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1 UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

2 OIL AND NATURAL GAS SECTOR

3 OFFICE OF AIR QUALITY PLANNING AND STANDARDS

4

5

6

7

8

9 PUBLIC HEARING ON EPA'S PROPOSED RULE ON

10 New Source Performance Standards; National

 Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants

11 and Review

12

13

14

15 Corrected Transcript - November 15, 2011

16

17 Arlington, Texas

18 Thursday, September 29, 2011

19 Afternoon Session

20

21

22

 ATKINSON-BAKER, INC.

23 COURT REPORTERS

 Telephone: 1-800-288-3376

24 www.depo.com

 Reported by Christi Sanford, CSR No. 6720

25 FILE NO. A507E0A
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1 PARTICIPANTS

2

3 EPA HEARING PANEL:

4

5 Fred Thompson, Hearing Chair

6 Associate Director, Sector Policies and Programs

7 Division, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards

8 Alex MacPherson

9 Rob Lawrence

10 Bruce Moore

11 Ruben Casso

12

13 SPEAKERS:

14

15 Ed Eichinger

16 Renee Vaughan

17 Dr. Lawrence Cottle

18 Jim Schermbeck

19 Tricia Cortez

20 James Wall

21 Kathleen Wazny

22 Margaret Fiedler

23 Sandy Denbraber

24 Carl Dimon

25 Carl Blankenship
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1 SPEAKERS CONT'D:

2 Jennifer Schultes

3 Marc McCord

4 Virginia Simonson

5 Helen Bush

6 Kay Buie-Nelson

7 Buddy Saunders

8 Kimberly Frankland

9 Tim Ruggiero

10 Melanie Sattler

11 Linda Hanratty

12 Ana Andrade

13 Susan Cooper

14 Sharon Wilson

15 Jan Evans

16 Larry E. Kitchens

17 Sister Elizabeth Riebschlaeger

18 Michael Wilburn

19 Jane Lynn

20 Claudette Fette

21 Susan Reid

22 Gary Hogan

23 Bill Dedecker

24 Kim Feil

25 Cary Clark
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1 SPEAKERS CONT'D:

2 Ken Feil

3 Harriet Irby

4 Marilyn Walton

5 Dewayne Quertermous

6 Jan Miller

7 Michelle Cline

8 Nina Ashley

9 Kerrie Kimberling

10 Penelope Bisbee

11 Rita Beving

12 Mary Owen

13 Faith Chatham

14 Ronnie Stapleton

15 Frank Kuchar

16 Ed Pischedda

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25
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1 PROCEEDINGS

2 (2:00 p.m.)

3 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. This is the public

4 hearing on the Oil and Natural Gas Sector: New Source

5 Performance Standards and National Emission Standards

6 for Hazar- -- Hazardous Air Pollutants and Review here

7 in Arlington, Texas. Good afternoon, and thank you for

8 attending this public hearing. The U.S. Environmental

9 Protection Agency, EPA, is holding this hearing to take

10 comment on the proposed rules.

11 My name is Fred Thompson, and I am the

12 associate director for the sector's Policies and

13 Programs Division in the EPA's Office of Air Quality

14 Planning and Standards. I will be chairing today's

15 hearing. Joining me on the panel are Bruce Moore to my

16 right of the sector's Policies and Programs Division in

17 Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; Alex Mac- --

18 Alex MacPherson to my left, he's with the Health and

19 Environmental Impacts Division in Research Triangle

20 Park, North Carolina; and Ruben Casso of EPA's Region 6

21 office here in Dallas, Texas.

22 We're here today to listen to your

23 comments on the EPA's proposal, Oil and Natural Gas

24 Sector: New Source Performance Standards and National

25 Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants and
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1 Review.

2 Today we'll be accepting oral comments on

3 all aspects of our proposal, and we -- and we will

4 prepare a written transcript of the hearing. The

5 transcript for the hearing will be available as part of

6 the official record for this rule. The EPA will

7 consider your comments as we move forward to complete a

8 final rule by February 28th, 2012. We are also

9 accepting written comments on the proposed rule until 30

10 days after the last public hearing, which is

11 October 31st, 2011.

12 At the registration area, which is located

13 out in the hallway, there are handouts with detailed

14 information for submitting written comments by mail, fax

15 or electronically.

16 Now, let me describe the procedures for

17 today's hearing. I will call the scheduled speakers to

18 the microphone in pairs. When it is your turn to speak,

19 please state your name and your affiliation before you

20 begin your testimony. You will be asked to spell your

21 name to ensure accuracy. In order to be fair to

22 everyone, please limit your testimony to five minutes

23 each and remain at the microphone until both speakers in

24 a pair have finished.

25 After you finish your testimony, members
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1 of the panel may ask clarifying questions. If in

2 addition to the transcript of your testimony you would

3 also like us to put the full text of your written

4 comments into the docket, please be sure to give a copy

5 of any written comments to our staff at the registration

6 table.

7 We have a timekeeping system, which is

8 located right here on the table, consisting of green,

9 yellow and red lights. When you begin speaking, the

10 green light will go on. You will have five minutes to

11 speak. The yellow light will signal that you have one

12 minute left to speak. When the red light goes on, five

13 minutes has passed and I will ask you to please complete

14 your testimony.

15 Today's hearing is scheduled from

16 9:00 a.m. and will continue until 8:00 p.m. or later, if

17 necessary, depending on the number of speakers. The

18 hearing will go on recess during the scheduled dinner

19 break from 5:00 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. We will reconvene

20 promptly at 6:30 p.m., respectfully.

21 We intend to stay into the evening until

22 everyone has an opportunity to comment. If you would

23 like to testify but have not yet registered to do so,

24 please sign up at the registration table in the hallway

25 outside the room.
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1 For those who have already registered to

2 speak, we have tried to accommodate your requests for

3 specific time slots. We ask for your patience as we

4 proceed through the list of speakers. We may need to

5 make some adjustments as the evening progresses. If any

6 questions arise throughout the day, please see a staff

7 member at the registration table for assistance.

8 Thank you again for participating today.

9 And at this point, I'd like to get started.

10 I'd like to ask Ed Eichinger and Renee

11 Vaughan to please come forward.

12 Good afternoon. Would you please state

13 your name and spell it for the court reporter, please,

14 before you begin your testimony?

15 MR. EICHINGER: My name is Ed Eichinger.

16 Last name is spelled E-i-c-h-i-n-g-e-r.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir.

18 MR. EICHINGER: I'm a citizen.

19 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

20 And Ms. Vaughan?

21 MS. VAUGHAN: Renee Vaughan, R-e-n-e-e

22 Vaughn, V as in Victor, a-u-g-h-a-n. I live in Dallas.

23 I'm a citizen.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you very much.

25 Mr. Eichinger, you can begin with your
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1 testimony whenever you're ready.

2 MR. EICHINGER: Okay. I've got it wrote

3 down here, so try to listen to the words. I'll just

4 read it.

5 I came here to Arlington in 1983. I came

6 to escape the environmental problems in Southern

7 California, San Diego. I served as a corpsman in the

8 U.S. Navy with the Marines at Camp Pendleton. I was

9 proficient at medical care for Marines training in the

10 mountain, jungle and desert warfare. When I was

11 honorably discharged, I became an orderly in the

12 hospitals, and my work in allied health care spans

13 14 years.

14 I left California because of the lack of

15 natural water supply and bad air. I remember driving

16 north through the San Bernadino Valley and not being

17 able to see the ridgeline around the city. The haze in

18 the air was so thick. I can remember even on clear days

19 it was still a hazy yellow.

20 I voted to approve the peripheral canal.

21 It was a measure that was supposed to improve the volume

22 of water supply to the millions and millions of people

23 in Southern California. It didn't pass. So between

24 that and the poor air quality, I felt trapped so I left.

25 There was plenty of work here in North
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1 Texas. And my grandparents had a home in Fort Worth, so

2 I stayed with them till I got on my feet. I guess,

3 according to the social statistics, I would be

4 considered blue collar, working class, poor.

5 I earned my emergency medical technician

6 certificate twice and worked in hospitals in California

7 and Texas. Along with millions of people here in North

8 Texas, I've had many jobs: Hospital orderly; I built

9 bridges; I cleared tree limbs from power lines for the

10 electric company; driven wreckers; worked in factories,

11 warehouses.

12 Until lately, I never felt the need to

13 become a professional because there was always

14 employment. As long as the rent was paid and food in

15 the refrigerator, I was happy. Like everyone else of my

16 status, I paid thousands of dollars in sales taxes,

17 purchased cars, lightbulbs, brooms, books, shoes,

18 furniture. It's a long list.

19 I lived at my -- I've lived at my current

20 address here in Arlington, 1119 South Davis Street, for

21 22 years. I've raised a family here. Except for the

22 extreme heat and the bugs in the summertime, it's been a

23 good experience.

24 I've been noticing, though, over the last

25 six years or so, the air quality is getting worse. I
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1 started to notice that drilling rigs were popping up

2 everywhere, towers with lights at night. I thought they

3 were cool-looking. They have American flags on them. I

4 consider myself a patriot. The lighted towers at night

5 had a sparkle and it broke the landscape, the dark, dull

6 landscape. It made me happy to know that people were

7 working.

8 Then one day, I noticed exhaust coming

9 from one of them. It was smoke. As I traveled over the

10 Fielder bridge on my way to work every morning, I would

11 look to the west and some days I couldn't even see the

12 buildings in Fort Worth. It reminded me of the skies I

13 had seen in Southern California.

14 I know the effects of poor -- of poor air

15 quality because, with the Marines training at

16 Bridgeport, California, I saw strong -- strong young men

17 reduced to puffing heaps at high altitude. I've held

18 the nebu- -- nebulizer for COPD patients in hospitals.

19 I've seen people struggle to get a breath.

20 I recently mentioned to my friends that

21 the air is getting bad here, the kind of bad that I

22 remember when I used to live in Southern Cal. The air

23 in Southern California is better now, thanks to the EPA

24 and courageous leaders in the community who fought

25 against big business and their lobbying.
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1 In Southern California now, the brown

2 skies are gone. It's all vanished. I'm told there were

3 mistakes in California with the EPA as they undertook

4 the tasks and procedures to get good air quality, but

5 Texas and the EPA can do this right, right from the

6 beginning.

7 I live near a busy street. And this --

8 there's a private school in my neighborhood. Although

9 at times in the past I did notice faint smell of car

10 exhaust, I never noticed it an issue with my breathing

11 before the gas wells came.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Mr. Eichinger, I'm sorry,

13 your time has expired, sir.

14 MR. EICHINGER: Okay.

15 MR. THOMPSON: I'll have to ask you, if

16 you would, please to send that to us if you haven't done

17 so. I'll review your comments.

18 MR. EICHINGER: Thanks for your time. And

19 I hope that and pray that you will impose the strictest

20 rules.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much, sir.

22 Ms. Vaughan?

23 MS. VAUGHAN: Thank you for your time and

24 thank you for being here. My comments are brief.

25 I live in North Texas. I've lived here
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1 almost all my life. And I've noticed in the last few

2 years that we have more frequent ozone alert days, days

3 that are considered orange or red or even purple, purple

4 being the kind of day when it's not safe for anyone to

5 go outside, regardless of how healthy they may be.

6 I work outside about 25 hours a week as

7 part of ful- -- fulfilling my duties for my job. And so

8 even though I'm a healthy person, this does give me

9 pause.

10 I would just like to ask, the same as Ed,

11 for you to put the strongest rules in place, not only to

12 protect me and my colleagues here, but hundreds of

13 friends and family that I know who do the same kind of

14 work that I do all across the United States and who also

15 deserve, just like all United States citizens, to be

16 protected from exposure to the toxic chemicals emitted

17 from frac wells.

18 We also have concerns about water use, of

19 course. Even the industry has admitted that the

20 produced water from frac wells can never be used for

21 anything ever again except for fracking. And I feel,

22 and so do my colleagues, that it's morally reprehensible

23 to ruin what is already a resource that people don't

24 have enough access to in other places in the world.

25 Thank you very much for considering my
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1 comments.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Vaughan.

3 Are there any clarifying questions for

4 Mr. Eichinger or Mrs. Vaughan?

5 Well, thank you both very much for your

6 time today and your testimony.

7 Okay. At this time I'd like to ask

8 Lawrence Cottle and Jim Schermbeck to please come

9 forward.

10 Good afternoon, gentlemen. Please state

11 your -- state your name and spell it for the court

12 reporter, please.

13 DR. COTTLE: My name is Dr. Lawrence

14 Cottle. I am a private citizen from Dallas. My address

15 is 5086 Matilda, Unit 116 in the city of Dallas.

16 From what is being said today -- and what

17 will be said, I'm sure -- I think it's going to be very

18 obvious that you, as our government officials, know very

19 well the basic concerns of our community, and by

20 listening and following through responsibly, you are

21 fulfilling a basic -- a basic function of our government

22 and that is to help provide a protection for all its

23 citizens.

24 We tend to forget sometimes that

25 government was not put here to get in our way. It was
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1 put here to help us and to provide some guidance. This

2 important function of providing protection for us is

3 something that we should expect.

4 Now, there are activities in our lives, of

5 course, which we depend upon for our existence and

6 survival outside of the government. Sometimes these

7 activities are greater than we are. Sometimes these

8 activities that we depon- -- depend upon may choose to

9 operate in their best interests, which are not always in

10 the interest of the greater public. When this occurs,

11 that's when we need our government to step in and

12 provide the safety and protection that we need.

13 Drilling for oil and natural gas are

14 essential activities to make our way of life possible in

15 this country. Without the end products, we could not

16 enjoy our current standard of living. But these

17 activities whose business interests are very powerful,

18 these interests act surely in the -- in the interest of

19 the public in that they do provide a very much-needed

20 product or service, something to run our cars, heat and

21 air-condition our homes and our businesses and, of

22 course, many other products and services.

23 There's a strong cry right now, we all

24 know, for jobs in our economy. The oil and gas industry

25 can meet the demands for more jobs as well as providing
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1 its end products to make our lives more comfortable, but

2 it is not in the best interest of the public when

3 harmful effects result from their activity.

4 We all know what happens when our water is

5 poisoned and our air is foul. The health care costs and

6 lost days of productivity that are also outcomes are

7 uncalled for and not worth the price of allowing these

8 energy industries to operate however they please.

9 As citizens, we deserve the safety and

10 protection that is called for first. As citizens, we

11 deserve the safety and protection -- this safety and

12 protection, and it should be your responsibility to see

13 to it that before drilling activities can begin, that

14 adequate safeguards are put into place to assure our

15 safety. To do less than that is irresponsible and does

16 a grave miservice (sic) to us all.

17 Thank you.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Dr. Cottle.

19 Any clarifying questions for -- okay.

20 MR. SCHERMBECK: Howdy. My name is Jim

21 Schermbeck. I'm here with Downwinders at Risk, the

22 premier defender of the DFW airshed these days.

23 There's many reasons to support these

24 rules: The fact that they reduce toxic -- toxic

25 exposure in neighborhoods, the fact that they reduce
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1 greenhouse gasses. I'm here to talk to you about the

2 fact that they can reduce smog in the Dallas/Fort Worth

3 area and other nonattainment areas.

4 I've heard the claim made today that the

5 DFW air quality is just so much better than it used to

6 be. And I like Senator Averitt. I worked with him when

7 he was in office and was sorry to see him go. But his

8 claims that the state's air programs are on steroids is

9 off-base. Air quality is not getting better in DFW and

10 it has everything to do with these proposed rules as to

11 why that is.

12 We've been in nonattainment for 20 years,

13 basically since 1991, since the clean air amendments

14 were passed. This is the TCEQ's own data about wind

15 direction. During the ozone season, it comes out of the

16 south, southeast and east, goes west, northwest and

17 north. Our worst days -- for instance, this week where

18 we've had an orange alert every day and where we've

19 exceeded the eight-hour 85 parts per billion standard

20 every day -- are because of light winds out of the east

21 and southeast.

22 Not coincidentally, most of the ozone

23 violations are in the western or northwestern part of

24 the Metroplex, basically in Tarrant and Denton and

25 Parker Counties, some scattered elsewhere, as you see.
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1 And this probably -- this number of 70 percent will

2 probably go up after we include this year's violations.

3 Unfortunately, that's also the area where most of the

4 gas drilling is taking place in the Dallas/Fort Worth

5 areas in this western part of the Metroplex, exactly

6 where the ozone problems were already bad.

7 This is a chart that many folks in here

8 have seen before, where we are in terms of -- let's

9 see -- 2009 wells, I think the number is now something

10 like 14,000, 15,000 wells, which is, according to

11 industry, only a 30 percent build-out. It could be as

12 many as 50,000 wells if they go to 100 percent.

13 This is all information from the Texas

14 Commission on Environmental Quality that shows just over

15 the last six years what kind of impact gas drilling has

16 had in this area. There was not even a category for

17 condensate tanks and pneumatic valves in the last 2006

18 inventory or the clear air plan that was put together

19 then. By 2012, as you can see, they're a significant

20 part of the dirty air inventory in Dallas/Fort Worth.

21 Here's another chart also from TCEQ that

22 shows you exactly how much each point source or other

23 kinds of sources have gone up in terms of their VOCs.

24 This is just for VOC pollution in the Dallas/Fort Worth

25 nonattainment area.
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1 And as you can see, as a result of past

2 clean air plans, almost every other source category has

3 gone down in terms of the total number of VOCs, with the

4 exception of two. One is the area source, which is a

5 kind of broad category that covers lots of different

6 things, and the other one is the oil and gas industry,

7 which has gone from 13 to 20 percent in just those last

8 six years. And the result of that is that you have more

9 VOCs in 2012 than you do in 2006, despite the presence

10 of two clean air plans that are supposed to take care of

11 this kind of pollution. In other words, the gas

12 industry has outstripped our ability to work clean air

13 plans around it. And since the last one did not include

14 the gas industry -- the State's chosen to ignore it --

15 this problem is not going away unless your rules are

16 proposed and implemented.

17 Let's see. This is just teasing that

18 number out that you just saw. You can see the huge

19 difference just in the last six years. Whereas cars and

20 trucks were primarily the largest source of VOC

21 pollution in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, according to

22 TCEQ, now as of this next year it'll be the oil and gas

23 industry.

24 And there's a phenomenon that goes on

25 where dirty air that comes up from the Houston area
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1 meets the lignite/coal plant belt, then goes north to

2 Midlothian, hits the cement plant pollution that you

3 heard about earlier today and then goes right into the

4 area where all of this drilling is taking place.

5 There's a phenomenon that wasn't

6 considered in the last TCEQ air plan -- the one that

7 hasn't even been submitted to you-all yet, but is

8 already out of date and obsolete and is not going to

9 work -- that the air that's already polluted, when it

10 mixes with stuff in the gas so that it actually produces

11 more of an ozone threat than either one of them

12 independently. This phenomenon has never been talked

13 about or studied in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, but I'm

14 convinced that it's one of the reasons why we have bad

15 air in the area here.

16 Last year, we only had two monitors that

17 were violating the 85 part per billion ozone standard,

18 and I believe one of the reasons is because the dirty

19 air coming up from the south meeting the gas well

20 pollution from the northwest. This year, we have seven

21 monitors out of compliance with the 85 standard, the

22 last one coming on Monday or Tuesday of this week with a

23 seasonal high in Parker County of 98 parts per billion.

24 But there's a whole new front of new ozone problems

25 opening up because of the gas wells' location and their
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1 emissions.

2 Here's the most severe, fourth highest --

3 MR. THOMPSON: Mr. Schermbeck --

4 MR. SCHERMBECK: -- violations --

5 MR. THOMPSON: -- I'm sorry. Your time --

6 MR. SCHERMBECK: I'm getting to the end.

7 Just a second here.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Mr. Schermbeck.

9 MR. SCHERMBECK: I promise, I've got two

10 more slides.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Mr. Schermbeck --

12 MR. SCHERMBECK: Here are the --

13 MR. THOMPSON: -- your time has expired,

14 sir.

15 MR. SCHERMBECK: And here are the design

16 values for --

17 MR. THOMPSON: Mr. Schermbeck, your time

18 has --

19 MR. SCHERMBECK: -- 2001 through 2011. As

20 you can see, they're going up, not down. We're going

21 the wrong direction.

22 MR. THOMPSON: Mr. Schermbeck, your time

23 has expired, sir.

24 MR. SCHERMBECK: That was the last slide.

25 MR. THOMPSON: Does the panel have any
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1 questions for Mr. Schermbeck or Mr. Cottle?

2 Thank you very much for your testimony.

3 Have you submitted -- Mr. Schermbeck?

4 Would you hold your applause, please. I need to ask you

5 a serious question. Have you submitted this to folks

6 outside yet?

7 MR. SCHERMBECK: I have not.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Because I want it in

9 the record; and in order to do that, we have to submit

10 the --

11 MR. SCHERMBECK: Sure. I understand.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Okay.

13 MR. SCHERMBECK: If you want me to do

14 that, I can do that or --

15 MR. THOMPSON: Yes. We can't do it for

16 you. You have to do it.

17 MR. SCHERMBECK: Oh, all right.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much.

19 MR. SCHERMBECK: As with most things clean

20 air-wise these days, we have to do it ourselves.

21 Thank you.

22 MR. THOMPSON: Again, thank you.

23 Could Tricia Cortez and James Wall please

24 come forward? James Wall? Is James Wall in the room?

25 Okay.
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1 Good afternoon. Ms. Cortez, could you

2 just state your name and spell it for the court

3 reporter?

4 MS. CORTEZ: Yes. My name's Tricia

5 Cortez. T-r-i-c-i-a, Cortez, C-o-r-t-e-z.

6 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. And you can begin

7 your testimony. And, Mr. Wall, we'll get to you after.

8 MS. CORTEZ: Yes. Hello. Good afternoon,

9 Chairman Thompson, and thank you for allowing us to be

10 here.

11 I work -- I'm in Laredo, Texas. I work

12 for a nonprofit organization called the Rio Grande

13 International Study Center. We are where the Eagle Ford

14 Shale is. And as y'all know, the Eagle Ford Shale, the

15 boundary is on -- the west is the Rio Grande, before it

16 cuts east across South Texas. But now in Mexico, Pemex

17 is about to complete their third test well in Coahuila,

18 which is across from Piedras Negras and Eagle Pass, to

19 see how far beyond the Rio Grande the shale play

20 extends.

21 Our organization is part of a new group

22 that formed this spring called The Safe Fracking

23 Coalition, which advocates for safe and responsible

24 drilling and production practices in the Eagle Ford

25 Shale. And as y'all know, the Eagle Ford Shale is very
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1 unique. It has three different kinds of windows north

2 to south: Oil, condensate and dry gas.

3 Up to now, we -- our organization, we've

4 been primarily concerned about the impact to water

5 quality and especially water consumption levels. In

6 northwest Webb County where Laredo is located, it takes

7 seven and a half to nine million gallons of water to

8 frac a single well. And there is no entity that is

9 monitoring the rate at which water is being extracted

10 and used in this new boom. And some of that water is

11 being pulled directly from the Rio Grande. And there's

12 also an issue of millions of gallons being taken from

13 city fire hydrants and water dispensers at colonias that

14 we're also concerned about.

15 We are -- we've also been very interested

16 in the issue of waste handling. Ranches that we've been

17 to, there's these waste disposal ponds -- LaMoca Ranch

18 off 83 North, other ranches off Camino Columbia Toll

19 Road -- where they're dumping flowback into unlined

20 pits. We have notified the Railroad Commission whenever

21 we learn about this, but it really is hard to gauge the

22 extent to which this practice is occurring.

