modified Sources; No. 2, Source

19 Determination for Certain Emission Units in the Oil

20 and Natural Gas Sector; and No. 3, Review of New

21 Sources and Modifications in Indian Country,

22 Federal Implementation Plan for Managing Air

23 Emissions from True Minor Sources Engaged in Oil

24 and Natural Gas Production in Indian Country.

25 EPA's administrator signed the
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1 proposed rules on August 18, 2015. The proposed

2 New Source Performance Standards would establish

3 methane and VOC standards for hydraulically

4 fractured wells and require owners and operators to

5 find and repair leaks. The proposed rule also

6 would extend emission reduction requirements

7 further downstream covering equipment in the

8 natural gas transmission and storage segments of

9 the industry that was not regulated in the Agency's

10 2012 rules.

11 The proposed Source Determination Rule

12 clarifies the EPA's air permitting rules as they

13 apply to the oil and natural gas industry. We also

14 are taking comments on the proposed federal

15 implementation plan to implement the Federal Minor

16 New Source Review Program in Indian Country for oil

17 and natural gas production. The plan, known as a

18 FIP, would be used instead of site-specific minor

19 New Source Review, preconstruction permits in

20 Indian country. It would incorporate emission

21 limits and other requirements from six EPA emission

22 standards including the 2015 proposed updates to

23 the New Source Performance Standards on which we

24 are taking comment today. If you would like more

25 details on the proposed rules, there are fact
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1 sheets available at the registration desk.

2 Before we get started, I'd like to go

3 through a few housekeeping items and ground rules

4 that will help make today's hearing run smoothly.

5 First, be sure you have checked in at the

6 registration desk even if you are not planning to

7 speak today, and if you signed up to speak online

8 or by phone but haven't told us that you're here,

9 please step out to the registration desk, which is

10 to my left here, and let the EPA staff know that

11 you've arrived.

12 I will call the speakers up in pairs.

13 When your name is called, please come to the podium

14 and -- at the front of the room, right in front of

15 me here. When I call you up to speak, please state

16 your name and spell it for the court reporter.

17 Your comments will be transcribed and included in

18 the record of comments on the proposed rule. It is

19 important that you tell us which rule or rules you

20 are speaking about. Each speaker will have five

21 minutes to give comments. When you're finished

22 speaking, please remain at the podium until the

23 person next to you has completed his or her

24 testimony. In fact, you can just take a seat on

25 the front row until the person -- the second person
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1 has completed his or her testimony.

2 We're here today to listen to you,

3 however, a panel member may ask questions to

4 clarify your comments. I will then call up the

5 next pair of speakers and so on. If you've brought

6 a written copy of your testimony, please give that

7 to the staff at the registration desk before you

8 leave today. We will put any written comments

9 submitted today in the official docket for the

10 proposed rule. We also have comment cards

11 available at the registration desk if you would

12 like to submit additional written comments. If you

13 want to comment in writing later, stop by the

14 materials table -- table near the registration desk

15 and pick up a copy of the instructions for

16 submitting written comments. Comments must be

17 received by November 17, 2015. Again, comments

18 must be received by November 17, 2015.

19 Let me assure you that EPA gives just

20 as much consideration to comments we receive in

21 writing as we do to comments received at public

22 hearings like this one. So if you have more

23 comments that you would like to provide the EPA,

24 please submit them by the comment period deadline.

25 Your comments will be reviewed. If you have any
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1 questions during the day, please see the staff at

2 the registration desk and somebody will assist you.

3 Thank you again for taking the time today to share

4 your comments on the EPA's proposal.

5 With that, let's get started, and at

6 this time, I'd like to invite Tamara Bounds. I

7 think that's B-o-u-n-d-s, and Paul Wehnert,

8 W-e-h-n-e-r-t, to come up for testimony. Bounds.

9 AUDIENCE MEMBER: She is in the press

10 conference. He went to get her.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Mr. Wehnert,

12 please come forward. We'll let her follow you.

13 MR. WEHNERT: Good afternoon,

14 everyone.

15 MR. THOMPSON: Good afternoon. How

16 are you today?

17 MR. WEHNERT: Good. I hope you're

18 doing well. My name is Paul Wehnert,

19 W-e-h-n-e-r-t, and I'm employed by Heath

20 Consultants, Incorporated, of Houston, Texas. A

21 little background on Heath Consultants. I

22 currently serve as the senior vice president of

23 Heath Consultants, been there 35 years. Heath

24 Consultants is actually one of the largest leak

25 detection service providers and equipment leak
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1 detection equipment manufacturers in North America,

2 and what I wanted to talk about is some of it, and

3 we've been heavily involved in this business since

4 1933, so we've been doing leak detections back in

5 1933, back in the old manufactured gas days, if you

6 can believe that, back with vegetation where you

7 went out and looked for vegetation signs.

8 We've come a long way to where we are

9 today, and there's been all sorts of technology and

10 will continue to be a lot of technology. We are

11 working today with different organizations like

12 PRCI, like GTI, like Nisearch, DOE, developing leak

13 detection technologies to help operators and

14 regulators reach that happy medium, what's best for

15 industry from a regulatory standpoint and what's

16 best for industry as a whole and what's best for

17 the public as a whole. And we kind of ride that

18 fence as an organization because we work with

19 regulators, we work with industry, we works with

20 trade associations to try to keep that happy

21 balance of what is best to make the world go round.

22 And so what I want to talk about is

23 some of the regulations currently, and there's a

24 lot of discussion on the OGI, the optical gas

25 imaging camera. There was a gentleman earlier with
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1 FLIR. We also have an optimal gas imaging camera.

2 There are several other ones that are out there on

3 the market, as well.

4 It is a valuable tool, however, it's

5 not the only tool. There are a number of tools out

6 there, and I just call it a tool in the toolbox.

7 There's different applications depending on what

8 type of facility you're inspecting, aboveground

9 facilities, below-ground piping. There's a number

10 of different things, so there's various tools. To

11 try to fit one tool -- to say that one tool is the

12 answer to everything I think is a mistake.

13 Some of it goes back to the Method 21

14 technology and, yes, there are Method 21 leak

15 detection technologies. That rule was generated,

16 you know, several years ago; and even since that

17 rule came out, there's a number of different

18 technologies, laser-based, optical-based, that were

19 never developed during Method 21 days, and so what

20 I -- what I hope is in the regulations, and I'll

21 provide this written, as well, proposing some of

22 the other technologies that are cost, price -- you

23 know, some gentlemen talked about the cost, that

24 it's going to cost some of smaller operators and

25 stuff.
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1 There's tools that can go down to

2 several thousand dollars on up to $100,000 and

3 everywhere in between. There's vehicle-mounted

4 applications. There was a girl that spoke from

5 Rebellion about a fixed system. There's aerial

6 systems. We're working on drone-based systems

7 right now, so I hate to see the regulation come out

8 prescriptive to just the OGI camera because I

9 think -- I think that's a big mistake. There are

10 scenarios even with an OGI camera, depending on

11 ambient temperatures, gas temperatures, and things

12 of that sort where it can actually not see a leak,

13 so I just would hope that some of these other

14 considerations are taken of different technologies.

15 Now, when I write with the

16 submissions, I'll kind of describe some of the

17 other technological advances that are out there

18 being worked. We work a lot with DOT, SIMNSA, and

19 some other regulatory environments, not in the mid20 and upstream like we're talking about here, but

21 more on the downstream and LDC gas operations, and

22 there's different technologies in that marketplace,

23 too. We also develop -- you know, there's a lot of

24 talk now with, you know, determining the

25 quantification of the leaks, as well.
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1 There's a lot of tools that are out

2 there that can do that as well as other devices

3 which we work with like the high-flow sampler and

4 other things there. But I'll run down the

5 different technologies that are out there and the

6 other platforms and I would hope you would consider

7 some of these instead of just kind of being

8 prescriptive to one -- one technology out there.

9 Thank you.

10 MR. THOMPSON: And thank you for your

11 testimony. Are there any questions?

12 MR. MOORE: One thing I'd like to ask

13 you, when you use the term optical gas imaging, are

14 there a variety of technologies that you would

15 consider to fit those three words?

16 MR. WEHNERT: Yes. In fact, a while

17 back, some of the -- before Quad O and some of the

18 subpart W types, the EPA actually came out with

19 some language they called the optical illuminating

20 device, which is not an optical gas imaging camera.

21 It's really the wrong nomenclature for it, but

22 there are laser-based technologies out there today.

23 We manufacture a number of laser-based technologies

24 that are about a fifth of the cost of an -- of an

25 optical gas imaging camera, and there are literally
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1 thousands of them used around the world every day

2 performing leak detection surveys.

3 And so the language, the way it's

4 written now, it's not a Method 21 tool and it's not

5 an optical gas imaging camera; therefore, that

6 particular tool can't -- right now doesn't meet the

7 regulations to be used, yet they're out there every

8 day finding thousands of leaks out there in a day

9 at a cost of about a fifth of what an optical gas

10 imaging camera is.

11 And I'm not shooting down an OGI

12 camera. We actually have one ourselves that I

13 mentioned earlier. There's applications for that,

14 but it's not an application for everything. It

15 really depends on the facility -- the type of

16 facility, the type of leaks you're looking at, and

17 so forth.

18 MR. MOORE: Thank you.

19 MR. THOMPSON: Additional questions?

20 (No response.)

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

22 testimony. Okay. Mrs. Bounds? Is she back in the

23 room?

24 (No response.)

25 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. At this time,
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1 I'd like for Tricia Cortez to please come forward

2 for your testimony.

3 Good afternoon, Ms. Cortez.

4 MS. CORTEZ: Good afternoon. My name

5 is Tricia Cortez. That's T-r-i-c-i-a, Cortez. I'm

6 executive director with the Rio Grande

7 International Study Center. So many kudos and

8 applause to the EPA for taking this first step in

9 addressing the methane problem which is affecting

10 my community and the greater part of the world.

11 The rules you are proposing, however, don't go far

12 enough. We ask that you add existing oil and gas

13 infrastructure into your plans. I come from deep

14 South Texas, the border city of Laredo, and I'm

15 representing an environmental nonprofit, the Rio

16 Grande International Study Center or RGISC.

17 This is spring, our Texas state

18 leaders passed House Bill 40 which strips away

19 fundamental powers from cities to regulate oil and

20 gas activity, so I'm also here to speak on behalf

21 of the hundreds of thousands of people in our

22 region who aren't informed or knowledgeable about

23 the hazards caused by methane pollution and who

24 can't be here today.

25 RGISC was chartered in Texas in 1994.
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1 It was founded by biologists and concerned citizens

2 on both sides of the river to protect and preserve

3 Laredo's only source of drinking water, the

4 Rio Grande, and its environment. When the Eagle

5 Ford Shale came onto scene, we helped form the safe

6 fracking coalition in 2011. We wanted to better

7 understand lessons learned from other communities

8 and figure out how to minimize the health and

9 environmental risks that come with this new type of

10 drilling.

11 Horizontal drilling and hydraulic

12 fracturing have just now entered our city limits,

13 and I'm trying to protect my community and keep

14 drilling at bay or at least a safe distance from

15 families, but we really need your help to ensure

16 that the strictest methane rules are in place to

17 protect our people.

18 We all know methane is a powerful

19 greenhouse gas and a dangerous player in the

20 climate change of today. Climate change affects us

21 all. We have received warnings about how our

22 planet is marching toward a two degree celsius

23 increase, a danger point for our planet according

24 to the Copenhagen Accord. Because of our heavy

25 dependence on the fossil fuel economy, scientists
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1 now say that we are on track for an average global

2 temperature rise of four degrees celsius, a point

3 that's not sustainable for our planet in the

4 earth's biodiversity.

5 A world bank report has noted it's not

6 clear that adaptation to a four degree celsius

7 world is possible. That's frightening. So change

8 is never easy, but we must do something now and

9 that moment is now, right here, in this room.

10 Climate change is and will be the most critical,

11 yet hard to pin down and control, environmental

12 problem of our time.

13 We in Texas are a part of this

14 problem. We account for 30 percent of all oil and

15 gas production in the United States, which means

16 that much of the 7 million tons of methane

17 pollution that is vented, flared, leaked, and

18 otherwise wasted from oil and gas operations occur

19 right here in Texas, but the flip side of that coin

20 is that we can also be a part of the solution, but

21 we do need a fearless EPA with stronger rules to

22 lead the way, and the people are with you. Do it.

23 In my neck of the woods, the Eagle

24 Ford Shale has exploded in a short period of time.

25 In 2009, it had 107 producing oil and gas wells.
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1 As of September 1, that number is now 14,565 wells.

2 If we in the U.S. are serious about meeting our

3 greenhouse gas reduction commitments, all of these

4 facilities must be included, addressed, and

5 regulated in the new rules. This is a no-brainer.

6 Force the oil and gas industry to stop the release

7 and leakage of unwanted methane into our

8 atmosphere.

9 Industry says these rules are too

10 burdensome to bear, that it will cost some

11 $420 million over the next two years, but that's --

12 next ten years, but that's small change for these

13 companies. Some of the larger players in the Eagle

14 Ford Shale make that amount of money per year in a

15 single day of sales. For example, Apache sold

16 assets in Australia in April for a cool

17 2.1 billion. In December 2014, EOG made a joint

18 sale of assets in Canada raising 410 million for

19 the company in one fell swoop. And this summer,

20 S.M. Energy sold gas-producing assets in Oklahoma

21 for a cool $270 million, and now these guys are

22 coming to Laredo.

23 What's going to happen to our families

24 when they start expanding into our neighborhoods

25 like a hungry Pacman and won't be held accountable
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1 for their pollution? What an injustice. It's an

2 outrage. Rules like this are the only way to fix

3 the problem. It's the only way to reduce VOCs and

4 other smog-forming pollutants and benzene and other

5 carcinogens and things we don't want in the

6 precious air that we breathe.

7 Our state regulators and elected

8 officials are part of the problem. Intimidated --

9 intimidated by and in the pocket of industry, they

10 have specifically refused to regulate methane and

11 instead are granting thousands of permits each year

12 to allow flaring, and this must stop. Please

13 include all new and existing facilities into your

14 rules. Let's move toward a low-carbon economy now

15 and begin to decouple these emissions now.

16 I want my one-year-old daughter,

17 Marley, to grow up in a healthy environment that is

18 free from methane, and I want her to grow up in a

19 century where climate change was curbed because we

20 had the guts to address these types of

21 environmental problems now. Thank you so much.

22 (Applause was heard.)

23 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Ms. Cortez.

24 Are there any questions?

25 MR. MOORE: No, thank you.
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1 MS. CORTEZ: Thank you very much.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Tamara Bounds?

3 Is she in the room?

4 MS. BOUNDS: Yes, I am. Good

5 afternoon, my name is Tamara Bounds, and I live in

6 Mansfield, Texas. I am president of the homeowners

7 association, cofounder of Mansfield Gas Well

8 Awareness, and I live in a gas patch. In case you

9 can't tell, I'm native Texan. Today is my

10 granddaughter's birthday. She has asthma and lives

11 close to a gas well site with 39 permitted wells.

12 She is ten years old today and hopes to be a

13 veterinarian when she grows up, so I come before

14 you today on her behalf and the other affected

15 Texans to say we support you and EPA's first step

16 to reduce methane pollution, and it's about time.

17 Mansfield has had enough of fracking

18 and methane leaks. We have 206 active gas wells

19 within 35 miles and another 306 on the way. Homes

20 are right next to these sites, and on my

21 PowerPoint, you'll see all of that. Our complaints

22 made to operators, TECQ, Texas Railroad Commission,

23 about the air pollution about these sites goes days

24 and weeks before they're addressed, if at all.

25 Most TECQ investigators are poorly trained and
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1 don't know what to look for. Once I helped turn on

2 the FLIR camera to show them what they needed to be

3 looking for.

4 Even if some methane leaks are

5 resolved, some unmanned sites still spew methane

6 for more than five hours next to schools and homes

7 due to faulty leak detection systems and

8 ineffective equipment. With at least four

9 documented flare episodes of emissions coming off

10 of leaking valves, pipes, tanks, compressors,

11 reports still come back without a violation.

12 Repairs and modifications never happen.

13 We have found that the third and

14 fourth generation gas companies are running

15 operations at a bare minimum within our city. They

16 do so without maintenance logs. They use faulty

17 valve equipment, gaskets needing replacement, and

18 no emergency shutdown in place. One site next to

19 my home has just spent over a half a million

20 dollars at the compressor site on remediation of

21 poor, disrepaired, and faulty equipment at the

22 operating site. This took our citizens three years

23 of consistent conversations with them and pressure

24 to do this at what cost and whose responsibility.

25 Our regulators and legislative
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1 leadership are not adequately regulating oil and

2 gas pollution and have specifically refused to

3 regulate methane. They tell us nothing is wrong.

4 We know better. We have become experts living next

5 to those polluting industries. We have been taught

6 that TECQ is controlled by polluting industries.

7 They're understaffed and underfunded. The

8 legislature has neutered the Texas Railroad

9 Commission. 425,852 wells with only 158

10 inspectors.

11 Our legislators has failed us by

12 enacting poor laws that strip away local control at

13 the direction of the oil and gas industry. Sadly,

14 and for the most part, industry refuses to use best

15 practice unless they're required. Voluntary

16 programs simply don't work here in Texas. Rules

17 like the EPA's proposals are the only way to fix

18 the problem. Our hope today lies in better

19 protection with the EPA having a Texas-sized

20 backbone. This proposal will be the first ever

21 national methane controls for the oil and gas

22 industry.

23 The proposed controls are sensible.

24 They're cost effective, and they're already

25 utilized by some in the gas and oil industry.
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1 Under the new methane standards, oil and gas

2 operators will install controls and will reduce not

3 only methane but as a secondary benefit also reduce

4 other hazardous pollutants. We hope our officials

5 will begin to see the bigger picture of

6 sustainability for our environment and future

7 Texans and for my granddaughter's sake, Cameron.

8 Thank you for your time.

9 MR. THOMPSON: And thank you for your

10 testimony. Are there any questions.

11 (No response.)

12 MR. THOMPSON: Any questions? No. Do

13 pass along a happy birthday to your granddaughter

14 on behalf of the EPA. Thank you.

15 Okay. At this time, I'd like to

16 invite Ed Soph and Carol Ann Soph, S-o-p-h, to

17 please come forward.

18 MR. SOPH: Good afternoon. My name is

19 Ed Soph, and that's spelled S-o-p-h. Here we are

20 45 years after the passage of the Clean Air Act,

21 and the air in my city, Denton, Texas, is so bad

22 that health professionals warn residents to -- that

23 to breathe it may seriously impair their health and

24 for some, their lives. The air in my city is so

25 bad that it receives an F from the American Lung
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1 Association, as I'm sure you know. The question

2 is, how can this be? I think you know.

3 The state agency charged with

4 protecting our air's quality doesn't. The TECQ is

5 a politically poisoned and industry-corrupted body

6 that spends more time and money suing the EPA than

7 protecting the right of Texans to breathe clean

8 air. Now there's no more time to play this game.

9 Climate collapse, not climate change. Climate

10 collapse is staring us in the face. The future is

11 bleak. You must act now to reduce methane

12 emissions and their attendant VOCs on all polluting

13 facilities, new and existing. You have all of the

14 facts. More are coming in every day in favor of

15 this sort of regulation. So please, act

16 meaningfully and forcefully.

17 Denton is contacting on you. Texas is

18 counting on you. The nation is counting on you,

19 and the earth is counting on you. Thank you very

20 much for your time.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir, for

22 your testimony. Any questions?

23 (No response.)

24 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Good afternoon.

25 MS. SOPH: Good afternoon. My name is
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1 Carol Soph, and I'm from Denton, Texas. I would

2 like to tell you a little bit about our city.

3 Denton has led the state in renewable energy.

4 40 percent of our electricity is coming from a wind

5 farm, and soon, 14 percent more is to come from a

6 solar farm. We also have the best incentive

7 program in place to reduce consumption of energy

8 with better insulation, windows, and green building

9 incentives.

10 Even with all of these reductions in

11 fossil fuel consumption, Denton has some of the

12 worst air quality in Texas. I believe there are

13 two things that strongly contribute to these poor

14 air quality ratings. One is the presence of the

15 300 existing gas well sites in the city, which in

16 many cases leak methane and VOCs continually due to

17 poor maintenance, cracked wellheads, and casings

18 and lack best available control technology to

19 prevent dangerous accidents.

20 The other reason our air will get

21 worse is that thousands of acres of land within the

22 city limits have been leased by a gas -- by gas

23 well companies. One of these companies told our

24 city council last month they have leased

25 10,000 acres and want to put one well every 20
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1 acres. That is 500 new wells, wells that will be

2 next to homes, schools, parks, and hospitals.

3 Due to this poorly regulated industry,

4 Denton's efforts to be a safe, healthy, and

5 sustainable community have been destroyed. We have

6 had spills. We have had a blowout at our airport,

7 which was made into a no-fly zone because there was

8 so much methane in the air, and it went on for

9 14 hours. First responders came and told the

10 people that lived close by not to put their lights

11 on in their homes because a spark might ignite the

12 methane, there was so much methane coming out. It

13 went on 14 hours.

14 There have been explosions from

15 lightning strikes in the backyards of a

16 subdivision. People did not know what to do,

17 didn't even know a gas well was there. It took

18 seven hours for special equipment to come up from

19 Houston to put that out. Seven hours. They didn't

20 know what to do. The fire department put the

21 flames out, but the methane and all of the VOCs

22 just came out for seven hours until that special

23 equipment came over.

24 We've also -- there's a gas well

25 that's 25 feet from a tennis court at one of our
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1 high schools. There's five gas wells right around

2 that high school. Parents don't even know they're

3 sending their kids there and there are all of these

4 dangers close by this high school in which children

5 who attend already have asthma or other breathing

6 conditions they need to know about.

7 I'm here today to request that the EPA

8 not only impose strong regulations on methane

9 emissions from new gas well production but stronger

10 regulations be put into place on existing

11 facilities, as well. This is an example of a

12 serious problem that is happening nationwide. The

13 EPA must step in where local protections have been

14 taken away, and they have been taken away in

15 Denton.

16 Denton was on the path to a clean,

17 sustainable future. We were doing everything we

18 could to clean our air, and we've come to the end

19 of our rope. We need your help. We need you to

20 put in strong regulations to clean our air now.

21 We've done our part. We have solar panels. We

22 have wind farms. It's not helping. It is not

23 helping. Now that the future is in question, we

24 really do need your help. Thank you very much.

25 MR. THOMPSON: And thank you for your
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1 testimony. Are there any questions from the panel?

2 (No response.)

3 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again.

4 At this time, I'd like to invite Lance

5 Irwin and Harriet Irby to please come forward for

6 testimony.

7 MR. COZAD: Did you also call David

8 Cozad?

9 MR. THOMPSON: No, sir. You're up

10 next after these two.

11 MR. IRWIN: Good afternoon.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Good afternoon.

13 MR. IRWIN: My name is Lance Irwin. I

14 live in Mansfield, Texas. I have two children who

15 in the past have needed breathing treatments with

16 Albuterol and Pulmicort.

17 When you see your child fighting to

18 breathe, you have a different perspective on what

19 clean air is. I live about a half mile from two

20 large pad sites and a compressor station. Leaks

21 and release of methane and other associated toxic

22 emissions are underestimated and underreported.

23 The rules that exist to reduce these emissions are

24 often ignored, and actually at times, with the help

25 of the TECQ, are systematically suppressed.
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1 Drillers came to our location to drill

2 60 wells and rework several old ones. This got bad

3 when they were doing well completions and were

4 supposed to be doing green completions to reduce

5 the emissions. Complaints that were made and

6 logged into TECQ often showed up later -- days

7 later after the air had cleared. It was clear that

8 they were venting emissions. At one point, 49

9 different complaints were bundled by TECQ. One

10 person said things were making them sick. An

11 investigation report was returned to them showing

12 that there was nothing wrong, however TECQ ran a

13 concurrent and separate investigation that showed

14 they were violating green completion rules and

15 venting emissions.

16 The operators received the violation,

17 but the people who were impacted were kept in the

18 dark and not shown this compliance investigation.

19 I discovered this through open records along with

20 their emissions. There was no fine, just asking

21 them to comply. It's cheaper to vent methane than

22 it is to flare it. My son's daycare was 900 feet

23 downwind during that violation, and TECQ did not

24 let the school know.

25 If operators are required to keep
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1 records and receipts to show in an EPA audit that

2 green completions are being used, this type of

3 negligence can be minimized. Please make a

4 requirement to capture and burn off emissions of

5 methane and other VOCs escaping from open hatches

6 on frac tanks during flowback. There is existing

7 technology that does this, but not widely used,

8 a/k/a gas buster flowback tanks.

9 Venting through fracking explodes blue

10 toxic foam into the air and was landing in our

11 neighbors' yards. No violation from TECQ or RRC.

12 The RRC investigated a separate foam report in the

13 adjacent school parking lot and never asked the

14 operator about the foam. They came up with the

15 theory that it could have been from mop water.

16 TECQ was given the MSDS sheet by the operator, and

17 the fire department asked the operator for the MSDS

18 sheet; and the material on the one -- on that one

19 was completely different and showed it caused

20 reproductive harm.

21 Require all emissions from compressors

22 to be captured and not vented -- and not vented and

23 only flared in emergency. I watched a blowdown

24 with Sharon Wilson from Earthworks on her FLIR at a

25 location -- at our location while the EPA was in
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1 Arlington talking about that area. We were

2 watching smog-forming pollution being created in

3 the form of a massive methane cloud just a few

4 miles away that day. With these substances blowing

5 across our neighborhood, TECQ investigated the

6 pathways and walked around the compressor. I know

7 it was from a blowdown. Why didn't they?

8 I looked up TECQ records and found

9 2013 compliance investigations, and in it, TECQ --

10 TECQ asked for maintenance records of Texas Energy

11 Midstream and they had none. TECQ asked them to

12 keep a tracking system to avoid the violation for

13 not keeping records, so when the incident occurred,

14 I asked for the records, and they were supposed --

15 they were supposed to keep them. Texas Energy

16 Midstream told TECQ that they had none. I asked

17 for the tracking system and received a blank

18 spreadsheet. TECQ is okay with that, no violation.

19 Do you trust the self-reporting estimates on

20 compressor emissions or TECQ?

21 Audit these compressor stations for

22 required records and do actual studies of the

23 emissions, and you'll find out how far off those

24 estimates really are. Oil and gas in Texas doesn't

25 work for the people, and it works and is controlled
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1 in large part by the industry. Our representatives

2 on every level of government are lobbied and

3 controlled by the industry. HB 40 is a prime

4 example of how democracy is undermined in Texas.

5 TECQ assures industry front groups whose goal is to

6 forward and re-tweet each other on Twitter, a

7 cheerleading industry.

8 Our commissioners have no -- people

9 who oppose industry's bad practices are working

10 with the Russians. State regulators play a game of

11 pretending to work for you. They do little to

12 protect the environment, and they protect industry

13 profits. The TECQ and RRC are taxpayer funded PR

14 firms for industry. Require large reductions in

15 methane and proof of the implementation. By

16 default, we will be breathing less smog and other

17 VOCs and toxins like benzene. The City of

18 Mansfield has seen fit to allow homes to be built

19 as close as 100 feet to wellheads and future

20 fracking sites and even closer to frac waste tanks.

21 You are the EPA. You have the

22 authority. Please do more to protect the air that

23 our kids breathe. The reports that I mentioned,

24 they're all on a disk. It's all categorized. You

25 can go back and look. I'm going to give it to the
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1 lady out in the hallway.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

3 MR. IRWIN: I'm so nervous.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Any questions?

5 MR. MOORE: No. That was very

6 interesting.

7 MR. LAWRENCE: It was.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again for

9 your testimony. And again, I'd like to remind our

10 folks coming forward for testimony to pronounce and

11 spell your name for the court reporter, please,

12 before you begin your testimony.

13 MS. IRBY: Harriet Irby. The last

14 name is I-r-b, as in boy, Y.

15 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

16 MS. IRBY: A resident of Pantego,

17 Texas, which is a small town enveloped by

18 Arlington; and I brought a couple of handouts.

19 Being an old schoolteacher, I brought handouts. I

20 couldn't help myself. The first part of my remarks

21 are called caught in the crossbow. And if you look

22 at this map, this is a map of Pantego. Pantego is

23 a little, and I thought, bucolic town. When I

24 moved there in 1970, lots of trees, birds, a

25 babbling brook, sweet air in the morning, all of
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1 that, a lovely suburban thing; and then the gas

2 drillers found us. Okay.

3 The little purple plug there is where

4 I live. No. 1 on the map is a gas well pad with

5 multiple wells. No. 2 is a compression station,

6 which is located in another town, Del Rio Gardens,

7 which has even more lax regulations than Pantego

8 does. Number three is a complex of gathering lines

9 with an odorized gas, of course, that runs along

10 Pioneer Parkway.

11 Now, I am here representing

12 nontobacco-using COPD patients. I have severe

13 COPD. You are looking at the population that pays

14 most of the costs of irresponsible gas drilling.

15 We're the ones that go to the hospital in ozone

16 season, and I can pretty well budget for my

17 hospitalization because I will be there with an

18 exacerbation of my COPD.

19 Arlington and the Arlington area also

20 has a child-who-has-asthma epidemic. The children

21 pay the cost of COPD because asthma steals their

22 childhood. My second division of my remarks is,

23 you are here proposing greater controls and

24 regulations to regulate methane leaks in the

25 natural gas production and oil production industry.
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1 This is really a problem.

2 Industry will tell you no, but other

3 agencies of far more repute will tell you that

4 methane is a problem; and I have here a pamphlet or

5 an article, rather, "Fracking, methane and

6 climate," and it quotes the IPCC that says,

7 "methane is much worse for the climate than carbon

8 dioxide: 86 times worse over 20 years according to

9 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

10 Well, who are these guys and how dare they Texas

11 that methane is bad news?

12 Well, I'll tell you who they are.

13 They are a United Nations agency founded in 1988,

14 and they have 195 countries as signatories. That's

15 an awful lot of agreement. Well, are they

16 reputable? Does the world like these people?

17 Well, in 2007, they won the Nobel Peace Prize. I

18 think the issue is settled. Methane is a problem.

19 Climate change is a problem. And I welcome the EPA

20 here to Dallas to attempt to get the rules passed

21 in order for us to successfully deal with it. I'm

22 so glad you're here.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Ms. Irby.

24 Are there any questions?

25 MR. MOORE: No, but thank you very
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1 much.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for always

3 coming to the public hearings. I remember you.

4 Thank you very much.

5 At this time, I'd like to invite David

6 Cozad and Deborah -- I can't read the last name.

7 A-r- -- it's a vowel and a consonant.

8 MS. ARMINTOR: Armintor.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. And I'll

10 have you spell that for me. Thank you very much.

11 MR. COZAD: My name is David Cozad.

12 That's C-o-z-a-d or Charlie, Oscar, Zulu, Alpha,

13 Delta.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

15 MR. COZAD: Thank you for holding this

16 hearing. I'm David Cozad, Democratic candidate for

17 U.S. Congress Texas -6. The EIA and the U.S.

18 Department of Energy have determined that the oil

19 and gas industry is or will enter into peak

20 production within five years. What that basically

21 means is that most of our production right now will

22 not be closed in, it will not be cleaned up by

23 these industries because they're already going out

24 of business.

25 I have here an article from Bloomberg.
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1 It says as a title, "Plunge in Oil Prices Causes a

2 Junk Debt Bloodbath for Drillers." And basically,

3 several of them have already gone bankrupt from the

4 April 18th reassessment, and they're facing another

5 one next month in which they're expecting

6 approximately 50 percent of these oil drillers to

7 go out of business by the end of the year.

8 I don't know how EPA is planning to

9 handle the resource destruction on their part, but

10 what this basically tells me is we're going to be

11 facing a major, major problem of cleaning up after

12 them unless you guys grab that money now. This

13 means the regulation of the oil and gas industry

14 must be strengthened in order to conserve as much

15 energy resources as possible until solar power is

16 sufficient to replace fossil fuels at 100 percent.

17 This is not a pipe dream. Germany has already run

18 a pilot program to do this, and they are now

19 starting the actual project to convert their system

20 to 100 percent renewable within ten years.

21 There is a team in Stanford who said

22 that we could do the same thing for the United

23 States by 2015. The problem is that, just as I

24 said, we've got problems with energy production,

25 such as this little report here from the University
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1 of Texas team put out this deal, but basically it's

2 called the fracking fallacy. And what they did was

3 they restructured the sampling techniques of the

4 EIA on natural gas and the other fracking systems,

5 and basically said was, peak production for natural

6 gas at the latest is going to be 2020.

7 Now, the EIA has also put out a report

8 that says that oil production is going to hit

9 maximum starting around 2017 to possibly 2019.

10 What this basically means is you guys have got to

11 start upgrading your regulations from thinking this

12 thing is an ongoing concern for the next 100 years

13 to something that's going to happen within the next

14 five years.

15 Now, I only have issues with certain

16 other organizations within the government, but the

17 EPA, you've got a big problem ahead of you. You've

18 got to start regulating these guys so we do not

19 lose a single BTU of energy out of this system. No

20 more of this being sloppy in production and

21 technology or just plain greedy. We've got to

22 clean the system up. We've got to make sure that

23 every drop and BTU of energy from methane is

24 captured and contained and is useful.

25 But right now, as several of these
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1 little displays are showing, this stuff is being

2 dumped because it doesn't provide a profit big

3 enough. There's a Bloomberg report that shows a

4 satellite where they're showing how much flaring is

5 being done in the Bakkan. It is so big and so

6 bright it shows up on satellite, and what caught

7 his attention is when it first started, they

8 thought it was a missile launch. So you guys have

9 got a lot of work to do, and you don't have a whole

10 lot of time to do it, and if you need the help,

11 when I get to Congress in January of 2017, I will

12 be there to support you in any way I can.

13 Final words, the needs of the many are

14 superior to the needs of the greedy. Thank you.

15 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Thank you

16 for your testimony. Are there any questions from

17 the panel?

18 MR. MOORE: No.

19 MR. COZAD: This has been entered into

20 the record?

21 MR. THOMPSON: Yes, sir. Thank you.

22 MS. ARMINTOR: Hi. Should I start?

23 MR. THOMPSON: Please.

24 MR. ARMINTOR: My name is Deborah

25 Armintor. It's spelled D-e-b-o-r-a-h, and the last
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1 name is A-r-m-i-n-t-o-r.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

3 MS. ARMINTOR: I'm a 42-year-old

4 resident of Denton, Texas. I'm a mother and an

5 English professor at the University of North Texas.

6 Minutes ago, two other Denton residents, Ed and

7 Carol Soph spoke eloquently about our F-rated air

8 quality in Denton, so I'm not going to repeat what

9 they have said so well.

10 I want to thank the EPA and express my

11 gratitude to you for the new proposed rules

12 regarding reducing methane emissions from

13 providers. Thank you for that. We need that and

14 are grateful, but that is not all that I came here

15 to say. I happen to be Jewish, and I've just

16 arrived here in Dallas from Yom Kippur services at

17 my temple and congregation -- it's Congregation

18 Kol Ami in Flower Mound. Yom Kippur is the Jewish

19 day of atonement, and if you haven't heard from any

20 Jews at today's hearing that's because we're

21 supposed to be at our synagogue confessing

22 collectively and publicly that we have missed the

23 mark in our individual and collective ethical and

24 group responsibilities -- in our individual and

25 collective duties as ethical and responsible global
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1 citizens in the past year and in the year ahead.

2 And, in fact, I'm not supposed to be

3 here right now. I should be back at the temple,

4 but I worked it out with God, and God says it's

5 okay for me to be here. The fact that EPA has

6 drafted these new rules shows that you understand

7 that our nation has been missing the mark regarding

8 the regulation of pollution by our oil and gas

9 industry. Here in Texas, we have really, really

10 missed the mark, and we need your help.

11 HB 40, which you were not responsible

12 for but you're probably aware of, is the new

13 statewide law that limits Texas cities from

14 protecting our own citizens and environment from

15 fracking. It denies the home rule municipalities

16 like Denton, Texas, where I live, from our right to

17 local control, and if you've read this law, if you

18 read the preamble, it begins by stating that Texas

19 has not missed the marked at all regarding

20 regulating oil and gas and emissions. In fact, it

21 boasts that -- this law boasts that Texas is right

22 on target which is why, according to HB 40, we

23 don't need any further regulations because we're

24 doing so well.

25 Texas, as you probably know, accounts
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1 for roughly 30 percent of all oil and gas

2 production in the United States, which means it's a

3 significant amount of -- 7 million tons of methane

4 pollution that is vented, flared, leaked, and

5 otherwise emitted from oil and gas operations in

6 Texas, many of these are in North Texas.

7 Our state regulators and legislative

8 leadership are not adequately regulating oil and

9 gas pollution and have specifically refused to

10 regulate methane. They don't have any requirements

11 for leak detection and repair programs for oil and

12 gas facilities. They've expanded the use of

13 permits to allow extended flaring. Now, I realize

14 that you're not responsible for this, but this is

15 why we in Texas are depending on you. We're

16 counting on you, and if you've seen Star Wars, I

17 feel like Princess Leia saying, you know, help us

18 Obi-Wan. You're our only hope. EPA, you are Texas

19 only hope in protecting our people and our

20 environment from industry pollution. Our state

21 legislature is not going to do it for us.

22 I have a couple of asks in addition to

23 just asking you to keep doing what you're doing in

24 protecting us. One, please apply these new rules

25 to existing oil and gas infrastructure, which in
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1 Denton, North Texas, and Texas, and the nation as a

2 whole, especially in Texas, are a far bigger

3 problem than any planned or hypothetical new oil

4 and gas sites especially in the case of refracking.

5 I also want to ask you to close the

6 aggregation loophole that allows multiple oil and

7 gas companies to put thousands of pieces of small

8 equipment that produce huge emissions into a single

9 facility without being regulated under the Clean

10 Air Act. Right now, the law is unclear about

11 whether all of this equipment should be treated as

12 a single large source or -- or whether each piece

13 itself is a minor source. I believe they should

14 all be considered a single source and regulated

15 accordingly. Thank you.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

17 testimony. Thank you for being here today. Before

18 you go, any questions?

19 MR. MOORE: The last comment, your

20 second one about the multiple sources?

21 MS. ARMINTOR: Yes?

22 MR. MOORE: That pertains to the

23 source rule --

24 MS. ARMINTOR: Yes. I understand that

25 that's not part of this current.
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1 MR. MOORE: No. No, it is.

2 MS. ARMINTOR: Yeah. Okay.

3 MR. MOORE: Not this rule, but the

4 part --

5 MS. ARMINTOR: Exactly. Exactly. I

6 understand. Yes. Thank you.

7 MR. MOORE: I was just clarifying.

8 MR. LAWRENCE: I apologize for the

9 scheduling issue. Several people have brought it

10 up. Our meeting got moved. It just happened to

11 fall on Yom Kippur.

12 MS. ARMINTOR: Okay. God forgives

13 you. Thank you.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

15 testimony. At this time, I'd like to invite Mahdi

16 Ahmadi to please come forward, please, and Helen

17 Bush.

18 Are you all set? If you can just

19 state your full name and spell it for the

20 court reporter and please begin your testimony

21 afterwards, sir.

22 MR. AHMADI: My name is Mahdi Ahmadi.

23 I'm a double major at the University of North Texas

24 living in Denton and doing philosophy and

25 mechanical engineering at the graduate level, so
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1 I'm here today to support EPA's proposed rule to

2 cut methane and other volatile organic compounds

3 a/k/a VOCs, from oil and gas facilities. I draw on

4 my research at the University of North Texas which

5 is focused on the local air quality and effects of

6 shale oil and gas activity in the Dallas-Fort Worth

7 area.

8 So there are several -- several

9 research showing the emerging effects on exposure

10 to oil and gas VOC emissions on adults, children,

11 and fetuses, which is important. It's not my area

12 of expertise. My research is focused on the

13 secondary local impact of VOCs, and that's

14 ground-level ozone or smog.

15 In recently published peer-reviewed

16 research, me and Dr. Kuruvilla, my supervisor, we

17 studied the ozone trends in the D/FW Metroplex by

18 comparing daily peak with the significant number of

19 gas and oil wells and comparing that to the eastern

20 side of the D/FW area that doesn't have that many

21 number of oil and gas wells. And as you may know,

22 ozone is an emission which contains methane gas, as

23 well, so we -- we applied those factors to the

24 statistical methods and we removed meteorological

25 impacts from the ozone trends and we looked at the
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1 meteorological ozone or we can kind of call it

2 man-mandate ozone, and, you know, there's a

3 difference between shale gas regions and nonshale

4 gas regions.

5 There's an increase in ozone -- in

6 meteorological ozone after 2009 in the western side

7 of the Metroplex, so which can be explained in

8 terms of VOCs emitted from oil and gas wells. This

9 table is really small, but this table is showing

10 the really disappointing history of the ozone

11 attainment of the D/FW area.

12 And given this, I recommend that the

13 state need to go beyond the traditional approach to

14 control -- to control ozone, and they need to adopt

15 new and -- new and more strict controls on the oil

16 and gas industry and facilities because the effect

17 is very local, and it can be smoothed out if you

18 only consider average numbers in a large area like

19 D/FW.

20 And this is another graph showing the

21 comparison between VOC trends in Dallas versus

22 Denton. The blue one is Dallas since 2000 to 2014,

23 and the red one is Denton. And considering the

24 number of people living in these two cities and the

25 traffic load, it's really -- I mean, the difference
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1 is really significant and kind of shocking.

2 And I broke down the graph into more

3 graphs showing the average VOC trend and also the

4 maximum and 19th percentile trends, so on the left

5 side is the median and -- and mean value trends,

6 Dallas and Denton. On the right side is the

7 19th percentile and the maximum value trends. Both

8 show there's a huge gap between Dallas and Denton,

9 and so why the median and mean value are important

10 for ozone formation, the maximum and

11 19th percentile are really important for acute

12 exposure and adverse health impact on exposure, so

13 it is important for all of us to look at both the

14 synoptic impact of oil and gas and also long-term

15 impacts of those sources on VOCs. And this is an

16 ongoing research that I'm going to show.

17 The relationship between oil and gas

18 wells in the area which is the map on the left side

19 is showing the number of wells in the census tract

20 in the area versus the -- the number of households

21 with incomes under $20,000 per year, which is kind

22 of showing there are people -- the people who are

23 very likely to -- to bear the burden of air

24 pollution are also likely to be from families with

25 lower income and also from a family without health
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1 insurance.

2 The left -- the right map is showing

3 the number of uninsured people in the census tract,

4 so in conclusion, this is why we should support the

5 new EPA proposal because VOCs do not automatically

6 go down. There must strict control on fugitive and

7 vented VOCs and methane and in all stages of oil

8 and gas development including production and

9 existing.

10 Also, I would also like to point out

11 that the VOC situation that we have in Denton and

12 like cities is from the existing infrastructure,

13 not from the future infrastructure and facilities.

14 So that's why we also need the same control on the

15 existing facilities and infrastructure especially

16 in the cities like, you know, Denton, which is

17 populated with oil and gas. And we also need more

18 monitoring stations like more stationary and mobile

19 monitoring -- monitoring stations to -- to measure

20 and evaluate the situation in the area. Thank you.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

22 testimony. Do you have any questions?

23 (No response.)

24 MR. THOMPSON: Are you going to submit

25 your findings here to the folks out front?
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1 MR. AHMADI: Of course, and the part

2 of it on the ozone trend is also published. It's

3 not accessible for the public, but -- you have to

4 pay; but I will submit this to you.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Ahmadi.

6 Thank you for your testimony.

7 Helen Bush. Good afternoon.

8 MS. BUSH: Good afternoon. Thank you

9 for having this hearing. I'm pleased to be here.

10 I appreciate your listening to the speeches because

11 I listen to them, too, and I learn and add to my

12 knowledge of protecting the environment and

13 promoting conservation. I'm very conservative

14 about these subjects, and I know people surrounding

15 me do the best they can, so my compromise is not

16 really acceptable because to me, it's going

17 backwards all of the time.

18 So I am here to tell you my point of

19 view, my persuasion, and I am here to admonish you.

20 I'm here to persuade you. I'm here to support the

21 strongest standards that you propose and for you to

22 hold the oil and gas petroleum industry to the

23 strictest rules that you are proposing and keep

24 considering any further improvements of these rules

25 and regulations.
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1 I have been studying methane and CO2

2 from the Internet, and I find information every

3 day. I watch newsletters from the scientists for

4 biodiversity, the union of concerned scientists,

5 the Pope Francis visit on climate change. He's

6 been preaching this lately in June with his edict

7 that's so famous now and so needed by the whole

8 world. I've been watching the UN, and I've watched

9 people criticize the UN. And only in December of

10 2014 they had yet another world summit in Lima,

11 Peru, on climate change, and we can still remember

12 the Copenhagen Summit in Denmark recently.

13 I do believe climate change is

14 occurring. I do believe I'm watching it, and I do

15 believe that what I'm studying in fracking, oil and

16 gas, coal emissions, actually industrialization,

17 agriculture, changes in the land, are really

18 contributing to climate change while I'm watching

19 it. I've been studying this since 2009, and I was

20 only a dilettante before that, watching what was

21 talked in the news about environment and science,

22 and so I think -- I think I'm here -- at D/FW, I've

23 watched severe drought, I've watched unusual

24 rainstorms of 12 inches in two hours. I was out in

25 it in my car watching floods in my area, which I'm
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1 not going to tell you where it was. I was driving

2 through it and stopping driving because you have to

3 stop driving because your car won't go through.

4 I've seen 12-inch rainstorms twice just in the last

5 20 years, so I think I have seen climate change

6 right here in Dallas.

7 I've seen air visibility questions

8 which is a new word for smog. I've seen air

9 pollution reports that tell us to stay inside.

10 I've seen long summers of days over 100, and I'm

11 reminding you that small changes have to be made in

12 each country, in each area of people contributing

13 what they can do, and oil and gas petroleum fossil

14 fuels need to be regulated and limited if possible

15 and I say that our community has to be proactive,

16 too, in the sustainability suggestions which are on

17 the Internet.

18 So I'm going to add one fact to all of

19 these technical speeches I've been listening to. I

20 looked at a National Geographic poster in a

21 classroom about Friday, and it was fascinating

22 explanation of global warming and climate change,

23 and it was undeniable from National Geographic.

24 The first fact I learned, and I was reminded of,

25 nitrogen is 78 percent of our atmosphere. Oxygen
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1 is 21 percent of our atmosphere, and other gases

2 are one percent of our atmosphere. That means that

3 CO2, the VOCs, the methane, the greenhouse gases

4 are all going into that one percent, which is the

5 factor which changes of greenhouse gas and affects

6 our climate and our communities and our environment

7 and our -- our good air. Thank you for listening.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

9 testimony, Mrs. Bush. Before you leave us, let me

10 just ask the panel if they have any follow-up

11 questions.

12 MR. MOORE: No.

13 MR. LAWRENCE: No.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much.

15 At this time, I'd like to invite Kaiba

16 White and Gene Collins, please come forward. And

17 if you will, pronounce and spell your name for the

18 court reporter and then begin your testimony. Good

19 afternoon.

20 MS. WHITE: Yes, sir. Good afternoon.

21 My name is Kaiba White, and I'm here on behalf of

22 and as a public citizen. My name is spelled

23 K-a-i-b-a.

24 We applaud the EPA for taking this

25 important first step of proposing rules to curb
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1 methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.

2 Methane is a dangerous greenhouse gas that has 87

3 times more impact on the climate per ton emitted

4 over a 20-year time frame compared to carbon

5 dioxide. In this short 20-year timeframe and even

6 much shorter time frame of five to ten years will

7 be critical to decrease greenhouse gas emissions

8 because, climate change is already happening and

9 because according to scientific research that's

10 come out recently, it is happening much quicker

11 than we previously thought.

12 Positive feedback loops such as the

13 melting of Arctic ice are threatening to take the

14 earth into a range that is very dangerous for

15 humans and other lower lives as well. Rapidly

16 reducing greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to

17 avoid the most costly consequence of climate

18 change, and these consequences are already started.

19 Studies have known that up to

20 12 percent of methane is leaking in some areas

21 where oil and gas development is taking place.

22 Even at a more conservative average of three

23 percent as some studies have suggested is leaking,

24 the impact on the climate is still devastating.

25 The reason we are disappointed in the
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1 proposed rules for new oil and gas infrastructure

2 is they are not accompanied by similar rules for

3 existing infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of

4 wells are not controlled and are also accompanied

5 by gathering lines, storage tanks, compressor

6 processing stations, pipelines. Much of this

7 construction will be in place for many years.

8 The vast majority of the methane

9 emissions of the infrastructure is going to come

10 from the existing -- from existing structures for

11 years to come. In 2018, we can expect about

12 90 percent of emissions will come from

13 infrastructure that already exists now. This is a

14 serious problem. There isn't time to wait to

15 develop those rules for existing infrastructure

16 until after the rules for the infrastructure have

17 been adopted. We need to stop this process

18 immediately, and we urge you to do so now.

19 In addition to the important climate

20 protection benefits that this proposed rule and

21 should any other rules to limit methane emissions

22 from existing infrastructure will hopefully be

23 forthcoming, there is also a considerable benefit

24 to the local air quality. This will be a much

25 needed improvement since the Texas Railroad
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1 Commission which is tasked with regulating the oil

2 and gas structures and the Texas Commission on

3 Environmental Quality have done a woefully

4 inadequate job of protecting Texas residents from

5 the environmental damage of hydraulic fracturing.

6 I'm sure you've heard a lot of this testimony

7 today.

8 In addition to the water pollution,

9 residents that live near oil and gas walls and

10 processing facilities are subjected to dangerous

11 air pollution including carcinogens such as

12 benzene. Studies have shown in some areas there's

13 already a correlation between oil and gas

14 development and low birth weight and other birth

15 defects including serious conditions like heart

16 defects. These impacts on health are unacceptable.

17 Regional air quality is also suffering.

18 Thanks to the volatile organic

19 compounds that are emitted from oil and gas

20 activity, San Antonio and the Dallas-Fort Worth

21 area are going to have an even more difficult time

22 complying with health-based EPA standards.

23 Vulnerable populations such as the elderly and

24 children will continue to suffer respiratory

25 conditions especially asthma if the situation isn't
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1 rectified.

2 Sealing leaks of petroleum equipment

3 that are dangerous to local residents as well as

4 the environment. The proposed rule should be

5 strengthened to include each and every piece of

6 equipment used in oil and gas extraction,

7 processing, and transportation. Compressors and

8 storage vessels should be fully incorporated into

9 the rules as well as any other -- anything they may

10 have will inadvertently be left out.

11 Finally, these rules and any future

12 proposed rules for leaks and existing

13 infrastructure will only achieve their intended

14 impact if there are mandatory inspections.

15 Enforcement of existing environmental standards is

16 extremely weak in Texas, and we cannot expect any

17 better if routine inspections are not required.

18 We're excited that these rules have

19 been proposed and hope they will be quickly

20 expanded and improved upon in the future. Thank

21 you for your time.

22 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

23 testimony. Are there any questions from the panel?

24 (No response.)

25 MR. MOORE: Thank you.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Good afternoon,

2 Mr. Collins.

3 MR. COLLINS: Good afternoon. My name

4 is Gene Collins. I live in Odessa, Texas. That's

5 in West Texas, the center of the Permian Basis

6 where the nation's crude oil is mostly located.

7 West Texas crude comes from that area. I've owned

8 a business for 30 years. I'm a senior pastor at

9 the Highland Street Church of Christ. I am a

10 member of the NAACP where I serve as branch

11 president, the West Texas area coordinator, and

12 chairman of the environmental justice committee of

13 the state of Texas. I also led the NAACP disaster

14 relief team for the whole country, and I serve as

15 part of the national leadership team of the

16 American Red Cross. I'm mentioning all of these

17 areas of commitment that I've accepted because even

18 with their uniqueness, they also intersect at the

19 junction of environmental justice.