23 We're also very concerned about the

24 hauling off of waste. Much of this is happening in our

25 area in open-top dump trucks, mainly because the rules
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1 for -- from the Railroad Commission are not explicit to

2 stop that. So what's happening is they're bringing all

3 this waste from drill sites in the Eagle Ford Shale that

4 come down Highway 83 South, hook onto I-35 South, come

5 into Laredo and then head south to Zapata County. In

6 the process, we are having lots of spills on our city

7 streets that are taking place on a weekly basis, leaving

8 TxDOT to clean up the mess. Many of these trucks are

9 headed to two huge, vast waste dump sites in Zapata

10 County, unlined pits, just -- it's vast, with a lot of

11 this stuff just out there. And then there's also been

12 documented dumping of this waste into creeks. And so we

13 hope that the EPA can take all of this into

14 consideration when writing their rules.

15 Now, the Eagle Ford Shale is very young

16 compared to the Marcellus and Barnett, but it is

17 expanding at break-neck speed. The number of wells has

18 gone from 26 in 2008 to -- now we have more than 2,000.

19 And they are projecting 30 to 100,000 wells to come

20 online.

21 In this whole process and the reason why

22 I'm here and I'm very interested in this and I'm very

23 happy that -- of what these new standards y'all are

24 proposing is because the discussion on air quality in

25 our region has been minimal. Either people don't know
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1 about it or there's this notion that the prevailing

2 winds that come from the southeast and go northwest will

3 not affect us; it will affect San Antonio or these other

4 little towns. But in the winter, those winds do shift

5 with the northerners -- with the northern fronts and

6 will come back south into Laredo and then across the

7 border into Mexico. So these -- these air quality

8 problems are not stationary.

9 Some of the things, Chairman Thompson,

10 that I just wanted to raise very quickly are -- I had

11 questions or we were concerned about what I understand

12 are transition zones. I understand that these new rules

13 that the EPA is proposing do not apply to non-gas wells.

14 However, two-thirds of the Eagle Ford Shale is liquid.

15 And if you drive through there, through La Salle or

16 Dimmit or Zavala where they're doing condensate or oil

17 wells, you have huge flares, not just your normal

18 everyday kind of flares, but huge flares that burn

19 24 hours, some that have been going for a month and a

20 half. So we would hope, Chairman Thompson, that the EPA

21 would write the rules so that we can find ways to

22 mitigate these emissions.

23 Also, this is very rural area. It affects

24 towns like Cotulla north of us. They just put a rig and

25 moved it across the street from Cotulla High School,
Page 27

1 next to a public housing project. They've now moved

2 that rig a mile north. We're very concerned about the

3 proximity. Because this is rural, outside of city

4 limits, there's really nothing in the books to protect

5 these people in these rural areas.

6 I was impressed by the testimony from

7 Devon Energy that talked about their emission reduction

8 practices. We hope that all operators will embrace

9 these new EPA standards to create an even playing field

10 and to safeguard our health.

11 Just -- lastly, I was --

12 MR. THOMPSON: Your time has expired,

13 Ms. Cortez.

14 MS. CORTEZ: Oh, I'm sorry. I was just

15 very curious about enforcement and studies. And we hope

16 y'all put monitors and more studies of all of this.

17 Thank you.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much for

19 your testimony. Thank you.

20 Mr. Wall?

21 MR. WALL: Yes. My name is James Wall.

22 It's W-a-l-l. And I'm a citizen of Flower Mound, Texas.

23 I moved to Flower Mound about 25 years ago

24 and -- so that we -- my family and I could enjoy a nice,

25 rural setting in Texas. Well, about three years ago I
Page 28

1 became aware of gas drilling moving in. It got to be a

2 little noisy in our town about gas drilling in Flower

3 Mound, and so I started paying attention. Before you

4 know it, that nice, little, rural town right now has,

5 like, 65 wells. We've had problems with spills. We've

6 got -- every time someone goes out with a -- an infrared

7 camera, they see leaks. And, I mean, it's just

8 ridiculous what's been going on.

9 When you look at a Google map of our area

10 now and -- and move it up toward Denton County, you can

11 see from the satellite map that there are all these

12 little pin dots of -- of well pads. I mean, it's just

13 unbelievably out of control in our area, I believe.

14 Sixty-five wells in Flower Mound is way more than what

15 we should have ever allowed or had. And, unfortunately,

16 it's not ended there. A lot of those existing pad sites

17 now are being expanded because they were approved under

18 old regulations.

19 My concern is we've got a lot of child

20 leukemia. We've got young women with bread can- --

21 breast cancer -- bread cancer -- breast cancer in our

22 area. We've had several studies that have been, I

23 think, kind of whitewashed or toned down to -- to not

24 show the real effects of all this, kind of similar to

25 the Fort Worth study that was done not too long ago
Page 29

1 that -- that talked about how clean our air is.

2 I mean, this is ridiculous stuff that's

3 going on in our state of Texas here. And we're really

4 looking forward to the EPA to come in and help us clean

5 up this -- this air and make sure that our water isn't

6 polluted here in our -- in our state. Our state

7 officials are not doing it. And you'll hear testimony,

8 I'm sure, all day long that -- that -- that they've

9 totally ignored the problem. We've got complaints.

10 In fact, Mr. Schermbeck's slides that he's

11 shown, you'll noticed that Flower Mound is the target

12 where all the arrows are pointing, you know, where the

13 pollution is going. That concerns me. We're looking

14 forward to the EPA of being the calvary coming in and --

15 and maybe saving our -- our state and maybe improving

16 our health. So please, please look at these

17 out-of-control operators here and -- and the situation

18 that they've created for our families.

19 Thank you.

20 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Wall.

21 Any -- I think we have -- and I have one

22 as well. So, please, Bruce, you go first.

23 MR. MOORE: The wells that you're talking

24 about in Flower Mound --

25 MR. WALL: Yes.
Page 30

1 MR. MOORE: -- the 65 wells, do you know

2 if those are primarily wet gas or dry gas wells? And

3 are there also compression stations there, too?

4 MR. WALL: We've got -- we have some

5 compression stations. I'm not -- I'm not sure about the

6 wet and dry wells, to be honest with you.

7 MR. MOORE: Okay.

8 MR. WALL: But we've got a problem with

9 them trying to put in centralized collection storage

10 units for the flowback. And, I mean, we're talking a

11 heavy industrialization of a rural -- what used to be a

12 rural community.

13 MR. MOORE: Thank you.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Mr. Wall, I'd like to ask,

15 what's the population? Do you know the population of

16 Flower Mound?

17 MR. WALL: When I moved there, I think it

18 was -- I think it was only about 10,000, and now it's

19 like -- it's -- it's up to like 50 or 60,000.

20 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you, sir.

21 Any other questions?

22 Okay. Mrs. Cortez and Mr. Wall, thank you

23 both for your testimony. Thank you very much.

24 Okay. At this time I'd like to ask

25 Kathleen Wazny and Margaret Fiedler -- Fiedler to please
Page 31

1 come forward.

2 Good afternoon, ladies. And let's start

3 with Ms. Wazny. If you could just pronounce and spell

4 your name for the court reporter.

5 MS. WAZNY: Kathleen Wazny, spelled

6 W-a-z-n-y. I tell people tough name, great guy.

7 Fifteen thousand gas wells in North Texas,

8 and we're here today scratching our heads and asking if

9 we need to monitor the air quality? You've got to be

10 kidding. I live with the gas wells and the tank farms

11 in Denton, in the heart of the Barnett Shale. Our

12 community is not only surround by the wells, but they're

13 in my neighborhood, some as close as 250 feet from a

14 home. We citizens have pushed our city government for

15 air quality monitoring for three years and have run up

16 against a brick wall. Even wells that surround senior

17 citizens have no special consideration.

18 Our local government hasn't protected our

19 air quality. The state of Texas has not protected our

20 air quality. And now we come to the EPA for a solution.

21 I'm shocked that we have to beg for this protection.

22 Let me remind you that 50 years ago, automobiles had

23 their first mandated emission controls. Fifty years

24 ago. So why are we citizens painted as unreasonable

25 when we ask that 15,000 gas wells be monitored for air
Page 32

1 quality?

2 Let me tell you what's happening in my

3 neighborhood of senior citizens. We have two industry

4 giants drilling for gas with these wells and tanks smack

5 dab in the middle of homes. We are acutely aware of the

6 leaks that occur after drilling. We have had three

7 major incidents in the last six months. All three

8 incidents had to be reported by little old ladies who

9 lived next to the tanks. All three were major.

10 My point is this: If these wells and

11 tanks had had 24/7 monitoring on them, we citizen

12 sentinels would not be on the front line as watchdogs.

13 When I asked the new city of Denton gas well

14 administrator about 24/7 air quality monitoring, he

15 replied, "You have 2,000 sets of eyes in your community.

16 They're the monitors." You've got to be kidding.

17 Here's the mandate: These wells have to

18 be monitored for air quality. I no longer have blue

19 skies in Denton. They're blue-gray. The only time

20 they're blue is after a rain, and that's not often. The

21 pollution haze hangs over Denton County, and it's

22 shameful because it could be prevented.

23 So who pays for the monitoring? Who else

24 but those who profit from the drilling. That's a

25 no-brainer. If I build a factory, I have to comply with
Page 33

1 air quality regulations. So how did this industry get

2 off scott-free? Not only are they not accountable for

3 air quality, they also have a free pass on the Clean

4 Water Act. That's another bombshell that's waiting to

5 happen when our drinking water and ag water comes out of

6 the ground polluted. It may take a while, but it's

7 coming.

8 So make the drillers pay for the

9 monitoring. They may cry, Poor me, I have no money, but

10 the industry is spending millions of dollars on

11 television ads, newspaper ads, magazine, radio,

12 billboards telling us how wonderful they are. Let them

13 cut back their ad budget and pay for my clean air.

14 All -- all wells have to be monitored, the

15 wells that are in, the wells that are drilled and the

16 wells that are coming. We breathe filthy air because of

17 this industry, and I am here today to tell you we have

18 the technology to solve the problem and you have the

19 power to make it happen.

20 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Wazny.

21 Thank you for your testimony.

22 Ms. Fiedler?

23 MS. FIEDLER: Oh, thanks. I should have

24 gone first.

25 I'm Dr. Margaret Fiedler, M-a-r-g-a-r-e-t
Page 34

1 F-i-e-d-l-e-r. I'm a private citizen, her neighbor.

2 Good afternoon.

3 MR. THOMPSON: Good afternoon.

4 MS. FIEDLER: I'm a 60-year-old

5 grandmother, a retired educator, a retired community

6 leader, and I need your help. You see, I'm a citizen of

7 the shale. I live in a community that has gas wells in

8 it. I live on the Barnett Shale. My neighborhood has

9 had multiple leaks at our existing gas well sites and at

10 our tank farm. In each case, my neighbors and I called

11 in the leaks.

12 Connie, one of my neighbors, noticed one

13 of the wells next to her house was malfunctioning. It

14 was hissing and releasing some substance into the air.

15 She reported it to the telephone number that was written

16 on the fence to call in in case of a problem. I also

17 called that number. The operator that answered said she

18 was the answering service in Oklahoma and would send in

19 the report. Weeks later, I received a call from a gas

20 company representative asking me to tell him what the

21 problem was. He had not received any notification of a

22 problem. He didn't even know of the incident.

23 Claudia, another neighbor, heard a

24 horrible squealing noise from one of the well sites as

25 she was walking one of her sons to his car after the
Page 35

1 Mavericks game and reported the leak. A number of days

2 later, we were notified that the company was working on

3 the problem.

4 Sandy, she lives next door. She called in

5 the terrible noise from the gas tank farm behind her

6 house that wouldn't stop for two hours. She said she

7 was too scared to even go to bed. I called TCEQ and

8 9-1-1 when the noise escalated.

9 Is this our job? Is this our new job in

10 retirement, monitoring existing gas wells? Are we the

11 citizen sentinels of existing gas wells? According to

12 the City, the answer is yes. We have met with our city

13 leaders and begged them for help, but our response is

14 that it's the gas well's industry to monitor itself. We

15 have talked with the gas well representatives and they

16 stated that someone visits each site daily to monitor

17 it, but the leaks occur at night, after a 9:00 to 5:00

18 day and the only one here monitoring it is us.

19 When I called CEQ at 7:30 at night after

20 listening to the noise from the tank farm for over an

21 hour and a half, I received a case number and a promise

22 that someone would be calling me back. And, yes, I

23 received a call, 8:44 p.m., almost two hours later, from

24 a gentleman that couldn't even find my location. He

25 said it wasn't on his GPS and that he had to go to
Page 36

1 Google Earth on his computer to locate the tank farm

2 behind our house. According to Sandy, the leak had

3 started at 6:00 p.m., and now almost three hours later

4 someone from the State is getting back to me, not that

5 he could help me. You see, he said it was too late and

6 dangerous to go out at night and that someone would get

7 back to me tomorrow.

8 I reported the incident to the City. They

9 notified me that they were requiring the driller to

10 install new safeguards at the tank site, but not 24/7

11 monitoring. So I'm back to work as the citizen

12 sentinel, along with Sandy, Connie and Claudia. But is

13 this really our job? Isn't it the government's

14 responsibility to provide protection for its citizens?

15 Why am I here today? I am asking you, the

16 EPA, for protection. Isn't it your job to make sure the

17 air I breathe is clean air? We need protection. I need

18 clean air. I am a cancer survivor. I have battled one

19 disease and I don't need another from dirty air. I need

20 better monitoring systems 24/7 than a series of old

21 ladies who happen to be walking, sitting on their back

22 porch or just listening with their windows open. I need

23 these four new air regulations for the oil and gas

24 industry that are being proposed. I need clean air.

25 This is -- I Googled what the
Page 37

1 ramifications for natural gas leaks, and my response

2 from Just Ask It was only three words, Death or

3 explosion. This is why I monitor. This is why I am a

4 gas well sentinel. But, really, I and my girlfriends

5 are all over 60. We need rest. We need help. We need

6 your help. Please, what are you waiting for?

7 Sit. Sit. He has a question.

8 MS. WAZNY: Sorry.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Thank you both

10 for your testimony.

11 Yeah. We need to give my colleagues an

12 opportunity here. Do you guys have any questions?

13 Well, thank you both very much for your

14 testimony today. Thank you.

15 Okay. At this time I'd like to ask Sandy

16 Denbraber and Melanie Sattler to please come forward.

17 Good afternoon.

18 MS. DENBRABER: Good afternoon.

19 MR. THOMPSON: And you are which?

20 MS. DENBRABER: I'm Sandy Denbraber.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Is Melanie here?

22 Okay.

23 MS. DENBRABER: The last time I spoke with

24 the EPA, I told them that finally the TCEQ had given a

25 violation with enforcement against Carrizo for making me
Page 38

1 deathly ill.

2 MR. THOMPSON: I'm sorry. Before you

3 begin -- I haven't started the timer. I want to ask,

4 could you just you state your name and spell it for the

5 court reporter, and then we'll start the timer.

6 MS. DENBRABER: My name is Sandra

7 Denbraber, D-e-n-b-r-a-b-e-r.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

9 MS. DENBRABER: The last time I was here,

10 I told you about how the TCEQ gave Carrizo Oil & Gas a

11 violation with enforcement for making me so ill. The

12 local TCEQ office got it documented very well and had it

13 approved by Austin. Well, a few weeks ago I got a

14 letter from Austin that was really strange because it

15 starts out with two dates of air sampling and then they

16 decide to drop it, saying my medical doesn't support a

17 violation. I sent a letter to the Attorney General's

18 office asking them to make the TCEQ enforce the law and

19 they come back and they say they don't enforce the law.

20 So in the state of Texas, it's okay for

21 oil and gas to make you sick. And there are safer ways

22 to drill. There's are preventative methods. There's

23 green completions. There's replacing leaky valves.

24 There's emission controls for condensate tanks. There's

25 better situations for generators -- I mean, compressor
Page 39

1 stations with diesel generators. I don't think diesel

2 generators should be anyplace in -- in cities with high

3 populations because the diesel exhaust is toxic. That

4 needs to change. We need help.

5 One of the recent articles I read was how

6 the Gulf War Syndrome was researched by Dr. Charles

7 Haley at UT Southwestern. He now has shown that minimal

8 exposures over a longer term can cause devastating

9 effects because it doesn't go by the air samples. It

10 goes -- because different chemicals react differently to

11 different people.

12 That needs to be addressed because the

13 TCEQ thinks that there was no abnormal air samples, but

14 the TCEQ would never come when the complaints were

15 there, when the gasses were being released. And even

16 though their samples would show things like benzene,

17 ethyl benzene and some of the other chemicals my blood

18 tests positive for, they say they were normal. Well,

19 there's no normal safe level for any of those chemicals.

20 And so we need somebody that can help us

21 change how the government views what we're being exposed

22 to. I didn't ask to be made sick, and it's a struggle

23 still daily with the chemicals there. I can sit out on

24 my porch and the huge hissing sounds and it's just a

25 mile up the street, because I live just a mile from
Page 40

1 here. And I live in a highly populated area, and it's

2 on the University of Texas Arlington's property.

3 So, please, I ask you, you need to make

4 changes because the Texas government's not going to do

5 it, and nobody in the Texas government is going to help

6 you. If there's a law and they know there's a law in

7 the book to protect you, they won't enforce it.

8 Thank you.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Denbraber.

10 Are there -- are there any questions from

11 the panel? No?

12 Okay. Thank you again for your testimony.

13 Thank you very much.

14 At this time I'd like to ask Carl Dimon

15 and Carl Blankenship to please come forward.

16 Good afternoon, gentlemen. Let's start

17 with Mr. Dimon. Could you please state and spell your

18 name for the court reporter?

19 MR. DIMON: Yes. I'm Carl A. Dimon,

20 D-i-m-o-n. I'm age 75 --

21 MR. THOMPSON: Would you move the mic a

22 little closer to you, please? Just move it a little --

23 yes, sir. Thank you very much.

24 MR. DIMON: I'm age 75. I'm a retired

25 petroleum engineer. I practiced for Mobil Oil
Page 41

1 Corporation for 34 years. I practiced in -- privately

2 for another 14 years.

3 I'd like to talk to you about two issues

4 concerning gas air quality as a result of hydraulic

5 fracturing. And I'll give this to the front table.

6 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, sir.

7 MR. DIMON: Included in this handout is a

8 article from The American Oil and Gas Reporter. It's

9 published by Kevin Fisher of Halliburton-Pinnacle

10 Technology saying, Hot dog, fracking is safe. It's so

11 far from where you frac to the water table that there

12 can't possibly be any problem. Well, horse puckeys.

13 The U- -- the Texas Bureau of Economic

14 Geology says in the Ellenburger formation there are all

15 kinds of sags and they extend clear up to formations of

16 Pennsylvanian-age, and gas in the strong sand and in

17 Parker County migrated from the Barnett Shale up to

18 those shallower formations. And we're letting these

19 clowns frac at 7,000 pounds surface pressure in a system

20 that has natural fractures that God put there and then

21 they're blaming God for methane gas appearing in Parker

22 County in people's water wells. How long are you going

23 to put up with that kind of nonsense?

24 I watched in Grand Prairie where I live

25 and, thank God, we're on the very eastern edge of the
Page 42

1 gas field. So it's not economic and they're getting out

2 of there, thank you, Lord. I watched them swab a well

3 after they'd fracked it. Four men on a little platform,

4 they'd pull a string up. About once every five minutes

5 they get a gas kick. The water would come up and down a

6 shoot, the gas would go in the air, the four guys would

7 run like hell. For one thing, they didn't want to

8 suffocate. They didn't want to die. How can the U.S.

9 Government's Occupational and Safety Health Agency (sic)

10 permit nonsense like that? What is happening? It's out

11 of control.

12 Thank you.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Dimon.

14 Mr. Blankenship?

15 MR. BLANKENSHIP: Hello. My name is Carl

16 Blankenship, C-a-r-l B-l-a-n-k-e-n-s-h-i-p. And -- all

17 right. So I'm here and I'm from Haslet, Texas, which is

18 up in the Denton area. It's -- it's actually right next

19 to Flower Mound.

20 But I'm actually here -- and I feel like a

21 bit of a minority here. But I am concerned -- I am

22 concerned about the -- the environment and the air, but

23 I'm also concerned about gas prices and also energy

24 prices where if -- if the offset of medical bills --

25 say -- say I obtain medical bills due to the pollution
Page 43

1 in the air is -- say that is offset by increasing energy

2 prices due to energy companies having to -- I'm so

3 sorry -- being able to -- having to -- having all those

4 procedures set in place to where they have to raise

5 prices on energy so that gas prices are going up, energy

6 prices are going up, to heat my house it costs more, to,

7 you know, run my whatever -- run my washing machine it

8 costs more.

9 Then I just ask that whatever the EPA does

10 that they would consider that the prices -- whatever has

11 to be paid by the energy -- energy companies, the --

12 like, the Barnett Shale companies, that they would just

13 take into consideration that they are -- they are a

14 company out there to make money, but they are also

15 assisting us by giving us cheap energy, by giving us

16 cheap gas. And so -- that didn't come out so good. But

17 thank you. Thank you for your time.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

19 Are there any clarifying questions?

20 Okay. Gentlemen, thank you both for your

21 testimony. Thank you very much.

22 Okay. At this time I'd like to ask

23 Jennifer Schultes and Marc McCord to please come

24 forward.

25 Good afternoon.
Page 44

1 MS. SCHULTES: Hi.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Let's start with

3 Mrs. Schultes. Could you state and spell your name,

4 please, for the court reporter?

5 MS. SCHULTES: Yes. My name is Jennifer

6 Schultes. That's S-c-h-u-l-t-e-s. I'm a private

7 citizen.

8 Can you hear me?

9 MR. THOMPSON: Yes.

10 MS. SCHULTES: First, I'd like to thank

11 the EPA for this step towards some sort of regulation of

12 the fracking process.

13 I'm an IT professional. I live in east

14 Fort Worth. Within a mile or two in any direction of my

15 house, there are all sorts of natural gas operations

16 underway: By the dog park, where I no longer take my

17 dog, along the river, behind the 7-Eleven, next to the

18 Waffle House, beside the high school sports field,

19 practically in people's front yards.

20 I also can't help but notice how

21 concentrated the operations are in the less affluent

22 sections of town, unsurprisingly. It scares me so much

23 that I do my best to avoid Berry Street, Beach Street

24 and Lancaster Avenue.

25 I know that powerful people with deep
Page 45

1 pockets have tried to hide this industry technique from

2 any and all regulation. I know that academics and

3 scientists who have spoken out against the dangers of

4 fracking, not to even mention urban fracking, have been

5 silenced systematically and undermined.

6 As far as I can tell, the natural gas

7 industry and our, quote, unquote, repetitives and

8 so-called leaders, especially in Fort Worth, have

9 decided to gamble on the health and safety of myself, my

10 family and my fellow citizens. Why is that? I guess,

11 because they had big money to make. I really can't

12 think of any other reason.

13 The question I ask myself, that I do not

14 want to ask myself, but I can't help it, no matter how

15 hard I try to push the question out of my head: Am I

16 gambling, too, by living here in an urban fracking

17 field? How much am I increasing my risk of cancer? Is

18 my niece going to get leukemia? Should I grab my family

19 and run away from my mortgage to someplace else? And

20 where would that even be?

21 I know that since coming here last year, I

22 have headaches most every day, I have a weird flutter in

23 my upper chest, I cough a lot. I started off my career

24 as a -- as a printmaker doing lithography and etching,

25 so I'm -- and I had to stop because of chemical exposure
Page 46

1 over a period of time. So I -- I know how this stuff

2 builds up in your system. That's why I do computer work

3 now, because I can't be around chemicals.

4 I used to spend -- or I do spend a lot of

5 time in my garden, my nice organic garden where I grow

6 vegetables. I -- I wonder about eating those vegetables

7 that are grown in this air and with this water. And I

8 say to myself, Jen, you're being really paranoid. Don't

9 sound like a kook, but I don't know who to believe and I

10 don't know that there's anyone out there protecting me

11 because I've seen things like the study that Fort Worth

12 did, which is a joke.

13 A couple weeks ago, passing a Lancaster

14 Avenue Chesapeake operation, there was a smell that was

15 so intense -- I had my car windows down because it was

16 not a -- it was not so hot of a day. I almost threw up.

17 Immediately I had an intense headache and for the rest

18 of the day this acrid taste in my mouth. I couldn't

19 make it go away. I drank water, everything.

20 I called the TCEQ, spent -- you know, some

21 guys called me a couple hours later. They couldn't find

22 the location, even though from where I told them there

23 were at least four pad sites right there within a

24 stone's throw. Wound up talking to people at TCEQ, back

25 and forth, back and forth, and then they basically told
Page 47

1 me, well, since it was not on my property, then -- you

2 know, then I couldn't have any -- I don't know what they

3 did. Really, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know

4 if it was ever reported. I have my little TCEQ form I

5 filled out.

6 Anyway, this is all to say that I -- I

7 call upon the EPA to regulate the industry as they would

8 any other with strong health- and science-based rules.

9 This country can ill afford to clean up the mess that

10 the industry will certainly leave behind. This country

11 can ill afford the resulting health costs which will

12 sadly come in our future.

13 And, please, you must not let existing

14 fracking operations off the hook. That would mean

15 writing off me, my neighborhood, my family, my

16 community, because there are already hundreds, if not

17 thousands, of wells here in my neighborhood.

18 Thank you.

19 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Schultes.

20 Mr. McCord?

21 MR. McCORD: Marc McCord, M-a-r-c

22 M-c-C-o-r-d.

23 Several comments I want to make that I

24 hadn't planned on making today, the first regarding a

25 statement made by Ms. Cortez regarding water taken from
Page 48

1 the Rio Grande. I'm a wilderness white water river

2 guide. I paddle the Rio Grande quite frequently. Last

3 March, on a 151-mile trip, it felt like I walked about

4 half of it because the water was too low. I have a

5 Thanksgiving trip coming up that I'm not going to be

6 able to do because there's not enough water down there.

7 Anybody that knows the Rio Grande knows that that river

8 is continuously low on water and getting lower. There

9 is no water available to spare for it.

10 The issues that this lady here just

11 brought up regarding air quality, I reported to TCEQ one

12 night back in I believe it was June or July when I was

13 canoeing with my club on the west fork of the Trinity in

14 downtown Fort Worth an extremely strong odor that hit me

15 when I was paddling in 46-mile-per-hour wind gusting to

16 53 miles per hour from the south, southeast. It gave me

17 a serious headache. It gave me a nasal infection and --

18 and severe sore throat that lasted for about three and a

19 half days.

20 I carry a GPS with me. I gave them GPS

21 waypoints on three different locations, and they

22 couldn't find the well. They were looking on the north

23 side of the river, as if that vapor was moving against a

24 46- to 53-mile-per-hour wind.

25 I'm telling you right now, the people that
Page 49

1 we have regulating in Texas are a bunch of incompetents.

2 And, quite frankly, and I hate to say it to you, but I'm

3 not that much impressed by what you're doing either,

4 because we've been coming here talking to you for a long

5 time about this and so far it's all talk and no action.

6 There's a lot of problems going on.

7 Now, one thing -- I -- I just got here a

8 little while ago and I haven't heard if anybody's talked

9 about it, but a major issue that -- that I'm finding is

10 frac sand mining. The mining operation produces

11 incredible amounts of silt crystal and silica dust that

12 penetrate skin and, when breathed, penetrates lung

13 tissue. It can produce incurable silicosis and lung

14 cancer.

15 I just came back from down in -- in an

16 area near the -- the Eagle Ford Shale where communities

17 down there are getting very concerned about it because

18 their rural lifestyle is being disrupted by six current

19 frac sand mining operations down in Mason County, and

20 three more are proposed and they're trying to get

21 permitted right now. It's destroying these people's way

22 of life. In addition to that comes all the

23 infrastructure damage from the truck traffic, the noise,

24 the pollution, the total disruption of life of citizens.

25 We count on the government to protect us
Page 50

1 from harmful industry. I will get a ticket if I have

2 too much pollution coming out of my car. If I go for my

3 state inspection, I will not get that inspection if

4 the -- if the pollution coming out of my tailpipe is too

5 much. Every industry just about in the state of Texas

6 has voluntarily complied with efforts to clean up our

7 air because we've been in a nonattainment situation

8 for -- for over 20 years, as Mr. Schermbeck testified to

9 and showed you evidence of, yet here we are in 2011,

10 headed for 2012, still facing these same problems

11 because our state and federal regulatory agencies are

12 failing miserably.

13 I would say to you, if you can't do the

14 job, resign and let somebody take your positions that

15 will get off their butts and do something for the

16 citizens. We don't need you to protect industry. The

17 jobs that are promised, all this BS about protecting us

18 from foreign oil, and especially from all the money

19 going to the middle east, U.S. Energy Information

20 Administration says that's not true. Canada and Mexico

21 are the two places we get most of our energy. Saudi

22 Arabia is a distant third, and we don't get much fuel

23 from the Middle East. So all those claims are just

24 industry lies.

25 What's the reality is the industry is
Page 51

1 polluting our air, they're polluting our water, they're

2 destroying our way of life and making it unhealthy for

3 us to live. And if we're dead, it's not going to matter

4 how much energy we have or at what cost or where it

5 comes from. So I -- I urge you to take strong immediate

6 action to curtail the pollution coming out of the oil

7 and gas industry.

8 Thank you very much.

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

10 Any clarifying questions?

11 Thank you both very much for your

12 testimony. Thank you.

13 Okay. At this time I'd like to ask

14 Virginia Simonson and Helen Bush to come forward.

15 Okay. Ms. Simonson, if you could -- we

16 could start with you. Your name and spell it, please,

17 for the court reporter.

18 MS. SIMONSON: Good afternoon. My name is

19 Virginia Simonson, S-i-m-o-n-s-o-n. I reside in Flower

20 Mound, Texas.

21 I became involved with efforts to promote

22 responsible drilling about two years ago as gas drilling

23 activities expanded near my area. As a career Army

24 officer, I've always worked through the system, whatever

25 that system may have been. As an activist, I've
Page 52

1 continued to work the established systems.

2 In 2010, I helped lead a citizen

3 referendum drive that led to a temporary moratorium on

4 new drilling permits and the appointment of an oil and

5 gas advisory board that developed recommendations to

6 improve our city ordinances related to drilling

7 activities. I've also spent significant amount of times

8 directly lobbying my city, state and federal

9 representatives, pushing for more responsible drilling

10 regulations and advocating for the rights of service

11 owners.

12 I could speak all day on the roadblocks to

13 justice that I and other activists face and still face

14 every day. I'm sure you've heard quite a bit of that.

15 We try -- we've tried everything within the system to

16 get our local and state reps to do the right thing,

17 trying to get them to take adequate steps to protect our

18 air, our water, our health. It has become painfully

19 apparent to me that our state and local representatives

20 just do not have the wherewithal to take the necessary

21 steps, and that's why I've asked to speak to you today.

22 My bottom line up-front -- and this is

23 about as clear as I can be, although that's not so

24 clear -- I fully support your New Source Performance

25 Standards and your Air Toxic Standards. When the state
Page 53

1 municipal governments fail to protect the citizens, it's

2 incumbent upon the federal government to do so.

3 I've become jaded and tone deaf to cries

4 for states' rights. Again, I want to repeat, I'm a

5 career Army officer. I protected and defended the

6 United States of America, our Constitution from enemies

7 foreign and domestic. But right now, what states'

8 rights mean to me mean the sanctioned elevation of

9 corporate rights over my individual rights to breathe

10 clean air, drink clean water and be relatively protected

11 from toxic chemicals.

12 The Clear Air Act, the Clean Water Act,

13 the Superfund Cleanup Act and the Civil Rights Act

14 illustrate how the federal government has had to step in

15 when cities and states fail to protect us, the citizens.

16 We're at the point now, and maybe we've been there for

17 the last couple of years, where it's clear that the oil

18 and gas industry has become such an overwhelming force

19 in Texas and Pennsylvania -- and you can continue on

20 over the 38 states that have the shale under them --

21 that we need you, the EPA, to dictate improvements for

22 oil and gas drilling, production, storage and

23 transmission activities.

24 You know, I -- there are a lot of great

25 stories that you've heard today and you'll continue
Page 54

1 to -- to hear anecdotal stories. And I can tell you

2 some of those myself, but I won't. I'm going to just

3 give you what -- what's out there in -- in the realm

4 of -- of TCEQ, T-C-E-Q, and the Web. I get daily

5 e-mails to tell me that our air is not so hot. And I

6 can go back, you know, for a long time.

7 This is August. You know, you can see --

8 you guys know what these colors mean. I don't have to

9 go through that. In September, you know, notice all

10 that green around us. Look at that map. I think that,

11 you know, that says something to me. Why do we in Texas

12 not have some of the same clean air that people in other

13 areas have? I suspect that there'll be more yellow and

14 orange lighting up on that map throughout the country as

15 fracking continues to proliferate and expand.

16 Okay. I kind of gave you, you know, what

17 you already know about Texas. I'm from Flower Mound,

18 Texas, and so I want to give you a little bit of what

19 it's like at the -- the micro level. You've heard from

20 somebody from Fort Worth. They have their issues.

21 They're similar to our issues in that their municipal

22 government hasn't protected them.

23 We're lucky in Flower Mound because, well,

24 quite frankly, we're an affluent community. And so when

25 we complain -- unfortunately, it's not fair, but when we
Page 55

1 complain, we do get action of some sort from the State.

2 So our state representatives gave us a TCEQ monitor.

3 And you can see kind of where they placed

4 it. It's that blue cloud in the center of that map.

5 And those little white circles and yellow circles, those

6 represent the gas pads in Flower Mound. Each can have

7 up to 20 wells on them. That little blue insert there,

8 that shows the prevailing wind patterns that we have in

9 the North Texas, Dallas/Fort Worth area, you guys

10 probably know, prevailing from the south to the north.

11 You know, it looks like that TCEQ monitor is perfectly,

12 you know, positioned to get -- capture all that data.

13 Right? Yeah, I know.

14 Okay. So we've got a monitor. In our

15 town, you know, they have to listen to us because, you

16 know, we have the wherewithal to recall them and to take

17 them out of -- of office. So they want to make sure

18 that we feel safe. So in addition to the TCEQ monitor,

19 they do ambient monit- -- air monitoring, and these are

20 their conclusions. And these conclusions are generally

21 the same pretty much every month. And the conclusions

22 are we don't have any problems with emissions from oil

23 and gas drilling. In fact, our town is so sure we don't

24 have problems, they put it in our new oil and gas

25 ordinance. It was proposed, but it passed in July. So
Page 56

1 we don't have any problems with this. And so if we

2 don't have problems, we don't really need any controls,

3 right? Right.

4 Okay. This is just one snapshot in time,

5 and this is from data to the TCEQ monitor. You know,

6 all of us --

7 MR. THOMPSON: Ms. Simonson?

8 MS. SIMONSON: Yes, sir.

9 MR. THOMPSON: I'm sorry. I'm so caught

10 up in this great presentation that your time expired a

11 minute ago.

12 MS. SIMONSON: Okay, sir.

13 MR. THOMPSON: So if you could just submit

14 out front.

15 MS. SIMONSON: Okay.

16 MR. THOMPSON: I'm going to hold this

17 until Ms. Bush gives her testimony and then I'm going to

18 hand it back to you for you to submit for the record out

19 front. Okay?

20 MS. SIMONSON: Okay. Yes, sir.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much.

22 MS. SIMONSON: Bottom line, if I could, we

23 need your help. We exceed the air standards and so does

24 Fort Worth and probably so do a lot of other places.

25 Thank you.
Page 57

1 MR. THOMPSON: So noted. Thank you.

2 Okay. Ms. Bush?

3 MS. BUSH: My name is Helen Bush.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Could you get the

5 microphone? I'm sorry.

6 MS. BUSH: My name is Helen Bush. It's

7 spelled H-e-l-e-n B-u-s-h. I'm here as a concerned

8 citizen. I'm from Dallas, Texas.

9 I have been watching environmental

10 standards since protest college days in the '60s. I was

11 a biology major, and I learned the words ecosystem,

12 ecology, protection of the environment.

13 In the '60s, I was watching this topic

14 over all these years in Dallas. I arrived here in 1973

15 after living one year in Okinawa, one year in eight

16 million people in Seoul, Korea, one year in California,

17 Monterrey, and one year in North Carolina, and six

18 months in Missouri. And I arrived here. I've been here

19 ever since.

20 My argument to persuade you to hold the

21 fracking oil corporations to the highest standards of

22 pollution control, which requires an investment of them,

23 is as follows. I want to give you something like a

24 vocabulary list to jog your memory of some of the words

25 that have gone out of the argument. This argument is
Page 58

1 intense.

2 These fracking platforms have gone up

3 since 2005. I only learned about this process in the

4 last two years. And they're already there. And they

5 went up before people knew they were going to be so

6 offensive in noise pollution, volatile chemicals. And

7 so I want to just read you a vocabulary list, like

8 brainstorming, and that will be the extent of my

9 argument for the environment protection.

10 Corporate responsibility. Industrial

11 complex. Sustainability. Ecology. Ecosystem.

12 Watershed for the rivers. Fossil fuels, which is the

13 umbrella word for all this going on. Environmentalist.

14 Protected lands. Protected rivers. Quality of life.

15 Quality of air. Volatile chemical compounds. Water

16 cycle.

17 The chemical compounds that go up in the

18 air come down in the rain into our rivers and onto our

19 farms. Particulates in the air, they come down in the

20 rain. Acid rain kills trees. You may have read about

21 that in biology books.

22 Downsizing. Alternative renewable energy

23 sources. All the technology has been there for years.

24 Solar. Wind. Green architecture. Conservation of

25 energy. Fuel-efficient cars. Attractive, popular mass
Page 59

1 transportation. Urban sprawl. American dream. Owning

2 your own home. City planning. Jobs, as if the oil

3 industry was the only one company that could offer jobs.

4 Mineral rights. Loss of habitat. Endangered species.

5 Limits to growth. Noise pollution. Gasland, the

6 documentary movie. I hope you've seen it.

7 Here's my reading list lately: Under a

8 Green Sky; Plows, Plagues and Petroleum; The Long

9 Summer.

10 Okay. My list continues. The Barnett

11 Shale was discovered, according to Wikipedia, in the

12 1930s. Fracking was taking place in the 1950s and has

13 been going on on a small scale for quite a few years.

14 The big thing that happened to Dallas/Fort Worth was in

15 nine -- in 2005, the Texas legislature approved

16 something that allowed fracking to explode, to go

17 forward, then to obtain the leases and build their

18 fracking wells.

19 So here is a -- a reading list from my

20 college days. The Waist-High Culture. That was about

21 unsustainability, but they didn't know the word then.

22 It was about dead-end products that only go to the trash

23 bin and nowhere to recycle. The Greening of America was

24 a book written about 1970. It had to do with pursuing

25 the American dream and --
Page 60

1 MR. THOMPSON: Mrs. Bush, I'm --

2 MS. BUSH: -- setting the limits to

3 growth.

4 MR. THOMPSON: I'm sorry. Your time has

5 expired.

6 MS. BUSH: Okay. Thank you.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

8 Any clarifying questions for --

9 MS. BUSH: Ms. Bush.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. At this time we're

11 going to take a five-minute break. And -- did you have

12 a question?

13 MR. CASSO: For Ms. Simonson, did you

14 already give her the documents?

15 MR. THOMPSON: Yes. I'm going to hand it

16 to her in just a moment.

17 Again, we're going to take a five-minute

18 break and reconvene -- I guess, that would be about

19 3:25, 3:26. Thanks, folks.

20 (Short recess)

21 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Before we -- before

22 we -- or before I, rather, ask the next two folks to

23 come up front, I do want to remind everybody -- in order

24 to be fair, I just want to remind particularly those

25 folks who may have come in after I read the opening
Page 61

1 statement that we do have a timekeeping system up here

2 that has the green, yellow and red lights. And for

3 those of you who are going to speak, when you see the

4 yellow here, it means that you've got one minute. Yes,

5 one minute.

6 Generally, folks, because I'm so engaged

7 in what you have to say and I'm so interested, I

8 really -- you're getting an extra 30, 40 seconds,

9 sometimes even a minute. So if I ask you to complete

10 your testimony, you've really been given extra. But

11 just as a reminder so that we can be fair to everyone

12 because we've got folks who want to testify and move on.

13 So with that being said, at this time I

14 would like to ask Kay Buie-Nelson and Buddy Saunders to

15 please come forward.

16 MS. BUIE-NELSON: How are you?

17 MR. THOMPSON: Great. I hope the both of

18 you are doing well this afternoon.

19 MS. BUIE-NELSON: Doing well.

20 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Thank you both

21 for coming.

22 MS. BUIE-NELSON: I noticed your names

23 weren't printed on anything. Is there a brochure out

24 there that has your --

25 MR. THOMPSON: Well, my name is -- I can't
Page 62

1 speak for the other guys. The opening statements have

2 my name on them.

3 MS. BUIE-NELSON: Oh, they do? Okay.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Yes, ma'am. But certainly

5 the folks out front can look into that for us. Angela,

6 would you please? Okay. And thank you for pointing

7 that out.

8 MS. BUIE-NELSON: Thank you.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. If we could

10 start with you, Mrs. Simonson (sic). Your name for the

11 record, please.

12 MS. BUIE-NELSON: My name is Kay

13 Buie-Nelson. That's B-u-i-e hyphen Nelson. Can you

14 hear me? Kay Buie-Nelson, B-u-i-e hyphen N-e-l-s-o-n.

15 And I'm not the greatest public speaker.

16 I get a little shy. But I'm here because -- and decided

17 to speak because I seem to be the only one here from

18 Haynesville Shale/Bossier Shale. And, you know, despite

19 my, you know, meager ability to accomplish much, I

20 wanted to be some voice for that area.

21 All of that is starting to move in from

22 Louisiana into East Texas. I live in Dallas. I've

23 lived in Dallas a considerable amount of my life, but

24 we've always had a family farm in East Texas where we

25 had cows and, you know, my brothers hunt and my dad
Page 63

1 hunted. It's, you know, God's country. It is so

2 beautiful. You turn down the road and it's covered with

3 trees and you drive way in and it's just absolutely

4 marvelous.

5 So I have here today my mineral lease,

6 which I have wanted to just bury this thing. I called

7 the Railroad Commission and yelled at them. I have

8 e-mailed different people, David Proctor, other people

9 telling them that they need to look out for our water.

10 And most of us in my family land area only have water

11 wells.

12 When I was down there on Labor Day, I had

13 three fires around me within three to four miles. I had

14 Bear Creek on the other side of Lake of the Pines, I had

15 the Diana fire, and then I had the Harrison County fire.

16 They were all three to four miles from me. And my road

17 dead ends. So, you know, it's pretty frightening. And

18 to think that in the future I will have flaring and

19 wells and all kind of terrible things there that I don't

20 want.

21 But I've noticed that in rural areas, a

22 lot of the rules and amendments and projected

23 regulations don't seem to apply and reach out into the

24 rural areas. I've noticed, just having studied the

25 small amount I have been able to so far, is that Flower
Page 64

1 Mound all of a sudden had meetings where they were able

2 to increase their setback from -- to 1,500 feet. I

3 think they started out that the fracking could be as

4 close as 500 feet. And then on the Internet, you see

5 pictures in Mineral Wells of frac units within 250 feet

6 of someone's kitchen window and water -- water

7 facilities.

8 So I -- you know, I see in my lease, they

9 kind of -- you know, kind of go around about 500. It

10 started out about 250. Now they're kind of about

11 500 feet. Well, I'm going to write in 1,500 feet.

12 But what I seem to notice is that everyone

13 giving their opinion and the work they've done is that

14 things could start right here in this mineral lease.

15 It's very vague. They don't offer you any surface

16 damage protection. Of course, they'll take care of your

17 cows if they kill them, which they do a lot. They'll

18 fix your cattle guards. They'll fix your fences. They

19 will put gravel roads and spray it with water. But

20 there's only water wells, so how can they go in and take

21 our water when we're in a severe drought? There 's no

22 hay even for the cows right now.

23 So, you know, I just think that if these

24 mineral leases could start out with some general

25 protections of surface and water protections and things
Page 65

1 that the surface owner is concerned about. If they

2 could start out with those things in the original

3 provision. Because I've seen three of these from this

4 company, one to my uncle, one to my cousin, and they're

5 all different. I mean, they're different because we

6 have different interest in ownership of land, but the

7 wording in many of them are different, which I don't

8 quite understand.

9 I've tried -- you know, I've been trying

10 to go to several different lawyers. I would really like

11 to get an environmental lawyer to help me. But so far,

12 my mineral bonus pay isn't quite enough to afford those

13 top-tier guys, you know. So I've been trying to figure

14 out how to write the addendum to attach with all the EPA

15 appros- -- you know, approvals and regulations and clean

16 water rights, and I've studied all of that with the

17 Chaney Loop and all of those things.

18 And, you know, I noticed back when coal

19 was the big, bad problem, we got that solved or pretty

20 much solved in Texas. I remember certain parts of south

21 Dallas, you -- they cleaned up the coal problems that

22 were affecting people's health. And then we all saw

23 that movie with Julia Roberts with Eric Brockovich where

24 she went after the chemical companies for dumping

25 pollution in waters and streams.
Page 66

1 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Ms. Buie-Nelson,

2 your time has expired.

3 MS. BUIE-NELSON: Okay. Thank you very

4 much for hearing my issues.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

6 Mr. Saunders?

7 MR. SAUNDERS: My name is Buddy Saunders,

8 B-u-d-d-y S-a-u-n-d-e-r-s.

9 I'll begin by saying that I don't have any

10 connection with the fossil fuel indus- -- fuel industry,

11 but I do support the development of those fuels. In my

12 opinion, there is an organized effort to cripple

13 America's energy industry in the name of sustainable

14 development and a green agenda. And I put sustainable

15 development and a green development agenda in quotation

16 marks. If these forces aren't countered and exposed as

17 the Luddites they are, serious damage will be done to

18 our currently -- current fragile economy. Without

19 reliable and affordable energy, neither Texas nor the

20 nation will have any hope of restoring the economic

21 growth and prosperity that have for generations been the

22 hallmark of America.

23 Wind, solar and so forth can't fill the

24 bill. It would be nice if they could. What America

25 must have is more oil, gas and coal. The good news is,
Page 67

1 is that there is plenty available for generations to

2 come and it is both safe and affordable. But these

3 nation-saving fossil fuels do nothing for us if they are

4 left in the ground. We need to develop more natural gas

5 and coal power plants, not shut down those that we have.

6 We can and, in fact, are making fossil fuels more

7 productive and less polluting every day. Aggressive

8 development of our abundant native fossil fuel resources

9 is the only way to a healthier and more prosperous

10 American future.

11 As a private citizen and long-time

12 business owner here in Arlington, I support the Barnett

13 Shale development, along with the safe and productive

14 development of all our vast fossil fuel resources. And

15 I hope you will take all that into consideration when

16 you make whatever decisions you make.

17 And I finished while I was still in the

18 green. Thank you.

19 MR. THOMPSON: Good job, Mr. Saunders.

20 Any questions for either Mr. Saunders or

21 Ms. Buie-Nelson?

22 Again, thank you both.

23 MR. SAUNDERS: Thank you.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. At this time I'd

25 like to ask Kimberly Frankland and Tim Ruggiero to
Page 68

1 please come forward.

2 MS. FRANKLAND: Hi. I'm Kimberly -- which

3 one first?

4 MR. THOMPSON: No. You -- you're on

5 point.