20 I'm here today to applaud and support

21 the EPA's initiative in developing the Climate

22 Action Plan, a methane strategy, the New Source

23 Performance Standards that are being recommended

24 today. I further applaud the EPA for the work

25 you've done including the necessary research.
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1 We've heard a lot about it today, and the formation

2 of scientific conclusions regarding the harm that

3 these gases have done and will continue to do to

4 our environment and our health. We certainly have

5 a moral obligation to protect this land in which we

6 live and the lives that are so precious to us.

7 I've read through a lot of the 500 or

8 so pages, and I understand the proposal. I know

9 that there is an effort also to clean up some

10 things that were left out of the last efforts; but

11 I'm so glad that the EPA has reconsidered and now

12 has decided to include it in this proposal. But I

13 have one suggestion that I want to offer as an

14 environmental activist living in the state of

15 Texas, a state which has tried to hinder

16 community-based organizations from being able to

17 work with and represent individuals and communities

18 that may have no resources or education to protect

19 itself.

20 This is a state that requires those

21 who wish to assist vulnerable populations to pass a

22 standing test based on some very narrow definitions

23 which exclude so many of us from the process. It's

24 a state that so often uses the state regulatory

25 agencies as boot camps for industry, environmental
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1 safety, and engineers. But I live in Texas anyway.

2 On pages 35 and 36 of the proposal, it

3 states that the EPA's intention to have the

4 industry take voluntary actions to address the

5 problems of methane emissions is somewhat troubling

6 to me as an environmentalist because I have seen

7 how in Texas they do everything they can possibly

8 do to circumvent those types of responsibilities.

9 I believe we should have incentives for business,

10 but I also believe that we should have strong

11 enforcement and fines; and I believe that a lot of

12 these fines when they are not in compliance should

13 be filtered to the communities and to the

14 community-based organizations that are trying to do

15 the policing locally that the EPA cannot do.

16 I've heard a lot about the various

17 monitors and I think we need more of them, but I

18 think we need to have them in the hands of people

19 in the communities who have a vested interest in

20 their own health. There are monitors that we can

21 give to young people that can -- that can tell what

22 has triggered their asthma. Whenever they get

23 asthma, they can take an air sample and decide, and

24 I think we should use whatever we can to find out

25 these sources and deal with them.
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1 I believe that we need to do all we

2 can to circumvent and control climate change in

3 this country. They have a more severe impact on

4 children, the elderly, the poor, and those who

5 cannot fend for themselves. So I, on behalf of the

6 NAACP, stand in support of what you're doing, but I

7 certainly would like to see it expanded to include

8 the initiative of people who care for and love

9 their community, love their children and their

10 grandchildren by empowering us to do even more in

11 this effort. Thank you very much.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Collins.

13 (Applause was heard.)

14 MR. THOMPSON: Are there any questions

15 from the panel?

16 MR. MOORE: No. Thank you very much.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir.

18 MR. COLLINS: Thank you.

19 MR. THOMPSON: At this time, I'd like

20 to invite Loni Russell and Will Edwards to please

21 come forward. Good afternoon.

22 MS. RUSSELL: Good afternoon.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Please state and spell

24 your name for the court reporter and proceed with

25 your testimony.
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1 MS. RUSSELL: Loni Russell, L-o-n-i,

2 R-u-s-s-e-l-l. I'm Loni Russell, and I'm here

3 today as a concerned citizen, a daughter, and an

4 aunt. I'm a member and a community organizer for

5 Moms Clean Air Force in the western states, a

6 community of over 550,000 members fighting for

7 clean air, 323,000 of which reside right here in

8 Texas. On behalf of our members, I want to thank

9 you for the opportunity to testify today about

10 addressing methane pollution from oil and gas

11 operations.

12 I thank you for taking this important

13 first step in addressing methane pollution and

14 respectfully request that you move forward with

15 this proposal while extending the program to cover

16 existing facilities. The scientific record and the

17 public health co-benefits demonstrate that cutting

18 methane pollution will provide stronger protections

19 for Americans and most importantly for our

20 children. Our families and communities need strong

21 national standards to reduce pollution from the oil

22 and gas industry.

23 I currently reside in California, and

24 I'm no stranger to poor air quality growing up in

25 the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles where my
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1 family still resides. Many of my family relatives

2 suffer from asthma. Copollutants that leak, along

3 with methane, lead to ozone formation which is

4 damaging to health. Exposure to ground-level ozone

5 or smog is associated with numerous health effects

6 such as premature death, asthma attacks,

7 hospitalizations, and chronic respiratory damage.

8 Numerous studies have found elevated

9 ozone pollution in regions of oil and gas

10 development largely due to emissions of VOCs and

11 nitrogen oxide from these activities. Nearly one

12 in every ten schoolchildren in the U.S. have

13 asthma, asthma being the number one health issue

14 that causes kids to miss school. One of those

15 little ones is my three-year-old nephew, Adrian.

16 He lives in Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley

17 in an area of some of the smoggiest air in the

18 country.

19 As we know, smog pollution triggers

20 hundreds and thousands of episodes of asthma and

21 respiratory ailments each year. It sends thousands

22 of children to emergency rooms and costs of bills

23 in healthcare costs, lost productivity, and

24 premature death. My state of California is

25 currently burning from extreme fires fueled by
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1 extreme drought engulfing our state. Fire, smoke,

2 and particulate matter triggering emergency room

3 visits for Californians in affected areas.

4 Children suffer the most. These massive fires in

5 the west are not just affecting those most

6 vulnerable. They're affecting those adults and

7 children with the most healthy of lungs. These

8 devastating disasters will only increase across the

9 west with climate change.

10 In my role as a community organizer,

11 I've met with families all across the west who are

12 impacted by air pollution from oil and gas

13 operations, operations near schools and playgrounds

14 and homes. Standards that reduce methane emissions

15 from oil and gas development will simultaneously

16 reduce emission and formation of health-damaging

17 air pollutants including VOCs, hazardous

18 pollutants, particulate matter, and ozone.

19 A large body of scientific research

20 indicates that oil and gas development is

21 associated with adverse health impacts. Higher

22 reported health symptoms from persons, greater

23 prevalence of adverse birth outcomes including

24 congenital heart defects, neural tube defects, and

25 low birth weight for infants born to mothers who
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1 live in high densities of natural gas development,

2 increased hospitalization rates. Today, the public

3 bears the burden of methane pollution by

4 contributing to climate change and contributing to

5 the formation of smog. A tighter standard would

6 hold these industries accountable for the

7 pollution. Let's keep children safe with the

8 strongest standards that helps millions of children

9 with asthma and other respiratory ailments breathe

10 easier. Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

12 testimony, Ms. Russell. Are there any questions

13 from the panel?

14 (No response.)

15 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you again.

16 Mr. Edwards, please.

17 MR. EDWARDS: Good afternoon. How are

18 y'all doing today?

19 MR. THOMPSON: Doing great.

20 MR. EDWARDS: I'm just an average

21 citizen. I live right over there off of Turtle

22 Creek in Residence Towers. Councilman Kingston's

23 district right there behind you there, and to be

24 honest, the problems with the ozone and the gases

25 have been going on since -- well, since they
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1 started fracking. My family owns land that was

2 given to us by President Wilson as a land packet in

3 southeastern Colorado, and the one spectacular part

4 of that land is that absolutely nothing grows on

5 it. It's completely 100 percent dead. Animals who

6 have tried to traverse the land usually die before

7 they get to the other side. That's pretty

8 horrible, but that's the result of fracking.

9 And another result is my lung here is

10 dying. Okay? And the doctors tell me when it

11 quits, I won't be able to breathe, and I guess you

12 can understand what the consequence of that will

13 be. The reality of the situation is, well, it is

14 admirable that y'all are coming up with some

15 regulations that will almost cover the problem.

16 The problem has been going on since long before

17 your organization ever existed, and the lack of my

18 government to care for the welfare of its people,

19 me, just one, has pretty much murdered me, and I

20 think there's no excuse -- no excuse for not having

21 already done this, and it needs to be done and it

22 needs to be done with reasonable effect.

23 You need to put these regulations

24 placed on all of these wells, on all of these

25 outputs, not just some of the new ones. You need
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1 to actually be effective and protect the people of

2 this country because I, for one, am dying from it,

3 and I'm not happy about that especially since it

4 was all done to save a few pennies per cubic yard

5 of natural gas because they sure don't put those

6 savings on to us. The love of money is the root of

7 all evil under the sun, and that's Biblical.

8 I don't know -- you know, most

9 scientists, they kind of realize that there's not

10 too much, you know, relation between the scientific

11 point of view and faith in God or anything else,

12 but to allow greedy unscrupulous people to

13 constantly poor poison into the area where the low

14 income people are forced to live because they can't

15 make enough money to live in a gated community,

16 it's killing them.

17 It's poisoning them, and there's no

18 reason for it except greed and failure, absolute

19 failure, to stand up for the rights of everyone not

20 just the Koch brothers, not just Dick Cheney, just

21 not DuPont Chemical or the oil companies, but us,

22 the people. We're here for more than just to clean

23 out your toilets and wipe up your vomit. We're

24 here to live, and personally, you've -- they've

25 murdered me. I'm the walking dead. Thank you.
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1 I'm done.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

3 testimony, sir. Before you go, are there any

4 questions?

5 MR. MOORE: No, but thank you so much

6 for your testimony.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again. Okay.

8 At this time, I'd like to invite Neil Carman and

9 Gunnar Schade to please come forth for testimony.

10 MR. CARMAN: My name is Neil Carman,

11 N-e-i-l, C-a-r-m-a-n, and I am with Sierra Club,

12 and I strongly endorse these rules although I think

13 they should be a lot tougher because existing

14 sources are being completely, you know, left out of

15 these rules.

16 I do want to share a personal

17 experience with family members down in the Eagle

18 Ford Shale just a year ago. And my niece who has

19 four little children under the age of eight, two of

20 them she adopted, but anyway, they lift next to one

21 of these fracking facilities, and I was down there

22 for a celebration, and it was a Saturday evening,

23 and I could look off and I could see a flare.

24 I couldn't smell anything, but I could

25 see that the small amount of smoke and, you know,
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1 emissions were drifting, you know, probably it was

2 about a quarter of a mile, maybe a little further.

3 And I didn't notice anything for a while, but then

4 I began to talk to my wife, I said, are you -- you

5 aren't drinking any alcohol, we don't smoke, and we

6 live in Austin, and we feel healthy there; but

7 anyway, so we noticed we began to not feel very

8 good.

9 We were outside, and there were a lot

10 of people there, and several other people

11 noticed -- made some comments that they weren't

12 feeling that good although a lot of other people

13 were drinking alcohol. Anyway, my concern here is

14 my niece has four little children, and so I want to

15 make some comments about why these rules need to be

16 tougher to protect our children.

17 Children are the most vulnerable to

18 the effects of methane and the related volatile

19 organic compounds -- compounds and hazardous air

20 pollutants. Children breathe more rapidly than

21 adults, taking in significantly more air pollution

22 per body weight than do adults. A resting infant,

23 for example, inhales twice as much air relative to

24 its size as does a resting adult. Two, children

25 spend more time outdoors. National data show that
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1 children spend an average of about 50 percent more

2 time outdoors than adults, so they're taking in

3 more air pollution by playing outside.

4 Another point, children are more

5 active while they're playing outside because

6 they're mouth-breathers and they're exercising, so

7 they spend three times as much time engaged in

8 sports and other vigorous activities. Increased

9 activity raises their breathing rates, and they

10 take in more air pollution significantly.

11 Children's airwaves are more narrow than those of

12 adults because they're not as developed, thus

13 enhancing the inflammatory effect of the air

14 pollution from the fracking activity. Children are

15 prone to mouth-breathing which significantly

16 increases the dose of pollution, especially

17 particulates reaching the lungs.

18 In adults, respiratory symptoms such

19 as coughing and shortness of breath serve as a

20 signal to air pollution exposure and warn us to

21 move indoors or curtail exercise. Children often

22 fail to exhibit these symptoms because they want to

23 keep playing outside, so that makes them less

24 likely to reduce their exposure such as stopping

25 exercise or going inside. Children are closest to
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1 the ground where air pollution is generally a

2 little bit more concentrated.

3 Children are also particularly

4 vulnerable to toxic substances -- the carcinogens,

5 the teratogens, the mutagens -- because their

6 bodies are immature, and they're rapidly growing so

7 their DNA is much more vulnerable to damage from

8 these carcinogens, mutagens, and so forth, such as

9 benzene and other, you know, related compounds

10 aromatics.

11 Children do not have a fully developed

12 immune system, a liver or kidneys to help protect

13 them from the damaging effects of many of these

14 chemicals. Immature lungs are unable to remove or

15 neutralize toxic contaminants adequately and

16 developing brains and neural pathways are

17 particularly vulnerable. In addition, some

18 chemicals affecting the endocrine system are

19 potentially disturbing their neural reproductive

20 and immune development.

21 Airborne carcinogens and mutagens,

22 chemicals such as benzene and related aromatics

23 potentially disturb their neural reproductive and

24 immune development. They have a much greater

25 effect on children possibly because rapidly growing
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1 tissues are less differentiated and more

2 susceptible than mature tissues in adults.

3 Children exposed to carcinogens like

4 benzene have a longer exposed expected lifespan

5 over which carcinogenic action may occur. Children

6 of parents exposed to toxic chemicals appear to

7 have a higher incidence of cancer possibly because

8 they inherit damaged genetic material. They get

9 damaged DNA from the parents. Additional exposure

10 may then precipitate malignancy in these

11 genetically susceptible children. And finally,

12 I'll just add, fetuses are exposed during gestation

13 to environmental pollution that is stored in the

14 mother's body, especially these women living in

15 this Eagle Ford Shale area and -- and these other

16 fracking areas in Texas.

17 Newborns are further exposed to

18 environmental pollution excreted in the mother's

19 breast milk. Children of mothers with higher

20 levels of environmental pollution in their bodies

21 display an increased incident of developmental and

22 other adverse health effects, so this rule needs to

23 be made stronger to protect the children -- the

24 thousands of children in Texas that live with their

25 families in these areas, and so I urge you to make
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1 the rules stronger and not to weaken them. Thank

2 you.

3 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Collins.

4 Are there any questions from the panel?

5 (No response.)

6 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again for

7 your testimony.

8 Why don't we do this. Since we'd like

9 you to provide whatever you want to show us, let me

10 ask, if you don't mind, Priscilla to come forward

11 and then meanwhile we can get somebody to work out

12 the technical issues and we'll have time to get you

13 squared away.

14 MR. MOORE: We've got someone coming.

15 MR. THOMPSON: Good afternoon. Could

16 you spell and pronounce your name for the court

17 reporter and then begin with your testimony.

18 MS. VILLA: Spell it out?

19 MR. THOMPSON: Please, for the court

20 reporter.

21 MS. VILLA: My name is Priscilla

22 Villa, P-r-i-s-c-i-l-l-a, last name, V-i-l-l-a, and

23 I'm a graduate student at the University of North

24 Texas and currently a Master's Candidate in Applied

25 Anthropology, and my research has been
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1 understanding health risks in Karnes County

2 particularly about the Eagle Ford Shale here in

3 Texas.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Okay.

5 MS. VILLA: I appreciate the EPA

6 taking the important first steps in cutting methane

7 emissions from oil and gas facilities. Since we've

8 already learned how important it is to reduce

9 climate change, I'm here to speak about how

10 critical this rule is to people's health. As a

11 graduate student in conducting research and

12 spending the summer in Karnes County, it allowed me

13 the opportunity to meet with community members and

14 to speak to them about their health.

15 Residents have not only witnessed and

16 experienced changes in the environment, but have

17 recognized and experienced changes within

18 themselves. Residents are eager to tell their

19 stories and struggles with their health they know

20 have been caused by the oil and gas emissions.

21 Since they're not able to be here today, I would

22 like to speak on their behalf and urge you, as they

23 have urged me, to listen to their concerns and do

24 something that will improve their poor air quality

25 and their poor quality of life by -- by these
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1 standards.

2 The patterns and the data so far shows

3 a variety in health symptoms and a distinct

4 timeline upon which these health issues have

5 appeared. If residents have already experienced

6 these declining health issues over the past five

7 years, I can imagine what they're going to be in

8 the next 10 to 20 years. The longer that we wait

9 for more air testing to occur, the longer that

10 residents are exposed to harmful pollutants. I

11 emphasize the importance of local knowledge and

12 consideration of policies that mostly affect the

13 areas like Karnes County.

14 As one resident states, I'm having

15 respiratory issues, and before, I didn't have those

16 at all. I think my issues are with the dust around

17 here. I'm asthmatic but also my ears get plugged

18 because of the congestion. It's in our lungs and

19 our pastures. Our horses have respiratory

20 problems, too. We smell that putrid smell. We

21 catch a whiff of it. You can't stay outside. It

22 makes my wife, me, and son feel nauseous. It's

23 almost like a raw egg smell. You can smell it

24 daily. There's threats and letters I get from the

25 industry, but nothing ever happens or comes from
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1 it. What are we breathing? Not knowing really

2 bothers me he says. It's not just fracking. It's

3 production. Fracking goes away but wells are here

4 for years. In the past five years, the air quality

5 has really gone downhill.

6 Upon my first trip to Karnes County,

7 it brought me to the public library whereupon five

8 minutes of standing in the lobby I heard a resident

9 complaint about persistent headaches and allergies.

10 During my visit to the local hospital, a resident

11 said that he brought in his mother to the ER for

12 the same thing, and this went on and on. Another

13 resident explained, she says, especially if I go

14 outside, it feels like I took a sleeping pill.

15 It's gotten worse. I'm also afraid I'm going to

16 get leukemia from all of this. We have bad air

17 quality, and I can smell this stuff but also the

18 way it makes me feel. Everyone needs to be aware

19 of this before anything can get done, that's why

20 I'm talking to you.

21 Even residents who aren't sure about

22 the relationship between poor air quality and

23 health have realized the possibility. As residents

24 who tell me about their constant burning in the

25 nose and coughing and scratchy throats, she says,
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1 I'm not going to swear that has to do with oil

2 wells, but it's just weird stuff that won't go

3 away, and it shouldn't be going on this long.

4 Another couple I spoke with feels the

5 same. In reference to her husband, she says, he's

6 got numbness in both of his hands, and he gets

7 dizzy when he bends over and has to stop whatever

8 he is doing. He used to be able to stay up all day

9 and do things outside. Now he has to come in and

10 take a lot of breaks. He does not attribute any of

11 this to the environment, but I'm going to -- but

12 I'm not going to attribute mine to age, she says.

13 Something is going on to -- something is going on

14 that makes you pass out, dizzy, or nauseous.

15 Something is causing it. Five years ago, I was the

16 spitting image of health. Prior to the oil

17 industry coming here, I would have one migraine

18 maybe other week, and now I just live with them.

19 There's no negotiation for residents

20 as to where oil and gas processes occur. One

21 resident says they don't sit down and tell you

22 they're going to build something right behind you.

23 We're about 500 feet away. The first time that

24 something told me something was happening was when

25 our animals started dying. We don't know how
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1 dangerous this was until the well exploded and they

2 evacuated us. When is this ever going to go away?

3 I've been on antibiotics and steroids for

4 bronchitis and sinusitis almost since all of this

5 started. I'd like to add that our grandson has

6 been diagnosed with similar respiratory issues.

7 My participant goes on and says, if I

8 would have known this, I would have never. And in

9 his statement, he realizes that he never had the

10 choice. He emphasized being able and healthy

11 enough to work and be outside prior to all of this

12 happening in Karnes County. He said I think that

13 they, the industry, could do this in a more

14 responsible manner and that they can monitor what

15 they're doing on a daily basis and that they can

16 spend more money by monitoring and letting people

17 know when something is coming out that's dangerous.

18 People that are surrounded by these

19 oil and gas activities can tell you how much their

20 environment and their health has declined because

21 of it. A resident sitting next to me used an

22 oxygen mask and tried to explain to the doctors,

23 and the doctors have told them about how little

24 response they've gotten from industry

25 representatives and state and environmental
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1 agencies. She says, he has restricted breathing

2 and doctors don't know why.

3 Doctors ran out of things to test for.

4 He doesn't go outside anymore. It bothers him. If

5 you make it to 70 without any respiratory issues,

6 then after months of this going on, all of a

7 sudden, you can't breathe anymore, I don't want his

8 health to deteriorate. His health will deteriorate

9 if we have to stay here.

10 And lastly, I just want to end this

11 with saying, I'm here pleading for a better qualify

12 of life for these people. Determining the air --

13 the quality of air associated to oil and gas

14 drilling processes should include listening and

15 spending quality time with the people who are being

16 affected and living with these contaminants. To

17 me, the people that I spoke with in Karnes County,

18 there's no doubt in my mind the air quality is

19 impacting their quality of life.

20 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Thank you

21 very much. Before you go, are there any questions?

22 MR. MOORE: No.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

24 testimony.

25 Okay. Folks, we're going to take a --
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1 how long? We're going to take a ten-minute break,

2 so let's come back at -- let's come back at

3 3:00 o'clock. How about that? All right? Thanks,

4 folks.

5 (Break was had from 2:48 p.m. to

6 3:01 p.m.)

7 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, folks. We are

8 going to get started. If you could just grab a

9 seat, and I'd also like to invite Hal Suter to

10 please come forward. You're up next. You're right

11 there? Okay. Sit right there. I've got my eyes

12 on you. Mr. Schade, please begin.

13 MR. SCHADE: Thank you. My name is

14 Gunnar Schade. I live in College Station, Texas,

15 and I'd like to talk to you in my role as a

16 concerned scientist about the issue.

17 MR. THOMPSON: And could you spell

18 your name for the court reporter, please.

19 MR. SCHADE: G-u-n-n-a-r. Last name,

20 S-c-h-a-d-e.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir.

22 MR. SCHADE: A little bit different

23 topic than you have dealt with for a long time, and

24 I'm calling it here a little -- maybe a little

25 because you're dealing with small sources, but they
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1 have a large impact and although these sources are

2 small, the focus on only large sources is not going

3 to solve the problem. I'm very grateful that

4 you're going to address all of the small sources.

5 Particularly, you're addressing methane, which has

6 not been addressed for a very long time, but it is

7 the second most important greenhouse gas and having

8 addressed it earlier, we would have saved a lot of

9 time with respect to making progress in the

10 greenhouse gas emissions.

11 I want to thank you for calling the

12 proposed rule common sense because I think that's

13 exactly what it is because reducing methane

14 emissions is actually very, very easy. Now, I want

15 to give you a little bit of a backdrop on what

16 methane is actually doing in the atmosphere. Most

17 of you will probably know this very well, but

18 methane is not dropping globally, and it's not

19 dropping regionally. It has been increasing again

20 since about ten years in the atmosphere now, and we

21 scientists are not 100 percent sure where this is

22 coming from, but it is mostly happening in northern

23 mid latitudes, and one of the reasons we're pretty

24 sure about is coal development in China, but other

25 conditions could go the development of -- excuse
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1 me -- shale resources in the United States.

2 The question often comes up in that

3 it's actually EPA's fault in part whether methane

4 emissions from oil and gas are dropping, and what

5 often gets cited with that statement is that EPA

6 emissions inventory shows it's dropping. If that

7 really were the case, then somebody please explain

8 to me as you can see here why ethane is increasing

9 since ethane is co-emitted? It's virtually only

10 with methane, but it's increasing almost

11 everywhere. So how can methane dropping -- be

12 dropping if ethane is increasing?

13 On the left-hand side of the recent

14 publication you have here slide one from colleagues

15 in northeast and on the right-hand side is a copy

16 of our publication and research from about a half a

17 year ago. One is showing Marcellus on the

18 left-hand side. On the right-hand side, the data

19 from Eagle Ford in Texas.

20 My critique of EPA is that you

21 continue to use and rely heavily on self-imported

22 data by the industry which is known to be biased.

23 A large study by Adam Brandt that appeared in

24 Science two years ago have -- was a methane study

25 that critically showed that EPA's data may be
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1 biased. I'm sorry that you can't see this very

2 clearly, but basically, the conclusion of the study

3 was, you know, in this part of the graph that

4 almost all ratios between estimates and reality are

5 smaller, but -- the ratio of reality to estimate is

6 larger than one with the total estimate hovering

7 around 50 percent underestimation.

8 On top of that, a recent paper shows

9 that one of the predominantly used instruments in

10 industry to measure leaks shows a very clear bias

11 which we see in the graph on the right-hand side.

12 This is the one-to-one line between an independent

13 analyzer and the analyzer in question on the left

14 half, and you can see that for many, many sources,

15 the analyzer is way underestimating where the

16 methane should be. This same analyzer was used in

17 a study that industry keeps repeating as being the

18 study that shows that its emissions are low. This

19 work is incredible, and you should definitely have

20 a look at it.

21 Lastly, fool me once, fool me twice.

22 When arguments are made that emissions are

23 dropping, often data is shown that shows relative

24 emissions, but relative emissions are based on gas

25 production, and science has shown that in those
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1 areas where there's a very, very large gas

2 production, you tend to have lower methane

3 emissions. But those are the areas in this case,

4 so for Barnett and Marcellus, these are old ones

5 where the industry has made a lot of progress in

6 efficiency and the industry is forwarding those

7 areas as where it doesn't emit a lot of methane.

8 These are dry gas areas.

9 Most of the emissions that with work

10 my colleagues would know show -- I'm sorry.

11 Most -- that was the wrong direction. Most

12 emissions are happening in those areas where oil is

13 brought out of the ground, not from the gas. And

14 my summary is here. I think it's very simple to

15 fix these leaks, and it would create a lot of jobs

16 to fix these leaks, but if you continue

17 wastefulness, you will not create any jobs.

18 Therefore, I applaud you for this rule. I hope

19 that you will go further in creating even more jobs

20 by also regulating these system sources. Thank you

21 very much.

22 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

23 testimony and your patience in getting that set up

24 for you. Are there any questions from the panel?

25 MR. MOORE: No.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Again, thank you very

2 much.

3 Mr. Suter? Okay.

4 MR. SUTER: I'm Hal Suter, S-u-t-e-r

5 is the last name. Don't worry about mispronouncing

6 it. It's a hard name. There was a baseball fan

7 named Bruce Suter, and there also was the relief

8 pitcher. When he was asked how you pronounce his

9 last name he said, just like Bruce, but the last

10 name is one less T and a lot less money. All

11 right.

12 I'm a member of the Lone Star Chapter

13 of the Sierra Club and the immediate past chair of

14 the Sierra Club. I'm also with the coastal and

15 regional group which is down there in Corpus

16 Christi, Texas. But we have a good chunk of

17 members that are people from Eagle Ford Shale,

18 Karnes County, and all of the country around there.

19 There have been a number of horror stories from

20 people who live there, and I think you can say

21 Denton is the same thing.

22 MR. THOMPSON: Could you move the mike

23 a little closer to you? A little more.

24 MR. SUTER: Do you want me to start

25 repeating all of that?
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1 MR. THOMPSON: No, sir. I got that.

2 MR. SUTER: Okay. So what we were

3 talking about is we put in -- the one thing about

4 that is that there are going to be a lot of

5 cumulative effects the way this industry has done

6 on. Sometimes these things are considered

7 individually, but added to the refineries down

8 there in Corpus Christi, the additions of more tank

9 farms, more storage vessels, et cetera, all of

10 these things add up just a little bit, little bit,

11 little bit, and it adds up to very big things. And

12 anything that can be done to mitigate what's going

13 on, it will be an improvement over what's happening

14 at the moment, and I certainly commend your Agency

15 for beginning the process of at least starting some

16 things, even though I will say ditto. I'm sure

17 you've heard a lot of people that say it should be

18 expanded to existing facilities, as well.

19 I do want to talk just a little bit

20 about some of the practical politics of what's

21 going on here. I go and look in the mirror and I

22 sit there and there's something wrong because, you

23 know, Hal Suter is supposed to be a brunette. All

24 I see is all of this gray hair now, and I guess

25 when I sit back and come to a hearing like this and
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1 I go back and have a lot of experience with all of

2 these various resource agencies here in Texas, I

3 can remember when there was a thing called the

4 Texas Water Commission. It merged with the Texas

5 Air Control Board, and it became the Texas Natural

6 Resource Conservation Commission, and, of course,

7 the name of it was TNRCC, which the way the acronym

8 is was called train wreck.

9 Well, that has gone and merged, and we

10 now call it the Texas Commission on Environmental

11 Quality. Now, with all due respect, gentlemen,

12 that is a misnomer, a very gross misnomer, because

13 it really should be TIPA, Texas industrial

14 permitting agency or Texas industrial pollution

15 agency because it does almost nothing really for

16 the environment.

17 We have the Railroad Commission. Now,

18 I promised a young lady that's a member of my

19 group, Teresa Corea, who sits on the Railroad

20 Commission Task Force for the Eagle Ford Shale that

21 I would not be my normal caustic self about the

22 Railroad Commission. And I also cannot think of

23 any acronym or name for the Railroad Commission

24 which would be appropriate in mixed company and

25 particularly when I'm on the record here in the
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1 hearing, but all of that notwithstanding, there are

2 some very good people who work in those agencies.

3 They are people who want to do a good job, but they

4 cannot do so because of the political pressure

5 they're going to be under.

6 If we have a rule from an agency which

7 is somewhat removed, one or two layers removed from

8 the political pressure, it is very feasible, very

9 possible, very probable, that we are going to have

10 a chance for these regulators to do the good job

11 which they want to do because they are free from

12 the political pressure, from the deadlines that

13 they're under here in Texas.

14 You know, like the previous speaker

15 before was talking about Obi-Wan Kenobi, and it's

16 probably pretty much true. We do need some Jedi

17 knights to come in and do some stuff here in Texas

18 because we are dealing with the dark side of the

19 force when it comes to the energy regulation here

20 in the state, and certainly anything that might be

21 done along those lines will be very helpful; but

22 basically, I feel if we can relieve some of the

23 political pressure to allow people to do what they

24 need to do, that will be a tremendous improvement,

25 so I'm free to answer any questions.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, Mr. Suter. Thank

2 you. Are there any questions for Mr. Suter?

3 MR. LAWRENCE: No.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

5 testimony.

6 (Applause was heard.)

7 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. All right. So I

8 think a Linda Cooke is up next.

9 MS. COOKE: I thought you were scared.

10 I brought extra copies of my remarks. Do you want

11 those now?

12 MR. MOORE: We'll take those through

13 the registration desk.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

15 MS. COOKE: Good afternoon.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Good afternoon to you.

17 If you will, just pronounce your name and spell it

18 for the court reporter and begin your testimony.

19 MS. COOKE: Linda Cooke, L-i-n-d-a,

20 C-o-o-k-e. I live in Dallas. I'm here to voice my

21 support for the proposed rulemaking titled, "Oil

22 and national -- Natural Gas Sector: Emission

23 Standards for New and Modified Sources," docket

24 number EPA-HQ-OAR-2010-20505 [sic].

25 I'm very glad that you are here in
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1 Texas today to listen to the comments of people

2 such as myself because I want you to hear firsthand

3 how poorly served we are by our state regulator

4 agencies who favor business development and oil and

5 gas interests over the health and quality of life

6 of the people of Texas.

7 Over the years, the Texas Commission

8 on Environmental Quality has consistently proposed

9 new state lax rules for regulating the air quality

10 that do not control increasing levels of pollution.

11 And consequently, the Dallas-Fort Worth area has

12 historically been in a nonattainment area for ozone

13 levels.

14 If the proposed new state

15 implementation -- implementation plan is

16 implemented without tougher federal standards to

17 meet, Dallas-Fort Worth will remain out of

18 compliance. They have specifically refused to

19 consider regulating sources of methane emissions

20 like compressors on drilling sites which are

21 present in significant numbers here in the Barnett

22 Shale.

23 Texas is a place where industry rides

24 roughshod over state regulators, and citizens don't

25 have a level playing field to seek relief from the
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1 adverse health consequences of air pollution. The

2 Texas Railroad Commissioners were elected by

3 beneficiaries of the oil and gas industry, and they

4 have significant personal financial interests in

5 the oil and gas industry themselves. They have

6 strong incentives to pass blanket legislation that

7 ignore the rights of private citizens to protect

8 themselves from harmful emissions regardless of

9 wherever they live or work. This is especially

10 meaningful in a state that produces as much as

11 30 percent of all gas and oil production in the

12 United States.

13 I'm sure many people testifying here

14 have already mentioned that the elected

15 representatives in the state legislature are also

16 beholden to the oil and gas industry. They cite

17 oil and gas as an economic driver and recently

18 passed House Bill 40 that stripped municipalities

19 of the right to establish setbacks to protect their

20 citizens from industrial processes, so now citizens

21 can no longer protect their health and safety from

22 the emissions and explosive dangers of industrial

23 processes by choosing to live within a city with a

24 protective ordinance.

25 In the past, drilling operations have
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1 been in rural areas. Now they can no longer be

2 prohibited in the cities despite the votes of the

3 people that live there. There are no longer any

4 safe places to live. Those with air pollution

5 related illnesses particularly suffer, and I'm one

6 of those. I was also shocked to -- I say shocked

7 to learn during TECQ's state impact plan meeting

8 last spring that the state makes no consideration

9 for airport emissions in quality air plan -- in air

10 quality planning.

11 I was advised that the state does not

12 measure or review those emissions because airports

13 are under the federal regulation. As a Dallas

14 resident who lives near Love Field, I have

15 witnessed over the past year the dramatic expansion

16 of services there since the lifting of the Wright

17 Amendment. This brings home to me how critical

18 federal regulations are to my personal quality of

19 life, so I need your help and the people of Texas

20 are in need of EPA's oversight and federal

21 regulation of methane pollution as ever before.

22 My wish would be to expand the

23 regulations to include emissions from all equipment

24 not just new and reworked sites. Please bear these

25 comments in mind while making your decision. I
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1 thank you for your consideration.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Ms. Cooke.

3 Thank you for your testimony.

4 (Applause was heard.)

5 MR. THOMPSON: Ms. Cooke, one second.

6 Are there any questions?

7 MR. MOORE: No.

8 MR. LAWRENCE: No.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much.

10 Thank you. Okay. At this time, I'd like to invite

11 Ranjana Bhandari. And then Jim Schermbeck will

12 follow the next testimony.

13 MS. BHANDARI: My name is Ranjana

14 Bhandari. I am from Arlington, Texas, and

15 represent a community group called Liveable

16 Arlington.

17 MR. THOMPSON: And I'm sorry. Could

18 you spell your name for the court reporter, please.

19 MS. BHANDARI: R-a-n-j-a-n-a.

20 Bhandari, B-h-a-n-d-a-r-i.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

22 MS. BHANDARI: I thank the EPA for

23 giving me this opportunity to comment. Arlington

24 is a city of 362,000 people in an area of less than

25 a hundred square miles. At present, we have
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1 400-plus gas wells in 56 drill sites as shown in

2 the Railroad Commission map. Let me advance to the

3 next one. Earlier this year, the City of Arlington

4 projected growing this number to more than 900 gas

5 wells in the next few years. Our city is also

6 covered with a maze of gas gathering and -- yes,

7 that is the slide -- I'm sorry -- gas gathering and

8 transmission pipelines and compressor stations.

9 The next slide shows a map of

10 Arlington with one-mile circles around each drill

11 site in the city. Given the intense drilling in

12 Arlington and the neighboring cities, residents

13 spend time in multiple overlapping circles wherever

14 they happen to be at any time. Our children are

15 constantly exposed to emissions from these sites

16 whether they are at home, school, in the park, a

17 little league game, at the playground. With

18 drilling expanding, this picture will only get

19 worse.

20 At the recent urban drilling forum

21 hosted by our city on August 1st of this year, our

22 fire chief stated that gas drilling was here to

23 stay in Arlington for a period of next -- of the

24 next 30 or 50 years. My son who is now a teenager

25 was born in Arlington. He has spent almost his
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1 entire life around drill sites, gas wells,

2 fracking, and the highly toxic emission and health

3 effects that accompany it. He was a toddler when

4 all of this started. These days, however, I hear

5 him talk about college.

6 If he escapes this toxic legacy of

7 drilling and gets away from it when he goes to

8 college, the global climate effect of all of this

9 methane leaking into our atmosphere will still

10 follow him for the rest of his life. This is true

11 for all of Arlington's children and for millions of

12 children elsewhere in the shale fields of America.

13 The climate effects of all of this

14 drilling are, of course, global. In Texas, with

15 the passage of House Bill 40 this year, the state

16 government has taken away a city's right to

17 regulate drilling. Our Railroad Commission does

18 not have enough inspectors. Only 158 statewide at

19 last count or the will to monitor the large number

20 of wells we have in our state. There are 400 gas

21 wells in Arlington alone. With this vacuum in

22 local and state monitoring and regulation, federal

23 rules are our only hope here. We need national

24 rules to protect the millions of people who now

25 live very close to drilling.
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1 We appreciate the EPA taking this

2 critical first step to reduce methane pollution

3 from oil and gas facilities. Methane is an

4 extremely potent greenhouse gas. Over a 20-year

5 period, it is 85 times more powerful than carbon

6 dioxide. 30 percent of U.S. oil and gas production

7 comes from Texas which means a large share of the

8 methane problem happens right here in this state.

9 These new rules are also important to

10 our health because the required controls will

11 reduce other toxic air pollution that is related

12 with the methane. It will cut emissions of VOCs

13 and smog-forming pollutants. The Dallas-Fort Worth

14 area where Arlington has been in nonattainment of

15 EPA smog standards for a long time. It also has

16 very high rates of childhood asthma. These rules

17 will also reduce emissions of compounds like

18 benzene which is a serious threat for public

19 health.

20 Industry claims job losses in arguing

21 against methane rules, however, Colorado's

22 experience shows us that is not the case. The

23 Colorado rules are considered tougher than the EPA

24 rules. Federal rules would require producers to

25 upgrade pumps and compressors on new wells and
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1 expand the use of methane-capturing equipment for

2 gas and oil wells. Unlike Colorado, they don't

3 cover methane from existing facilities. Colorado

4 requires companies to inspect for methane leaks in

5 tanks, pipelines, and wells once a month at large

6 facilities and plug them using infrared cameras.

7 Noble, the state's second largest oil

8 driller, said in a presentation to Colorado last

9 year that compliance would cost about $3 million a

10 year. They told investors that the cost wouldn't

11 be material to earnings or cash flow. The proposed

12 rules are tough, but they're the right thing to do.

13 They provide enhanced air quality benefits at a

14 manageable cost.

15 Even with the best technology in

16 place, burning dirty fossil fuels places future

17 generations at extreme risk from climate change.

18 While supporting a rapid shift to clean renewable

19 energy, we strongly urge the EPA to implement these

20 rules for both new and existing oil and gas

21 facilities in the interim to help preserve not just

22 a liveable Arlington, but also a liveable planet.

23 Thank you.

24 (Applause was heard.)

25 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your
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1 testimony. Are there any questions?

2 MR. MOORE: No. Thank you.

3 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again.

4 MR. SCHERMBECK: Mr. Thompson, are you

5 from Region 6?

6 MR. THOMPSON: No, I'm not.

7 MR. SCHERMBECK: I feel like I've seen

8 you before.

9 MR. THOMPSON: I know exactly who you

10 are. I've chaired before when you've testified.

11 MR. SCHERMBECK: Really?

12 MR. THOMPSON: Absolutely. I remember

13 you.

14 MR. SCHERMBECK: There have been a lot

15 of hearings lately.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for coming

17 today. The floor is yours. Please state and spell

18 for name for the court reporter and then begin.

19 MR. SCHERMBECK: My name is Jim

20 Schermbeck. It's spelled S-c-h-e-r-m-b-e-c-k.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir.

22 MR. SCHERMBECK: I'm director of

23 Downward Risk. It's a 21-year-old local clean air

24 group that's been tracking and dealing with the

25 D/FW smog since about 1995. I'm here today
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1 representing an oppressed majority, people who

2 breathe. Because a majority of Texas residents

3 want cleaner air, that's shown in poll after poll,

4 a majority of Texas residents want action on

5 climate change and a majority of Texas residents

6 want the state to follow federal law. However, we

7 are governed by man, and they are all men who do

8 not share these values.

9 It's true that after years of

10 borderline illegal gerrymandering and intense

11 disenfranchisement, they were elected; but they do

12 not represent the majority of Texans on these

13 issues.

14 Our situation is analogous to the

15 situation in the 1960's during the civil rights

16 movement. Just as Alabama and Mississippi and

17 other southern states, including Texas, attempted

18 to nullify or disregard civil rights legislation

19 for a whole population within those states during

20 those years, so Texas is now attempting to nullify

21 federal environmental law. It's kind of a

22 confederate approach to clean air.

23 It's hard to put much stock in an

24 agency that doesn't even believe that smog is much

25 of a problem, which TECQ officially does, so I'm
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1 here to speak for this oppressed majority when I

2 tell you that most Texans support these methane

3 rules and other clean air measures, but you could

4 do more. You could cover existing facilities

5 because the Barnett Shale now has almost 17,000 or

6 more wells and over 700 compressors. It's a hive

7 of oil and gas activity in the middle of the fourth

8 largest metropolitan area in the country.

9 Within these rules are special

10 regulations for smog nonattainment areas like ours,

11 like Dallas-Fort Worth, that would require new

12 control guideline techniques to reduce methane and

13 smog from -- and smog-forming emissions in new

14 clean air plants such as the one being drawn up for

15 Dallas-Fort Worth right now. The problem is that

16 these guidelines don't take effect for two years in

17 the current rules. It might as well be 20 because

18 there is a new clean air plan being drafted right

19 now for the 75 standards, and we need these kind of

20 control techniques installed in that plan now.

21 For instance, we're only one of four

22 metropolitan areas in the country not expected to

23 meet the 85 standards by your own Agency according

24 to models released earlier this year. Only one in

25 four non-California cities not expected to meet the
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1 75 standard by 2018. We're the only one of those

2 cities not expected to meet that standard that has

3 significant oil and gas pollution involved in its

4 ozone formation. We're the only one of those four

5 areas where this childhood asthma rate is two to

6 three times the state and national average.

7 Last July, there were 11 studies that

8 were published -- peer reviewed and published

9 showing that methane was leaking from the Barnett

10 Shale at 50 percent more than predicted levels --

11 than EPA-predicted levels. You might have heard

12 that ozone levels in D/FW are going down. That is

13 not true. In 19- -- I believe in 2009, we had

14 ozone levels at 86 parts per billion. This year,

15 the design value is at 83. That's a three parts

16 per billion in the last five or six years it's gone

17 down. It's not going down significantly. In fact,

18 it went up this year. This summer is so much worse

19 than the last, the ozone actually went up two parts

20 per billion. So no, ozone is not going down in the

21 area. It's getting worse.

22 Texas is stalling on this plan hoping

23 that their delay will cause attention to revert

24 back to the new standard coming down the line in

25 October, that attention will be paid to that
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1 timeline and that everybody will forget about this

2 current plan that they cannot possibly meet by

3 2017. That's the deadline being held over there.

4 A very loud minority in Austin and DC

5 would have you believe that most Texans don't want

6 the EPA to do its job. They're mistaken. They are

7 the George Wallaces standing in the schoolhouse

8 door. They are the Bull Connors. They are the

9 Volkswagen of state government. That is why we

10 need the EPA to send the equivalent of federal

11 marshals to enforce the law. The state won't

12 provide us with our right to clean air. The EPA

13 must. Please, please let my people breathe.

14 Thanks.

15 (Applause was heard.)

16 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

17 testimony. Mr. Schermbeck, before you go, any

18 questions?

19 MR. MOORE: No.

20 MR. LAWRENCE: No.

21 MR. SCHERMBECK: I'm assuming you have

22 my e-mail address.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Yes. Thank you very

24 much. Okay. At this time, I'd like to invite

25 Molly -- I think that's R-o-o-k-e, Rooke? And then
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1 John -- that's correct. Thank you. Good

2 afternoon.

3 MS. ROOKE: Good afternoon. I'm Molly

4 Rooke, R-o-o-k-e, and I split my time between

5 living in Dallas and down in South Texas on my

6 family's ranch. I actually drove up for this from

7 down there. I'm a mineral owner and a property

8 owner, very familiar with oil and gas operations,

9 which are still ongoing after several generations

10 on our ranch. I'm also asthmatic and an

11 environmentalist.

12 I'm terribly in support of EPA's

13 efforts to clean our air and reduce greenhouse

14 emissions by controlling methane emissions from oil

15 and gas sources. I hope that the EPA will further

16 strengthen the rules and include existing sources

17 of methane emissions from oil and gas operations.

18 The Dallas-Fort Worth areas need strong federal

19 rules on methane to clean up our -- to help clean

20 up our regional high ozone smog which sickens so

21 many, including myself.

22 The flaring that I see whenever I'm in

23 the Eagle Ford Shale is extremely widespread. It's

24 very disturbing to see all of that methane being

25 flared off, and it's only polluting our air as well
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1 as wasting a very valuable resource. And we talk

2 about how important our natural gas is, and then we

3 just flare it off because they've overproduced or

4 brought the price down, so it's not -- it's not

5 something we should be doing, definitely not as a

6 mineral owner and not as someone who cares about

7 our air quality and our greenhouse gas emissions.

8 Of course, as you've heard -- as

9 you've heard from so many today, this is lots of

10 variation on the same theme, but it's because we're

11 all suffering the same thing. The Texas regulators

12 are just not out there protecting us. Their goal

13 is to protect the profits of the oil and gas

14 industry at the expense of all of us, and they have

15 expanded issuing permits allowing extended flaring

16 with more than 3,012 permits in 2014 and 5,207 in

17 2015, with up to 30 percent of all gas being flared

18 or vented in some counties in the Eagle Ford Shale.

19 That is ridiculous and obscene.

20 It is crucial that the EPA do all that

21 it can to establish and enforce the strongest

22 possible rules on greenhouse gas emissions

23 including methane emissions from the oil and gas

24 sector especially in the absence of protection from

25 state regulators or legislators. We are counting
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1 on you. Thank you.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Thank you

3 for your testimony. Any questions?

4 MR. MOORE: No.

5 MR. LAWRENCE: No.

6 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

7 (Applause was heard.)

8 MR. LAZARATION: Good afternoon.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Good afternoon.

10 MR. LAZARATION: My name is John

11 Lazaration. The last name is spelled

12 L-a-z-a-r-a-t-i-o-n, and this is a first for me. I

13 felt it was an opportunity to speak directly to my

14 federal government to let you know that I, too, am

15 a Texan who feels that this government, the State

16 of Texas, is not acting in the best interests of

17 the residents of Texas. I am concerned. I will

18 not try to presume to tell you how dangerous these

19 methane and the other gases are to the greenhouse

20 gas problem that this country is facing, but I will

21 say that scientists are telling us every time they

22 do a new study that things are happening faster

23 than they expected them to happen. I think we're

24 in trouble, and we don't have a lot of time.

25 These rules are a wonderful first
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1 step. They can't be our last. The -- the straw

2 argument against doing these are the cost to

3 industry and the cost to the economy. Well, I

4 think Denmark has proven that you can have a clean

5 economy and a growing economy, and it is -- the

6 government, I believe, set aside approximately

7 $50 million to deal with two small fishing

8 villages -- moving two small fishing villages in

9 Alaska. The cost of addressing greenhouse gas now

10 will pale when it comes time to move Houston.

11 And I am sorry, but I believe that the

12 way our economy is set up, we have privatized the

13 profits of the fossil fuel industry, but we are

14 socializing the cost of these industries. A

15 greener clean economy is a must. Thank you very

16 much.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you,

18 Mr. Lazaration. Are there any questions from the

19 panel?

20 MR. MOORE: No. I just wondered where

21 you do live in Texas.

22 MR. LAZARATION: I live in DeSoto.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

24 testimony.

25 (Applause was heard.)
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. At this time,

2 I'd like to invite Ingrid Kelley and Richard

3 Bradley to come forward. Good afternoon,

4 Mrs. Kelley. How are you?

5 MS. KELLEY: Good afternoon, whatever

6 Jedi warriors that you are. It's Kelley with an

7 E-Y. Thank you.

8 Premature mortality. I found it

9 mentioned often in the literature while searching

10 about methane emissions and public health.

11 Premature mortality does not include accidental

12 death. Premature cardiovascular and respiratory

13 mortality related to methane alone is at the top of

14 the list. This caught my attention as I'm an RN in

15 a heart failure, heart, and lung transplant unit.

16 It's difficult to witness the struggles of those

17 patients. Breathing is a chore. Walking to the

18 bathroom, bathing, eating, talking all are

19 exhaustive tasks.

20 A recent study done over a four-year

21 time frame in Pennsylvania found that

22 hospitalization rates increased in areas of close

23 proximity to unconventional oil and gas drilling.

24 In this study, cardiovascular admissions were

25 statistically significantly higher. The effects on
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1 children's health from exposure to environmental

2 toxins is staggering. A conservative estimate for

3 the cost of asthma in the United States is over

4 $2 billion, and for childhood cancers the cost is

5 over $600,000 per case. Their health is

6 compromised before they become adults, increasing

7 the odds of premature mortality. Is this the

8 future we want for our children?

9 Study after study concludes that

10 reductions in methane emissions are beneficial to

11 human health. Overall reductions in ozone-related

12 premature mortality would be greatly reduced. The

13 costs of implementing these regulations is negated

14 by the costs associated with premature mortality.

15 Should new technological learning take place that

16 aggressively reduces methane emissions, we would

17 see a reduction in premature mortality five times

18 greater than the least expensive scenario of

19 methane control. That's over 640,000 lives.

20 Methane not only is a threat to our

21 air quality but also to our water supply. Methane

22 contamination is now well documented in the

23 Marcellus and Utica Shale area and in the Barnett

24 Shale region from unconventional natural gas

25 extraction. There is not a system in the human
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1 body that isn't adversely impacted by the dangers

2 of methane.

3 Additional benefits of methane

4 regulation will decrease the negative effects on

5 climate change. Climate change alone will further

6 negatively impact our health. If we cannot

7 eliminate the industries that endanger our health,

8 then the very least we can do is regulate the

9 emissions that they release in order to protect the

10 public's health. If we don't, Americans will

11 shoulder the economic burden from healthcare costs

12 related to premature mortality.

13 The cost analysis of premature

14 mortality and methane emissions are available, so

15 my question is, why are we not regulating to

16 maximize the best possible outcome for human health

17 benefits? What price do you have on the life of

18 your loved ones? How much is it worth to you to

19 protect them? The answer to these questions is

20 obvious. We shouldn't even have to ask.

21 I'm not going to describe how and why

22 methane is leaking in massive quantities from

23 hydraulic fracking or describe how methane impacts

24 the climate. You know that information. Stop the

25 bottom-up regulations. Don't rely on the industry
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1 to self-regulate. It is obvious by the frequent

2 accidents occurring that they can't control it.

3 Also, this technology was implemented without

4 concern or caution regarding the risk to human

5 health, including to their own employees.

6 Our state regulatory agencies often

7 ignore our complaints or don't act on them

8 appropriately, and it is not just the methane that

9 is poisoning us. All the VOCs, nitrogen oxides,

10 the countless carcinogens and mutagenic chemicals

11 that are used by the industry is deteriorating our

12 health and our environment. Protect us, please,

13 for my patients, my loved ones, and for all of us.

14 Thank you for your time.

15 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

16 testimony.

17 (Applause was heard.)

18 MR. THOMPSON: Are there any questions

19 for Ms. Kelley?

20 MR. MOORE: No.

21 MR. LAWRENCE: You're an RN you said

22 here in Dallas?

23 MS. KELLEY: Yes, here in Dallas, and

24 my paper is cited heavily.

25 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you again
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1 for your testimony.

2 Mr. Bradley, please. Good afternoon,

3 Mr. Bradley.

4 MR. BRADLEY: Good afternoon. Thank

5 you for having me. Do you want me to spell my

6 name?