6 MS. FRANKLAND: Kimberly Frankland,

7 K-i-m-b-e-r-l-y F-r-a-n-k-l-a-n-d. I live here in

8 Arlington, Texas, and I've been following urban drilling

9 since its development in the last five years.

10 EPA's proposed amendments to air

11 regulations for the oil and gas industry are prudent and

12 reasonable. Thank you for pursuing these changes.

13 Texas is all about oil and gas. Texans desperately need

14 the EPA to require the oil and gas industry to do

15 everything reasonable to improve air quality.

16 The industry spends millions to promote

17 how clean and safe natural gas is. Insteading --

18 instead of spending millions on promotional advertising,

19 I wish the drillers would use better valves, capture

20 released gasses from tank batteries and compressor

21 stations. Unfortunately, the industry speaks in half

22 truths. We need EPA intervention in North Texas.

23 When the cities that set up their

24 ordinances for oil and gas -- they relied heavily on the

25 drillers to guide them on what to do. You don't ask a
Page 69

1 dirty, invasive industry to help you write the rules,

2 and that's why we need the EPA.

3 In Arlington, permanent gas well equipment

4 like separators and tank batteries can be 30 feet from a

5 commercial building and 100 feet from homes, churches

6 and schools. These are the permanent equipment features

7 that leak raw gas into the air.

8 We had a spill here in Arl- -- not a

9 spill, a release into the air. A valve failed and the

10 gas was just spewing into the air. I saw Chesapeake

11 representatives the very next day. I said, What

12 happened last night? Air and water was released into

13 the air. And later they were pressed at a council

14 meeting more about it and they said, Well, raw gas was

15 spewing into the air.

16 Well, what they failed to mention was for

17 40 minutes raw gas was spewing into the air, citizens

18 were calling 9-1-1, the operator didn't know what to do,

19 she got ahold of Chesapeake and said, What -- you know,

20 should I call the fire department? Chesapeake said, No.

21 Don't call the fire department. We'll send somebody

22 out. It was 20 minutes from the first call to when the

23 fire department of our city was alerted to the fact we

24 had a gas-spewing gas well.

25 And cities just have believed the
Page 70

1 drillers. They don't know what to the do. They don't

2 know how to set up ordinances that protect the citizens.

3 We need the EPA to step in and protect us. It's

4 ridiculous.

5 I've gone to almost every city council

6 meeting for two years, and time and time again I see

7 these drillers say half truths. This week, they -- they

8 permitted a number of wells here in town where drillers

9 don't even have a fire extinguisher on the property

10 that's required by city ordinance. And the city lets

11 them do it. The city passed more wells on these sites

12 where they don't even have a fire extinguisher.

13 I'm sorry. You're supposed to have a fire

14 extinguisher and you're supposed to have signs posted

15 with no smoking and phone numbers so you can reach

16 emergency personnel. We shouldn't be permitting more

17 wells if the drillers can't follow simple rules. And if

18 they can't follow simple rules, they can't follow big

19 rules.

20 So we need federal government to step in

21 and say, Do X, Y and Z and make them do X, Y and Z

22 because we have to live next to these things. We have

23 people who had an empty lot next to them that now have

24 eight gas wells next to them 100 feet from their home.

25 I mean, this is -- it's ridiculous. Texas is really out
Page 71

1 of control in favor of the oil and gas industry. I'm

2 just flabbergasted every time I come to a council

3 meeting and I see our nine elected officials up there

4 approving more wells.

5 The night that it was -- it was less than

6 48 hours from a raw gas release and they approved six

7 more wells for that site within 48 hours of a total

8 failure. And Chesapeake got up here and they said,

9 Redundant safety features worked. They didn't work.

10 The automatic shut-off valve didn't shut it off. That's

11 a failure. If the automatic shut-off valve doesn't shut

12 it off, the redundant safety features failed.

13 They spin it, they tell it, halfway truth,

14 and it's -- it's repeated and it's -- and it's pathetic.

15 And I'm ashamed of our city council. I'm ashamed of how

16 they've just totally done everything the oil and gas

17 industry runs and they -- they don't look out what's

18 best for the citizens. You know, I love this state.

19 Oil and gas brings a ton of money to this state, but

20 they can do it safer, they can do it better, they can do

21 it more effectively. And I thank you very much for

22 being here.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Thank you for

24 your testimony.

25 MR. RUGGIERO: Good afternoon. My name
Page 72

1 is Timothy Ruggiero, R-u-g-g-i-e-r-o. I reside at

2 415 Star Shell Road in Decatur, Texas.

3 A new report out from the Perryman Group

4 states that 65 billion in economic impact and generated

5 more than five billion in tax revenues and more than

6 100,000 jobs. Well, I have another way to create even

7 more jobs as well as unsold millions in revenue. Fix

8 and repair all leaking equipment using this supposedly

9 new technology to not only prevent leaks, spills and

10 emissions, but to capture the product and then sell it.

11 Forty-nine states follow the Clean Air

12 Act. Texas, as you well know, does not. Not

13 surprisingly, Texas is number one in toxic air

14 emissions. Once again, one does not need a Ph.D. in

15 economics to figure this one out.

16 We only have the TCEQ and the Texas

17 Railroad Commission to protect us, but one is powerless

18 and seemingly uninterested and the other is mired in

19 ineptitude and politics. Given both agencies,

20 especially the TRCT's lack of experience and expertise,

21 I would think that they would welcome assistance from

22 the EPA. Instead, both agencies lash out and not only

23 publicly criticize the EPA, but concerned citizens as

24 well.

25 The TRC has been critical of me and people
Page 73

1 like me who have the audacity to demand enforcement of

2 current regulations. In my case and that of my

3 neighbors, the Texas Railroad Commission has had two

4 years' worth of complaints of multiple spills, leaks and

5 faulty equipment to take action and they have not. Only

6 until the EPA started their study on hydraulic

7 fracturing did the Texas Railroad Commission begin to

8 express an interest in examining the multiple

9 violations.

10 The Texas Railroad Commission is

11 predisposed to never finding violations. And since

12 that's the case and then I told them no, perhaps this is

13 why Commissioner David Porter refers to me and people

14 like me as unsatisfied landowners. I couldn't be more

15 unsatisfied. I'm unsatisfied with the Texas Railroad

16 Commission and their lack of action and accountability.

17 I would urge the EPA to not only set a new

18 standard, but to keep fighting the good fight. What is

19 critical is to include all existing wells in the

20 proposal. That is probably one of the most important

21 things that we can do is include all the existing wells.

22 If you take a look around in the state, you will find,

23 particularly on the Barnett Shale, we have hundreds upon

24 hundreds upon hundreds of complaints and painfully few

25 actual enforcement actions or where the report says no
Page 74

1 violations found.

2 As a conservative, I am not necessarily

3 that much in favor of having the federal government step

4 into state's business, but when the state has faily

5 cleared time -- failed -- clearly failed time and time

6 again, then I would welcome any effort by -- on the part

7 of the EPA to step in and help us, particularly the

8 future of our children.

9 Thank you very much.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

11 Are there any questions?

12 Okay. Again, thank you both for your

13 testimony. Thank you very much.

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

15 Melanie Sattler and Linda Hanratty.

16 Good afternoon, ladies. Ms. Sattler,

17 we'll start with you.

18 MS. SATTLER: My name is Melanie Sattler,

19 M-e-l-a-n-i-e, last name S-a-t-t-l-e-r.

20 I'm speaking today as a citizen. I do

21 work at a local university. My expertise is air

22 quality. And I'm a registered professional engineer in

23 the state of Texas. But I cannot speak for my

24 university, so I'm speaking for myself today.

25 I'd like to speak particularly in
Page 75

1 support of the NSPS for pneumatic controllers. It's

2 Section VI.B.4.b. The measures requiring low-bleed

3 pneumatics are a win-win for both the natural gas

4 industry and air quality. They're a win for the natural

5 gas industry in terms of preventing salable product from

6 escaping into the air.

7 And they're a win-win in terms of air

8 quality for three reasons: First, being climate change.

9 Methane, as I'm sure you're aware, has a global warming

10 potential of 21 times that of carbon dioxide on a

11 per-molecule basis over a 100-year time horizon.

12 Volatile organics, which are released as a part of

13 natural gas, contribute to ground level ozone formation,

14 the second problem. And then the third problem is air

15 toxics.

16 I authored a report on the amount of

17 emissions that could be reduced, particularly by

18 reducing emissions from pneumatics. And I brought a

19 copy of that to give to you and also to put in the

20 record. The date of the report is May, and so the

21 report is based on TCEQ emission estimates from natural

22 gas facilities as of May. I've been told that there

23 have been some updated estimates that have been put

24 forward recently that indicate that pneumatics are even

25 a higher percent of the emissions coming from natural
Page 76

1 gas facilities, but the -- the report that I have here

2 is based on current information as of May.

3 Thank you.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. Okay.

5 MS. HANRATTY: My name is Linda Hanratty,

6 and I live in Fort Worth, Texas, and I'm here speaking

7 for the League of Women Voters of Texas. And Hanratty

8 is H-a-n-r-a-t-t-y.

9 LWV Texas applauds the Environmental

10 Protection Agency for proposing national air emission

11 standards for the oil and natural gas industry. We are

12 particularly gratified that these proposed standards

13 cover the process of recovering natural gas through

14 hydraulic -- through hydraulic fracturing, commonly

15 known as fracking. These proposed regulations are in

16 conformance with LWVUS's support for strengthening

17 federal regulation of gas drilling in a manner

18 consistent with the preservation of a healthy

19 environment.

20 Obviously, the oil and gas industry has a

21 huge economic and environmental impact on Texas, and we

22 are pleased that EPA chose Texas as the site of one of

23 three hearings on these proposals.

24 The standards listed below are especially

25 important to LWV Texas and we strongly endorse their
Page 77

1 adoption. Source performance standards for volatile

2 organic compounds, which would cut VOCs by nearly

3 one-fourth across the oil and gas industry, including a

4 nearly 95 percent reduction in VOCs emitted from new and

5 modified hydraulically fractured gas wells. The process

6 to meet the new standard captures natural gas, thus

7 saving the industry an estimated nearly $30 million

8 annually. And that refers some of -- some to her

9 testimony.

10 Source Performance Standards for sulfur

11 dioxide, Air Toxic Standards for oil and natural gas

12 production, which includes reducing air toxics from all

13 large dehydrators by 95 percent and requiring crude oil

14 in condensate tanks at major sources to control

15 95 percent of their air toxic emissions.

16 Air Toxic Standards for natural gas

17 transmission and storage that are estimated to reduce

18 the maximum risk level for cancer from 90 per million to

19 20 per million.

20 Elimination of exceptions for startup,

21 shutdown and malfunction events, since many of the

22 highest levels of hazardous emissions occur at these

23 times.

24 These rules are important for health and

25 environmental quality in the 16-county Barnett Shale
Page 78

1 region of Texas and the over three million people who

2 inhabit this region. As gas drilling moves into Dallas

3 County, the population impacted by gas drilling could

4 increase by nearly 2.4 million.

5 The city of Fort Worth's air quality study

6 dated July 13th, 2011, recommended -- recommended that,

7 and I quote, All reasonable precautions to reduce

8 emissions from the wellheads and compressor stations

9 should be made. This is particularly important for

10 tanks in lined compressor engines because these two

11 sources accounted for the greatest portion of the risks

12 observed for the pollutants selected for further

13 evaluation, end quote.

14 These proposed regulations will reduce air

15 toxic emissions, provided the regulations are adequately

16 enforced, and make our air less toxic to breathe.

17 Thank you.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

19 A question for you, Mrs. Hanratty. You

20 just referenced a study -- I'm sorry -- and I was

21 writing something else. It was --

22 MS. HANRATTY: The air quality study.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Was that it?

24 MS. HANRATTY: What?

25 MR. THOMPSON: Did you just reference the
Page 79

1 Fort Worth --

2 MS. HANRATTY: Yes.

3 MR. THOMPSON: -- air quality --

4 MS. HANRATTY: Yes.

5 MR. THOMPSON: -- study?

6 MS. HANRATTY: Yes. I know that it said

7 that everything was wonderful, but the recommendations

8 are in line with your proposals.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thanks. I was

10 taking notes as you were reading. I apolo- --

11 Any questions?

12 MR. MOORE: Yeah.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. We have a question

14 here. Ladies, if you can remain seated, I think there's

15 some questions here.

16 MR. MOORE: I had one for Ms. Sattler

17 with regard to your looking into pneumatic devices. If

18 you have information that you've uncovered that would

19 help us identify specific situations where high bleeds

20 are still necessary, that's one place where we -- I

21 believe we -- I don't know -- I believe we sought

22 comment on that in the -- in the proposal. But that is

23 one place where we really want to try to get specific

24 information on. So if you -- if you have information on

25 that, we would like to have that sometime.
Page 80

1 MS. HANRATTY: That's not something I have

2 information on at the moment, but I can look into that.

3 MR. MOORE: Great. Thank you.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Any other questions?

5 Ladies, thank you both for your testimony.

6 Okay. At this time I'd like to ask Ana

7 Andrade to please come forward.

8 Good afternoon.

9 MS. ANDRADE: Good afternoon.

10 Okay. I'm a Texan, but I've been living

11 up in Pennsylvania for a while. And --

12 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Before we start --

13 before we start the timer, could you state your name and

14 spell it --

15 MS. ANDRADE: Okay.

16 MR. THOMPSON: -- for the court reporter?

17 MS. ANDRADE: Okay. My name is Ana

18 Andrade, which is A-n-r-a-d-e (sic).

19 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

20 MS. ANDRADE: I'm a Texan. It was -- I've

21 been living up in Pennsylvania. And there's a serious

22 issue with the Marcellus fracking, which more has to do

23 with water. So most of my comments and anecdotes have

24 to do with water, the problems I experienced up there.

25 But since this hearing is on air quality, I have decided
Page 81

1 to put together a little something about the chemicals

2 used in hydrofracking fluids. Okay. So bear with me in

3 my efforts to pronounce some of the chemical names.

4 Please feel free to correct me.

5 Concerns about environmental and human

6 health effects associated with hydraulic fracturing

7 include the contamination of groundwater and risk to air

8 quality. The migration of gasses in hydraulic

9 fracturing chemicals to the surface and the potential

10 mishandling of waste, the potential costs associated

11 with possible environmental cleanup processes, loss of

12 land value and human and animal health concerns are

13 proven facts.

14 A 2010 EPA study discovered contaminants

15 in drinking water, such contaminants as arsenic.

16 Arsenic contamination of groundwater is already commonly

17 found in the southwest United States. It is known to

18 cause increased liver or skin cancer, bladder cancer and

19 is causative in the development of diabetes.

20 Copper. Copper is an essential nutrient

21 required by the body in very small amounts. However,

22 the EPA has found copper to potentially cause the

23 following health effects when people are exposed to it

24 at high levels. Short periods of exposure can cause

25 gastrointestinal disturbances, includ- -- including
Page 82

1 nausea and vomiting. Use of water with high levels over

2 many years can cause liver or kidney damage.

3 Va- -- Vana- -- nandium -- Vanandium

4 (phonetic) induces iron deficiency, cirrhosis by

5 interfering with iron absorption.

6 Okay. Adam- -- mo- -- monatan derivatives

7 exhibit a broad spectrum of activity and are used in

8 complex therapy for many somatic diseases. However, the

9 insufficient amount of data on the side of toxic effects

10 makes further study advisable. Petroleum remains the

11 only natural source of Admantanu- -- tanun.

12 Okay. Methane gas. Methane gas can

13 become explosive when mixed with other chemicals at

14 levels as low as five percent. You can smell methane

15 when a utility company works on the sewer system and

16 hydrogen sulfide naturally mixes with methane. If you

17 are in a place where you can detect unpleasant rotten

18 egg smell, the methane levels may be high enough to

19 become explosive. In high concentrations, methane gas

20 can be deadly when ignited. Natural methane from

21 beneath the earth has caused disastrous mining and oil

22 explosions.

23 Although it is nontoxic, methane is a

24 simple asphyxiant because it can displace oxygen which

25 is needed for breathing. Oxygen levels below 16 percent
Page 83

1 can be dangerous and levels below 10 percent can be

2 deadly. There is no standard governing the permissible

3 amount of methane in the air at home or in the

4 workplace, but the minimum oxygen content for any place

5 where people need to breathe is 18 percent.

6 Biocides. They are used to kill bacteria

7 and reduce the risk of falling in fracking wells, are

8 intended to kill living organisms. Many biocidal

9 products pose significant risk to human health and

10 welfare. Great care is require when handling biocides

11 and appropriate protective clothing and equipment should

12 be used. The use of biocides can also have significant

13 adverse effects on the natural environment. Okay. Such

14 toxics can cause severe eye, throat, nose, throat, lung

15 irritation, along with headaches, drowsiness and

16 dizziness. It is the main source of occupational asthma

17 among health care providers when using as a strong

18 disinfectant.

19 Breakers. Breakers are chemicals used to

20 facilitate the entry of particles in small cracks in the

21 hydrofracking process. Common uses are as bleach in

22 hair care products, etching mixtures for circuit boards.

23 Okay. Clay stabilizers are used to

24 stabilize the clay in the fracking wells.

25 Quaternary ammonium compounds --
Page 84

1 MR. THOMPSON: I'm sorry. Mrs. Andrade,

2 your time has expired.

3 MS. ANDRADE: Oh, okay.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Before you leave, are there

5 any questions for Ms. Andrade.

6 Okay. Thank you very much for your

7 testimony.

8 At this time we're going to recess until

9 4:20, which is when our next speaker is scheduled to

10 testify. Thank you. 4:20.

11 (Short recess)

12 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, ladies and gentlemen.

13 We're going to get started here again.

14 At this time I'd like to ask Susan Cooper

15 and Sharon Wilson to please come forward.

16 Good afternoon, ladies. And we're going

17 to start with Mrs. Cooper.

18 MS. COOPER: I am Susan Turrets (phonetic)

19 Cooper of Richardson, Texas. Please record that I have

20 brought my nebulizer and inhaler to my presentation

21 today. I have bronchiectasis and a lingering case of

22 bronchitis causing continual shortness of breath. I am

23 convinced that air pollution and global warming are

24 exacerbating my respiratory affliction.

25 So often, I have spoken here and pleaded
Page 85

1 for clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. Both

2 are necessities of life. None of us can live without

3 them; not global warming deniers, not even officials of

4 oil and gas companies.

5 I am staggered that fracking is allowed.

6 Josh Fox, the director of the movie Gasland, says that

7 9- -- 596 different chemicals are used in the fracking

8 process and that the gas industry is exempt from

9 revealing their names because the information is

10 proprietary. Emissions from leaks are fearfully

11 poisonous, and leaks are known to occur.

12 Human health should be considered the

13 foremost priority. Their rights end where my air space

14 begins. How sad it is that their profit motive is so

15 high that they are willing to jeopardize the health of

16 human beings, especially children, to compound the

17 problems of respiratory diseases, to cause high rates of

18 cancer in communities located near gas pipelines, and

19 they are so callus about the possibility of poisoning

20 our precious water sources.

21 The American Lung Association, which

22 obtains its data from the EPA's air quality system

23 database, consistently rates Texas with a grade of F for

24 failure. In our area, Dallas County has had 24 orange

25 days, two red days; Denton County, 33 orange days and
Page 86

1 three red days; Tarrant County is far worse with 59

2 orange days, four red days and, heaven help us, one

3 purple day.

4 In round numbers, figures from the

5 American Lung Association indicate the following risk

6 implications for our area due to high ozone and chemical

7 and particulate pollutants in our air: Pediatric

8 asthma, 56,000; adult asthma, 113,000; chronic

9 bronchitis, 71,000; cardiovascular disease, 566,000.

10 211,000 adults are at risk. 690,000 children under 18

11 are at risk. When these numbers translate to human

12 beings, the effect is staggering. No profit, no

13 corporate greed is worth these colossal risks to life

14 itself.

15 The Sierra Club reports that in

16 Dallas/Fort Worth, pollution from oil and gas fields is

17 worse than the exhaust of all cars in some of our

18 biggest cities. Reducing oil and gas pollution will

19 protect our communities, create jobs, will often pay for

20 itself as companies stop leaks and keep the natural gas

21 in the pipeline and out of our air.

22 It further says each new oil or gas well

23 contributes to the millions of tons of harmful --

24 harmful pollutants spewed into the air from this

25 industry and that the dirty oil and gas industry is the
Page 87

1 second largest stationary source of global warming

2 pollution in the U.S. Even worse, every year industry

3 emits more than 300 million tons of pollutants like

4 methane and sulfur dioxide.

5 Emissions from vehicular traffic,

6 coal-fired power plants, fracking and tar sands

7 pipelines all accumulate and contribute to global

8 warming. Every one of us on earth has a moral

9 obligation to nurture and protect this precious planet

10 earth. This is our only home.

11 I wholeheartedly support the EPA in

12 regulating these industries. Regulations must be

13 immediate, stringent and strictly enforced. EPA, we

14 need you, our planet earth needs you and my bronchitis

15 and I need you.

16 Thank you.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Cooper.

18 Thank you very much.

19 Mrs. Wilson?

20 MS. WILSON: My name is Sharon Wilson,

21 S-h-a-r-o-n W-i-l-s-o-n. I am Texas and Gulf region

22 organizer for Earthworks' Oil and Gas Accountability

23 Project. We are a nonprofit organization working

24 nationally to protect communities from the impacts of

25 irresponsible mineral and energy development. We will
Page 88

1 submit technical comments.

2 Last year, EPA invited me to your Research

3 Triangle Park offices in North Carolina and then to

4 headquarters in D.C. to help open your eyes to the

5 severity of the problems gas patch residents face every

6 day. I presented to you real life examples of health

7 effects, environmental damage, diminished property value

8 and how family and community well-being has suffered in

9 the Barnett Shale.

10 This is what we call the map of

11 destruction. We already have over 15,000 existing wells

12 in the Barnett Shale. Although you seem to have heard

13 our cries for help, and the new rules are a step in the

14 right direction, without including existing sources,

15 these rules are very little help to drilling saturated

16 areas. The very same people whose stories you heard

17 will continue to suffer. You can ease the suffering by

18 strengthening EPA's proposed rules to immediately

19 include all new and existing wells and storage tanks,

20 compressor and processing facilities and all related

21 equipment.

22 We have heard from industry about all the

23 jobs they provide, and in today's economy we need jobs.

24 But how much is a job worth? Is a job worth sacrificing

25 the health of our children? Are these our choices then,
Page 89

1 jobs or health?

2 On EPA's Natural Gas STAR Program Web

3 site, you list nearly 100 proven, cost-effective,

4 industry developed technologies and practices that

5 improve operational efficiency and reduce methane

6 emissions. Methane is a surrogate gas that carries

7 toxic compounds with it. Yet from all those

8 technologies, EPA has chosen only five for these new

9 rules.

10 If this industry can't employ its own

11 technologies to protect public health and provide jobs

12 and make a profit, then they need a new business model.

13 Stop coddling this industry. Help them step into the

14 21st century and operate more efficiently by reducing

15 all -- by requiring all the best available technologies

16 for all emission sources at all stages of extraction,

17 production and processing.

18 Argyle and Bartonville citizens conducted

19 baseline testing to measure the quality of their air

20 before large scale gas development took hold. In

21 baseline testing, only seven of the 84 air contaminants

22 typically tested for by TCEQ showed up in their air

23 samples. After drilling, fracking and additional oil

24 and gas facilities moved into the air, TCEQ testing on

25 the high school band practice lot one-half mile from the
Page 90

1 offend- -- offending facility detected 65 of the 84

2 contaminants. You scientists, can you tell us what the

3 increased risks are when children go from breathing

4 seven chemicals to breathing a cocktail of 65 different

5 chemicals? That science needs to happen.