7 MR. THOMPSON: For the court reporter.

8 MR. BRADLEY: My name is Ricky,

9 R-i-c-k-y, Bradley, B-r-a-d-l-e-y.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

11 MR. BRADLEY: I'm here today with an

12 organization called Citizens' Climate Lobby. We do

13 a lot of work at the federal level trying to get a

14 federal price on carbon. I really appreciate the

15 opportunity that you guys presented us today as

16 citizens to come in and to voice our opinions and

17 to give input.

18 I've spent the last 15 years or so

19 between Houston and Dallas, and if you know

20 anything, you guys obviously know about these

21 cities. You almost have to have a cognitive

22 distance when you're driving into one of these

23 cities and see the smog and knowing that you're

24 going to work there. I mean, it's just -- you have

25 to be disconnected from it.
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1 I really appreciate your efforts, and

2 I'm very supportive of the regulations that we are

3 all commenting on here today, but I would like the

4 EPA to go even further. What really upsets me more

5 than anything is some of the doublespeak that we

6 get in the state. It's my sense, really, that

7 what's at stake here is not only our personal

8 liberty but our economic liberty, and we need the

9 EPA to step in and help out with that.

10 I don't understand the arguments that

11 people have about liberty but then to be able to

12 forsake their own personal freedom and their own

13 health with a cost benefit analysis. We don't do

14 that with anything else when it comes to liberty,

15 and that's exactly what's at stake here is our

16 ability to live and survive and thrive in our

17 environment. That's very important to me. There

18 should be no cost benefit analysis on this.

19 So what it really comes to for me is

20 that this is an economic question of hidden costs

21 of oil and gas production, and, you know, there's

22 two options. There's regulation and also a price

23 on greenhouse gas emissions. In the absence of

24 congressional action, we're doing exactly what we

25 have to do, and I applaud you guys for your efforts
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1 and this administration for everything that they've

2 done.

3 Really, to me, it comes down to this.

4 The last thing I'll say, I won't take all of your

5 time.

6 MR. THOMPSON: No, sir. You have

7 three minutes.

8 MR. BRADLEY: You know, no business

9 has a right to exist if they can't control all of

10 their costs and turn a profit. Right? I mean,

11 that is not how our free market system is set up to

12 work, and anything less than that -- anything less

13 than holding it fully accountable for all of their

14 costs is, indeed, a subsidy or a handout to that

15 industry. You know, I don't take my trash out and

16 dump it on the street and expect everybody else to

17 pay for it and pick it up. I have to pay for my

18 trash.

19 That type of pollution is not being

20 paid for by the producers, and I applaud you for

21 your efforts to make that happen. And if it's in

22 the most inefficient way, and that's what I truly

23 believe through regulation, so be it. If the

24 industry is going to fight and not allow the

25 market-based approaches work, then I applaud your
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1 efforts in everything you're doing. Thank you.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Bradley.

3 Are there any questions for Mr. Bradley?

4 MR. MOORE: No.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

6 testimony.

7 (Applause was heard.)

8 MR. THOMPSON: At this time, I'd like

9 to ask Colata Harlan and Brett Cease if they're in

10 the room to please come forward for testimony.

11 Okay. Good afternoon.

12 MR. CEASE: Good afternoon. Thank you

13 for the time. My name is Brett Cease, B-r-e-t-t,

14 C-e-a-s-e. I am a resident of Denton and a public

15 policy and doctorate student at UT Dallas. And I

16 just, I guess, want to begin by thanking all of you

17 gentlemen for setting this public hearing up and

18 for making time to come to Dallas and listen to the

19 voices of citizens and area residents and commend

20 kind of the efforts being made on behalf of the EPA

21 to regulate the law of the commons.

22 Some of my interests in research areas

23 are really looking at the kind of economic

24 efficiencies of the law of the commons and really

25 looking at what to do to really make sure to
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1 protect kind of the commons area that all of us

2 really inhabit collectively, and I think that the

3 proposed climate air quality and permitting rules

4 for the oil and natural gas industry take a really

5 vital and important first step in doing that, and I

6 just have a couple of quick comments on the way

7 that we can continue to go in the direction of

8 protecting the commons.

9 The first we are really looking at is

10 the cost benefit analyses. Also, quantifying the

11 benefits that will come from the reduced emissions

12 of VOCs. The formation of smog and soot from those

13 hazardous air pollutants were not included in the

14 proposed draft rules, I believe. In addition to

15 that, we'd love to also uplift the importance of

16 looking at the economic question of having the

17 ability to look at the benefits of the sale of the

18 gas that would be saved in the transmission and

19 storage segments as well. That wasn't included in

20 the draft rules, and I think that would be a

21 societal benefit or cost depending on which side

22 you're looking at. I think it would also be

23 important to include existing sources as well as

24 new sources of methane emissions in the extension

25 of these rules as well as including storage vessels
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1 and tanks into the actual regulation process as

2 well.

3 I think that in addition to that, it

4 would be important for the EPA to look at their

5 current standard of allowing either captured or

6 combustion for methane emissions, allowing

7 operators to either do either, onsite perhaps is

8 not the farthest we could go from a perspective of

9 waste as well as of an environmental perspective.

10 We minimize the flare as much as possible but allow

11 it only if technically feasible or impossible, I

12 guess, would be a step in the right direction.

13 And I guess the last comment I would

14 ask is also, you know, just to require the

15 inspections are not done on a semiannual basis, but

16 at least quarterly and that the system, the way it

17 currently is set up, would incentivize operators to

18 ignore or overlook leaks in order to qualify for

19 the schedule of less frequent inspections that they

20 currently would be set up to do and instead have it

21 be required at all points.

22 Again, I guess I'll just close by

23 saying I appreciate what the EPA is doing with this

24 step especially if the U.S. is serious about

25 meeting its international greenhouse gas reduction
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1 commitments. We have the upcoming Paris

2 conference, and with the timeliness of the Pope's

3 visit, we ask at this time -- I appreciate that

4 this step is being taken as studies have shown that

5 we won't make those commitments unless we cut

6 methane from oil and gas sources by 40 to 45

7 percent by 2025. So thank you again for your time,

8 and I appreciate the chance to speak.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Yes. Thank you,

10 Mr. Cease. I think we have a question.

11 MR. MOORE: You -- I wanted to clarify

12 and make sure that I heard you correctly.

13 MR. CEASE: Okay.

14 MR. MOORE: On the frequency of the

15 surveys for leaks, you were suggesting that we

16 should have a quarterly requirement -- require

17 quarterly surveying without the frequency changing?

18 MR. CEASE: Correct. I guess that

19 would be -- I think monthly, quarterly. At this

20 point, kind of I'll leave that up to your best

21 judgment.

22 MR. MOORE: But no change in

23 frequency?

24 MR. CEASE: Correct.

25 MR. THOMPSON: Any additional
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1 questions?

2 (No response.)

3 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again for

4 your testimony.

5 MR. CEASE: Thank you.

6 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. I'm going to

7 reach out once more for Colata Harlan. Is she

8 coming to show up? No? All right. At this time,

9 I'd like to ask Terry Burns and Jodi -- I can't

10 read the last name. It's not that I can't

11 pronounce it. I just can't read it.

12 MS. ISMERT: Ismert.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Ismert? Okay. Thank

14 you. Hi, Mr. Burns.

15 MR. BURNS: Good afternoon, members of

16 the board here, and I thank you for giving me the

17 opportunity to speak. I very much appreciate EPA

18 coming out to Dallas on this important issue and

19 taking public testimony.

20 MR. THOMPSON: Yes, sir.

21 MR. BURNS: I'm a retired physician in

22 San Antonio and cochair of a group of the Sierra

23 Club. I speak on behalf of our thousands of

24 members in the San Antonio region. We strongly

25 support the proposed rules regulating methane
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1 emissions from the oil and gas industry. We are in

2 San Antonio just north of downwind from the huge

3 Eagle Ford fracking plant. Our air quality has

4 deteriorated substantially over the last several

5 years and is now in nonattainment for current ozone

6 standards let alone the soon to be released new

7 standards.

8 A significant portion of our air

9 pollution comes from transport, both down IH-35,

10 the corridor from North Central Texas coal plants

11 and also from Eagle Ford to the southeast. VOCs

12 are a major contributor to our smog, and Eagle Ford

13 is a major emitter of these VOCs. Our air has

14 become unhealthy and is harming our children and

15 elderly, asthmatics and people with COPD, and

16 people who work outside. We are trying to build a

17 more physically active and fit community, and yet,

18 going outside can be unhealthy.

19 I frequently attend our area council

20 government meetings and have seen extensive data

21 supporting the above claims. I have seen infrared

22 pictures of huge gas leaks at Eagle Ford drilling

23 sites and from storage tanks. I have seen

24 night-sky images of dozens and dozens of flares

25 throughout the Eagle Ford area.
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1 The new rules are an important first

2 step to correcting these problems. It is

3 essential, however, that these rules be extended to

4 apply to existing infrastructure such as mostly

5 what we have now in Eagle Ford, otherwise we in

6 San Antonio will see very little benefit.

7 The rules come with modest cost to

8 industry, much of which can be recouped by the

9 capture and sale of these now wasted gases.

10 Flaring should be allowed only for safety and where

11 no other alternative is available. Inspections

12 should be fixed and quarterly with mandatory

13 reporting to EPA.

14 Repair times to correct leaks should

15 not be permitted to exceed 30 days. Storage tanks

16 and compressors at well sites should be included in

17 the rule. Large gas clouds have been documented

18 escaping from these. These rules will provide

19 substantial public health benefit which should be

20 included in the cost benefit analysis. They will

21 significantly reduce emissions of a major

22 contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change.

23 Ideally, we should be moving rapidly

24 away from fossil fuels including natural gas, but

25 in the meantime, we need to do all we can as
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1 rapidly as possible to reduce greenhouse gas

2 emissions like methane and associated VOCs and air

3 toxins and carcinogens, and these measures will

4 greatly improve -- improve our public health as

5 well as the climate. Please extend the rule to

6 existing infrastructure. Thank you.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Burns.

8 Are there any questions from the panel?

9 MR. MOORE: No.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir. Thank

11 you for your testimony.

12 Good afternoon.

13 MS. ISMERT: Good afternoon. I'm Jodi

14 Ismert, and I just wanted to say thank you so much

15 for letting us speak at this hearing as well as

16 putting forth these new -- these potential new

17 controls. I am personally very excited about them,

18 so I definitely support the new regulations.

19 The one thing I definitely wish, I

20 wish these were actually for existing sources as

21 well. I think that's extremely important and

22 that's actually a primary concern in addition to

23 the future sources. I am a citizen, and I'm a

24 mother. I don't represent any organization,

25 although today, I've heard and will hear from many
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1 that represent organizations and businesses and you

2 will also hear those who have a vested financial

3 interest in the outcome of your decision.

4 My interests are in the health and

5 wellness of my family as well as the health and

6 wellness of future generations. We've spent years

7 as citizens watching very little get done as far as

8 methane emissions are concerned, especially in the

9 state of Texas, and very little get done to stave

10 off climate change. People in power who the

11 citizens voted for have often avoided their

12 responsibilities and have instead favored the

13 profit maximization of oil and gas companies over

14 the rights and public good of citizens. I believe

15 that's truly where the battle is at this point for

16 citizens. We are losing our rights. We are

17 watching them diminish.

18 In the state of Texas, we watched our

19 rights diminish for home rule. Very recently, we

20 lost the -- the possibility to truly -- to truly

21 have the proper setbacks for these methane

22 emissions as well as volatile organic compounds,

23 like benzene which is a cancer-causing toxin. I

24 believe this is a problem.

25 The problem that citizens have today
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1 is that companies and state governments are placing

2 profit maximization over the citizens' rights to

3 health and safety. In this issue, we as citizens

4 are seeing our rights diminish. We are seeing that

5 when we do appeal to our governments to protect the

6 public good, they are instead avoiding their

7 responsibilities in favor of representing money

8 interests and also working with them to create laws

9 such as HB 40. It's a huge problem because

10 ordinary citizens like me are losing the battle, so

11 I stand here before you today not as a

12 representative for any money interests but simply

13 as a concerned citizen, a mother, and a human

14 being. And I'm asking you to please push forth

15 with these new regulations that we have been

16 waiting so long for.

17 I wish the regulations would also

18 include existing wells, existing sources, as I have

19 mentioned earlier. These really are a major

20 problem, and without addressing these, I feel we

21 are missing and avoiding a regulation that should

22 have been completed long ago, and this correction

23 should absolutely be restated backwards to

24 preexisting sources that pollute the air we breath.

25 Methane packs a punch over two dozen
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1 the potency of carbon dioxide, and existing well

2 sites are leaky systems. We need regulators, and

3 in my direct area alone, there are over 250 gas

4 wells; so knowing that they leak volatile organic

5 compounds like benzene very close to my home, very

6 close to my daughter and her school, it's a huge

7 concern. I would like to see regulations on these

8 existing sources.

9 The state and the regulatory agencies

10 in Texas have made it quite clear through their

11 inaction and also through some of their actions

12 like HB 40 that they are not going to properly

13 regulate oil and gases. They have made it more

14 difficult for citizens to create setbacks for

15 health and safety protection, as I've already

16 stated. I urge you to please make those new

17 regulations and also to have them encompass the

18 existing sources which are a major source. And

19 that's mostly what I wanted to say today. I'm

20 hoping that you will please, please include the

21 existing sources as well as the future sources as

22 well. Thank you.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Ismert.

24 Any questions from the panel?

25 MR. LAWRENCE: No.
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1 MR. MOORE: You mentioned that you had

2 oil and gas wells and other equipment near you. Do

3 you know how far your home is away from them?

4 MS. ISMERT: I do. It's a little less

5 than a mile is where my home stands and well within

6 the two-mile range, as well.

7 MR. MOORE: Thank you.

8 MS. ISMERT: You're welcome.

9 MR. LAWRENCE: What town do you live

10 in?

11 MS. ISMERT: Denton.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Additional questions?

13 (No response.)

14 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again for

15 your testimony.

16 MS. ISMERT: Thank you very much, as

17 well.

18 (Applause was heard.)

19 MR. THOMPSON: All right. I'd like to

20 invite Adam Ringle and Dr. Adam Rindeff,

21 R-i-n-d-e-f-f [sic]. Are they in the room? Are

22 there any Adams in the room? Here we go. There's

23 one. Okay. Great. Good afternoon, sir.

24 MR. RINGLE: Thanks for having me.

25 Good afternoon.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Thanks for being here.

2 Please state your name and spell it for the court

3 reporter.

4 MR. RINGLE: Sure. My name is Adam

5 Ringle, and I'm here to speak in support of the

6 proposed rules on methane and VOC emissions. I

7 also urge you to expand the coverage of the rule.

8 I'm a professor of philosophy at the University of

9 North Texas and a member of the Denton Drilling

10 Awareness Group, which lead the Frac Free Denton

11 campaign to ban hydraulic fracturing in our city,

12 but I'm speaking to you today as the father of two

13 children. My son, named MG, who is 7, and my

14 daughter, Lulu, who is 3, pictured here on

15 vacation.

16 My wife and I love Denton, but there's

17 one thing that keeps us up at night wondering

18 whether we should try to move, and that's air

19 pollution. We have some of the worst air in the

20 states, and we also worry about little Lulu who

21 occasionally has to use a nebulizer to help her

22 breathe. Now, I know there are many reasons we

23 have such polluted air, but there's no denying that

24 oil and gas production is a big part of it.

25 Oil and gas production accounts for
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1 more VOC emissions than on-road mobile sources

2 according to the EPA. A new study out by my

3 school, UNT, shows that ozone levels are higher in

4 areas with shale gas activities than other areas,

5 so I started the Denton Drilling Advisory Group in

6 2011 to help the city write new rules for shale gas

7 development, and we worked for over two years to

8 strike a balance to accommodate fracking while

9 protecting public health.

10 Unfortunately, the industry continued

11 to act unneighborly, and the state government

12 turned a blind eye. Annual contributions from the

13 oil and gas industry to Texas state legislators

14 total over $23 million. About 2 million of that

15 goes directly to Railroad Commission Commissioners,

16 those who are supposed to regulate the industry.

17 Only as a last resort did we call for the fracking

18 ban. My son, MG, joined me and hundreds of

19 citizens in a grass-roots efforts. We knocked on

20 thousands of doors, many of them in close proximity

21 to the nearly 300 gas wells in our town.

22 When we won the vote, my family and so

23 many other families in Denton celebrated the

24 prospect of cleaner air and safer neighborhoods,

25 but it is not to be. In short order, our state
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1 legislature implemented a law, HB 40, written by

2 and for the industry. It didn't just kill our

3 democratically enacted ordinance. It subverted a

4 Texas tradition of local control. It replaced the

5 community reasonable standard that prioritized

6 health and safety with a commercially reasonable

7 standard which prioritized the industry's bottom

8 line. Now the state has taken away our ability to

9 defend ourselves, so now my children and their

10 friends need the EPA more than ever.

11 The net benefits of your proposed rule

12 by 2025 would be $150 million. The proposed rules

13 addresses global concerns about the adverse effects

14 of air toxins. Well, I'm here on behalf of my

15 children as a member of one of those communities,

16 and I'm urging you to implement and strengthen this

17 rule. Indeed, the rule does not go far enough.

18 The vast majority of emissions from this sector

19 will come from sources now in existence.

20 Existing sources simply must be

21 targeted for improvements in addition to new

22 sources. I also ask you to extend the regulations

23 to compressors and well sites. MG and Lulu have

24 friends who live very near a well site with a

25 compressor. A briny, offensive odor is present
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1 there. Our friends have regular nosebleeds that

2 only occurred once fracking and the compressor

3 moved in next door.

4 In ten years, this rule will reduce

5 emissions by 400,000 tons of methane. There is no

6 magic bullet for climate change, but this will be

7 an important piece of the solution as we work to

8 leave all of our children a secure and liveable

9 planet.

10 A study in the New England Journal of

11 Medicine this year showed that cleaner air means

12 healthier lungs for children. In ten years, the

13 rule will reduce emissions by 180,000 tons of VOC

14 and 2,500 tons of HAP. In ten years, MG will be 17

15 and Lulu will be 13. Across those ten years, they

16 will each draw nine million breaths of air.

17 Whatever is in the air is going to fill their lungs

18 and be absorbed in their blood, so what's going to

19 be in the air? I want you to imagine you're

20 holding the lungs of your children in your hands

21 because in some sense you're doing just that. It's

22 my job to keep my kids safe, but I can't do it

23 alone especially in a state that favors polluters

24 over parents.

25 I need your help. I need you to go
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1 back to Washington, DC, and tell them the people in

2 the gas patch are watching and we're hoping. Tell

3 them about MG and Lulu. Tell them about all their

4 friends, all of their friends and the millions of

5 breaths they're going to take, and remind them that

6 they are deciding what will go into the bodies of

7 children and tell them to do the right thing.

8 Thank you.

9 (Applause was heard.)

10 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Are there

11 any questions?

12 MR. MOORE: No. Thank you.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Thanks very much.

14 MR. RINKLEFF: It's Rinkleff.

15 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

16 MR. RINKLEFF: Well, you know, I find

17 this situation a little frustrating. I know people

18 who have spent five to six years of their lives

19 essentially wasted on this issue. They should be

20 doing something else with their time. Instead,

21 they have to come here and talk to you when you,

22 frankly, should be going to Congress and making

23 some very clear points.

24 Today, I'm supposed to thank you for

25 finally turning your attention to methane, and
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1 that's certainly an issue. It's a potent

2 greenhouse gas. The science is really clear on

3 that, and there's a real problem in this world.

4 The U.K. Ministry of Defence has estimated that the

5 effect of climate change in the foreseeable future

6 will be the equivalent of, at the very least, a

7 limited nuclear war. They're estimating 100

8 million to 1 billion refugees streaming out of

9 Bangladesh, Micronesia, the Philippines, Indonesia.

10 Where are those people going to? Why is the City

11 of Denton being forced to contribute and worsen the

12 environmental presence in this world?

13 The people of Denton, two-thirds of

14 the community, said, no, we don't want methane

15 emissions to continue increasing. Why doesn't the

16 EPA turn around and say, do you know what, a

17 community has a right to say no, and enough is

18 enough? There's a nice little chart here. It's an

19 exponential growth curve. In 2007, there were 27

20 wells in Pennsylvania. By 2011, there were 2,000.

21 In the foreseeable future, there could be 60,000.

22 Even if -- even if fracking is safe to

23 punch a hole through the aquifer and go down below

24 and cause an explosion, even if that's

25 scientifically safe, there's a statistical
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1 percentage chance that there's going to be a

2 problem. I believe in Denton city limits alone, I

3 mean, maybe I'm wrong, it sounds ridiculous, but I

4 heard there's a thousand wells. That's a lot.

5 Mistakes are inevitable. I read your 1,000 page

6 EPA analysis on fracking. You were very clear that

7 there's been negative environmental impacts, and

8 you're also very clear that you don't -- you don't

9 really know how severe the problem is. I saw that

10 over and over. There is not enough data. We

11 cannot estimate. We cannot come to a conclusion.

12 There's -- there's -- I think -- I

13 think 671 chemicals in fracking fluids that you

14 might have the molecular formula for, but you have

15 not done any kind of study to figure out how will

16 that migrate through the environment. How will

17 that interact in other chemicals and transform into

18 a third chemical and how will that cause a

19 long-term environmental impact on a community? You

20 don't know, and I appreciate -- I appreciate the

21 honesty in that report, but what I -- what I am

22 confused about is the conclusion.

23 Like, if I'm going to do something and

24 I'm, like, I don't know if that's safe, how can I

25 then turn around and say this community right here
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1 that voted that they don't think it's safe, they

2 must -- they must participate when I -- when I have

3 clearly drawn a scientific conclusion that I don't

4 have enough evidence to conclude it's safe and I do

5 have enough evidence to conclude if it's not done

6 properly, there's going to be a problem.

7 You said in the report that spills are

8 common. They're not uncommon, and you said

9 28 percent of spills have no known or documented

10 cause, so we don't even know what the problem is.

11 We don't know what the impact is, and the federal

12 government should have respect for a community

13 that's engaged in a democratic process and said we

14 don't want this in our community.

15 There's other little charts here.

16 Like, you guys should look at this. Like, there's

17 a well. It goes down through the groundwater. At

18 some point, chemicals are going to get in the

19 groundwater and then it's going to come back up and

20 people are going to drink it. There's a little

21 tower. There's fumes coming off the tower. People

22 are going to breathe that. Here's toxic waste and

23 sludge, and there's dead trees. It's not -- it's

24 not hard to figure out. You don't need a Ph.D. to

25 understand this. An elementary school student can
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1 understand it. Fracking is an industrial toxic

2 process, and it sure as hell should not be

3 conducted within 250 feet or 250 meters or whatever

4 the number is of a residential neighborhood or an

5 elementary school.

6 I -- I just want to say your -- your

7 plan to regulate methane is great, but it's way too

8 little and it's way too late, and I hope you guys

9 take this a lot more seriously. Thank you.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Before you

11 go, questions? Let me ask the panel if they have

12 any questions for you, sir.

13 MR. MOORE: I just have one.

14 MR. THOMPSON: We do.

15 MR. MOORE: I want to ask you just to

16 make -- for the purpose of the record to clarify

17 that the study you're talking about was the water

18 study done by the Office of Research and

19 Development that was just released?

20 MR. RINKLEFF: Yeah.

21 MR. MOORE: That's what I thought you

22 were referring to.

23 MR. THOMPSON: All right. Thank you.

24 At this time, I'd like to invite Mary

25 Warren and Kelli Barr to please come forward.
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1 MS. WARREN: Hello.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Hello.

3 MS. WARREN: Thank you all for being

4 here, and I really appreciate your attentiveness

5 and your respect. It's been a long day, and for

6 you to give as much attention to each speaker, I

7 know it really requires a commitment on your part.

8 Thank you for giving us this opportunity to speak

9 to this in Dallas today. My name is Mary Warren,

10 and I am coming just as a private citizen. I am a

11 member of Organizing for Action, and my specialty

12 there is on climate change, and I was also a member

13 of the team in Dallas, a coalition of groups that

14 fought for a fracking ordinance to protect us here

15 in Dallas.

16 Yes, I do want the proposed

17 regulations on methane emissions from oil and gas

18 production. Our climate is changing much faster

19 than climate scientists have predicted. The window

20 on which we can preserve our climate is closing

21 fast. These regulations and more limitations on

22 greenhouse gas production have been needed for

23 decades. We are really in crunch time. I am

24 begging the EPA to greatly accelerate our country's

25 diminishment of fossil fuel use and production. We
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1 don't have time to go easy on the oil and gas

2 industry, and I say that coming from an oil and gas

3 family.

4 I was born in Southern Louisiana. My

5 father worked for the oil and gas industry, and we

6 moved to Houston, and he worked for it there; and

7 my husband's father was an independent producer,

8 and so I'm really immersed in that industry and

9 that culture, and, you know, looking at it, it's

10 very clear to me that we can't do this anymore. It

11 just doesn't make sense. And jobs come from all

12 kinds of industry. Our country's infrastructure

13 repair and rebuilding for renewal fuels would

14 continue to generate and maintain jobs.

15 Right now, a man is going to prison

16 for selling peanuts that were poisoned with

17 pathogens. Why are you allowing fossil fuels to

18 poison our air and water and greatly contribute to

19 dramatic climate change? It seems things are out

20 of balance. This man was responsible for many

21 deaths, however, oil and gas industry is working

22 towards making it impossible for human life at all.

23 Here in Texas, there's no effective

24 state and local government regulation of oil and

25 gas production and delivery. Our state government
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1 has sold its soul to the oil and gas industry, and

2 they have passed laws to prevent local governments

3 from protecting us. We must have national

4 regulations to prevent the rapid poisoning of our

5 air and water and the destruction of our land. I

6 don't know if you've ever flown over much of Texas,

7 but it is just horrifying to see the moonscape of

8 so many fracking sites. We need tight enforcement

9 of these regulations. Self-reporting would be

10 useless and deadly. My experience in the oil

11 industry is that there's a culture of pride in

12 conning people and not paying attention to rules

13 and bragging later about we tricked those guys.