6 They currently have only two of the 22

7 planned wells in place. When they have all 22 wells in

8 place, because of a loophole in the Clean Air Act, it

9 will be considered as 22 different emission sources,

10 each with a separate permit. By promising not to exceed

11 the 25-tons-per-year emission cap per well, all of those

12 22 emission sources are allowed to po- -- pollute from

13 the same pad site up to 550 tons per year of VOCs

14 without triggering further scrutiny and regulation.

15 Please close the loophole in the Clean Air Act so that

16 oil and gas emissions are aggregated.

17 We support the draft rules as a first step

18 and request that you go further to include existing

19 sources, employ all available technologies, include all

20 emission sources and events and aggre- -- aggregate

21 emissions.

22 Thank you for being here.

23 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Wilson.

24 Before you go, did you want to say something about what

25 we have here?
Page 91

1 MS. WILSON: I would like for y'all to

2 take a look. This is -- this is what we live with every

3 day.

4 MR. THOMPSON: Ms. Cooper, thank you

5 very -- one moment. Thank you for -- Ms. Cooper, let

6 me --

7 MS. COOPER: I'll take her that.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much.

9 Ms. Cooper, she's going to submit your

10 hard copy out front for you for the public record.

11 Okay? You understand? I know. Okay. She'll take care

12 of it. Thank you.

13 I'm sorry.

14 MS. WILSON: These -- this is as of May

15 the wells in the Barnett Shale.

16 MR. THOMPSON: So the red --

17 MS. WILSON: Right.

18 MR. THOMPSON: The red indicates wells?

19 MS. WILSON: These -- the little -- what

20 is that?

21 UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible.)

22 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Those -- I see now.

23 MS. WILSON: Those are the pad sites. You

24 can see where these are the horizontal legs. This --

25 we're saturated. We are saturated. And most of these
Page 92

1 are in areas where people live right next to them,

2 homes, schools.

3 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. All right. Thank

4 you.

5 MS. WILSON: Thank you.

6 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much. Thank

7 you both for your testimony.

8 At this time I'd like to ask Jan Evans and

9 Larry Kitchens to come forward, please.

10 Good afternoon, folks. Let's start with

11 Mrs. Evans. If you just state your name and spell it

12 for the record and then you can begin your testimony.

13 MS. EVANS: My name's Jan Evans. I'm a

14 resident here in Arlington, Texas.

15 I'd like to comment that the Arlington

16 residents went to the gas meetings prior to drilling.

17 The gas companies have experience with the gas wells.

18 They covered a lot of information, including safety.

19 We, as citizens, approved the drilling.

20 As a city, we should be thrilled at this

21 new source of income, especially in these hard times.

22 Aren't we lucky that when the cattle industry came to

23 our area that there weren't citizens to block it?

24 Aren't we lucky that years ago oil wells were welcomed

25 in Texas and the state and citizens benefitted?
Page 93

1 I have not seen or been affected by any

2 ill effects due to gas wells. We, as citizens, should

3 be welcoming the gas industry and the good will and the

4 income that it will provide to this area.

5 Thank you very much.

6 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Evans.

7 Mr. Kitchens?

8 MR. KITCHEN: My name is --

9 MR. THOMPSON: I'm sorry. One moment,

10 please. There's a question for Ms. Evans.

11 MR. MOORE: You had mentioned that you had

12 not seen any ill effects or anything like that. Are

13 there any -- are there any gas wells or facilities near

14 you?

15 MS. EVANS: Yes, there are.

16 MR. MOORE: Okay. What is the -- I mean,

17 just -- just for -- what is the nearest one to

18 your home?

19 MS. EVANS: Well, they're not actually

20 produced -- I mean, they're not up yet. They're being

21 drilled right now. One is at Pioneer and west of Green

22 Oaks Boulevard on the west side. There's another being

23 built right down the road from me.

24 MR. MOORE: Okay.

25 MS. EVANS: I am not concerned in the
Page 94

1 least.

2 MR. MOORE: Thank you.

3 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Any additional

4 questions?

5 Okay. Thank you.

6 MR. KITCHENS: Are you ready?

7 MR. THOMPSON: Yes, sir.

8 MR. KITCHENS: Yes. My name is Larry

9 Kitchens. I live in Hurst, Texas. K-i-t-c-h-e-n-s,

10 just like a room in a house.

11 First of all, I thank you for the

12 opportunity to give all of us a chance to speak to you

13 today and I also thank you your patience to sit through

14 what has to be a very long day and I appreciate your

15 patience.

16 For the sake of brevity, and hopefully not

17 to be repetitive of some of the speakers that have gone

18 before me that have been speaking either for or against,

19 I'm just going to make some general observations and

20 comments. And I've left a copy of my presentation at

21 the registration desk.

22 I have taken time to read the basic

23 information provided by the EPA and I am convinced that

24 this is a move in the right direction. It is using

25 prudent technologies and best practices. There
Page 95

1 obviously are some areas that we can still move towards,

2 but this is a definitely a move in the right next.

3 I'm not a scientist. I'm not an expert in

4 the field. I am concerned on two levels about the

5 quality of air that we have in the Dallas/Fort Worth

6 area, and this is why I am supporting the proposed rules

7 that we have before us.

8 One of my professional responsibilities

9 and privilege is to serve on the city council for the

10 city of Hurst for the past ten years. It is my

11 capacity, it is my duty to become aware of all of the

12 issues that come before our city council for

13 consideration. Obviously, with the development of gas

14 exploration in this Barnett Shale area, this is one that

15 we have given a lot of attention to in consideration of

16 the economic benefits and the rights of the landowners

17 who have reasonable access to their mineral rights and

18 the rights of those who live in the immediate area of

19 gas wells to be protected from harmful pollutants.

20 Recently our city council updated our city

21 ordinance as it relates to gas drilling operations in

22 our city by strengthening our testing requirements.

23 These changes were reflective of proven industry

24 standards and of similar actions taken by other councils

25 in this area. While I am not speaking for our council
Page 96

1 today, I think it's safe to state that our council

2 strongly believes that testing is important to the

3 environment and in the protection of our citizens is

4 allowed under state and federal law, but more

5 importantly, it's the right thing to do.

6 The best proof that a company is not

7 harming the environment is regular and systematic

8 testing for pollutants in the air, water and soil. We

9 feel our testing requirements are responsible and

10 reasonable in meeting our obligations to our citizens to

11 protect them and at the same time provide companies

12 reasonable and responsible ways in which they can drill

13 in our neighborhoods. It seems to me that this is a

14 goal of the proposed standards.

15 Second, as a citizen living in the

16 footprint of the Barnett Shale, I am personally

17 concerned about the quality of the air in the

18 Dallas/Fort Worth area. This is not to say that the oil

19 and gas industry is the sole contributor. It certainly

20 isn't. But it is a contributor. And it contributes

21 organic vol- -- volatile organic compounds, a group of

22 chemicals that contribute to the formation of ground

23 level ozone or smog.

24 Exposure to ozone is linked to a wide

25 range of health effects, including aggravated asthma,
Page 97

1 increased emergency room visits and hospital admissions

2 and premature death. This means increased cost in

3 health care, an issue that should not be taken lightly.

4 On a more personal note, it is an issue

5 that directly affects my family. My wife suffers from

6 asthma. On orange pollution days, such as we have

7 today, it is not safe for her to venture outside, but

8 she has chosen to come today to hear the testimony. Her

9 doctors even suggested that we leave the

10 Dallas/Fort Worth area so we can find some clean air to

11 breathe. In fact, if we travel 85 miles south to our

12 place on Lake Whitney, within an hour of arriving, she

13 can breathe much better than if she were to go outside

14 in our backyard.

15 My goal and my hope is that EPA will stay

16 the course with these proposed changes. I am very much

17 aware of the pressures being made by the oil and gas

18 industry, by lobbyists for the industry and by

19 politicians who express fear this will be too expensive

20 and cost jobs. In fact, it will probably create more

21 jobs and provide a better environment for all of us.

22 I am not opposed to oil and gas

23 exploration and drilling. In fact, I would love to have

24 the economic benefits of a monthly check from a gas

25 company. What I am in favor of is a reasonable and
Page 98

1 responsible way of ensuring our future in energy and at

2 the same time a safe place to live and enjoy those

3 benefits. It is my belief that these standards will

4 help move us in that direction.

5 Recently, a top executive of one of the

6 companies that is involved in gas drilling in the

7 Barnett Shale at a conference made this statement, that

8 critics of shale drilling are fear-mongering extremists

9 who want Americans to live in a world where it's cold,

10 it's dark and we're all hungry. May I suggest that if

11 we have all of the energy in the world at our disposal

12 and we live in a place that is uninhabitable, we will

13 live in a place that's cold, dark and we will all be

14 hungry.

15 Thank you.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much.

17 Are there any questions for Ms. Evans or

18 Mr. Kitchens?

19 Thank you. Thank you both. And,

20 Ms. Kitchens, thank you for coming out as well today.

21 We appreciate it.

22 Yes, ma'am. She had something else

23 written. Yes, ma'am. You got it. Michael Wilburn.

24 That's the phonetic, right. Sometimes I do better

25 without the phonetics, but --
Page 99

1 MS. RIEBSCHLAEGER: When I saw that look

2 on a person's face, I know they're looking for me, so...

3 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you. And Michael

4 Wilburn.

5 Okay. Good afternoon to the both of you.

6 And I would like to start with Mr. Wilburn. Your name

7 for the public record, please.

8 MR. WILBURN: Hello. My name is Michael

9 Wilburn, W-i-l-b-u-r-n, and I am here today with the

10 Southern Methodist University Environmental Society.

11 Okay. Now, I would like to begin by

12 stating I am definitely in favor of the regulation of

13 the fracking because it -- I believe it is far too long

14 that the oil and gas companies have been able to run

15 amuck and not be regulated.

16 Now, many claim -- you know, many of the

17 oil and gas companies make it seem kind of like children

18 are with their parents. You know, we don't need rules;

19 we can do what we want. But many times, like the

20 parents, these rules are for the benefit of us all.

21 Now, what's the problem with making sure, you know, that

22 this is as safe as possible?

23 You know, on some of the nightly news

24 accounts I see now with fracking, you know, the spills,

25 you know, getting in drinking water, that -- the water
Page 100

1 from the tap is flammable and actually not lighting on

2 fire. And many people may say, Well, it's not like that

3 now, but what's to stop that from, in a few years if we

4 let more drilling happening, one day that the water from

5 your tap will suddenly become toxic like that and you

6 won't know. Now, it's just a hazard that's potentially

7 there. And if all it takes is some more regulation to

8 prevent it, why -- it just makes common sense to be able

9 just to prevent it, so...

10 Next, you know, and many say, you know,

11 Well, what about the jobs created? Well, honestly, if

12 you have all the jobs and we all have all the money we

13 could ever want, but we're all sick and can't go outside

14 and enjoy ourselves, what good is the money doing us?

15 You know, jobs really aren't completely everything, you

16 know. And, really, if they wanted jobs, they may look

17 to alternative energy sources. There are jobs there,

18 you know, and investment there. And for what is being

19 invested in more fracking and more drilling could be

20 used for alternative energy sources, you know, which I

21 think is a better route.

22 But even with what -- I realize we just

23 can't go there all of a sudden. And what -- what gas

24 and natural -- and oil we're going to have to use should

25 be regulated to ensure that it is, you know, for the
Page 101

1 benefit of all of our health, you know. Because we are

2 seeing -- this is -- fracking is relatively new. And a

3 lot of times with something new, the health benefits and

4 hazards take time to come out, you know, and sometimes

5 years. So I -- there's nothing wrong with regulating

6 things to begin with to ensure they are safe.

7 You know, and just an example -- it may

8 not relate directly -- but I grew up in a small rural

9 area and the farmers were unregulated and used

10 fertilizers. And it just so happened that, you know,

11 the groundwater was unsafe to drink. You know, we got a

12 notice that says, Do not drink water from the tap,

13 because this water had so many nitrates in it that even

14 after you boil it, it could kill infants. So I'm, you

15 know, kind of -- if you don't regulate something that's

16 harmful, it can have disastrous effects that won't be

17 able to be fixed or at least in the near term.

18 So I am definitely in favor of the

19 regulations. And I thank -- would like to thank you-all

20 for allowing me the opportunity to voice. And I just

21 hope one day that we might have an alternative energy

22 source where we won't have to worry about these issues.

23 Thank you.

24 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Wilburn.

25 MS. RIEBSCHLAEGER: Good afternoon.
Page 102

1 MR. THOMPSON: Good afternoon.

2 MS. RIEBSCHLAEGER: First of all, before I

3 begin, I would like to thank you for this opportunity.

4 This is democracy at its best because it allows citizens

5 to speak directly to -- to officials who can make a

6 difference in their lives. We can truly be represented

7 without the intervention of media interpretation,

8 without lobbyists intervening, so we appreciate it very

9 much.

10 I also want to thank my fellow citizens

11 who've come forward today to testify and tell their

12 stories. I've been deeply moved, as a fellow citizen,

13 at their stories and I thank them for having the courage

14 to come forward. And I'm happy to see America at its

15 best also when citizens come together to speak and give

16 each other courage to do the right thing and to ask for

17 the right thing. So thank you.

18 And now I'd like to begin my testimony.

19 My name is Sister Elizabeth Riebschlaeger. I'm a Sister

20 of Charity of the Incarnate Word from San Antonio,

21 Texas, but I'm a born and raised Texan from Dewitt

22 County, Texas, Cuero, deep in the heart of Eagle -- the

23 Eagle Ford Shale where oil and gas activities can only

24 be described as frantic and furious.

25 Our once quiet streets and country lanes
Page 103

1 are now overrun by diesel trucks hauling hazardous

2 materials. Our beautiful fields of wildflowers struck

3 baron by this historic drought are overwhelmed with

4 drilling rigs, fracking units, batteries of storage

5 tanks, flares, pipeline facilities. Seventeen -- seven

6 to 13 million gallons of water per week is being taken

7 from under our feet as our aquifer is drained and -- and

8 the water destroyed. And even a 24-inch pipeline is, as

9 I speak, being laid underneath the Guadalupe River,

10 which is -- which is also vital to farming and ranching

11 interests. There is no doubt that toxic vapors,

12 including methane and sulfur dioxide and other gasses,

13 are pouring out of these motors and other facilities.

14 In another country in the -- county in

15 Eagle Ford Shale, one family's rural home was

16 overwhelmed by the toxic smell from a compressor station

17 across the county road. One member was hospitalized

18 intermittently over a year with symptoms similar to

19 pneumonia and arsenic was found in their blood. Doctors

20 warned that if this family did not move out of their

21 home, that member would be dead in a year.

22 The name and place where this occurred

23 cannot be divulged here because a lawsuit was filed and

24 settled out of court. As is usually the case, the

25 company's agreement insisted on a nondisclosure clause
Page 104

1 which prevents this family from letting anyone know of

2 the illness brought about by the compressor station, not

3 even their neighbors who are also complaining of odors.

4 Four of their closest friends and neighbors sold their

5 property and moved away from the compressor, some to

6 other parts of the state, hopefully to one where the air

7 is still safe to breathe, if they can find one.

8 It is our strong request that

9 consideration be given to formulating a legal way for

10 the practice of nondisclosure requirements to be ended.

11 Nondisclosure keeps the public -- keeps from the public

12 important information about health that should be made

13 known to all to prevent others from suffering the same

14 consequences of an oil or gas company's safety failures

15 or disregard of EPA rules and regulations.

16 You might ask, Well, then how do you know

17 of this event? Policies can be made and documents

18 signed after the settlement is reached, but in the

19 meantime in these small rural communities, thank God,

20 neighbors grow up still looking out for one another, and

21 that becomes a life commitment. They know. Extended

22 family members care about their loved ones and they

23 know.

24 As Shakespeare said, The truth will out.

25 And it lies in the lives and experiences of the grass
Page 105

1 roots people who usually have no resources to help them

2 understand what is happening to them, not the power to

3 -- nor the power to stand up for their rights to

4 powerful corporations owned and operated by their more

5 powerful fellow Americans. This is not patriotism.

6 Some of you are hearing those stories today.

7 This dangerously frantic development by

8 oil and gas companies as they try to beat the clock on

9 these new regulations continues through shale regions.

10 Daily more and more toxins pour into the air at an

11 alarming rate as new wells are drilled. This rush for

12 the money is a dangerous policy that risks irreversible

13 damages to the environment and millions of dollars in

14 public health costs in the near and distant future.

15 The time to act is now, not later, not

16 2013, 2011. No toxic emissions -- I mean, so that toxic

17 emission -- emissions can be contained and stopped.

18 Specifically, all these new -- all these new and

19 existing sources of toxic emissions should be covered

20 under these new rules.

21 There is certainly a moral imperative

22 involved here. If I could quote Pope John Paul, II, To

23 care for creation is a moral duty for all human beings,

24 to govern nature as a responsible administrator and not

25 as a merciless exploiter. I repeat, and not as a
Page 106

1 merciless exploiter.

2 The mission assigned to the EPA by the

3 American people is to do just that, to protect the

4 common good from those who would only exploit the energy

5 resources that creation provides for us. Our

6 environmental house is on fire, and the USA cannot

7 afford to sit around and discuss any longer which door

8 we're going to use for an exit. We need to move and we

9 need to move now.

10 Thank you.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

12 Are there any clarifying questions?

13 MS. RIEBSCHLAEGER: Thank you very much.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you both, again, for

15 your testimony. Thank you very much.

16 All right. I'd like to ask Jane Lynn to

17 please come forward.

18 Good afternoon.

19 MS. LYNN: Hello. My name is Jane Lynn,

20 J-a-n-e L-y-n-n, and Lynn is my last name. I am a

21 resident of Arlington, Texas.

22 I am a conservative wife and a mother who

23 has lived in the same community for 25 years. There are

24 at least a half a dozen drill pad sites within two miles

25 of my home, some of them having up to 20 wells. The
Page 107

1 drilling for natural gas less than 2,000 feet from our

2 home has dramatically impacted my family's quality of

3 life and, consequently, has propelled me into a fight to

4 protect our lives and the environment.

5 Since the onset of drilling operations, I

6 have been having -- experiencing negative health

7 effects, so I personally began logging these symptoms in

8 October of 2010. The most prevalent symptom has been

9 long-term headaches lasting up to ten days. And a

10 neighbor that lives right near me has reported also of

11 having severe headaches lasting three weeks at a time,

12 and she also believes it's due to the well site in close

13 proximity to our home. I'm also experiencing a lot of

14 fatigue, another symptom that neighbors are testifying

15 to.

16 And some other symptoms in my immediate

17 area are nosebleeds, burning eyes, sore throats, slurred

18 speech, weak extremities, dizziness and blurred vision.

19 We hear strange noises and smell strange odors. The

20 fear of the unknown with lack of regulation has had a

21 real physical as well as emotional impact upon us.

22 One day, I decided to call our Chesapeake

23 neighborhood representative to share with her these

24 negative health effects I had been experiencing which I

25 believed was a direct result of the toxins being emitted
Page 108

1 into the air. She said, Prove it. At that moment, I

2 realized I was up a creek without a paddle.

3 And speaking of water, I would like to

4 mention that just last month, Chesapeake was found in

5 another violation at our well pad site, this time for

6 illegally trucking water across the city line to frac a

7 well in a city that had water restrictions in place due

8 to the drought. Although our city knew what they were

9 doing, they didn't cite them until the media exposed

10 their actions, yet the maximum fine of $2,000 will be

11 considered just a mere cost of doing business.

12 And this brings up another important

13 issue: What will be the long-term ramifications of the

14 billions and trillions of gallons of water that are now

15 being removed from the water cycle forever? Mankind has

16 survived thousands of years without natural gas, but has

17 always required water to sustain life.

18 Now I want to tell you what happened on

19 April 11th, 2011, at around 2:30 a.m. A storm had blown

20 through the area knocking out power, which, in turn, had

21 thrown a compressor station offline, which then caused

22 two separate malfunctions to occur at our drill pad

23 site. Anyhow, since the storm had blown in a cool

24 front, we opened the windows and went back to sleep. A

25 little while later, a terrifying sound like loud jet
Page 109

1 engines woke us up. It would not stop.

2 We called 9-1-1, but the operator was

3 unable to provide us with clear direction on what to do

4 since our city did not have emergency protocols in place

5 for this type of situation. Simultaneously, a similar

6 incident was occurring on the other side of town which

7 had probably confused the 9-1-1 operator.

8 Our entire home was quickly filling with a

9 filthy smelling stench of chemical odors and gasses. My

10 husband and I stepped outside to see what was happening

11 and we could feel the weight like a heavy blanket of

12 fumes covering the neighborhood. The whole experience

13 was surreal. We went back inside and scrambled to shut

14 all the windows of our home. I was feeling utterly

15 helpless seeing my 11-year-old daughter lying in bed,

16 getting a chemical exposure in her sleep.

17 After some time, my husband proceeded to

18 start his truck and drive over to the Fulson pad site to

19 see what was going on or if an emergency crew was there,

20 totally unaware at the time that his vehicle could have

21 exploded from the gasses which had settled over the

22 neighborhood. There was no one at the site, but the

23 well was still venting gasses. It vented for

24 approximately one and a half hours.

25 Meanwhile, back at the house, I reported
Page 110

1 the incident to TCEQ. TCEQ's report came out four

2 months later, stated that no violations were found.

3 Mind you, they did not arrive on the scene until

4 approximately eight hours later to investigate, but by

5 that time reported no odors detected.

6 How much longer will this powerful

7 unregulated industry be permitted to legally poison us?

8 I am weary of living this nightmare. All we want to --

9 all we want is to be able to --

10 MR. THOMPSON: Mrs. Lynn?

11 MS. LYNN: -- live peacefully on this

12 property. Almost finished.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Finish your --

14 MS. LYNN: One more sentence.

15 MR. THOMPSON: Finish your sentence.

16 MS. LYNN: Okay. As American citizens, we

17 are asking the EPA to, once and for all, put an end to

18 the self-regulating of a very dangerous industry right

19 next door to our homes, our schools, our churches and

20 our parks. Human life must trump corporate profits.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much.

22 Before you run -- before you run,

23 Mrs. Lynn, just check, see if we have any clarifying

24 questions for you.

25 MS. LYNN: Okay.
Page 111

1 MR. THOMPSON: Any? Any?

2 Again, thank you very much for your

3 testimony. Thank you.

4 At this time we're going to break for

5 dinner and we will reconvene back here at 6:30 p.m.,

6 6:30 p.m. Thank you-all.

7 (Recess was taken)

8 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. We're going to go

9 ahead and begin.

10 This is the public hearing on the Oil and

11 Natural Gas Sector: The New Source Performance

12 Standards and National Emission Standards For Hazardous

13 Air Pollutants and Review here in Arlington, Texas.

14 Again, good afternoon and thank you for attending this

15 public hearing.

16 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,

17 the EPA, is holding this hearing to take comment on the

18 proposed rules. My name is Fred Thompson, and I am the

19 associate director for the sector's Policies and

20 Programs Division and EPA's Office of Air Quality

21 Planning and Standards. I will be chairing today's

22 hearing.

23 Joining me on the panel are Bruce Moore to

24 my right of the sector's Policies and Programs Division

25 in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; Rob Lawrence,
Page 112

1 who is also to my immediate right, from EPA's Region 6

2 office in Dallas, Texas; Alex MacPherson to my left, who

3 works in the Health and Environmental Impacts Division

4 at EPA RTP in North Carolina. That's Research Triangle

5 Park.

6 We're here today to listen to your

7 comments on the EPA's proposal, Oil and Natural Gas

8 Sector: New Source Performance Standards and National

9 Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants and

10 Review.

11 Today we will be accepting oral comments

12 on all aspects of our proposal and we will prepare a

13 written transcript of the hearing. The transcript for

14 the hearing will be available as part of the official

15 record for this rule. The EPA will consider your

16 comments as we move forward to complete a final rule by

17 February 28th, 2012. We are also accepting written

18 comments on the proposed rule until 30 days after the

19 last public hearing, and at present, that is

20 October 31st, 2011.

21 At the registration area, which is located

22 in the hallway outside of this room, there are handouts

23 with the detailed information for submitting written

24 comments by mail, fax or electronically.

25 Now, let me describe the procedures for
Page 113

1 today's hearing. I will call the scheduled speakers to

2 the microphone in pairs, which is located here in front

3 of me. When it is your turn to speak, please state your

4 name and your affiliation before you begin your

5 testimony. You will be asked to spell your name to

6 ensure accuracy.

7 We have a timekeeping system which is

8 located right here on the table in front of me,

9 consisting of green, yellow and red lights. When you

10 begin speaking, the green light will go on. You will

11 have five minutes to speak. The yellow light will

12 signal that you have one minute left to speak. When the

13 red light goes on, five minutes has passed and I will

14 ask you to please complete your testimony.

15 Today's hearing is scheduled for 9:00 a.m.

16 and will continue until 8:00 p.m., or later if

17 necessary, depending on the number of speakers. We

18 intend to stay into the evening until everyone has had

19 an opportunity to comment.

20 If you would like to testify but have not

21 yet registered to do so, please sign up at the

22 registration table in the hallway outside of this room.

23 For those who have already registered to speak, we have

24 tried to accommodate your request for specific time

25 slots. We ask for your patience as we proceed through
Page 114

1 the list of speakers. We may need to make some

2 adjustments as the evening progresses.

3 If any questions arise throughout this

4 afternoon, please see a staff member at the registration

5 table for assistance. Thank you all again for

6 participating in this hearing.

7 At this time I'd like to get started. I'd

8 like to ask Claudette Fette and Susan Reid to please

9 come up front.

10 Good evening, ladies.

11 MS. REID: Good evening.

12 MR. THOMPSON: And we'd like to start with

13 Ms. Fette. If you'd just give us your name and spell it

14 for the record, please.

15 MS. FETTE: My name is Claudette Fette,

16 and it's spelled F-e-t-t-e.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

18 MS. FETTE: I want to thank you first for

19 the process of -- of beginning the clean air rules.

20 My family, a couple of years ago, bought a

21 100-acre farm. My dad sold his in Central Texas so he

22 could teach my 19-year-old son how to farm. And -- and

23 the farm that we purchased is in southwest Cooke County,

24 which is in Rosston, right in the middle of the Barnett

25 Shale. It has somewhere around 150 mature native
Page 115

1 pecans. And I have a picture for you of my husband

2 standing next to one of them. They're absolutely

3 gorgeous. We have planted -- and it has dozens of old

4 black walnuts and all kinds of native oak and willow

5 and -- and all kinds of species. We've planted 38

6 chestnut trees and done some improvements that way. And

7 it has a beautiful hundreds year -- hundreds of year old

8 live oak tree that my husband and I planned to build a

9 house next to and grow old and die next to and then will

10 to my children.

11 There were just a couple of wells when we

12 went looking for land. There were no mineral rights to

13 purchase. There were just a couple of wells around.

14 And it's Texas. We had no idea that we were about to be

15 in the middle of an explosion of drilling. The seller

16 told us nobody would want to drill on our land because

17 it was long and skinny.

18 This summer, the number of wells around us

19 exploded. There are seven horizontal wells under our

20 farm. There are 50 horizontal wells within two miles of

21 our farm and 70 to 75 vertical wells. And it's

22 continuing. They just flattened the hill across the

23 road for another pad site.

24 I want to argue for the need for adequate

25 regulatory capacity, as well as public information. An
Page 116

1 example, a couple of months ago TRC helped us -- helped

2 us figure out -- our land backs up on Clear Creek, which

3 feeds both Lake Lewisville and Lake Ray Roberts, which

4 feed several different communities in our area. And

5 there -- these socks appeared on the creek, and we

6 didn't know what they were or where they came from. So

7 we called the Railroad Commission and they came out and

8 said, oh, well, they were related to a spill that

9 happened five or six weeks before that.

10 But there was no -- there's no mechanism

11 for anybody to tell us. And we're out there all the

12 time. I'd be looking. I could help figure out what's

13 going on and report it to somebody, but nobody --

14 there's no -- there's no mechanism for even contacting

15 us to find that out. So I think you need to be using

16 surface owners, and we need public info. And we need

17 public info on each of the drilling companies and that

18 needs to be something that we can find readily.

19 I'm also concerned about the lack of

20 regulatory staff. In Texas, the TRC folks are

21 responsible for inspecting the completions for those

22 drills -- or for those wells, and they only work during

23 the daytime. But as I understand it, many, if not most,

24 of those wells are completed overnight. So there's

25 nobody in any regulatory capacity looking to see what
Page 117

1 that cement looks like. There's nobody there. And as I

2 understand it as I've been reading this, there isn't --

3 there doesn't begin to be adequate numbers of regulatory

4 staff to even be doing -- providing the oversight that's

5 necessary. So we need to have adequate oversight.

6 I wrote a letter that I gave up there

7 that -- that suggests supporting the SAEB 90-day report

8 and their recommendations, and I wrote that to my

9 senators in Texas and copied my state senator, whose

10 office called to inform me that actually because we did

11 not own the mineral rights we were not actually

12 landowners, that the people that owned the mineral

13 rights actually owned the land and we only have surface

14 rights.

15 You need to understand that so that you

16 understand how essential it is that we have federal

17 oversight, because my state is not capable of protecting

18 me. And I want to grow old on that farm and I want to

19 grow old with that tree, and I want my children and my

20 grandchildren to do that.

21 And I want health -- I want you to be

22 looking at health effects. I work in health care. That

23 is my day job. I want you to be looking at health

24 effects. Asthma, autism, cancer, all of those need to

25 be tracked and followed so that we can see what that is.
Page 118

1 Nobody's looking. Please keep us safe. And thank you.

2 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Fette.

3 MS. FETTE: And I've got pictures for you.

4 MR. THOMPSON: And if you don't mind, I'd

5 like to look at your photographs, if you --

6 MS. FETTE: I'm giving them to you.

7 MR. THOMPSON: -- if you don't mind.

8 MS. FETTE: They're gorgeous. And,

9 remember, you're keeping us safe.

10 MR. MACPHERSON: I do have one follow-up.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Sure. Absolutely.

12 MR. MACPHERSON: Thank you for your

13 comments.

14 You mentioned the ^ SEAB? SAEB report.

15 MS. FETTE: Uh-huh.

16 MR. MACPHERSON: Could you just clarify

17 what you mentioned that for and --

18 MS. FETTE: The -- the letter that I wrote

19 to my senators followed that report and kind of gave

20 recommendations, both in line with that report, as well

21 as asking for -- for more landowner, surface owner,

22 whatever you want to call us, involvement and

23 engagement. But it was looking at that, because that's

24 what I -- I -- this is not my --

25 MR. MACPHERSON: That was one of the
Page 119

1 recommendations from the report?

2 MS. FETTE: Huh?

3 MR. MACPHERSON: That was one of the

4 recommendations from the report, for the landowners?

5 MS. FETTE: No. That was one that I had

6 said in addition to.

7 MR. MACPHERSON: Oh, okay.

8 MS. FETTE: But the -- the letter was --

9 was referencing that -- support for those

10 recommendations --

11 MR. MACPHERSON: Thank you.

12 MS. FETTE: -- of the 90-day. Thank you.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Please don't leave us.

14 Please remain --

15 MS. FETTE: Oh, I'm sorry.

16 MR. THOMPSON: -- unless you just have to

17 go.

18 MS. FETTE: I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

19 You can keep them if you want to just

20 remember them. I want motivation. They're gorgeous.

21 MR. THOMPSON: They are gorgeous. Thanks

22 for sharing those.

23 Mrs. Reid?

24 MS. REID: Good evening.

25 MR. THOMPSON: Good evening.
Page 120

1 MS. REID: Thank you for being here. My

2 name is Susan Reid, and I live in Grand Prairie, Texas,

3 and I'm associated with the Westchester-Grand Prairie

4 Community Alliance. We formed the group last year. And

5 I live within a two-mile range of at least three shale

6 gas drilling pad sites.

7 Members of the Westchester community

8 formed the Westchester-Grand Prairie Community Alliance

9 in the summer of 2010 when we realized that there was a

10 serious problem in our community. Seismic testing

11 trucks had descended on our community of over 2,000

12 homes without warning in June of 2010, even though our

13 Westchester Association of Homeowners had decided that

14 we would not, as a group, sign a lease way back in 2007.

15 In the meantime, one site, the Corn

16 Valley A -- and there's a B, too; this is the Corn

17 Valley A pad site -- 850 feet from the Joe Pool Lake dam

18 and 537 feet from homeowners, had been permitted by the

19 Texas Railroad Commission in 2009 and our city was ready

20 to permit it. We held a community-wide meeting on

21 July 19th, 2010, attended by more than 500 Westchester

22 neighbors thinking that we might stop it, but even with

23 so many opposed to all of it, our city permitted this

24 pad site the day after this meeting.

25 Soon we realized that there had never been
Page 121

1 any public discussion about any of it and that this was

2 because we had no SUP for gas drilling; meaning, with

3 few exceptions, all gas drilling permits submitted

4 through the Texas Railroad Commission were being

5 approved administratively by the Grand Prairie, Texas,

6 Environmental Services Department. After attending

7 planning and zoning commission meetings, we discovered

8 that this commission knew less than we did about shale

9 gas drilling and they had never had any presentations

10 about any of it.

11 It didn't take long to realize that we

12 were in serious trouble. Through meetings and a lot of

13 hard work, we realized that our city's gas drilling

14 ordinance was basically an open door for gas drilling in

15 our neighborhoods and then we got to work. Through a

16 petition-signing effort, a neighborhood blog, The

17 Westchester Gazette -- we're on Facebook, too -- and

18 speaking regularly before our city councils, lots of

19 e-mails, by November 18th, 2010, we had a moratorium on

20 all shale gas drilling so that the ordinance could be

21 strengthened. Yay. That was great.

22 Then Chesapeake began their campaign.

23 That campaign included a public meeting held on

24 December 7th, 2010, that requested all those lessors,

25 the landowners who had signed leases with them,
Page 122

1 Chesapeake wanted everyone to go to City Hall and

2 present -- and protest this moratorium and the

3 1,000-foot setback that might be part of a revised and

4 new ordinance.

5 To see a corporation telling a community

6 to come together and go against protective actions that

7 our community group had worked so hard to make happen,

8 well, it was unbelievable to us. They even told this

9 large gathering of well over 700 or 800 people stuffed

10 into a community building that they would invoke force

11 majeure if necessary and if the city kept this

12 moratorium in place very long. They mentioned that we

13 probably didn't even know what that was, force majeure,

14 but they would explain it to us.

15 When one of our group yelled out from the

16 center of the room, What about the process? The

17 response back was, Oh, we're not going to address the

18 process tonight. And we won't be taking any questions,

19 either.

20 One young man came up to me after this

21 meeting trying to convince me and others that there

22 wasn't anything wrong with hydraulic fracturing. I

23 asked him who he worked for. It was clear to me that he

24 was trying to keep me from talking to people in the

25 room. And he told me, Chesapeake, and I -- and that he
Page 123

1 was a hydraulic engineer and hy- -- that hydraulic

2 fracturing was God's laws of physics. And that is a

3 direct quote.

4 More shocking experiences were to follow

5 when our city, in fact, did lift the moratorium only two

6 months later. And it was to have been a six-month

7 moratorium, but pressure from the industry was too great

8 for our city.

9 What we have here are huge gaps in the

10 regulation of the very dangerous shale gas drilling

11 industry. Our communities are under siege by these

12 people physically, psychologically and economically.

13 After seeing that our city and state are firmly in the

14 grip of the oil and gas industry, our community group,

15 the Westchester-Grand Prairie Community Alliance, has

16 come to the conclusion that the EPA is our last hope for

17 change.

18 We thought that the very name of the oil

19 and gas regulation agency, the Texas Railroad

20 Commission, would finally get a new name on this last

21 legislative session this last spring, and our state

22 legislature could not even get that changed. This is

23 unbelievable in America.

24 People are suffering. I've talked to many

25 of them. They are suffering and will suffer more and
Page 124

1 more in the very near future unless we stop this

2 industry's rampage. More shale gas drilling

3 infrastructure is going in as we sit here tonight. I

4 see it. It's going in right now. They do all their

5 work ahead of time, and by the time they ask for the

6 rubber stamp from the state regulators, it's a done

7 deal.

8 We will do whatever we can as a group and

9 as a community to support the efforts of the EPA to gain

10 regulation of this industry. It's a matter of life and

11 death. And we need help now.

12 Thank you.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Reid.

14 MS. REID: Thank you.

15 MR. THOMPSON: Are there any clarifying

16 questions or follow-up questions for Mrs. Reid?

17 Okay. Both Mrs. Fette and Mrs. Reid,

18 thank you both for being here this afternoon and thank

19 you for your testimony. Thank you very much.

20 At this time I'd like to ask Gary Hogan

21 and Bill Dedecker to come forward, please.

22 Mr. Hogan, we'd like to start with you.

23 Just state your name for the record, please.

24 MR. HOGAN: My name is Gary Hogan,

25 H-o-g-a-n. I'm representing -- I'm vice president of
Page 125

1 the North Central Texas Communities Alliance.

2 The North Central Texas Communities

3 Alliance formed about two years ago as kind of an

4 umbrella or oversight committee to help citizens deal

5 with issues related to gas drilling, everything from

6 leasing to working with legislation, working with the

7 cities on ordinances where we could and helping citizens

8 prepare to have the knowledge base to get up to speed to

9 deal with the issues that were confronting them as gas

10 drilling expanded out of Fort Worth and into the other

11 communities and, now as we speak, into -- into Dallas.

12 We've actually been working with -- a little bit with

13 Dallas on their preparation for this as it advances to

14 them.

15 We are a nonprofit agency, and we work on

16 a volunteer basis that's available to citizens all over

17 the Barnett Shale region. In this capacity, we've

18 had -- been privileged to all the things that people

19 have been trying to be confronted with with this issue.

20 And we have seen firsthand the suffering of people and

21 the, if nothing else, anecdotal consequences of what

22 grass drilling is doing to polluted gas -- polluted

23 water wells all over the region being polluted with

24 drilling debris and muds that make wells un- --

25 unusable, to being involved with Mayor Calvin Tillman in
Page 126

1 Dish, Texas, who first raised the flag about what was

2 going on in his community.

3 And we're seeing these effects every

4 single time drilling moves even close to a populated

5 area, and the rural areas are even more at the mercy of

6 our state regulatory agencies who have been working for

7 the industry. There's no other way to put it. Our --

8 our railroad commission has stated publicly that they

9 are working, first of all, for the economic benefit of

10 the gas operators in this state, for the economic boom

11 that is tied to it.

12 Public health and safety is a fight for

13 every citizen that ever has to call them for action. We

14 have seen this firsthand wherever these cases have come

15 up that the citizens, when they cry for help from the

16 TCEQ and from our railroad commission, even when they

17 respond, they -- they lean toward industry, trying to

18 make them be able to defend their cases against us.

19 I -- I pulled this off your Web site today

20 and I couldn't agree with it more. The EPA has pro- --

21 proposed a suite of highly cost-effective regulations

22 that could reduce harmful air pollution from the oil and

23 natural gas industry. I agree 100 percent. And I want

24 to beg the EPA -- the political climate we are seeing

25 came on real strong. I want to say when -- when we
Page 127

1 heard Dr. Al Armandariz was going to be our director,

2 people were doing a happy dance in Texas because we

3 really thought we had a chance.

4 Now, I'm -- I'm not from Texas, and people

5 point that out to me all the time. I'm not from Texas

6 and I don't understand, but I've been here a long time

7 and I do love Texas and I do a lot of work to make Texas

8 better. But it's heartbreaking when you see what people

9 are suffering from. And this air quality issue is -- is

10 something that we need help on. You do not have to be a

11 scientist to understand that we were a nonattainment

12 zone for many, many years and Texas was given a lot of

13 lead rope to not follow even what other states had to

14 do.

15 So we need your help. I wish our

16 agencies -- that we could have faith in them. I've even

17 seen our agencies attacking our federal EPA and saying

18 they don't trust your testing standards. But somebody's

19 got to start working for the citizens, the good health

20 and safety of the citizens. I think we can acquire this

21 natural gas resource, but this industry needs to be made

22 to do it in an environmental and protective way. And if

23 they can't do that, then we can't do it until we can do

24 it that way, because we're not a third world nation here

25 and we should not be treated like we are a third world
Page 128

1 nation.

2 So let's do this. If we're going to do

3 it, we need to do it right. And we need the help,

4 unfortunately, from the federal EPA to be strong and

5 come in and stand up for us and do not bend to these

6 political pressures. Carry that back to the highest

7 level, please, that there are Texas citizens here that

8 are begging for your help.

9 Thank you.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Hogan.

11 Are there any follow-up questions?

12 If you could share the microphone.

13 MR. HOGAN: I'm sorry.

14 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much.

15 MR. DEDECKER: Yes. Good evening. My

16 name is Bill Dedecker. That's spelled D-e-d-e-c-k-e-r.

17 I live on the Riverview Drive in Arlington, in northwest

18 Arlington. I've lived there for 30 years. I should say

19 right up front that we did lease our mineral rights to

20 one of the gas companies, and so far it's been a good

21 relationship. I -- I am speaking here not against the

22 regulations as such, but to add a note of caution and a

23 strong note of caution.

24 As I said, we've lived here 30 years. We

25 have three wells within roughly one mile of us. I've
Page 129

1 been to one of them several times because I believe it

2 is the well -- and I don't believe -- I know it's the

3 well that is going to go underneath our house and suck

4 out the gas from underneath our house, which I think is

5 a marvelous thing.

6 And I've been here. These folks are

7 responsible. These folks are hard-working. The -- the

8 -- the area around the well is clean. I've been there

9 several times. There is never any dirt, slop. They

10 seem to be very conscientious folks. And the other well

11 is near where I get my -- my -- my coffee every morning,

12 and I have not smelled a thing. I have not seen a

13 thing, other than a bunch of hard-working people.

14 So the -- based on that, the fact of the

15 matter is that there are lots of anecdotes, lots of

16 stories, lots of pictures of beautiful live oak trees, I

17 grant you; but the fact of the matter is when you start

18 digging for the hard facts, they're few and far between.

19 In fact, there are almost none of them, as best as I can

20 tell. So the -- and I do live in a very populated area,

21 like I said, with three wells within a mile or within

22 about a mile.

23 Now, the -- in your statement here,

24 there's a statement made that the savings are

25 potentially $30 million per year, which is a wonderful
Page 130

1 thing. However -- where is it here? It's -- I

2 highlighted it. Right. The -- the cost of the proposed

3 requirements would be 754 million. They're the costs.

4 And the savings would be $783 million.

5 Now, I'll be very honest with you

6 gentlemen. I'm in the business of cost analysis.

7 That's what I do for a living for the aviation industry.

8 And when you're that close to talk blithely about a net

9 savings of 20 -- $29 million a year, you're blowing

10 smoke. The fact of the matter is that at -- at best you

11 could say that this is a wash. And probably, given

12 previous estimates of what EPA and other government

13 agencies that I've worked with directly, their estimates

14 of benefits and their estimates of costs, they're often

15 off by a factor of two, particularly the benefits or the

16 costs, usually in the negative direction.

17 In other words, this has the potential of

18 being very, very expensive for the oil and gas industry.

19 And that's my whole point. Because I wish to point out

20 that in the current recession -- and in case you hadn't

21 noticed it and you may not, but we are in a deep

22 recession. And one of the reasons that Texas has done

23 reasonably well is because we do have oil and -- we do

24 have all these gas wells. It has been a tremendous boom

25 to our economy. It really has. I am not saying that
Page 131

1 there shouldn't be a reasonable amount of sensible

2 regulation. I believe the Texas Railroad Commission

3 does that. I believe they're a very conscientious

4 organization.

5 If you compare the boom that we're having,

6 it's comparable to the boom that Pennsylvania is

7 experiencing. New York has heavily regulated gas

8 drilling. They are suffering. Their unemployment rate

9 is significantly higher than Pennsylvania. They have --

10 they have -- they -- they -- they share a shale field

11 system, Marcellus shale. If you look at New York, they

12 are suffering because they're not drilling there. They

13 can't. And as a result, the economic pain is

14 tremendous.

15 In Pennsylvania -- Pennsylvania has

16 turned -- that region of Pennsylvania is turning into a

17 boom area. The same thing for the Dakotas where the --

18 the Bakken formation is, which is actually oil, not gas.

19 The point here is that in this deep

20 recession, which nobody seems to have any idea of how to

21 get out of, least of all our government, the last thing

22 we need is our government coming up with more

23 regulations that make it more difficult, more expensive,

24 et cetera, to actually influence an area -- areas

25 where -- where -- where shale gas is being drilled and
Page 132

1 that are booming.

2 My question to you would be is: How

3 confident are you in your cost and benefit analysis?

4 What are the resulting costs in -- in -- in loss of

5 jobs? And I'd like to know that. And if you have a

6 copy of the study someplace or you can give me a Web

7 site, I would like to go to it and I'll study it and

8 I'll give you further written follow-up.

9 Thank you.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Dedecker.

11 Any follow-up questions?

12 MR. MOORE: I have one. Who is the

13 operator that -- that has your three -- the well that

14 you were talking about on your property?

15 MR. DEDECKER: Chesapeake.

16 MR. MOORE: Thanks.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, gentlemen.

18 MR. DEDECKER: By the way, they have been

19 responsive to the questions I've asked.

20 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, gentlemen. Thank you

21 both for --

22 MR. HOGAN: Thank you.

23 MR. THOMPSON: -- your comments. Thank

24 you very much.

25 At this time I'd like to ask Kim Feil and
Page 133

1 Cary Clark to come forward, please.

2 MS. FEIL: I'm Kim Feil. And you can

3 spell that K-i-m F as in Frank, e-i-l.

4 Just before we broke for lunch between

5 speakers today, one of your EPA panel members, Mr. Bruce

6 Moore, inquired of where Mr. Benzene, the guy sitting in

7 the back with the respirator, was. I told him that I

8 was by myself this morning and was just too weak

9 physically to bring him.

10 I believe I'm your canary, having eight

11 years of living and working in the refinery town of

12 Norco, Louisiana. I moved here to Arlington 20 years

13 ago, but being exposed to drilling in the last five

14 years was the tipping point for me and my ill health.

15 I have been under the care of Dr. Lewis

16 Cone, and my most recent detoxification prescription

17 yesterday was 7,000 milligrams of Vitamin C to rid my

18 body of lifelong mercury buildup and to help with the

19 pain in my hip that started last November and for the

20 pain in my elbows and the loss of the strength of the

21 grip in my left hand that started a few months ago.

22 Last week, I failed the muscle stress test for

23 formaldehyde in my body that was affecting my liver and

24 gall bladder and was prescribed charcoal ingestion.

25 This is what the hospitals give people
Page 134

1 with chemical poisoning. I am not shy to tell this

2 panel that since my treatment started eight days ago, I

3 have been having foaming bubbles in my urine. This, in

4 itself, has me worried that any surfactants or other

5 foaming agents used in the gas drilling industry have

6 somehow entered possibly in my system.

7 I have been downwind from the UTA

8 Arlington drill site for five years, and they now have

9 22 gas wells. My son has suffered other BP symptoms

10 like health effects, too, in the past during what I

11 believe was a cooling inversion. I also live near the

12 General Motors plant and regularly smell a slick -- a

13 sickly sweet odor and wonder now if it is the GM plant

14 I'm smelling or the gas wells they put on that property.

15 The epitomizes the greed the shale rush has caused when

16 a heavy hitter on air quality like GM gets to put gas

17 wells on their site.