14 Please adopt these regulations and

15 make them even broader and more strict,

16 particularly I'm worried about the existing

17 infrastructure and also leakage from compressor

18 stations. There has been a lot of talk about

19 establishing compressor stations through the middle

20 of Dallas and pipelines, and so that would affect

21 us directly. We will be anxiously anticipating

22 additional regulations and -- that will protect us

23 in the next year. Please do everything you can to

24 ensure that human life can continue on this planet,

25 and I'll do my part, too. Thank you.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Are there

2 any questions or comments?

3 MR. MOORE: No. Thank you very much.

4 (Applause was heard.)

5 MR. THOMPSON: Kelli Barr. Good

6 afternoon.

7 MS. BARR: I'm hobbling over here.

8 MR. THOMPSON: I saw you got a head

9 start. Thank you for coming.

10 MS. BARR: Thanks. Hi. My name is

11 Kelli Barr, K-e-l-l-i, B-a-r-r. Thanks. I am a

12 resident of Denton. I'm actually a Texas native,

13 but I've been something of an ex-pat from the great

14 state of Texas for most of my life, but I returned

15 about five years ago to Denton to study philosophy

16 at the University of North Texas, and my specific

17 interests are in philosophy from a policy

18 standpoint, so I've been following the issue of

19 fracking with great interest from as someone who

20 lives in Denton but also as someone who is

21 interested in environmental degradation and studies

22 in biodiversification and also studies in

23 philosophy and public policy.

24 So my comment is not really going to

25 be about the technical requirements and the rules
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1 and the decisions that you're debating. My

2 comments more are going to be about the story of

3 Denton. I think what's been happening to us over

4 the last five years or so and probably longer is

5 really indicative for y'all and the role that

6 federal agencies like EPA can play in protecting

7 people who live in places like Denton.

8 So I think the story of Denton is one,

9 in which to sum it up, it's really the story of the

10 willful ignorance of the State of Texas legislative

11 and regulatory systems and the willful ignorance to

12 protect the health and safety of the residents.

13 Now, this is obviously most crystallized in the

14 form of HB 40 which distinctly takes out this

15 clause about community reasonability as judgment

16 for good or bad regulations and reinserts the

17 clause about commercial reasonability, but that's

18 really just a belated instauration of this

19 regulatory regime that overwhelmingly is biased

20 toward an industry that's notoriously secret as

21 that, as your Agency is steadily and slowly

22 discovering, is very -- in fact, very detrimental

23 to public health and safety.

24 So we started in Denton trying to

25 resolve what we thought was a very local problem
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1 with the local tools that were available to us. It

2 was the problem of gas wells being refracked when

3 homes had been built very close to them, so really,

4 the problem in Denton is urban fracking. People in

5 Eagle Ford have a very different kind of problem,

6 but they're experiencing the same impact.

7 So we started with the regulatory

8 environment of Denton to try to solve our problem,

9 and we quickly realized we were not alone in this,

10 which was great, except it seemed like we were

11 being thwarted at every turn to actually try to

12 make a rule that would benefit the health and

13 safety of Denton residents.

14 So Dr. Rinkleff commented about the

15 kinds of measures -- the policy measures we've been

16 proposing. Basically, we did what we could, but

17 what happened we did not know is that the state

18 either ignored it or when it finally came to a head

19 and we called for a fracking ban, they actively

20 opposed the democratically -- the democratic will

21 of two-thirds of Denton residents in passing HB 40

22 afterwards, and we were immediately sued by the

23 Texas Land Commissioner's office.

24 So there's further evidence to this

25 what I'm calling willful ignorance, specifically
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1 the imbalance between the number of permits granted

2 by the Railroad Commission and the budget of TECQ.

3 I'm not sure if you've looked at the figures

4 lately, but since 2008, the number of permits has

5 increased by a factor of 168, while the budget for

6 TECQ, which is the primary regulatory body in Texas

7 for gas wells -- oil and gas wells has fallen by

8 39 percent. There's really no justification for,

9 A, the fall in the budget, and, B, the cuts in

10 staff that have been made, specifically inspection

11 staff.

12 Another striking example, obviously,

13 is HB 40. The legislature made an end run around

14 our will to not have fracking in Denton and

15 basically cut the legs out from under us in being

16 able to ensure our own health and safety, but also

17 another thing like being able to plan our land

18 management in the future. It's really difficult

19 for the city to be able to plan intelligently for

20 how to use and develop their land for the purpose

21 of providing for the general welfare, so all of

22 this is just building up the picture that the

23 situation that we're facing right now is one in

24 which the accountability -- the burden of

25 accountability and the burden of risk from
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1 industrial practices is being localized to

2 individual citizens.

3 We don't have the resources to be able

4 to bear that burden. We simply don't. Many of us

5 don't have the technical expertise to actually

6 understand how to combat these things. Lots of us

7 don't have the time. I almost wasn't able to make

8 my speaking time because I had to teach today, so

9 basically, our health and safety is being

10 subordinated to a regulatory industry that's not

11 interested in giving us the resources to protect

12 ourselves when it's proven that it's not willing to

13 protect us, so I greatly commend you today for

14 finally paying attention to this issue.

15 Thank you, but we come to you in a

16 state of desperation. You really are our last gasp

17 of help in this regard, and so these -- these

18 regulations, I agree, are entirely common sense,

19 but I would also echo some of the comments that

20 have been made by others that the time scale that

21 you're considering in implementing them is really

22 not sufficient to actually help us because we can't

23 do anything now that our ban has been repealed, so

24 I would encourage you to look at the time scale for

25 compliance because that's a problem for us.
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1 I would also encourage you to include

2 existing sources for emissions because that's a

3 real problem for us right now. We don't have the

4 capacity at the municipal level to actually be able

5 to enforce inspections and routine safety measures.

6 We've tried to get regular air and quality

7 monitoring through our city, but we simply don't

8 have the resources or the capacity to be able to do

9 it.

10 I also invite you -- since you haven't

11 been able to do the baseline studies that you would

12 need in order to figure out what exactly fracking

13 does to air and water, I would invite you to come

14 to the City of Denton. Since our ban has been

15 repealed, we're now going to have fracking

16 operations that are going to be resuming this

17 month, so if you want to start baseline air and

18 water quality monitoring, I would encourage you to

19 look to Denton as a good case study for that.

20 And also, I would encourage you to

21 make the annual reports available to the public so

22 that people like me can keep track of operators'

23 track records. If a new operator is going to move

24 into our area, we should be able to check their

25 track record and make sure these people are going
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1 to be reasonable and reasonable operators.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Final thoughts,

3 Ms. Barr. You've exceeded your time. Ten seconds.

4 Closing thoughts. And your closing words are?

5 Would you like to state anything in closing?

6 MS. BARR: Oh, yeah. Thank you. No,

7 I am. I'm sure y'all don't hear it very often, but

8 you really are the last line of defense, so thank

9 you for paying attention to us, and I encourage you

10 to go on regulating with as much strength as you

11 can.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

13 testimony. Are there any questions from the panel?

14 Bruce?

15 MR. MOORE: I have one brief question.

16 You mentioned making the annual reports --

17 MS. BARR: Yes.

18 MR. MOORE: -- publicly available?

19 You're referring to the annual reports required by

20 the NSPS that the operators have to submit?

21 MS. BARR: Yes. Right. Yes. So, I

22 mean, it is a problem that the -- the reporting

23 scheme that you've set up is a self-reporting

24 scheme. Other people have commented on this. I

25 mean, we've been living under that for pretty much
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1 the entirety of oil and gas development in the

2 state of Texas, and that's proven really

3 problematic, so I would certainly encourage you to

4 look at other ways of mandating reporting and also

5 verifying reporting other than simply relying on

6 the goodwill of the operators. They've shown

7 themselves not to have goodwill toward anyone but

8 themselves.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. All right.

10 Thank you for your testimony.

11 At this time, I'd like to invite

12 Sister Elizabeth to come forward.

13 SISTER RIEBSCHLAEGER: She can call me

14 Sister Elizabeth. Everybody has that same problem,

15 but for the record, my name is Riebschlaeger.

16 MR. THOMPSON: And if you could spell

17 that for the court reporter, that would be great.

18 SISTER RIEBSCHLAEGER: Sister

19 Elizabeth, R-i-e-b-s-c-h-l-a-e-g-e-r.

20 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

21 SISTER RIEBSCHLAEGER: Period. Good

22 afternoon.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Good afternoon.

24 SISTER RIEBSCHLAEGER: Thank you for

25 this opportunity. My name is Sister Elizabeth
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1 Riebschlaeger. I am a member of the Sisters of

2 Charity of the Incarnate Word of San Antonio,

3 Texas, and I appear here today on behalf of the

4 congregation.

5 We are experiencing the impact of oil

6 and gas activities in the Eagle Ford Shale on

7 San Antonio's rural and communities air quality.

8 We are here today to join those competent,

9 experienced, and respected scientists and

10 researchers in support of the regulations the

11 Environmental Protection Agency is proposing. It

12 is a significant coincidence that we are addressing

13 these proposed changes in methane emission

14 regulations as Pope Francis visits our nation. For

15 many, Catholic and not, he comes in a prophetic

16 role, calling us to a greater moral responsibility

17 for the environment we share.

18 Our purpose here is to support the

19 moral and human values represented in these

20 regulations. All people have a natural right to

21 clean air wherever they live and wherever they

22 nurture their families. It is morally wrong to

23 knowingly endanger the health of another person.

24 It is morally right to take action to protect the

25 life and health of others, especially when we
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1 become aware that our actions are doing them harm.

2 On September 17, 2015, a coalition of

3 37 investors including asset management companies,

4 hospital systems, mutual funds, and faith-based

5 organizations sent letters to 32 leading oil and

6 gas energy companies voicing our concerns about the

7 impact of methane emissions on climate change

8 urging them to engage constructively in the

9 Environmental Protection Agency's current methane

10 rulemaking process.

11 The petitioning organizations are

12 members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate

13 Responsibility, ICCR, a coalition of institutional

14 investors who practice socially responsible

15 investing and shareholder advocacy to promote

16 greater corporate responsibility on matters of

17 social and environmental concern. Our own

18 congregation is a founding member of the

19 San Antonio based Socially Responsible Investment

20 Coalition.

21 We endorse the following statements

22 and join with ICCR in believing that continued,

23 unaddressed methane emissions are precisely the

24 kind of unsustainable action that must be curbed in

25 an effort to build a more just and sustainable
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1 world.

2 Pat Zerega of Mercy Investment

3 Services states, "The Pope's recent encyclical,

4 Laudato Si, highlighted the importance of

5 recognizing our shared moral responsibility to live

6 in harmony with the environment and prevent harm to

7 communities caused by unsustainable action."

8 Christina Herman of ICCR states, "The

9 health, environmental, and economic impacts of

10 methane and associated air emissions are

11 substantial, and there are many cost-effective

12 technologies and services available to business to

13 reduce methane emissions. Businesses that

14 implement greenhouse -- implement greenhouse

15 emission reduction plans proactively will be ahead

16 of the game as these and more inevitable

17 regulations are approved."

18 Danielle Fugere of As You Sow said,

19 "Stronger rules are needed to reduce methane

20 emissions and mitigate climate change impacts.

21 Climate change represents serious and increasing

22 risks for the energy sector, and, more broadly,

23 society -- climate instability threatens business

24 infrastructure, resource availability, supply chain

25 efficiency, and the ability to produce and
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1 distribute goods and services."

2 So we're saying it's good business to

3 do even more. We join, therefore, in not only

4 gratefully favoring these Environmental Protection

5 Agency regulations but also in urging industry to

6 contribute responsibly to improved and best

7 practices as morally responsible actors. Thank you

8 for provide me the opportunity of this public

9 hearing.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Sister

11 Elizabeth, for your testimony. Are there any

12 questions?

13 MR. MOORE: No, thank you.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

15 (Applause was heard.)

16 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. At this time,

17 we're going to take a break. Let's reconvene at

18 4:45. Thank you.

19 (Break was had from 4:31 p.m. to

20 4:51 p.m.)

21 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, folks. We're

22 going to start things up again. Before we move

23 forward, I'd like to introduce a new panel member.

24 Lisa Thompson is with the EPA's Office of Air

25 Quality Planning and Standards, and will be with us
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1 for the remainder of the hearing.

2 At this time, I'd like to invite

3 Ingrid Martine and Alan Septoff -- Septoff to the

4 podium. Great. All right. Is Ingrid present?

5 MS. MARTINE: Yes.

6 MR. THOMPSON: Take your time.

7 MS. MARTINE: Hello.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Hello. And if you

9 would be so kind as to just, again, state your name

10 and spell it for the court reporter, that would be

11 much appreciated.

12 MS. MARTIN: Ingrid Martine,

13 M-a-r-t-i-n-e, and I am here as a citizen. And I

14 am not here to praise the EPA's rules to limit

15 methane pollution nor am I here to complain that

16 those proposed rules don't go far enough. I have

17 two purposes and ask you not to take the first one

18 personally because it's not meant to be personal.

19 But the first purpose I have is to simply say out

20 loud that I have zero hopes that the EPA will

21 protect me and the community -- the communities --

22 communities I love, the communities we love, and I

23 say that because I look at the stats, and by every

24 measure, our communities are in worse shape since

25 the launching of the EPA over 40 years ago, by
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1 every measure except one.

2 For example, 60 percent of our

3 waterways have been degraded since the Clean Air

4 Act. In the U.S. every year, 4 billion pounds of

5 toxic chemicals including 72 million pounds of

6 known carcinogens are released into the atmosphere

7 from 20,000 industrial polluters, and just one more

8 fact, because facts don't really convince anybody

9 of anything, but two trillion pounds of livestock

10 waste laced with antibiotics, hormones, and

11 chemicals are dumped in waterways and applied to

12 the land; and this is the tip of the iceberg which,

13 by the way, we know is melting faster according to

14 scientists than we ever believed.

15 And so I've been wondering, and I

16 think many people wonder, the environmental laws of

17 the '70s were supposed to do something real. Why

18 are things worse? The stark reality,

19 unfortunately, is that our corporate rights trump

20 our communities' rights to create communities that

21 are healthy, safe, and where people really can

22 enjoy wellbeing, and so this reality should really

23 trump the myth that the majority of us believe

24 namely that we live in a democratic society in

25 which we have the ability and authority to govern
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1 ourselves and our own communities.

2 What we're discovering, hello Denton,

3 is that we have a hollow democracy that allows us

4 to determine the height of the weeds in our

5 neighbor's garden but on really substantive issues,

6 we are out of luck. And so what we are settling

7 for simply because we really don't know anything

8 else, we don't know what else to do, what we're

9 settling for is to meet in venues like these and

10 try to regulate the harm done to us. And we tell

11 ourselves that surely through our efforts things

12 are getting better because to do otherwise would

13 have us go crazy.

14 What we may not be seeing is that we

15 are trapped by the regulatory system, and this is

16 really my second point, is that we are on a hamster

17 wheel that just keeps on turning. What perhaps

18 people don't realize enough is that the rules to

19 regulate are written by the industries themselves.

20 Developers write development regulations. Agra

21 business writes agricultural regulations, and the

22 system is stacked against we the people. Think

23 about it. Why would the corporations write

24 anything in the rules that would benefit the

25 communities that might oppose them? That would be
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1 crazy.

2 And I'd like to say, the fox is in the

3 henhouse, and still, we show up here, so what I'd

4 like to say in the last 30 seconds, is there an

5 alternative to transition from trying to limit the

6 amount of poison we will tolerate to stopping

7 corporate offenders by asserting local democratic

8 control directly over them, and yes, there are. It

9 is the community rights movement. I have

10 information here that I can give to the people in

11 the room, and they are used by over 200 communities

12 in ten states, and they are changing the landscape.

13 And while I appreciate that you also

14 are not empowered to really do anything, the

15 regulations, really in the big picture, have

16 failed, and I just wanted to say that out loud.

17 And it's not that I don't appreciate the individual

18 efforts and the individual caring because I'm sure

19 you care and that you want things to work for

20 individuals, communities, and the natural world.

21 Thank you.

22 MR. THOMPSON: And thank you for your

23 comments, Ms. Martine. Are there any questions

24 from the panel, Lisa or Bruce, any follow up?

25 MR. MOORE: No. No.
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1 MS. THOMPSON: No.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again for

3 your testimony.

4 MR. SEPTOFF: Hello.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Hello. If you can

6 state and spell your name for the court reporter

7 and then give your testimony, sir.

8 MR. SEPTOFF: My name is Alan Septoff,

9 spelled A-l-a-n, and Septoff, the first four

10 letters of September, S-e-p-t, and off, like

11 turning off the light switch. And I'm with

12 Earthworks, a national environmental group

13 dedicated to protecting communities and the

14 environment from the impacts of resource

15 extraction, and I thought that I was a cynic and

16 fatalist until I heard Ingrid, who has taught me

17 that I have a ways to go yet.

18 I -- before I actually say anything

19 about my comments, I would like to observe that I

20 am Jewish, and I'm a bad Jew; so that part let me

21 be here today, but you wouldn't schedule a public

22 hearing on Easter, and you really shouldn't

23 schedule public hearings on Yom Kippur, either.

24 So with that said, I'm speaking on

25 behalf of myself and more than 3,000 members we
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1 have in the state of Texas, and I do support EPA's

2 proposal as far as it goes. The climate benefits

3 and health benefits are definitely worth it, but it

4 needs to go further. Methane and associated VOC

5 pollution like benzene is dangerous from new

6 facilities. It's dangerous from existing sources,

7 too, and that's especially true in Texas. It's

8 true because Texas is home to one of the nation's

9 largest concentrations of urban drilling.

10 People are living with thousands of

11 oil and gas facilities in their midst right now,

12 and it is true that Texas, because the state

13 government has stripped local communities' rights

14 to protect themselves from an oil and gas industry,

15 frankly run amok. In Texas, and other states that

16 are a mature oil and gas industry, existing sources

17 of methane and associated -- associated pollutants

18 are more of a threat than new sources ever will be

19 to public health. Beyond including existing

20 sources, among the most important way EPA could

21 improve this rule would be to explicitly allow and

22 to encourage citizens to take a more active role in

23 ensuring that the final rule is enforced.

24 Once this rule is finalized, EPA is

25 likely going to delegate enforcement of it to the
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1 states, and as I'm sure everybody in the EPA is

2 aware, in Texas, that means relying on the very

3 same people that in another recent context -- the

4 very same people that explicitly told EPA that they

5 were unwilling to limit greenhouse gas pollution.

6 And even when Texas regulators claim to enforce oil

7 and gas oversight, its own data shows that they do

8 a horrible job of it.

9 Public information requests reveal

10 that inspectors only visit 50 percent of active

11 facilities in the state each year. So even if EPA

12 winds up trying to enforce these rules itself,

13 which would be vastly preferable than the

14 alternative, you are resource-strapped and that's

15 unlikely to change any time soon. So what to do?

16 Empower the people who have the

17 greatest incentive, the people that are most

18 concerned with oil and gas violations, the citizens

19 that are forced to live with them. They are out

20 there. They are living with it every day, and they

21 are more than willing to speak up if they think

22 they will be heard, so that means for EPA to change

23 this rule to create a formal and transparent

24 process for citizens to report violations, to

25 require timely action on those citizen reports, and
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1 to require reports back to the citizens that made

2 the reports, and to have this whole process be

3 transparent via preferably an online public

4 database that would allow people to download the

5 database based on, you know, company and location,

6 et cetera, et cetera. Because the citizens want to

7 hold the oil and gas industry accountable, and if

8 you make it easier for them to do so, we will do

9 it. Thank you.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

11 comments. Before you go, any questions for follow

12 up?

13 MR. MOORE: No.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Mr. Septoff, I would

15 like to say, your comment regarding Yom Kippur is

16 respectfully noted, sir.

17 MR. SEPTOFF: Thank you.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. At this

19 time, I'd like to invite Ron Seifert and Cindy, it

20 appears to be, Spoon to please come forward.

21 MR. SEIFERT: Hello. Good afternoon.

22 My name is Ron Seifert. That's R-o-n,

23 S-e-i-f-e-r-t.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

25 MR. SEIFERT: Okay. I will start just
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1 by simply echoing and speaking in support of

2 everyone you've heard today who has advocated for

3 the regulation of methane. I also will echo and

4 support the comments you've heard today by everyone

5 who indicates that these regulations do not go far

6 enough and leave perhaps the most vulnerable folks

7 still impacted unaffected by this regulation, which

8 is a travesty.

9 To that extent, I want to spend a

10 little bit of time just offering a few observations

11 about what I've seen throughout the day. I have

12 been here throughout almost the entire day, and

13 it's almost without exception that people speaking

14 here today are advocating for the regulation of

15 methane. I believe aside from a couple of folks

16 very early in the morning first thing, almost

17 unanimously here and in Room B, everyone has spoken

18 for the regulation of methane; so I'm a little

19 surprised that industry, being this hearing is in

20 Dallas and in Texas, isn't more represented.

21 I feel like that must be one of two

22 reasons or some combination therein. Either these

23 regulations don't seem to be very impactful to

24 industry so they're not that interested because

25 they don't go far enough because they will allow
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1 for over 90 percent of the methane emissions to go

2 unregulated in this new scheme, or perhaps they

3 don't feel like this event even is necessary for

4 their voices to be heard.

5 And if that's the case, perhaps it's a

6 systems problem and not really your problem, but I

7 hope you take note of that, and I just want to

8 emphasize that if this is the only forum that

9 everyday people have access to to influence policy

10 and industry feels like they have other vehicles of

11 access, that you take very seriously the input that

12 you hear today from folks around the metro area who

13 are breathing the air directly impacted by methane

14 emissions.

15 But also keep in mind that the

16 majority of people you did hear from today aren't

17 living in the places perhaps or aren't reflective

18 of all the places in this country where methane

19 emissions are at their worst. I'd say that some of

20 the most cases where people are facing the most

21 direct harm from fracking and methane emissions in

22 the four corners region, in the Bakken, coming soon

23 in the Eagle Ford Shale are largely going to be

24 unrepresented in these hearings.

25 It would be fantastic if the EPA could
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1 use some resources to reach out to those areas

2 where fracking and methane emissions are so

3 intense, where resources are scarce, that are some

4 of the least-serviced communities in this whole

5 country and are going to suffer the ramifications

6 of these new regulations or lack thereof more

7 directly than even a lot of folks here on the

8 Barnett Shale.

9 Let's see. Do I have anything else

10 really to say? No. I think I can leave it there.

11 Thank you very much.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

13 testimony, Mr. Seifert. Any follow-up?

14 MR. MOORE: No.

15 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir.

16 MS. SPOON: Hello.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Hello.

18 MS. SPOON: My name is Cindy Spoon,

19 C-i-n-d-y, last name is Spoon, S-p-o-o-n. Thank

20 you for the opportunity to testify in front of

21 y'all. I live in Denton, Texas, also, and I'm very

22 proud of that, and I'm very proud of the residents

23 that passed the fracking ban this year. It's

24 important because that's 15,000 people within our

25 own city, not 15,000 people across the country
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1 somewhere. It's 15,000 people within the city

2 limits of Denton voted to ban fracking, so that

3 should be taken into consideration because it's

4 a -- we've already made our voices heard that we

5 don't want to live near fracking. We don't want to

6 live near this infrastructure, you know, and, of

7 course, it's been forced back upon us as you've

8 heard today.

9 I support these new regulations, but I

10 also think they do not go far enough. Living in

11 Denton means that I already live near hundreds of

12 wells and pipelines and compressor stations, and so

13 if these regulations don't also include existing

14 infrastructure, it's not really lifting the burden

15 for our community.

16 I think that these regulations are

17 long overdue. Again, I'm thankful they're

18 happening now, but they're long overdue. I would

19 like to see storage vessels included in the methane

20 regulations. I know that they're regulated for

21 VOCs, so I don't understand why they wouldn't be

22 regulated for methane. I would like to see

23 compressor stations that are well sites be

24 included. I think they're regulated on their own

25 but not at well sites, if that makes sense.
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1 I would like to see more frequent

2 regulations, and I would like to see a shortened

3 time frame that industry is allowed to respond to

4 incidents. I think right now they have up to six

5 months to report, correct me if I'm wrong.

6 We know that methane leaks are

7 inevitable. We know that they're widespread,

8 fracking is going to be happening. We also know

9 that fixing these leaks is kind of one of the

10 easiest things that the oil and gas industry could

11 do, so why would we not require them to do it?

12 Earlier today, up in that room we had

13 a press conference, and we had a couple of

14 different speakers; and there was a scientist that

15 worked at Texas A&M University speaking, and he

16 talked about how the EPA already vastly

17 underestimates the national emissions rate, so

18 we're already -- even though y'all are taking steps

19 to address this, the numbers of methane pollution

20 are already being underestimated, which is

21 troubling.

22 And the last technical thing I would

23 say is that we really can't be making choices or

24 proposing regulations that are -- that are

25 Band-Aids because we are facing catastrophic
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1 climate change in my lifetime, so we have to be

2 proposing actual solutions that go far enough. So

3 like my friend, Ron, I am just going to remind EPA

4 folks, y'all taking time out of your day to hear

5 testimony today, about some of the things I've also

6 seen today.

7 A lot of the people that were speaking

8 today I can't imagine -- I'm not in that position,

9 and thank God. A lot of folks that I saw speaking

10 today were here to testify about their children and

11 the asthma that they have or the nosebleeds that

12 they get or their grandchildren. I know one of my

13 friends, I think she's going to speak after me,

14 she's a high school teacher where there's fracking

15 right by that high school, and she actually had to

16 leave school early today and get someone to cover

17 her classes to testify to y'all.

18 Folks that are -- you know, hauled and

19 busted ass to get here before work or come here

20 after work. This is really, really important to

21 us. We really, really want to be heard. We want

22 to be taken seriously. You've heard over and over

23 again throughout testimony that our state

24 regulators are not supporting us, so we need the

25 federal government, the EPA, to show us that every
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1 single branch of government in the United States is

2 not completely bought and sold by oil and gas.

3 It's up to y'all to prove that to us because that's

4 how it feels like right now living in Denton.

5 I mean, I think that's it. I think

6 that's all I have to say. We need a fracking ban.

7 We want a fracking ban. That's what we want. All

8 right. Thank you.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Ms. Spoon.

10 Any follow up from the panel for Ms. Spoon?

11 (No response.)