18 Toxic rock -- toxicrisk.com reports show

19 GM produced 858 pounds of benzene in 2007, the total 190

20 tons per year emissions showed that 45 percent of that

21 was xylene, which is highly reactive in the formation of

22 ozone. I found it funny that the Perryman report

23 compared the economic benefit of the Barnett Shale in

24 the last decade to be almost as -- twice as large as

25 that of the GM and its associated suppliers. But how
Page 135

1 ironic that last Tuesday I spoke before our city council

2 in these very chambers and shared my analysis of the

3 TCEQ Phase 2 Emissions Inventory which had a disclaimer

4 that emissions from the drilling, fracking, flowback

5 were not included.

6 This unknown pre-production emissions

7 information was also a huge gap in the ERG Fort Worth

8 air study, too. And when I crunched the TCEQ numbers,

9 not looking at compression emission stations, I

10 estimated that the aggregate emissions of our 60 gas

11 well pad sites just here in Arlington approached the GM

12 plant's annual emissions.

13 Since TCEQ told me that there's less than

14 half a percent of benzene in the Barnett Shale, I

15 multiplied that 190 times per year by .004, which was

16 three-quarters tons of benzene. If you spread that over

17 the 60 drill sites just here in Arlington, that could be

18 25 pounds a year present benzene at each site near homes

19 and schools. This proves how outdated and unprotective

20 the PBR is and blatantly shows it is not intended to be

21 applied to urban drilling.

22 But it gets worse. Recently, DFW

23 Midstream Summit reported to me that GM's annual

24 emissions are actually 414 ton per year, which is one

25 ton of benzene per year, plus all the drilling. How
Page 136

1 convenient that no air monitoring stations are near the

2 GM plant or by the Cowboy stadium. And since our local

3 leaders refuse to listen to my pleas to not allow any

4 more drilling in that already overburdened airshed, I

5 turn to you, EPA, knowing that this damage has all been

6 done and it's going to be all grandfathered in. And I

7 look to you to correct this so my town can be livable

8 again. I believe I'm in your -- I'm a --

9 Based on the air study results of the

10 BSEEC and the Titan -- that's the air study they did --

11 and then the ERG Fort Worth air study, I was able to

12 direct my doctor to test for formaldehyde poisoning.

13 And I did meet somebody who worked for Exxon that was

14 telling me the corrosion inhibitor is one of the funky

15 smelling things that I was asking him what Jane Lynn was

16 smelling she testified earlier. And he went on to say

17 that, you know, his daughter has brain lesions and the

18 wife was complaining how dirty his clothes smelled. We

19 talked about methanol. We talked about ethanol

20 poisoning and how convenient that their -- their

21 daughter has lesions.

22 You know, it's -- it's just too much when

23 I can tell my doctor to look for formaldehyde because I

24 think that's what I've been exposed to. That's what the

25 ERG study found out. That's what the BEC study found
Page 137

1 out.

2 I firmly believe we need to ask Chesapeake

3 to not drill and any of the other drillers until they

4 can get electric compression stations, electric

5 generators. Let's hold off until we get the technology

6 in place.

7 Thank you.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Feil.

9 Are there any follow-up questions? Bruce?

10 MR. MOORE: I would like to -- you

11 mentioned that the ERG Fort Worth study did not include

12 the -- the air emissions from the flowback period of

13 completions following hydrofracking. Is that -- is that

14 true? Or was I -- did I mishear that?

15 MS. FEIL: Well, repeat your question

16 because I want to go back to my notes.

17 MR. MOORE: You -- all right. Did --

18 MS. FEIL: It was --

19 MR. MOORE: Did I hear you correctly --

20 MS. FEIL: It was the TCE- --

21 MR. MOORE: -- when you said --

22 MS. FEIL: It was the TCEQ that did not --

23 when they -- when they collected the Phase 2 emissions

24 inventory equipment, there was a disclaimer that said

25 they didn't have the drilling, flacking, flowback
Page 138

1 information included.

2 MR. MOORE: Oh, okay.

3 MS. FEIL: And then when I looked at the

4 ERG study, there's been information that shows that

5 there's similar gaps in the pre-production numbers

6 because they -- they didn't test drilling sites that had

7 diesel rigs. The only drilling site they looked at was

8 an electric rig, which isn't representative of what we

9 see when we drive by. We --

10 MR. MOORE: Okay. Thank you.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Mr. Clark?

12 MR. CLARK: My name is Cary Clark. I'm

13 63 years old and I'm a lifelong resident of Tarrant

14 County. I live south -- I live in Fort Worth now, south

15 of TCU. I'm a jogger. I get outdoors as often as I

16 can. I breathe the air and I drink the city water.

17 There's a lovely biking and jogging trail

18 that runs for many miles along the Trinity River here in

19 Tarrant County. And that's about a mile north of TCU.

20 It's a fairly densely populated area around here, around

21 the area where I live and around this trail and around

22 TCU, lots of apartments, individual residences,

23 businesses.

24 A while back, I was jogging along the

25 trail with a buddy of mine. It was a pretty crowded
Page 139

1 day. A lot of people were out. And there's a well

2 that's in -- maybe a couple hundred, 200 or 300 feet

3 from the river. And it's close to Rogers Road -- Rogers

4 Road and the Trinity River.

5 And we were jogging by it that day and

6 there was -- this happened more than just one day. But

7 one day in particular, there was a really bad odor in

8 the air and it was stifling, and my friend and I just

9 kind of looked at each other and gagged. And there was

10 literally a film that kind of became evident on my lips

11 and my nose and my nostrils, my mouth. I was trying

12 to -- trying to spit it out and -- you know, when you

13 get something like that in -- kind of coating your

14 tongue and your throat and your nostrils, it's pretty

15 yucky.

16 I'm not a scientist. I haven't done any

17 research. I'm just giving you my experience.

18 I don't have any idea what it was. I know

19 it was bad. I know you wouldn't want to have that stuff

20 in your face, in your body. You wouldn't want your

21 children to ever have that happen to them. You just

22 don't know what that is.

23 Other days, I've been by that well. And

24 there's a big silver stack. And one day it -- we could

25 hear it before we got inside. There was an enormous
Page 140

1 roar and a big fire coming out of that. Another day,

2 that -- some stuff was in the air. It was -- it was

3 really bad.

4 I don't think anybody really knows what

5 those chemicals were. As far as I know, I never -- I

6 looked. I never saw anything in the paper about it. I

7 don't know if there was any monitoring. But I do know

8 that's a densely populated area. There was no place for

9 that stuff to go, except around people, their homes,

10 their yards, their children playing and the joggers,

11 hundreds of us that go up and down there.

12 By the way, I don't go up -- I don't go on

13 that trail nearly as much as I used to because of that

14 problem.

15 I'm here really to urge the Environmental

16 Protection Agency to -- to apply 21st century

17 technology, the best that we have, whatever that is,

18 21st century safety standards to monitor these drill

19 sites, these well sites 24 hours a day, seven days a

20 week. We really need to find out what's happening, what

21 these emissions are, what is going into the air that we

22 breathe and the water that we drink.

23 I really believe there are some things

24 that are more important than short-term profit for one

25 particular industry. One thing that is more important
Page 141

1 is the public health because that's a long-term concern

2 for all of us, a very personal concern. And we need the

3 monitoring that will ensure that our water and that our

4 air are safe to do the most basic, fundamental things

5 necessary for life, which is to breathe and to drink

6 water.

7 In Texas, our water, as everybody in this

8 room knows, is very precious. We don't have an

9 unlimited supply of water. Anybody who goes along the

10 river in Texas or a lake now sure as heck knows that.

11 We really have to take care of it, and I beg your help

12 in helping us to do that.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Clark.

14 Are there any questions for Mr. Clark from

15 the panel?

16 Okay. Thank you both for your testimony.

17 Thank you very much.

18 Okay. At this time I'd like to ask Ken

19 Feil and Harriet Irby to come forward. And that's Ken.

20 Good evening.

21 MS. IRBY: Good evening.

22 MR. THOMPSON: Let's start with Mr. Feil.

23 MR. FEIL: Good evening. Ken Feil. I've

24 been an Arlington resident for about 35 or so years now.

25 I just have a letter written by --
Page 142

1 MR. THOMPSON: Could you put the mic just

2 a little closer to you?

3 MR. FEIL: Okay. Sure.

4 I have a letter written Jim Bradbury that

5 was in the Star Telegram I'd just like to read,

6 especially since there's been so much emphasis on the

7 EGR's Fort Worth gas study nationally and

8 internationally. I just want to make y'all aware of

9 this.

10 The length and complexity of Fort Worth's

11 recent air quality study makes it difficult to decipher

12 and its information thus virtually unavailable to most

13 residents. While we now have information that we did

14 not have before, we do not have the crystal clear

15 answers that we need.

16 We must do far more. I encourage the

17 mayor and City Council to not place this report on a

18 shelf as a question answered, but instead use it as a

19 foundation to address emission controls for natural gas

20 production activities over the long term. The value of

21 royalty income will prove fleeting if we discover all

22 too late that the health of our young and old was

23 diminished because we are unwilling to press this issue.

24 The $1 million cost of the air quality

25 study was enormous for the results that were provided.
Page 143

1 The city staff failed to take a significantly aggressive

2 approach in managing the work and a contractor and

3 allowed the final cost to run significantly over budget.

4 Credibility was key for this work. After

5 the protocol was developed and Eastern Research Group

6 selected to do the work, the city staff folded back into

7 a behind-the-scenes process of developing the contract.

8 The process was not open -- was not open to the air

9 quality study committee or the public.

10 Eastern Research was asked to conduct air

11 quality sampling to determine the existence of and

12 prevalence of harmful emissions from natural gas

13 operations citywide. The ambient air monitoring report

14 revealed relatively consistent signs of important air

15 quality issues.

16 Benzene, the contaminant that has drawn

17 much of the current attention on air quality, was

18 detected 94 percent of the time. It is the best marker

19 for an emission problem.

20 Seven other VOCs were detected at rates

21 higher than 90 percent. That these values were

22 collected citywide underscores the gravity of the

23 situation.

24 The report identified seven key pollutants

25 for Fort Worth. Eastern Research's analysis appears to
Page 144

1 judge the presence of the pollutants only by whether

2 they produce an urgent health hazard. That leaves open

3 a very important question about Fort Worth's overall

4 near- and short-term air quality. This may be too

5 simplistic for air scientists, but if we find benzene

6 94 percent of the time, we have a problem.

7 The most important part of the study was

8 to be point-source testing at every natural gas site in

9 the city. The air quality committee was surprised but

10 also impressed that Eastern Research assured us that so

11 many sites would be closely evaluated.

12 The committee discussed at length the use

13 of testing and detected rates of emissions instead of

14 oil and gas book estimates. Unfortunately, as the

15 details of the report made clear, the consultant

16 utilized surrogate emission profiles and

17 industry-estimated values in its analysis.

18 Stunningly, the report reflects raw

19 averaging and wholesale assumptions that nontested

20 equipment was not leaking. This was not what the city

21 asked or paid for. Not withstanding the consultants'

22 assurances, the report acknowledges that not all of the

23 sites' emissions were even tested. For example, certain

24 parts of storage tanks, wastewater and condensate

25 loading equipment and flaring -- flaring, excuse me,
Page 145

1 were not tested.

2 The report highlights compressors as well

3 as gas treatment plants as the greatest source of

4 obvious emissions. The reported values for the one gas

5 treatment plant examined are significant. The city

6 should inventory all gas treatment plants that are just

7 outside city boundaries and produce emissions that can

8 or do drift into the city.

9 Certain emissions were detected by

10 infrared camera as well as completion sites but were not

11 measured otherwise. The evaporative units at the city's

12 waste disposal pilot project were not tested for

13 emissions.

14 Despite requests, testing in heavily -- in

15 heavy condensate production areas outside of Fort Worth

16 was not done. We have no sense of the value -- I'm

17 sorry. We have no sense of the volume of emissions that

18 drift into our city from production areas that are known

19 to emit VOCs.

20 The real question facing the city and its

21 residents concerns Barnett Shale gas development's

22 cumu- -- cumulative effect on air quality and good

23 health. The answer still eludes us.

24 And just for closure, I'd like to say -- I

25 know how long you've been here in North Texas, but we're
Page 146

1 just bombarded by campaigns from the industry saying,

2 you know, what has gas well drilling done, you know, for

3 us. Sure, we need the jobs, but at what cost?

4 Thanks.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you.

6 Before you slide that over, let me ask:

7 Any questions? No?

8 Okay. Thank you.

9 Okay. Ms. Irby?

10 MS. IRBY: Harriet Irby. Last name,

11 I-r-b-y.

12 The recent exploitation of the Barnett

13 Shale gas play in populated North Texas areas has

14 contributed to the already unacceptable levels of air

15 pollution in the Metroplex. For example -- and you've

16 already been told this -- but peak ozone on

17 September 27th, 2011, in zip code 76013 -- mine -- was

18 127. I celebrated that by having an asthma attack at

19 4:30 that day. By contrast -- and I believe in compare

20 and contrast -- I've been keeping track of ozone peaks

21 in the San Francisco bay area, and it was 31 for zip

22 code 94116. I did this -- I tracked these comparable

23 ozone levels for a month. San Francisco runs at roughly

24 a quarter of this area.

25 Do we have an ozone problem? You bet we
Page 147

1 do, in spite of the fact of what our local and federal

2 officials would have you believe. We are out of

3 compliance for decades, and that has economic and health

4 consequences.

5 I love it when they say you gotta have

6 drilling because it means jobs. I would like to remind

7 those folks that the unemployment rate in Texas is

8 currently on the uptick. I would also remind them that

9 the Perryman study talked about 100,000 jobs over 40 and

10 50 years.

11 And where are they going to get the water?

12 We are out of water. This summer we have been hit by a

13 triple whammy. We've had a high pressure system that

14 has sealed in the pollutants and we've been hit with

15 searing heat and a devastating drought. We have already

16 lost $5.2 billion in this state. Our good governor in

17 his campaigns doesn't use the word drought very much. I

18 wonder why.

19 Texas air pollution laws and agencies have

20 failed to protect us in our environment. We have been

21 hit, as I said, with a triple whammy. But your name

22 says it all, Environmental Protection Agency. State and

23 local governments do not protect us.

24 The complaint process for TCEQ takes

25 months. TCEQ uses outdated summa canisters that let
Page 148

1 them ignore emissions peaks. When a complainant finally

2 gets to complain, it only offers excuses and cover-ups.

3 I am certain people have died waiting on a TCEQ answer.

4 As individuals, we face forces that we can't fight

5 alone.

6 Specifically, I am here to request vapor

7 recovery systems on all wells and compressor stations.

8 Drillers should execute green completions.

9 On September 3rd, 2011, my friends and I

10 outlined our struggle with the Dalworthington Gardens

11 Gathering Station Number 1 in the Star Telegram article.

12 It was titled, Women Are Sure Something Smells At

13 Compressor Station.

14 As a -- as an aside, if the gas companies

15 are doing so well, why did I, on September 4th, get a

16 phone call from Carrizo requesting a royalty payment

17 back? Oh. We overpaid you. They didn't get their

18 check back.

19 TCEQ has had eight citizen complaints on

20 this site since June 2011. Open valves were found in

21 June. A sickening sweet smell was noted by citizens and

22 station employees. On August 18th, a TCEQ employee

23 experienced health effects while inspecting the station.

24 VOC levels were high but citizens are still waiting on

25 results.
Page 149

1 August 22nd, more odor. Citizen health

2 complaints led to another inspection. This time, the

3 police said the leak wasn't harmful because the station

4 employee said it wasn't. The substance was not

5 identified. TCEQ later said they found a storage tank

6 emissions valve -- that storage tank emissions had

7 ceased after yet another valve adjustment. Our pet cats

8 and chickens have suddenly died during these episodes.

9 We have experienced shortness of breath, rapid heart

10 rates and itchy eyes and throats. It is sometimes

11 difficult to remain outside.

12 MR. THOMPSON: Ms. -- Ms. Irby, I'm sorry.

13 Your time has expired.

14 MS. IRBY: Okay. Well, I've got some

15 handouts. I received, on my request for vapor recovery

16 station systems, a response from Midstream, and I have

17 my response and my notes and Midstream's refusal

18 (inaudible).

19 MR. THOMPSON: Now, you want these as part

20 of the public record?

21 MS. IRBY: Yes.

22 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. You need to submit

23 those at the table outside. Yes, ma'am.

24 MS. IRBY: All right.

25 MR. THOMPSON: And before you go, are
Page 150

1 there any questions for Mrs. Irby? None?

2 Okay. Thank you both for your testimony.

3 Both Mr. Feil and Mrs. Irby, thank you both.

4 At this time I'd like to ask Marilyn

5 Walton and Dewayne Quertermous to come forward.

6 Good evening.

7 MS. WALTON: Good evening.

8 MR. THOMPSON: Let's start with

9 Mrs. Walton. Your name for the record and then you can

10 begin your testimony.

11 MS. WALTON: My name is Marilyn Walton.

12 M-a-r-i-l-y-n, Walton, W-a-l-t-o-n, as in John-Boy.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Okay.

14 MS. WALTON: I am an artist. I am a

15 singer. I'm also a graduate urban planner. I must tell

16 you that I'm also a member of MoveOn.org.

17 I live in the City of Dallas in the

18 southwestern sector, one of the most windy areas of the

19 county. I have developed, as a result of the

20 atmosphere, respiratory illnesses, asthma that affect

21 the way I do my job and if I can do my job as a singer.

22 I worked for the Bolshoi in Russia for five years, yet I

23 never had that problem. I worked in China for two

24 years. I never had that problem. I worked in South

25 America for as long, but somehow when I came home, I had
Page 151

1 those problems with the atmosphere affecting my voice.

2 The fracturing in oil and gas has made

3 this an issue for me and it has made it an issue that I

4 had to speak to. Economics should not affect the lives

5 in the way that it does. I am aware that gas and oil is

6 necessary and the drilling of gas and oil is necessary,

7 but is it vital? Is it vital?

8 I own property in Irving, Texas, across

9 from the airport. I own property in Oklahoma. Both are

10 oil drilling areas. But when I found out about the

11 fracturing, I suddenly stopped wanting the drilling to

12 occur.

13 I had the feeling that the earthquakes we

14 were suffering from in Oklahoma, in Dallas County -- I

15 live on I-20 and I-35. For over 3,000 years there have

16 not been earthquakes there, but suddenly Ellis County

17 has had them. Tarrant County has had them. Parker

18 County has had them. I'm not technologically savvy but

19 I will tell you that geologists have not been able to

20 determine whether they are the result of fracturing or

21 not. But because they didn't start until the

22 fracturing, I think they are. And common sense says

23 that they are.

24 Just as emissions have affected all the

25 counties that I have mentioned, the national atmosphere
Page 152

1 and the national future of our nation should not be held

2 hostage to corporate financial interest. Therefore,

3 should they be allowed to do this or should they not?

4 Fracturing has caused earthquakes, and the

5 environment has resulted in a -- a drought, and the

6 drought has resulted in waterways and lakes and water

7 tables being sincerely -- severely affected.

8 Years ago, a man by the name of Bill Saul

9 Estes --

10 MR. THOMPSON: Mrs. Walton, I'm sorry.

11 Your -- your time has -- has expired.

12 MS. WALTON: Okay. Sorry, sir.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

14 Are there any follow-up questions for

15 Mrs. Walton?

16 MR. QUERTERMOUS: Yes. My name is Dewayne

17 Quertermous, D-e-w-a-y-n-e Q-u-e-r-t-e-r-m-o-u-s.

18 As Ms. Marilyn just said, our air in DFW

19 is no longer conducive to being able to breathe easily

20 during normal daily activity, much less strenuous

21 outdoor activity. Each passing year, our air becomes an

22 increasingly toxic soup despite reductions in air

23 emissions from traditional sources. The reason our air

24 is not as clean as it should be is the practice of gas

25 drilling by hydraulic fracturing which spews millions of
Page 153

1 tons of harmful pollutants into our air and which now

2 basically equals the emissions that are emitted by

3 mobile sources and airports in DFW. They're roughly

4 equivalent.

5 This will only get worse as the Barnett

6 Shale play is drilled out to its estimated total of

7 50,000 wells. And it's -- I think it's currently about

8 15,000. Yet these virtually unregulated emissions are

9 totally unaccounted for in the official plan to bring

10 the DFW nonattainment area into compliance. This state

11 of affairs is frankly absurd.

12 The industry is very effective at lobbying

13 local and state levels. They're also very good at

14 intimidation at the local level by threatening legal

15 action to any city who does not give them any exemption

16 they ask for.

17 Since it is obvious that effective

18 regulations cannot be achieved at the local and state

19 levels, the EPA and these proposed regulations are the

20 best hope for DFW and other areas affected by gas

21 drilling and its effects on air emissions. The industry

22 will argue that these regulations will kill jobs and

23 hurt the industry. However, the unregulated nature of

24 this industry and the excesses it has caused has led to

25 having a deserved reputation for being a bad neighbor
Page 154

1 and not caring about the environmental cost of its

2 activities.

3 This reputation has led to a bevy of

4 countries announcing bans and many others putting in

5 place moratoriums until effective regulations are put in

6 place. This fear and caution elicited in outside

7 observers should be a wake-up call for the public, the

8 EPA and the industry itself that the current practices

9 of this -- of the industry in this country is causing

10 significant damage to public health and the environment.

11 I ask the EPA to do its job of protecting

12 the public and the environment by implementing these

13 proposed regulations and making them apply to as many

14 wells as possible. At the same time, you will be

15 helping this industry to become the responsible

16 corporate citizen it claims to be.

17 Thank you.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

19 Are there any follow-up questions?

20 Thank you both for your testimony. Thank

21 you very much.

22 Would Jan Miller and Michelle Cline please

23 come forward? Jan Miller and Michelle Cline.

24 Good evening, ladies. We'll start with

25 Mrs. Miller, please.
Page 155

1 MS. MILLER: Good evening. My name is Jan

2 Miller, J-a-n M-i-l-l-e-r. I live in Arlington, Texas.

3 MR. THOMPSON: Pull the microphone just a

4 little closer to you.

5 MS. MILLER: Okay. Is that better?

6 MR. THOMPSON: A little, yeah.

7 MS. MILLER: Okay. Thanks for -- thanks

8 very much for coming to Arlington tonight and all day

9 today. I'm sorry. I appreciate your -- your being here

10 and taking our testimony.

11 My name is Jan Miller. I live in

12 Arlington. I have lived here all my life. I am a

13 scientist, professionally employed. I'm not

14 representing either my employer here tonight, certainly.

15 I drive about 10 miles -- I live in

16 southwest Arlington. I drive about 10 miles to work in

17 Fort Worth. On the way to work, I pass approximately

18 five well sites. I also pass a compressor station. I

19 have two well sites within sight of my office door --

20 sorry, my office window. At home, I now have a well

21 site of 20 plus wells within 600 feet of my back door.

22 There are routes around Arlington that I

23 no longer go because I know that I will pass a

24 compressor station or a well site and I'm going to --

25 I'm going to breathe those -- those fumes when I pass
Page 156

1 by. I'm careful to keep the recirculation on my car.

2 I'm now -- thanks to the well site that's close to home,

3 I can smell those -- that -- that -- emissions from

4 that site as well on a fairly routine basis. It depends

5 on -- of course, on which way the wind's blowing. But

6 this is now part of our lives.

7 I live in a very ordinary suburb. I never

8 dreamed that any available space would be taken up by

9 wells, well sites so close to residences. The sites

10 have been permitted and they're unavoidable in our -- in

11 our daily life here.