12 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you for

13 your testimony.

14 Okay. At this time, I'd like to

15 invite Jennifer Hensley and Heather Dowell and Adam

16 Barnett to follow.

17 MS. HENSLEY: Hello.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Hello. Thanks for

19 coming. Could you state and spell your last name

20 for the court reporter, please.

21 MS. HENSLEY: Jennifer Hensley,

22 H-e-n-s-l-e-y.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

24 MS. HENSLEY: And thank you. Good

25 afternoon.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Good afternoon.

2 MS. HENSLEY: Thank you for choosing

3 Dallas as one of your destinations. I'm sure that

4 you are needed elsewhere. There are so many other

5 locations, but I -- I believe that we are

6 especially desperate for you to hear our pleas and

7 our testimonies.

8 Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is

9 the main concern of my testimony. Texas, as you

10 already know, is drowning in natural oil and gas.

11 This fact has been disastrous from our air quality,

12 and consequently, we are continuously in violation

13 of the Clean Air Act. Perhaps you even saw the

14 telltale smog like just permeates the Metroplex

15 maybe on your way in. I'm also from Denton. I'm

16 from Denton, and my friend is there. I was born in

17 Denton, and I grew up in Denton. I now raise my

18 son there, and I teach there, like somebody said.

19 We are one of the most heavily fracked

20 areas in the Metroplex. We have had several

21 accidents involving frac wells, leaks, and

22 explosions, and our town has made the news, I'm

23 sure you're aware, and they haunt my dreams. We

24 have nearly 300 gas wells within city limits.

25 Denton is not as big as Dallas, and that's too
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1 many. And all of these gas wells lack proper

2 oversight. We -- we have not been trained. We

3 have no safety protocols. Our public doesn't know

4 what to do if they smell gas. There's no number.

5 It's not well known, and they don't know who to

6 call.

7 I don't even know who to call.

8 They're within 250 feet. They're allowed to be

9 250 feet within schools, homes, day cares, and

10 hospitals. The school where I teach, there's a gas

11 well on either side, one by the baseball field, and

12 one right next to the tennis courts. And I have

13 athletes that have asthma that's so severe they

14 miss class all the time, and it breaks my heart.

15 Some of the new permits that have been

16 approved are right next to these existing wells and

17 right next to the homes where my students live, and

18 this is not something that I wish for them and

19 definitely not something that I wish for my own

20 son. We held the elections, and I was so happy to

21 vote for the fracking ban; and I was elated when we

22 won, so happy, democracy, yeah. However, this

23 year's legislature signed into law House Bill 40

24 which limited local control and thus effectively

25 eliminated our ban and also jeopardized over 300
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1 ordinances across the state, communities that are

2 just trying to protect their citizens' health and

3 wellbeing and quality of life and safety.

4 In the days following HB 40's

5 passage, industry declared that they would resume

6 operations in Denton that very week, just days

7 after, just miles away from my childhood home

8 actually, and I was outraged. And so I took some

9 civil disobedience training and media training and

10 every Frac Free Friday in the summer.

11 Frac Free Friday was where we would

12 show up to the active gas well sites on Friday

13 mornings and protest, and it was during that time

14 while protesting under the watchful eye of at least

15 a dozen armed police officers that I met my now

16 friend and fractivist Sheila, who is a resident in

17 the neighborhood, and her story just depressed me

18 further.

19 Children, of course, with asthma that

20 mysteriously disappeared when they were away and

21 staying with family that didn't have fracking in

22 their town, and septic pumps and systems that

23 needed replacing because of clogging from sediment

24 from industry. So while I was there, it's true,

25 while standing in the street with my Moms Against
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1 Fracking sign, holding my son only on non-ozone

2 action days, which there were very few, there was a

3 slide, not unlike my son's slide, just right next

4 to me next to a frac well that's spewing a

5 coal-colored cloud of smoke, and it doesn't belong

6 next to that.

7 And so with 20 seconds to go, there's

8 not enough time to tell you -- to tell you that we

9 need you because our local government has failed

10 us, and our state government has failed us.

11 Democracy has failed us. And so we are pleading

12 with you, pass everything that you can. It's

13 probably not even strong enough, and don't -- don't

14 give any kind of relaxed grace period because we

15 need relief, and we need it now. Thank you.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

17 testimony, and thank you for coming.

18 MS. HENSLEY: That's my son

19 (indicating).

20 (Applause was heard.)

21 MR. THOMPSON: Are there any follow-up

22 questions for Ms. Hensley?

23 MR. MOORE: No.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you so much for

25 being here today.
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1 MS. HENSLEY: Thank you.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Hi. Good afternoon.

3 MS. DOWELL: My name is Heather

4 Dowell, and I'm from Mansfield, Texas. I want to

5 say thank you for y'all being here today in as what

6 has, I'm sure, been an incredibly long day with

7 five-minute increments of people talking and giving

8 you technical information and sincere information.

9 I just want to thank you for your time with this

10 growing situation.

11 I'm here this evening as an average

12 citizen to express my concern to what is going on

13 in my state and my city in general over gas

14 extraction. I've been expressing my concern over

15 the past year to my city council until House

16 Bill 40 came along and took our local voice and

17 power away.

18 That's the day that solidified that

19 the state Texas legislature is run by the oil and

20 gas industry. I was saddened by this realization

21 even though I knew it to be true just never this

22 blatant. There's a true problem here when industry

23 that is unable to regulate itself is calling all of

24 the shots for our state and, even worse, our

25 environment and our general health concerns.
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1 I'm here as a concerned Texas -- Texan

2 but most of all a parent. I'm a 44-year-old

3 long-time triathlete and mother of one that has now

4 been diagnosed with asthma in the last year. I

5 have never had allergies or respiratory before in

6 my entire life, and so I was shocked when I heard

7 this diagnosis. And this has only added to my

8 concern with all of the gas wells and extraction

9 around my home.

10 Living in a country or a county that

11 is already in nonattainment and known for producing

12 some of the worst air in Texas, we must watch

13 everything we can do that can add to our already

14 cumbersome pollution issues. We've all seen the

15 science behind everything, behind the cancer, the

16 lung disease, children with asthma, bloody noses,

17 headaches, and worse, death.

18 These are signs -- these are signs we

19 don't seem to be paying attention to. We have seen

20 time and time again we must pay attention to our

21 history and learn from it, yet, we're here running

22 frac free as we please with disregard to our

23 environment and what the true environmental impacts

24 are of this action. I would venture to say

25 everybody here has heard about all of the gas
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1 problems and extractions in Pennsylvania, but we're

2 not learning from those mistakes, and Texas is not

3 immune as we have experienced over the past decade.

4 I'm not here to propose we stop all

5 drilling exploration, but I am here to say they

6 need to be regulated much better than what's going

7 on now. I believe at this point, we need oil and

8 gas as part of our energy resources as we do not

9 yet have the infrastructure put in place, but it's

10 coming and not fast enough.

11 That said, we can slow down and

12 install proper and more stringent emission controls

13 on the equipment used for drilling, fracking, and

14 compressor stations. I'm asking the EPA to stand

15 up for all Americans and set tougher regulations on

16 the oil and gas industry and not allow greed and

17 money to overpower health concerns, our land, the

18 environment, and our children's future.

19 I'm asking the EPA to address existing

20 equipment out there now and include the VOC CTGs

21 for nonattainment areas into the current D/FW air

22 plan. I am asking the EPA to allow my

23 seven-year-old daughter to live a healthy life, to

24 make mistakes, learn from them, grow up, and be a

25 wonderful contributing citizen to her community and
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1 not allow greed to override her chance to do

2 anything she sets her mind to due to toxic air that

3 we know how to control.

4 Thank you for your time and

5 consideration to all our requests for a stronger

6 stance on better air quality in Texas, and I hope

7 y'all have a great evening.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

9 testimony.

10 Are there any follow-up questions?

11 MR. MOORE: No. Thank you.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you for

13 your testimony and for being here.

14 Adam, please?

15 MR. BARNETT: Hey, how's it going?

16 It's been a long day. All right. All right. So

17 my name is Adam Barnett. That is spelled Adam, the

18 usual way, and Barnett, barn, B-a-r-n-e-t-t.

19 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

20 MR. BARNETT: All right. So I am

21 20 years old and have never taken a breath of clean

22 air, and I've lived in North Texas for all of my

23 life. For the first ten years of my life, I lived

24 in Wise County on a beautiful farm, but as oil and

25 gas development moved all around us, the once clean
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1 air turned brown and began to reek of petroleum.

2 My family and I moved to Denton thinking we could

3 escape only to again find ourselves surrounded by

4 oil and gas development and air that was even

5 dirtier.

6 When I was young, every night I would

7 go outdoors and see the universe hanging in a pitch

8 black Texas sky, but as I grew older and developed

9 and matured, the universe began getting a lot

10 smaller. It grew smaller and smaller until all

11 that was left was a dark brown little smudge

12 illuminated by only a few pale drilling lights. By

13 the time I left my farm, I still didn't know what a

14 breath of clean air felt like, but I did know what

15 VOCs were and what it felt like to live in an area

16 that was infested with them, and it didn't feel

17 good.

18 So I began to question after all of

19 this as the smog moved from city to the country and

20 into my back door, what really is the point? A

21 common trait held by all of us is a desire to work

22 hard in order to leave something good for our

23 future generations. From where I stand, why

24 bother? Why waste the time? What have you left me

25 with?
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1 The sea levels as it stands are still

2 going to rise, the lands will burn, air quality

3 will just get worse, and millions, probably

4 billions, of people are going to be displaced and

5 die because of this. So bringing it back to the

6 rules, it's not all your fault. Scientists knew

7 burning hydrocarbons were causing the planet to

8 warm, but the oil and gas industry, as you probably

9 know, used their endless resources to squelch the

10 science and fund global warming deniers.

11 The industry has had a disinformation

12 campaign which delayed action that could have given

13 your children and my generation a better chance for

14 survival, so I would like to thank you, though.

15 These rules are a small step in the right

16 direction, but we have run out of time for the

17 convenience of small steps. What we need is a

18 giant leap towards the right direction, and the

19 only way to do this is to pass the strongest rules,

20 and in doing so give my generation a fighting

21 chance. Pass them now and include existing

22 sources.

23 Either way, you're writing history,

24 and the pen is still in your hand; so what do you

25 want the records to say? Will they say that in the
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1 face of the greatest calamity engineered by humans

2 in history you didn't do quite enough to stop it

3 because at the time it was too hard or at the time

4 it was too inconvenient to fight for your children?

5 A man from your time once said that we would go to

6 the moon and do the other things, too, not because

7 they were easy but because they were hard. What

8 you and I have ahead of us will be very hard, but

9 we don't have the convenience to give up any

10 longer. Somewhere out there, there's a

11 ten-year-old boy who is watching his universe

12 shrink. His life is in your hands. My life is in

13 your hands, and to add to that, we just had another

14 earthquake 2.3 in Wise County, so there's another

15 factor for you guys. All right. Thank you.

16 (Applause was heard.)

17 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Adam. Any

18 follow-up questions?

19 MR. MOORE: No.

20 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

21 testimony.

22 At this time, I'd like to invite

23 Susybelle Gosslee. Hello and welcome.

24 MS. GOSSLEE: I'm a little hidden back

25 there. I'm Susybelle Gosslee speaking on behalf of
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1 the League of Women Voters of Texas. The League of

2 Women Voters of Texas strongly supports the

3 proposed emission standards for new and modified

4 sources for the oil and gas industry. We are

5 appreciative of the determination of EPA to propose

6 these standards.

7 The standards cover updating New

8 Source Performance Standards for methane and

9 volatile -- volatile organic compounds or VOCs, as

10 I'll call them for the rest of my presentation, for

11 additional new and modified sources in the oil and

12 gas industry, draft control techniques guidelines

13 for reducing emissions from existing oil and gas

14 natural sources and certain ozone nonattainment

15 areas and states in the ozone -- ozone transport

16 region particularly relating to VOCs.

17 Proposed updates to clarify the

18 Agency's air rules as they apply to the oil and

19 gas -- natural gas industry. Proposed federal

20 implementation plan to implement minor New Source

21 Review permitting in Indian Country.

22 Members of the League of Women Voters

23 of Texas are well-informed about the need for

24 methane standards as well as VOC standards to

25 address climate change. While it would be easier
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1 to implement these changes when the oil and gas

2 industry is flourishing, it is nonetheless

3 important that the industry implement the standards

4 as they go forward. In fact, many industries have

5 already implemented some of them and are leading

6 the way for implementation.

7 Studies in Texas have shown that

8 methane emissions are much higher than the EPA has

9 estimated. One by Touche Howard in the journal,

10 Energy, Science & Engineering, has claimed that

11 work by the University of Texas and published in

12 the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

13 has greatly underestimated the amount of methane

14 that is being emitted due to the use of a

15 Bacharach meter high-flow sampler, which in

16 previous studies had been shown to exhibit sensor

17 failure leading to underreporting of natural gas

18 emissions.

19 Other studies in the Barnett Shale

20 field have found far greater emissions of methane

21 than estimated by EPA. While we hope that the EPA

22 estimates are correct, we encourage the EPA to be

23 aware of these other studies. There are deniers of

24 the need for these additional regulations, as you

25 well know. Some of Texas' top elected government
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1 officials even deny that climate change is caused

2 by human activity in any way. Others wish to

3 negate the need for these standards by indicating

4 how little influence this action will have in

5 reducing worldwide emissions.

6 Unfortunately, the United States

7 cannot set standards for worldwide emissions;

8 however, we can and Texas can, be a leader in

9 reducing methane and VOC emissions so that we can

10 have more influence on other countries attending

11 the conference of the parties of the United Nations

12 framework convention on climate change this

13 December in Paris.

14 The League has a recommendation with

15 regard to the proposed rules. The only way that

16 these standards apply to existing oil and natural

17 gas sources is the control technique guidelines for

18 reducing emissions from existing oil and natural

19 gas sources in certain ozone nonattainment areas

20 and states in the ozone -- ozone transport region.

21 As these are merely guidelines, they are not

22 enforceable. We recommend that you propose

23 separate rules for existing oil and natural gas

24 sources as without them we cannot reach the goals

25 set forth in the President's Climate Action Plan of
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1 cutting methane emissions from the oil and gas

2 sector of 40 to 45 percent from 2012 levels by

3 2025.

4 These goals would reduce an estimated

5 340- to 400,000 short tons of methane, which equate

6 to 7.7 to 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

7 EPA estimates that the proposal will have a climate

8 benefit of 460 million to 550 million, outweighing

9 the proposed cost of 320- to $420 million. As the

10 benefits outweigh the costs, the oil and gas

11 industry will benefit, therefore, we certainly

12 support this approach.

13 EPA asked for comments on defining the

14 term adjacent with regard to determining when

15 multiple pieces of equipment and activity and oil

16 and gas extraction and production must be deemed a

17 single source that is subject to requirements from

18 the Clean Air Act air permitting -- permitting

19 program.

20 The League supports the

21 proximity-based approach in which equipment or

22 activity would be considered adjacent if they are

23 located in the same site or on the site within --

24 or within a fourth of a mile of each other. This

25 is currently being followed in the state of Texas.
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1 The League of Women Voters of Texas

2 appreciates the opportunity to present these

3 comments, and I have written testimony for you, as

4 well.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much,

6 Ms. Gosslee. Are there any follow-up questions

7 from the panel?

8 MR. MOORE: No. Thank you.

9 MS. GOSSLEE: Do I give this to you?

10 MR. THOMPSON: The lady right next to

11 you.

12 MS. GOSSLEE: Thank you for your time.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

14 testimony.

15 Okay. At this time, I'd like to

16 invite Gary Hogan and Gary Stuard to please come

17 forward.

18 MR. HOGAN: Good evening.

19 MR. THOMPSON: Good evening.

20 MR. HOGAN: Thank you for this

21 opportunity. My name is Gary Hogan. I'm president

22 of a nonprofit organization called the North

23 Central Texas Communities Alliance. I want to

24 welcome the EPA representatives to Dallas and the

25 North Texas area, home of the Barnett Shale.
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1 Our area, as you well know, was the

2 birth of the modern fracking technologies for oil

3 and gas activities. The North Central Texas

4 Communities Alliance, which formed in 2010, has

5 aided and helped communities, individuals with all

6 issues of the unconventional oil and gas drilling

7 and fracking in the North Texas area. I personally

8 have been intensely involved with the issue of gas

9 drilling in the Barnett Shale when it came to my

10 neighborhood in 2007.

11 The Barnett Shale is drilling in

12 communities and cities in North Texas in very

13 densely populated areas. Gas drilling has

14 endangered our cities, communities, and

15 neighborhoods as close as 200 feet from residential

16 properties, 600 feet from schools, day care

17 centers, and even hospitals. I served on two City

18 of Fort Worth gas drilling ordinance task forces

19 attempting to write ordinances to the protection of

20 the health, safety, property values, and quality of

21 life of citizens. But all too often, I saw the

22 power and political influence of the industry get

23 by with their way.

24 We all know the appreciation that our

25 State of Texas government officials have given to
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1 our federal government and the EPA in particular.

2 From personal experience, I can say that the Texas

3 agencies, our Railroad Commission and our Texas

4 Commission of Environmental Quality, that are meant

5 to protect these same needs of public safety and

6 health have proven time and again to be more

7 concerned with jobs, economic issues, and the

8 protection of the gas industry profits over

9 citizens' concerns.

10 Everybody knows just recently in

11 Denton, Texas, that 59 percent of the citizens

12 tried to pass an ordinance against fracking and

13 drilling mainly to get the attention of the gas

14 industry, for those same protections. They went to

15 our Railroad Commission. They went to our TECQ and

16 tried to get their concerns addressed. And as a

17 last resort, they went to get a resolution on their

18 ballot to pass a ban to get the attention of the

19 gas industry.

20 The attention we got, unfortunately,

21 was that the State of Texas came against the voting

22 citizens in a community and now have passed House

23 Bill 40 which takes a lot of control away from

24 cities and municipalities to protect their own

25 citizens. I find it very ironic that the State of
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1 Texas says to the federal government to stay out of

2 our business in Texas, but the State of Texas will

3 put that same authority and onerous -- onerous

4 control over their own citizens and municipalities.

5 It seems like our state seems to talk out of both

6 sides of their mouth.

7 Many of our citizens want and need our

8 federal government's help and this EPA to stand up

9 for us. The health, safety, and future of our

10 citizens, the quality of our communities'

11 environment are more important to us than any

12 relative short-term economic benefits. These new

13 rules to reduce methane pollution from the sources

14 of this oil and gas activities are greatly needed.

15 Our region is already in noncompliance to federal

16 air quality standards for too many years and has

17 only suffered further in spite of any reductions

18 that we've seen in CO2 emissions. This activity

19 which has swept across our nation has had

20 detrimental effects to our air, water quality, and

21 we're seeing climate change in spite of the deniers

22 who, for the most part, their ideology is purely

23 profit-driven.

24 Negative health impacts have been

25 seen. I have seen them myself personally. When a
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1 person calls me and invites me to their home and

2 shows pictures of their young children having

3 continuous nosebleeds from living a quarter of a

4 mile or hundreds of feet from compressor stations

5 or gas and oil drilling, it breaks your heart.

6 Are you aware, in fact, that in

7 Fort Worth, Texas, from 2006 to 2011, the most

8 prolific drilling period in the City of Fort Worth

9 because we've tapered off now, asthma in children

10 increased from less than five percent to nearly

11 25 percent in five years? That was reported by

12 Cooks Children's Hospital in January of 2012.

13 Respiratory ailments, in fact, still

14 account for 30 to 35 percent of children's

15 treatment at Cooks Children's Hospital.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Mr. Hogan, your time

17 has expired. Final thoughts, please, sir.

18 MR. HOGAN: Okay. I want to thank you

19 for this and for coming down and listening to the

20 people in the Fort Worth area and the North Texas

21 area. I also endorse -- our organization also

22 wants to endorse the recommendations set forth by

23 the Sierra Club. I'm sure you probably received

24 those already, but I will submit them with my

25 comments. Thank you.
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1 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir. Are

2 there any questions for Mr. Hogan?

3 MR. MOORE: No. Thank you.

4 MS. THOMPSON: No.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir.

6 Good afternoon.

7 MR. STUARD: Good afternoon, sir, and

8 to the panel. My name is Gary Stuard, S-t-u-a-r-d.

9 I'm a resident of Dallas, Texas, 6133 Reiger

10 Avenue, Zip Code 75214. I am the chair of the

11 local chapter of System Change Not Climate Change,

12 which is the eco socialist coalition for North

13 America. I've also been very active in a number of

14 local environmental groups such as Downwinders at

15 Risk and the Dallas Green Alliance, which in this

16 past spring were able to get most of the candidates

17 we were pushing for who were pro environmental to

18 be members of this city council.

19 I know many others have gone through

20 all of the technical details about the proposed

21 regulations that y'all are looking at to see to

22 enforce, so I never cared a lot for mathematics;

23 and you're probably tired of hearing figures all

24 day long, so I won't bore you with that.

25 Basically, for my part, what you're proposing is
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1 good because what we have now is pretty much like a

2 wild west situation out here in Texas.

3 Our government -- the state government

4 is not controlled by us. It is controlled by the

5 oil and gas industries as well as other polluters.

6 They have betrayed us. They lied to us. They do

7 not do their job to protect citizens. They're

8 totally controlled by the oil and gas industry.

9 There is no true democracy in this state. It is

10 sheer criminal capitalism for the fossil fuel

11 industry.

12 Regardless of the health impacts that

13 have been happening in this area, with terrible

14 asthma -- asthma rates for children, worsening air

15 quality in this area, I think now it's even worse

16 than Houston, Texas, and I'm from Houston, and

17 that's saying a lot, as well as people being

18 exposed to carcinogens such as benzenes and others

19 whose wells -- gas wells created right next to

20 their homes, gas wells created right next to

21 schools, and not enough people in the state to

22 regulate. They didn't even know how many wells

23 there were. That's just a small example of the

24 corruption. There is a criminal state being run

25 for the profit of oil and gas industry.
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1 Now, of course, all of us would want

2 the regulations that are being proposed by you to

3 be even more stronger, but I will even go further.

4 As a climate justice activist, and I don't know how

5 many of you have read this by Naomi Klein, This

6 Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. I

7 would submit this document, but this is my only

8 copy; and being a social worker, I don't have lots

9 of funds to buy books. But this book -- this book

10 and also this one talks about capitalism. Both of

11 them make it explicitly clear as well as the

12 interplanetary -- I'm sorry -- Intergovernmental

13 Panel on Climate Change, we're headed towards

14 catastrophe. You should know that. And if you

15 don't, shame on you. But I'm going to be polite

16 and assume that you do know.

17 We have hardly any time left. Runaway

18 science, runaway climate change are already

19 happening. You know it. You know what's happening

20 in the Arctics, the rapid melting of ice.

21 Greenland's ice base -- ice base is rapidly

22 melting. This year has been the hottest year.

23 Look at the fires that are happening out in the

24 west. Methane is worse than CO2 and climate

25 change.
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1 What has to happen, whether y'all can

2 do it or it will have to be up to us, the citizens,

3 because pretty much we have lost faith in

4 government at all levels because apparently it

5 seems that they're bought out for the service of

6 corporations particularly the oil and gas industry

7 the likes of which Exxon knew what would be

8 happening going back in the '80s, they knew.

9 Their models predicted it, and they

10 lied and have spent millions and millions of

11 dollars lying about climate change and the

12 connection with fossil fuels. If you really are

13 serious, and we are for sure, stop the use of

14 fossil fuels. We must radically get off fossil

15 fuels as quickly as we can or there is no hope for

16 you. And if you have children, they will have no

17 planet. Thank you.

18 (Applause was heard.)

19 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Stuard.

20 Are there any questions from the panel?

21 MR. MOORE: No.

22 MR. THOMPSON: Lisa?

23 MS. THOMPSON: No.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

25 testimony.
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1 MR. STUARD: Thank you.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Yes, sir. Okay. At

3 this, I'd like to invite Lucille Esteban to come

4 forward for testimony. Good afternoon. Thanks for

5 joining us.

6 MS. ESTEBAN: Absolutely. My name is

7 Lucille Esteban, and I really appreciate your time

8 today. I will tell you something. I actually have

9 full faith in our federal government because

10 there's not an option not to. Right now, I think

11 you've heard a lot of science about the regulations

12 right on the table. We know that there's

13 essentially no regulations on the oil and gas

14 industry, and Texas bears almost a third of the

15 weight of the byproduct. This is my daughter. She

16 is 12 years old. She was born in the Baltimore/DC

17 area, and we didn't move to Texas until she was

18 about four years old. My son is eight, and he's

19 spent a lot of time with me while I was going to

20 college in Denton; and about a year old, he had his

21 first emergency room visit. He has a fairly severe

22 case of asthma, and it definitely limits his

23 activities.

24 In good conscience, I don't feel like

25 I can stay in an area where methane levels, in
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1 particular, continue to be so high and continue to

2 escalate and have no sign of dropping. But the

3 problem is at this point, where would we go where

4 he could comfortably live? It is the obligation of

5 our federal government, of our state government,

6 and of our local government to serve in the best

7 interests of its citizens and not in the best

8 interests of industries.

9 I would ask you to think about this as

10 a small first step toward permanent change. We

11 know that we're not dependent on oil and gas

12 industry for energy. We know that they control us.

13 We know that they're dependent on us, but we are

14 unfortunately being held hostage by them. Did you

15 want to say anything?

16 MASTER BRIAN OLIVER: I believe we

17 should change these laws because I limit -- I limit

18 my activities because of my asthma. There's so

19 much -- there's all of the things I like to do, and

20 I can't do pretty much anything outdoors. All I

21 can do is just do PE and fitness and, like, inside,

22 not outside. Not -- I cannot do a lot of things

23 outside at all.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Before you move to your

25 daughter -- young man, good job. Could he state
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1 his name for us for the record?

2 MASTER BRIAN OLIVER: Brian Oliver.

3 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Brian.

4 MS. BELLA OLIVER: Hi. My name is

5 Bella Oliver, and so as my brother was saying, it's

6 hard because I have to watch him having an inhaler,

7 have his breathing treatments and everything, and

8 so I see around my -- I volunteer. We have this

9 girl, she has asthma. She has to have a breathing

10 treatment because of the air. Right near my

11 school, this morning it kind of smelled not so

12 good. It smelled like oil and other things. It's

13 not really safe for us because we're not -- our

14 lungs are not made for this. It's like smoking.

15 You can't handle it. People say it's okay, but it

16 isn't.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Bella.

18 MS. ESTEBAN: Thank you. Thanks to

19 all of you.

20 (Applause was heard.)

21 MR. THOMPSON: Are there any questions

22 for Bella, Lucille, or Brian?

23 MR. MOORE: None of them, but I

24 appreciate them making their statements.

25 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again for
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1 your testimony.

2 Okay. At this time, we're going to

3 take a break, and we're going to take either a

4 15-minute break or a break until someone else shows

5 up or signs up to testify. Okay? So we'll

6 reconvene at 6:15 or as soon as someone -- after

7 6:15 if someone shows up to testify. Thank you.

8 (Break was had from 5:54 p.m. to

9 6:26 p.m.)

10 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, folks. We're

11 going to start up again. At this time, I'd like to

12 invite Daniel Melendez to please come forward as

13 well as Harry Davis. And following Mr. Davis will

14 be Steve Everley, so in that order. Melendez,

15 David, and Everley.

16 MR. MELENDEZ: Is this on?

17 MR. THOMPSON: Yes, sir, it's on. If

18 you don't mind, could you just pronounce and -- and

19 state and spell your name for the court reporter

20 and then begin your testimony.

21 MR. MELENDEZ: Hi. My name is Daniel

22 Melendez, M-e-l-e-n-d-e-z. I live in Arlington,

23 Texas, 76002. And my reason for coming here is I

24 live four blocks from a drilling rig. When it

25 first went up, the first thing I saw every time I
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1 left my house in the morning to go to work was that

2 drilling rig.

3 Shortly afterwards, a few years later

4 or so, once it had the completion tanks or whatever

5 they're called, compressor stations I think is what

6 it's called now, when I would open my doors to my

7 house to go in either from -- to or from work or

8 just coming in and out of the house, my smoke

9 detectors would go off, not realizing at the time

10 that they also detected VOCs.

11 So they went off without any real

12 indication of smoke coming from the house or

13 emanating anywhere near the house, and I couldn't

14 figure it out until possibly now that that may be

15 what the problem was was VOCs from that drilling

16 rig that's four blocks from my house.

17 I have this article from James Osborn

18 that says, "methane emissions from natural gas

19 operations in North Texas' Barnett Shale are

20 50 percent higher than estimates by the federal

21 government would indicate," according to a series

22 of studies published by -- published Tuesday in the

23 scientific journal, Environmental Science &

24 Technology, the finding brings into greater

25 question the validity of Environmental Protection
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1 Agency data showing methane emissions are declining

2 even as natural gas production in the United States

3 boomed with the advent of hydraulic fracturing.

4 The study, which was commissioned by

5 the Environmental Defense Fund and drew scientists

6 from universities across the country, shows that

7 the majority of methane emissions in the Barnett

8 come from a relatively small number of sites

9 probably through a flare of gas and other actions

10 not accounted for in the federal data. Between one

11 and two percent of the natural gas produced in the

12 Barnett ends up leaking into the atmosphere, a

13 finding consistent with similar studies conducted

14 in gas production regions of Colorado and Utah,

15 said Ramon Alvarez, lead senior scientist with the

16 Environmental Defense Fund.

17 This is from the EPA -- from the

18 Sierra Club, 9/14/15. Texas cities, specifically

19 Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio, will see

20 enormous benefits from this rule in the efforts to

21 clean up regional smog. The co-pollutant

22 reductions achieved through the rule and the CTG

23 portions of the rule are specifically important to

24 Texas. Texas accounts for roughly 30 percent of

25 all oil and gas production in the U.S., which means
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1 a significant amount of the 7 million tons of

2 methane pollution that were vented, flared, leaked,

3 and otherwise wasted from oil and gas operations

4 occur in Texas, and I'm certain one of them is four

5 blocks from my house.

6 Last May, I ran for city council of

7 Arlington, not taking -- actually being able to win

8 since I was running against the strongest incumbent

9 in Arlington, but I had to make a stand. When I

10 was running -- I was block walking north of the

11 Lake Arlington Baptist Church blowout on the exact

12 same day, and from that day, my health has declined

13 tremendously. I actually had to go to the

14 Arlington Cancer Center for two months because now

15 I'm diagnosed with polycythemia and

16 urethrocystitis, which means that my red blood

17 count is through the roof causing me to have high

18 blood pressure as well; so now I have to go and

19 give blood to lower my blood pressure twice a

20 week -- two times a week.

21 This has never happened before, and it

22 was really odd; and I didn't even connect it until

23 later on after I put the two together. I went

24 block walking. I could only walk for one hour

25 which is very uncommon for me because I'm not in
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1 the best shape physically, but I am in good health

2 or was until then, so I was taken by surprise that

3 I could only block walk for one hour. I was

4 completely out of breath. I was completely tired,

5 and I couldn't continue. It just wasn't me.

6 Somehow this insomniac, this lifelong

7 acute insomniac -- chronic insomniac who can't fall

8 asleep, can't sleep, wakes up two hours before my

9 alarm goes off, suddenly can take naps during the

10 day, has to take naps, has left work on a couple of

11 occasions because I was just too tired to go to

12 work and I had no explanation for it other than

13 this newfound condition of mine which I can only

14 connect to the Lake Arlington Baptist Church

15 blowout.

16 Although there hasn't been any true

17 medical or, you know, scientific connection to my

18 current illness, I can only connect it to that

19 because it happened on the exact same day, and that

20 was block walking one north -- one block north of

21 the LABC. Thank you for your time.

22 MR. THOMPSON: And thank you for your

23 testimony, Mr. Melendez. And are there any

24 follow-up questions for the panel?

25 MR. MOORE: No questions.
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1 MR. MELENDEZ: No questions.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

3 testimony.

4 Mr. Davis?

5 MR. DAVIS: Yes. My name is Harry

6 Owen Davis, H-a-r-r-y, O-w-e-n, D-a-v-i-s. Oscar

7 Wilde once noted that a cynic is one who knows the

8 price of everything and yet the value of nothing.

9 Those who oppose these modest yet essential

10 regulations controlling methane emissions are quick

11 to point cynically to the costs that they claim the

12 oil and gas industry will incur in capital

13 expenditures and loss of jobs. Yet not once do

14 these cynics consider the value of the conservation

15 measures, waste reduction efficiencies, and overall

16 lowering of the rate at which we release methane

17 into the atmosphere.

18 Evidently, the industry has chosen

19 their default knee-jerk stance, that any regulation

20 is a bad regulation. We don't need more government

21 they say. We can self-regulate they say. I

22 believe the appropriate metaphor here is leaving

23 the fox to guard the henhouse. Except in this

24 case, the fox is unusually gassy and is likely to

25 kill all of the hens with its copious methane
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1 emissions if we don't get at these regulations.

2 But the irony of the opposition's

3 position is striking. The regulations would

4 require the oil and gas producers to operate more

5 efficiently going forward, capturing more of the

6 gases currently lost to the atmosphere. Less gas

7 escaping means more gas to sell. The EPA

8 estimates, your Agency estimates, that the savings

9 in additional gas captured and sold will exceed the

10 cost of implementing the infrastructure necessary

11 to comply with the regulations by 100- to

12 $150 million. So these regulations would be the

13 right thing to do from a business efficiency

14 standpoint even if there were fewer environmental

15 benefits.

16 However, the environmental benefits of

17 implementing these regulations are real and will be

18 significant. If you accept the fact, based on

19 scientific consensus, that human greenhouse gas

20 emissions must be lowered in order to slow the

21 devastation that global warming continues to wreak

22 on our planet, then you must ratify these

23 regulations.

24 Methane, as you know, currently

25 represents about 90 percent of all of
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1 human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, a number

2 made vastly more significant because of methane's

3 25 times more powerful effect on global warming

4 than carbon dioxide. The highest most noble

5 purpose of government is to keep the governed safe

6 and happy. In order to accomplish this, the

7 government must play a leading role in safety

8 guarding our country's vast natural resources which

9 are jointly owned by all citizens, the land, the

10 water, and the air.

11 I'll leave for others the question of

12 whether or not these regulations go far enough to

13 protect us or whether they should or should not

14 apply to existing drilling operations. What I will

15 say is this, ladies and gentlemen, don't turn away

16 from your responsibility as representatives of the

17 government and, therefore, guardians of our

18 precious natural resources. Do your duty for the

19 sake of all of us, our children, our grandchildren,

20 and all generations to come. Enact these

21 regulations. Thank you.

22 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

23 testimony. Before you step away, are there any

24 follow-up questions?

25 MR. MOORE: No.
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1 MS. THOMPSON: No.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much for

3 coming.

4 Mr. Everley, please.

5 MR. EVERLEY: Steve Everley. I am a

6 spokesman for North Texans for Natural Gas. The

7 last name is spelled E-v-e-r-l-e-y.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

9 MR. EVERLEY: Okay. So while EPA's

10 proposed regulations on methane emissions from the

11 oil and natural gas industry target a tiny sliver

12 of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, they will

13 have a significant impact on domestic energy

14 particularly here in North Texas. Since 2001, the

15 Barnett Shale development has added more than

16 $110 billion in value for the North Texas economy,

17 has generated tax receipts of more than $10 billion

18 for local and state governments, and supported more

19 than 107,000 jobs, but EPA's proposed methane rule

20 will this development harder, not easier. In fact,

21 Oppenheimer recently stated that EPA's proposal

22 could wipe out energy companies that are already

23 suffering from a difficult commodities market.

24 Many of these companies are the smaller producers

25 rather than, quote, big oil corporations.
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1 The restrictions on drilling would

2 harm other important industries all across Texas.

3 According to the American Chemistry Council,

4 chemical manufacturers have announced more than

5 $145 billion worth of new investments in the United

6 States to take advantage of affordable natural gas,

7 which is used as a feedstock. These investments,

8 many of which would be in Texas, include expanded

9 production of fertilizers and other products used

10 by America's farmers.

11 Drilling restrictions would also mean

12 less affordable energy, which is a key reason why

13 many companies relocated abroad prior to the shale

14 gas boom taking jobs with them. The proposed

15 methane rules are also harmful from a social

16 justice respective since affordable natural gas

17 particularly helps the poor.

18 In 2012, cheap natural gas added an

19 average of $1,200 in disposable income for U.S.

20 households. Energy savings from natural gas in

21 U.S. public elementary and secondary schools

22 totaled almost half a billion dollars in the

23 2012-2013 fiscal year, equivalent to the salaries

24 of 5,000 full-time teachers.

25 Needless to say, the mandates that
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1 undermine these benefits are highly regressive.

2 While economic costs are a legitimate concern,

3 they're compounded by the fact that EPA's rule

4 appears to be a solution in search of a problem.

5 EPA's own data shows that methane emissions are

6 already decreasing. In the Permian and Gulf Coast

7 Basins here in Texas, methane emissions decreased

8 by 9 percent and 18 percent respectively between

9 2011 and 2013. Those regions include two of the

10 largest oil fields in the entire world.

11 In one of the most heavily drilled

12 regions of the Barnett Shale here in North Texas,

13 methane emissions fell 37 percent since 2011.

14 Nationwide methane emissions from hydraulically

15 fractured natural gas wells declined 73 percent

16 since 2011, again based on EPA's own data. Yet EPA

17 justifies this new rule by asserting that methane

18 emissions will rise 25 percent over the next

19 decade.

20 We reviewed EPA's supplementary

21 documents to find where this claim originated but

22 could find no supporting evidence. Although the

23 claim is repeated in the media reports, it remains

24 unclear how the EPA came to this calculation.

25 Although the EPA lists combatting climate change as
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1 one of its justifications for this rule,

2 peer-reviewed studies have learned that natural gas

3 has already been beneficial for the climate.

4 Scientists have estimated that a methane leakage

5 rate of below 3.2 percent will ensure natural gas

6 maintains its greenhouse gas advantage.

7 Four separate studies published this

8 year showed a methane leakage rate of between

9 1.1 percent and 1.6 percent. Even if leakage were

10 50 percent higher than some have alleged, the

11 climate benefits of natural gas would easily be

12 maintained. In fact, EPA already lists low-cost

13 natural gas as one of four key building blocks of

14 its so-called Clean Power Plan which aims to reduce

15 greenhouse gases from the nation's power grid. But

16 the EPA's goals also contradict each other as the

17 clean power plant relies on natural gas while EPA's

18 methane rules will make it more difficult to

19 produce that natural gas.

20 Coupled with other mandates from the

21 EPA that could restrict -- could restrict drilling,

22 such as reducing the National Ambient Air Quality

23 Standards for ozone, EPA is trying to have its cake

24 and eat it, too. Methane emissions from oil and

25 natural gas reduction represent only about one
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1 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

2 While EPA allows much larger sources of methane to

3 pursue voluntary protection measures, the Agency is

4 pushing its costly mandates on oil and gas.

5 This is rather bizarre considering

6 that EPA has admitted that voluntary actions by the

7 oil and natural gas industry have contributed the

8 lion's share of methane emission reductions in

9 recent years.

10 In conclusion, methane emissions from

11 oil and gas operations are trending downward, and

12 peer-reviewed research confirms that leakage rates

13 are well below the threshold to maintain

14 greenhouse -- greenhouse gas advantage of natural

15 gas. EPA's argument for the new methane rules is

16 to combat climate change, but the Agency has

17 provided insufficient evidence to support why such

18 mandates are necessary to achieve that goal. Based

19 on EPA's own data, this methane rule appears to be

20 a costly solution in search of a problem. Thank

21 you.

22 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

23 testimony, Mr. Everley. Are there any follow-up

24 questions from the panel?

25 MR. MOORE: No. Thank you.
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1 MR. EVERLEY: Thank you so much.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

3 At this time, I'd like to invite

4 Dewayne Quertermous to come forward for testimony.

5 If you would state your name and spell it for

6 the court reporter and then begin your testimony.

7 MR. QUERTERMOUS: Dewayne Quertermous.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Can you spell it?

9 MR. QUERTERMOUS:

10 Q-u-e-r-t-e-r-m-o-u-s.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir.

12 MR. QUERTERMOUS: I'm here

13 representing the Fort Worth Sierra Club and the

14 Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club.

15 MR. THOMPSON: Hold on for a second.

16 Gentlemen?

17 (Brief interruption.)

18 MR. QUERTERMOUS: I'm here

19 representing the Sierra Club, the fourth group in

20 the Lone Star Chapter, which is a state group.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

22 MR. QUERTERMOUS: Contrary to the

23 speaker before us, these regulations are not overly

24 burdensome. They should be a lot stronger

25 especially in the -- in applying to existing
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1 facilities. Because methane is very highly potent

2 and a lot of the climate change modelers think that

3 that's the key thing that where things are

4 happening faster than the models because it's not

5 being factored into the models because five years

6 ago, they didn't think it was 86 times more

7 powerful in 20 years. It was more like 10 -- 10 to

8 15 percent more powerful they thought in 20 years.

9 Now it's 86 times. So that means the -- that

10 speeds up the process of climate change a lot.

11 Methane is a very powerful greenhouse

12 gas or climate change gas. There's a lot of other

13 emissions that go along with methane that are very

14 harmful to public health that when you capture the

15 methane, when you try to put these -- they will

16 have the benefit of getting the other particulates,

17 you know, of all of the other things, the benzene,

18 and other stuff.

19 Not doing the regulations is basically

20 corporate welfare. When industries can put

21 costs -- the fugitive methane emissions and the

22 other emissions are costs that are paid for by the

23 public, by insurance companies, by the government

24 through healthcare, and by the general public

25 through increased health costs through, you know,
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1 emphysema, asthma, and other health issues.

2 This industry, if they can't make a

3 profit doing drilling using these regulations, they

4 shouldn't be drilling. You know, that's the

5 basic -- they should be doing it responsibly with

6 the best technology. This takes a step towards

7 making them use the best technology available for

8 drilling. That's what they should be forced to do,

9 and that's what they should be regulated so they're

10 not subsidized by the general public, by the

11 government, by taxes or costs that they impose on

12 other people. And I could quote -- you know, read

13 a lot of the facts and figures and stuff, but I'm

14 sure you've heard all of that today, so that's all

15 I have to say.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you for

17 your testimony, and let me just open it up to the

18 panel and see if they have anything for you.

19 MR. MOORE: I don't have any.

20 MS. THOMPSON: No.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again, sir.

22 So at this time, it appears that we'll

23 break again until someone else signs up to testify.

24 Thank you.

25 (Break was had from 6:46 p.m. to
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1 6:54 p.m.)

2 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. I'm going to

3 start again here. At this time, I'd like to ask

4 Jane Lind and Tamika Dickerson to please come

5 forward to testify. Hello.

6 MS. LIND: Hi. I'm Jane Lind. We

7 raced to get here. I didn't even have a speaking

8 slot until we arrived because I have some very

9 relevant stories that have happened this week, last

10 week, and I'm going to try to use this time to

11 share with you what's going on.

12 Okay. On the 21st, on Monday night,

13 at around 11:15, a neighbor called me from across

14 the subdivision, and she said, does it smell by

15 your house? She was pretty upset because the smell

16 was so horrific, so I stuck my head out the door,

17 just popped it open just a little bit, and it was

18 like knock you over off your feet smelled like

19 rotten eggs. Quickly, I shut the door. I called

20 911 and called the TECQ. I called Atmos. Atmos

21 told us to evacuate, but they also told us don't

22 start your car engine. We couldn't go outside. It

23 was just very, very frightening.

24 I woke up with a wicked headache.

25 Woke up -- my daughter was all dizzy, and she had a
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1 headache the next day, so we had health effects

2 from this. I just got a call from TECQ this

3 afternoon, two days later. They finally got around

4 to going out there. Now, I had found out the next

5 morning from our 911 operator that they were

6 receiving calls widespread all across the city from

7 ten miles to the south, from ten miles to the west,

8 and in other cities where there was a huge plume.

9 We don't know what it was. I'm guessing possibly

10 hydrogen sulfide. We don't know. I mean, Atmos

11 checked the area, did their survey. They said all

12 clear. They checked their pipelines. They said

13 there were no problems there.

14 The last I heard, the Railroad

15 Commission was going to go out and try to figure

16 things out. The problem is, TECQ takes two days to

17 get out there, they're not going to find anything.

18 Of course, since it's a plume, it's long gone; so

19 I'm really upset with them because our state is not

20 protecting us with the air. This is not the first

21 time I have been poisoned in my house. I was also

22 poisoned April 11, 2011, from a Chesapeake drill

23 site 1,500 feet from my home. This also happened

24 in the middle of the night. And then last week,

25 we've been involved with neighborhood meetings.
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1 This is shifting gears. We've got a

2 drill site with undeveloped land, and this is kind

3 of a totally different topic, but we've got

4 undeveloped land around these drill sites. Nobody

5 wants to build on this land because it's so close

6 to drilling. So now they're in desperation. The

7 property owners are trying to sell their land to

8 developers to build new homes right up against

9 drill sites. Guys, we need rules. We need, like,

10 really stricter regulations on what they can get

11 because Sharon Wilson from Earthworks came out to

12 our drill site a while back, and we took -- on two

13 different occasions, we took FLIR videos. And that

14 drill site with the gas compressor is spewing.

15 I mean, there are actually -- we have

16 video footage of this, so we need help. We live

17 here. Our children are here. Our schools are

18 here, and, you know, to be poisoned in your own

19 home and then for our state to not be responsive --

20 and we have gone to our city. We have tried to get

21 our city to purchase the right equipment to do the

22 proper air testing, and the answer I get is, well,

23 we don't want to overregulate because the state's

24 got that covered.

25 Well, the state doesn't, so we're
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1 coming to you. We're hoping that you will help us

2 out. We really need stricter rules, but not only

3 do we need the stricter rules, we need enforcement.

4 We need somebody, you know, boots on the ground who

5 can respond to the issues when they do arise. So

6 thank you. I have a minute left. Let me think if

7 there's anything else.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Actually, a minute and

9 30 seconds.

10 MS. LIND: I have no preparation.

11 This is all just -- because it's so relative. This

12 is my life now. This is where I live, and the air

13 is horrible, you know. We've got so many kids with

14 asthma, breathing problems, and, you know, like

15 when I leave the area, I feel great. When I come

16 back to Dallas-Fort Worth, I feel sick because,

17 like, the air is so yuck here. We need some help.

18 The gas industry has so much money they can do

19 things to their equipment. There are things they

20 can do to make it safer. If they're going to put

21 this stuff inside the middle of our residential

22 neighborhoods, we expect that they would do

23 whatever they can do to make it safer.

24 So thank you for your time, and I hope

25 you can help us because we need your help because
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1 the State of Texas is not helping us.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you for

3 your testimony. Are there any follow-up questions?

4 MR. MOORE: No.

5 MS. THOMPSON: No.

6 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you.

7 MS. DICKERSON: Hello.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Hello.

9 MS. DICKERSON: My name is Tamika

10 Dickerson. I live in Arlington. I'm a retired mom

11 of four, and I'm not going to be one of your

12 subject matter experts, but anyway, but I do have

13 some stories I would like to share with you.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Sure.

15 MS. DICKERSON: My life I think is --

16 I consider comprised of two parts, before December

17 the 2nd in 2012 when I thought I was going to die

18 from what I consider was a heavy metal plume in my

19 neighborhood. I was called by my friend who asked

20 me to come over to her neighborhood just north of

21 me, which is down the hill at a very low elevation

22 to come and diagnose -- you know, help diagnose the

23 smell.

24 So dumbly, I went over there. I was

25 sitting in my car with the window open on one side,
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1 and suddenly in -- this plume or whatever it was at

2 this low-lying area, I'm losing my consciousness.

3 I thought I'm not my own, and I remember this

4 panicky feeling, you know, just asking God to give

5 me the strength to be able to drive away. And

6 somehow I managed to do that, but it changed my

7 life, the way I look at life. I mean, that was

8 scary, that that can happen to someone.

9 Arlington -- there were Arlington

10 police officers in the area trying to figure out

11 where the smell was coming from. No one could

12 figure it out. It was blamed on compost. That's

13 what Arlington chose to blame it on. It was

14 compost, and this other police officer got really,

15 really sick; and he got mad to the point that he

16 was calling me all day long how he's going to sue

17 the City of Arlington because of the health effects

18 that he had. Of course, the spokesman from the

19 Arlington, Texas, police department immediately

20 came forward and said, hey, you wore the blue

21 uniform today. You're not allowed to talk about

22 this.

23 So ever since that time, I've taken,

24 you know, more interest in what's going on around

25 me. The latest event was the one that Jane Lind
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1 was already talking about. My husband told me

2 around 11:30 Monday evening, you need to come out

3 and smell this. And he described it as a very,

4 very sour smell. I went outside, and you could not

5 ignore it. I mean, it was horrific. And like a

6 fool, I walked through my house. I got to the

7 backyard. My husband says, trust me, it's also in

8 the backyard, so I smelled it all around. At the

9 same time, I feel like my lungs are just starting

10 to fill up. I feel like I have trouble getting a

11 breath.

12 So after that, I closed the door, went

13 inside, called 911, called Atmos Energy, and

14 finally, because we had been having sewer problems

15 with the City of Arlington because of the earth

16 moving, I called the city water department. Long

17 story short, after calling 911 and trying to follow

18 up with what went on, I was told that it was a

19 sewer problem in the area. Two different 911

20 operators told me it was sewer problems and the

21 water department is working on it. However, I had

22 the whole entire sewer crew show up to give me a

23 report at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning to tell me

24 there were no sewer problems. But for two days,

25 the City of Arlington officials are telling me that
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1 they had sewer problems.

2 Sewer problems don't cause that kind

3 of plume. The plume was very widespread for miles

4 and miles in Arlington. My husband even went out

5 in his car and was trying to reach to see which way

6 it was coming from, you know, whether it was a

7 nearby drill site. The wind was from the east, so

8 we have no idea where it was coming from.

9 I'm here to share my little story

10 because I support whatever cost it's going to be

11 there to prevent these chemicals from being

12 released into the atmosphere and to impact our

13 citizens. You don't want that for yourself and

14 your kids. I don't want it for my family and my

15 grandchildren, my pets. I mean, whether it's

16 methane or otherwise. I don't know enough about

17 particular chemicals to talk about it in detail,

18 but I'm against releasing all of these harmful

19 chemicals, methane or otherwise. So thank you for

20 listening to me.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

22 testimony.

23 Does anyone have any follow up?

24 MR. MOORE: No.

25 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you again for
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1 your testimony.

2 Okay. Again, folks, we'll break until

3 someone else signs up to testify.

4 (Break was had from 7:05 p.m. to

5 8:00 p.m.)

6 MR. THOMPSON: Today is September 23,

7 2015. The time is 8:00 p.m., and this concludes

8 the public hearing on EPA's proposed rules relating

9 to the oil and natural gas sector. Thank you for

10 joining us today.

11 (End of proceedings at 8:00 p.m.)

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1 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY PUBLIC HEARING

2 SEPTEMBER 23, 2015

3

4 I, Linda J. Webster, being first duly

5 sworn, on oath says that I am a Certified Shorthand

6 Reporter doing business in the City of Fort Worth,

7 County of Tarrant, and the State of Texas; that I

8 reported in shorthand the proceedings had at the

9 foregoing Environmental Protection Agency Public

10 Hearing; and that the foregoing is a true and

11 correct transcript of my shorthand notes so taken

12 as aforesaid and contains all the proceedings had

13 at the said Environmental Protection Agency Public

14 Hearing.

15 Certified to by me this 13th day of

16 November, 2015.

17

18

19

20

________________________________

21 LINDA J. WEBSTER, CSR, RPR

Atkinson-Baker, Inc.

22 500 North Brand Boulevard

Glendale, California 91203

23 (818) 551-7300

(818) 551-7330 (Fax)

24 Firm No. 32

Cert. No. 8106

25 Cert. Expires: 12-31-16