12 The city and state governments have not

13 provided adequate protection for human health or for the

14 environment. The exemptions are frequently granted to

15 the -- to the regulations that we do have in the former

16 state ordinance -- or local ordinances. The industry

17 has taken advantage of the lax and nonexistent

18 regulations and they've been granted the exemptions on

19 top of what paltry regulation does exist, including

20 on -- on the federal scale the Halliburton loophole,

21 which has granted the whole industry exemptions.

22 Any regulations from -- from local

23 ordinances are -- are retroactive and come at a cost at

24 our -- at our expense. We are -- we feel like guinea

25 pigs here in this -- in this area because the -- the
Page 157

1 industry has moved in and moved into suburban and urban

2 areas without -- without adequate regulation.

3 I only wish that the regulations that are

4 proposed would -- would apply to -- retroactively to

5 existing wells. As some other people have said,

6 monitors would be great, but, again, it's just proving

7 what's already there. But we -- we really do fear for

8 our health here and for the environment, not only the

9 health emissions, but the -- the methane and the

10 greenhouse gas emissions.

11 But, again, I'll be very grateful for

12 whatever this -- these regulations can provide for us --

13 for us here. And, again, I appreciate your coming to

14 Arlington and listening to our testimony. Thank you

15 very much.

16 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Miller.

17 Are there any questions for Mrs. Miller?

18 Okay. Thank you.

19 Ms. Cline?

20 MS. CLINE: Good evening. My name is

21 Michelle Cline, M-i-c-h-e-l-l-e. Cline is C-l-i-n-e.

22 I'm joined this evening by Andy and

23 Julianne Bidanado (phonetic). They're not speaking, but

24 they are part of my community. We live in the Grace

25 Meadows HOA in North Richland Hills. We're a very small
Page 158

1 homeowners' association comprised of only 30 homes. I

2 have been a past member on the board. Julie's been

3 active in the committee -- I'm sorry, on the board, as

4 well as the past secretary. And Andy is our present HOA

5 president.

6 And we're here tonight because we are --

7 live on, I believe, the single biggest site going into

8 North Richland Hills. There's 12 completed sites. And

9 on about two, maybe three acres, they are slated for 22.

10 North Richland Hills is a northeastern suburb of

11 Fort Worth. And the tip that we're in borders

12 Southlake, Colleyville, Hurst and Keller. So this is

13 clearly a very populated area. Twenty-two wells in one

14 site that's a few thousand yards from our homes.

15 Unfortunately, on Memorial Day weekend,

16 some of our no- -- neighbors noticed some unusual

17 activity, including fire trucks, folks out taking

18 samples along the creek bed in the middle of the night,

19 et cetera.

20 We e-mailed our good friends at Chesa- --

21 I'm sorry, good neighbors at Chesapeake and didn't get a

22 response. Started inquiring at the city as 24 hours

23 approached about what was going on. I actually ended up

24 calling the EPA, got in touch with Steve Mason at Region

25 6. He got ahold of the folks at the Railroad
Page 159

1 Commission. They did come out and apparently there had

2 been a spill. The site was in violation of statewide

3 Rule 8.

4 Long story short, I had to fight to get

5 some of the testing. And if anybody would like to see

6 this, I'm happy to e-mail it to Steve or anyone at

7 the -- the EPA. I do have scans of those. I don't have

8 them with me tonight.

9 The water that was tested 16 hours after

10 the fire department showed up did test positive for

11 carbon chains that are indicative of diesel. And -- and

12 by the way, my background -- I work in pathology. And

13 the folks that are with me tonight are both pharmacists.

14 So we know a little bit about chemistry and the effects

15 of these things on folks' bodies.

16 So we have some significant concerns about

17 that because the Railroad Commission -- I received a

18 letter last month that basically said it's all cleaned

19 up. I haven't seen any of this data, but they said it's

20 all cleaned up, the violation is over, et cetera. So

21 I'm in a position where I don't feel that our local

22 authorities can or will take care of us, so I'm looking

23 to you folks at the EPA to help us out.

24 But I know that we're not here today to

25 talk about water. We're here today to talk about the
Page 160

1 air. Now, obviously since this happened Memorial Day

2 weekend, the 22 wells going in behind us have been

3 pretty high on my radar.

4 I don't know how clear this picture is.

5 Oh. Do you mind? Thank you. First, I shouldn't have

6 got -- shouldn't have got it done in glossy, but I'll

7 remember that the next time.

8 You can see some smoke coming out over

9 the -- some trees there. Our neighborhood's right in

10 front of that. And I noticed that one day when I was

11 talking my little girl out for a walk in the stroller

12 and I heard all the noise and I looked and there was

13 black smoke pouring. And this went on for about three

14 weeks in July, daily, Monday through Friday, from --

15 between 7:00 and 8:00 till about 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. And

16 I have a hard time believing that this kind of activity

17 going on on these sites isn't a major contributor to the

18 issues that we have here in Dallas/Fort Worth.

19 And if you can't see the smoke in the

20 picture, I'm sure -- especially those of you coming from

21 other areas and aren't used to seeing how bad the

22 pollution is here notice it just driving around or

23 landing in Dallas every day.

24 One thing I would like to ask is for these

25 federal air quality standards to not only apply to new
Page 161

1 sources, but to grandfather in old sources. As someone

2 else pointed out, these rules are going to be worthless

3 where an area is already saturated and with 22 within a

4 few hundred -- or, I'm sorry, a few thousand yards of

5 where I raise my daughter, those rules would be

6 completely worthless for us.

7 I'm very concerned about the benzene.

8 Someone spoke to that earlier. Despite what the

9 industry wants to say, working in pathology, we know for

10 a fact that benzene causes lymphoma and leukemia. I've

11 actually had somebody from the industry tell me that I

12 shouldn't worry about benzene because it's a colorless

13 and odorless gas.

14 We also know that Texas has some of the

15 highest breast cancer rates in the United States, and

16 those rates aren't going down. I don't have any proof

17 that they're related to the oil and gas industry, but

18 even in some of the oil and gas industry's own studies,

19 women, even in administrative positions, seem to have

20 higher rates of breast cancer than the rest of the

21 general population. So I think that these are things

22 that we need to look at. And considering some of the

23 things going on with hydraulic fracturing, this is not

24 the drilling of the '70s. We really need to look into

25 this.
Page 162

1 And just so you know where I'm coming

2 from, I think that there's a -- a tendency to think that

3 the folks that come and speak out against it fit a

4 concern stereotype.

5 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You can say it.

6 MS. CLINE: I'm a Republican. I'm a

7 conservative. My daddy worked on the oil fields as a

8 roughneck in the '70s, and I have family that works in

9 the gas industry at present.

10 My time's up?

11 MR. THOMPSON: Your time's up.

12 MS. CLINE: Thank you.

13 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

14 Before you go, the pho- -- I want to ask

15 you a question about the photo.

16 MS. CLINE: Yes.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Was that from your

18 backyard? Your community?

19 MS. CLINE: That photo is taken on Kirk

20 Lane. If you enter the community from Precinct Line,

21 you can follow Kirk Lane. Our HOA is to the right.

22 This is a road that curves around past the farm behind

23 us where these wells are actually in at and around a

24 curve. So you're looking -- our houses would be right

25 in front of this tree line.
Page 163

1 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. Thanks.

2 Are there any questions from the panel?

3 And, Mrs. Miller, you're hiding behind the poster. Do

4 we have any questions for her as well?

5 Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you both

6 for your testimony.

7 MS. CLINE: Thank you-all for your time

8 tonight. We appreciate you coming out to Texas.

9 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

10 I'd like to ask Nina Ashley and Kerrie

11 Kimberling to come forward.

12 Good evening, ladies.

13 MS. ASHLEY: Good evening.

14 MR. THOMPSON: I'd like to start with you,

15 Mrs. Ashley. Spell your name for the record and then

16 you can begin your testimony.

17 MS. ASHLEY: My name is Nina Ashley.

18 That's N-i-a (sic) and then Ashley is A-s-h-l-e-y.

19 I just come to ask people to have a little

20 common sense. If our air is polluted, if our water is

21 polluted, birds are going to fall out of the air, fish

22 are going to die, the animals are going to die, all our

23 food is polluted; therefore, everything is polluted.

24 This is kind of silly.

25 Miners use canaries to go into mines to
Page 164

1 find out if there's gas escaping. When the canary dies,

2 the people -- the miners know to get out. We don't need

3 more regulation and more expense. That's foolish. We

4 don't need to do that.

5 That's what I have to say. Thank you.

6 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you for your

7 testimony.

8 Are there any questions for Mrs. Ashley?

9 Okay.

10 MS. ASHLEY: Oh. I have -- excuse me. I

11 do have a couple more comments.

12 I survived breast cancer, fourth stage

13 breast cancer and cancer of the thyroid and I got those

14 from hormones that were female hormones. I didn't get

15 it from the environment. So we should ask about a lot

16 of drugs, but the environment did nothing to do with

17 that. Now I'm clear. I have no problems. I'm a sixth

18 generation Texan. Nobody that I know has been getting

19 problems from the environment here in Texas. And I know

20 a lot of people.

21 Thank you.

22 MR. THOMPSON: Again, thank you.

23 MS. KIMBERLING: My name is Kerrie

24 Kimberling. It's K-e-r-r-i-e, Kimberling,

25 K-i-m-b-e-r-l-i-n-g. I live in Richardson, Texas.
Page 165

1 I'm here to support the new gas drilling

2 regulations. I -- my land isn't being destroyed and I

3 don't have any health problems, but health problems

4 don't happen overnight. Cancer can happen over a long

5 period of time. And environmental effects are having

6 an -- an impact on us. I believe it was the Susan G.

7 Komen Foundation who recently stated that the

8 environmental impacts are having an effect on breast

9 cancer in women.

10 In Texas, polluters are rarely held

11 accountable. The Dallas/Fort Worth area continues to be

12 in violation of the Clean Air Act. I'm trying to do my

13 part, but my coasting to every stop sign doesn't seem to

14 be doing the trick. Industry has to do their fair

15 share.

16 These rules can make a difference if they

17 are enforced. We will need your help with the

18 enforcement. The TCEQ is a joke. The EPA has allowed

19 them to continue to be a joke. We need these

20 regulations, we need them enforced, and we need you to

21 act on the fact that TCEQ is not doing their job.

22 Texans need your protection.

23 Thank you for your time.

24 MR. THOMPSON: And thank you for your

25 time.
Page 166

1 Are there any questions for

2 Mrs. Kimberling?

3 Okay. Mrs. Ashley and Mrs. Kimberling,

4 thank you both for your time and your testimony. Thank

5 you.

6 I'd like to ask Penelope Bisbee and Rita

7 Beving or Beving -- Beving -- Beving, is that it? Three

8 time's a charm. Got it right on the third shot. Thank

9 you.

10 Good evening, ladies. Let's start with

11 Mrs. Bisbee. State your name for the record and --

12 MS. BISBEE: Okay.

13 MR. THOMPSON: -- then begin your

14 testimony.

15 MS. BISBEE: Okay. My name is Penelope

16 Bisbee, P-e-n-e-l-o-p-e B-i-s-b-e-e. Good -- good

17 evening, Alex, Fred, Rob and Bruce.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Good evening.

19 MS. BISBEE: Okay. I -- I'll be brief.

20 I -- I'm an artist and a concerned

21 citizen. I'm concerned about the current boom in oil

22 and gas drilling, especially in this region in this

23 state of Texas. No doubt Texas is open for business,

24 oil and gas business closed for taking care of public

25 health.
Page 167

1 Two -- two quick points. One, The

2 Railroad Commission has 12 -- yes, 12 inspectors for

3 potentially 17,000 wells. Well, they'll have everything

4 inspected by 2050, 2100.

5 Number two, EPA, Alex, Fred, Rob and

6 Bruce, stay strong. Ensure that all reasonable measures

7 are taken to control harmful emissions. Our health

8 depends on it.

9 Lastly, thank you, EPA. In my book, you

10 guys are rock stars.

11 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you for your

12 testimony, Mrs. Bisbee.

13 Any questions for Mrs. Bisbee? Guys? No?

14 Okay.

15 MS. BEVING: My -- my name is Rita Beving.

16 I reside at 13214 Glad Acres Drive in Farmers Branch,

17 Texas. I am on the regional clean air steering

18 committee for Dallas/Fort Worth, and I'm also here

19 representing -- and I am the public citizen Sierra Club

20 representative on that committee.

21 Before I get in my comments on air, I want

22 to implore the EPA to do something else for me since I

23 have you in front of me. Last night the state -- well,

24 yesterday the state department had hearings on tar

25 sands. I implore the Agency to intervene on this
Page 168

1 national interest determination because Entrix did the

2 study on the FEIS and the EIS and the SEIS for tar

3 sands. They used outdated EPA material and references.

4 Now we are facing the dirtiest fossil fuel

5 on the planet, tar sands, that puts water at risk for

6 60 -- for almost 10 to 12 million people in 60 counties

7 in East Texas with the tar sands pipeline coming

8 through. Just like today that we're asking you to hold

9 frackers accountable, we cannot have Canada put us at

10 risk for refining oil to go to China. So with that, I'm

11 going to go into my fracking comments.

12 Like I said, I'm on the regional clean air

13 steering committee. That's 19 or -- 19 to 21 officials

14 from the area serve on that committee.

15 For those who want to claim nothing is

16 wrong in this region, I suggest they go to the Cooke's

17 medical study and find out that asthma is 25 percent

18 higher than the national average. There's another

19 medical study, I believe it's by one of the Methodist

20 Hospitals in the region, that also point out we have an

21 elevated level of sick children and sick people. It is

22 documented. So with that, I say frackers shouldn't be

23 exempt from the Clear Air Act.

24 I'm just going to mention that at a

25 Railroad Commission -- with the Railroad Commissioner
Page 169

1 testifying before the Natural Resources Committee this

2 year in Fort Worth, this is how many inspectors the

3 Railroad Commission has for all of these wells in the

4 North Texas area, 12. Twelve inspectors for 17,000

5 wells. That's unacceptable. So that is why we need the

6 EPA to intervene with rules.

7 Colorado and Wyoming already use these

8 reg- -- types of regulations of green com- --

9 completions wherever it's possible. There is no reason

10 we can't do that everywhere.

11 Now, of course, the standard industry line

12 is delay and deny. It doesn't matter whether you're a

13 coal plant or cement kiln. After 15 years of doing

14 this, I see it all the time, hoping a new administration

15 will be elected and make sure that no rules and no

16 enforcement go forward threatening to shut down the EPA.

17 I've seen it for over a decade.

18 The industry can do this because the

19 technology exists. Methane, benzene, formaldehyde, it's

20 very detrimental to public health. We have to clean

21 this up. It's not just about CO2 and VOCs and NOCs. We

22 have to clean up the industry.

23 So on behalf of public citizens and those

24 in the Dallas/Fort Worth area that don't like seeing

25 their garden hoses catching fire and their water
Page 170

1 catching on fire, I urge you to adopt these rules.

2 Thank you.

3 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mrs. Beving.

4 Are there any questions for Mrs. Beving?

5 Mrs. Beving, could you spell your last

6 name for the court reporter?

7 MS. BEVING: It's B as in boy, e as in

8 Edward, v as in Victor, i-n, g as in girl. Thank you

9 both.

10 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you both.

11 Would Mary Owen and Faith Chatham please

12 come forward? Thank you.

13 Good evening, ladies. Yes, Mrs. Owen.

14 MS. OWEN: Okay. I -- I wanted to --

15 about three weeks ago --

16 MR. THOMPSON: Mrs. Owen, could you start

17 by giving us your name for the court record?

18 MS. OWEN: Mary Owen. That's M-a-r-y

19 O-w-e-n.

20 Three weeks ago, I was sitting there and

21 it was one of those really super hot nights when the

22 wind was blowing and it was just -- there was a lot of

23 other dirt in the air. But I was smelling this gas and

24 it was so -- like natural gas, but was super nasty and

25 dirty. Well, I didn't panic and didn't call 9-1-1.
Page 171

1 So the next day, I called the EPA. They

2 said that if I smell that again, I should call 9-1-1.

3 We have those big blow-off stations right down on

4 Truman. I live on East and Truman and Davis and North

5 Street.

6 So the next day I did. And when I smelled

7 it again, it was so strong it would have knocked you

8 out. So I called 9-1-1.

9 They came out and they did their little

10 search around, even at the blow-off part. There was no

11 problem. But what I did find out is that the -- it's

12 not the transfer station. It's what they -- that lady

13 was talking about a while ago where they -- where they

14 filter the gas through stuff and it has a pop-off valve.

15 Well, it popped off. When it popped off, it was awful

16 and it was so strong it -- it -- it was scary. And it

17 killed one of my trees. It was one I had watered and

18 I'd been watering very well.

19 So the guy -- the next day when Atmos

20 Energy came out and they did their little thing all the

21 way around and he went down to that place. He said,

22 Okay. It's not dangerous to breathe. Okay? Well, it

23 does not say that it isn't dangerous to plants because

24 it killed one of my trees. And it wasn't from the heat

25 because I'd been watering well.
Page 172

1 I want to know why that wasn't filtered

2 better. And I want to know -- okay. From what I've

3 been hearing, they're selling water from Arlington's

4 water to the gas places so they can clean whatever it is

5 they clean. And it's never reclaimed. That's bad. We

6 need the water, especially right now when we're in such

7 a drought. We do not need to be spending that water,

8 our natural water that we can drink to use for that

9 purpose. That is bad.

10 And I went by the -- the retention pond,

11 which is right around the corner from me. Okay. It's

12 not -- it does -- I don't know how deep they are, but

13 they're big. And if you -- they're cutting down Olympic

14 swimming pools for kids to swim in now because of the

15 lack of water. Okay?

16 And another question is what can be

17 reclaimed -- how can that be reclaimed even if they put

18 up those little filter things? And I've see them up and

19 down the road. Is that good enough? You know, it blows

20 in the air and it's just not good. It's really bad.

21 And what can we do?

22 That's why I try to keep plants. And

23 we're going to have re- -- I want us to think about

24 replanting that -- the plant that they're talk- -- that

25 I'm talking about that's there at Truman and North
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1 Street where they haven't drilled yet, but they've got

2 the ponds. They need to replant more, more, more trees.

3 And all plants that they had put out, most of them have

4 dried. And we need to plant more trees, more plants

5 because all the heat has killed so many plants this

6 year.

7 Now, that's not because of any gas well.

8 That's a natural thing that's occurred. But that just

9 goes to show that we need to replant, replant. Have

10 anybody that has a -- a cyclone fence, a wire fence,

11 have vines growing on it. That helps our air. Any

12 grass that's growing helps our air. Any Johnson grass,

13 even. We shouldn't even cut down Johnson grass because

14 it cleans our air. Okay? Anything -- and we need to go

15 with drought-resistant plants because even the cactuses

16 and essentially plants, they clean our air.

17 I'm an analyst. I analyze every plant,

18 every tree. There's nothing in our air that I don't

19 analyze. And my nose is really sensitive.

20 MR. THOMPSON: Mrs. Owens, I'm sorry.

21 Your time has expired.

22 MS. OWEN: My time is up? Well, thank

23 you. I hope you -- I hope you --

24 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Before you --

25 MS. OWEN: I hope I made my point.
Page 174

1 MR. THOMPSON: Before you move the

2 microphone, though, we want to ask for any questions.

3 Okay.

4 MS. OWEN: Thank you.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

6 MS. CHATHAM: I'm Faith Chatham, F-a-i-t-h

7 C-h-a-t-h-a-m. I'm a ninth generation resident of

8 Texas. And I grew up in the oil fields of East Texas.

9 I am one of the cofounders of DFW Regional

10 Concerned Citizens. We consider ourselves an

11 independent think tank because we do not accept money

12 from industry or governmental entities. However, in

13 full disclosure, I will say that all of us are graduates

14 or have been trained at the UT Urban Institute. We have

15 multiple degrees from UTA, but we're not on staff at

16 UTA. And in full disclosure, all of us own at least one

17 parcel of land in Texas which is leased for oil and gas

18 production.

19 That being said, in this multi-year

20 journey of examining natural gas production and policy

21 from many different directions and examining research

22 studies coming from all kinds of sources, I'd like to

23 share our conclusions. Now, mind you, DFW Regional

24 Concerned Citizens concentrates on public policy in the

25 North Central Texas Council of Government region. This
Page 175

1 is 16 counties, all of which are in the Barnett Shale.

2 So I'm speaking from the very local perspective and also

3 from a regional perspective.

4 In this endeavor of deciding how to

5 produce and regulate or not regulate natural gas, there

6 is more than merely the billions of dollars of industry

7 investment in energy sector profits on the table. How

8 we develop natural gas as a bridge fund does impact our

9 national fence, but failing to develop and implement

10 green completion and industry best practices nationwide

11 will deter the implement- -- or deterring the

12 implementation of these proposed air standards will

13 result in lost profit for investors, the industry and

14 will result in higher health care expenditures and time

15 lost from school, work and community service by

16 citizens.

17 The economic impact of not implementing

18 these rules as fast as possible and of refusing to allow

19 grandfathering will be much more costly than we can

20 afford. We believe that adoption and implementation of

21 these rules are an important step in sensibly developing

22 natural gas as a bridge fuel for current consumption,

23 but current economic gains must be balanced with

24 long-term economic sustainability. And these air

25 standards are one step in protecting our environment.
Page 176

1 And without air, water, plants and human beings, we have

2 no economic growth and it's a loss-loss.

3 While there is some short-term economic

4 benefit from lax air standards, delay of adoption of

5 these standards will have dire long-term consequences

6 both economically and environmentally. These proposed

7 standards are all based on implementation of practices

8 that are used in other states and have been proven by

9 the industry to work and are cost-productive.

10 We have seen some improvement in the air

11 quality at North Central Texas Council of Regions in the

12 past eight years. Most of this came from changes in the

13 automobile standards and also from taking bad cars off

14 the road and from closing down a horrible cement kiln.

15 In the past few years, the air quality has steadily

16 gotten worse. And in the past few years, there's been

17 more and more wells come online.

18 You can look at the Dallas/Fort Worth

19 area, and the counties that had gas wells first had bad

20 air quality first. Dallas County, although it continues

21 to have more population and more automobiles, has better

22 air than Tarrant.

23 At this time there is a very alarming

24 increase in breast cancer in six counties in Texas.

25 They are all in the Barnett Shale. This is dangerous.
Page 177

1 The National Center For the Prevention of Disease

2 Control has identified Tarrant, Denton, Parker, Wise,

3 Hood and Johnson as being those counties with the

4 highest incidences of breast cancer.

5 We realize that although natural gas is

6 considered a environmental issue, it's really a child

7 endangerment issue. It's an old person endangerment

8 issue. It's a family endangerment issue. And the rules

9 that you implement and when you implement them and how

10 you implement them and how you demand that they are

11 complied with from the bottom to the top will determine

12 this. There is no will from the bottom to do it. It

13 must be done from the top.

14 With an alarming incidence of increases of

15 501(c)(3) nonprofit --

16 MR. THOMPSON: Ms. Chatham --

17 MS. CHATHAM: -- organizations --

18 MR. THOMPSON: -- I'm sorry. Your time

19 has expired.

20 MS. CHATHAM: Okay. Thank you.

21 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Are there any

22 questions for either Mrs. Owen or Mrs. Chatham?

23 Thank you both very much for your

24 testimony. Thank you.

25 I'd like to ask Ronnie Stapleton and Frank
Page 178

1 Kuchar to come forward.

2 Good evening, gentlemen. If we could

3 start with Mr. Stapleton, please.

4 MR. STAPLETON: My name is Ronnie

5 Stapleton, R-o-n-n-i-e S-t-a-p-l-e-t-o-n. I'm a

6 resident of Fort Worth.

7 I've got a pretty short-and-sweet thing to

8 say here. The Texas Railroad Commission has state

9 regulatory authority over a very productive and safe oil

10 and gas industry in Texas. The industry has in- -- was

11 invented in Texas, and we know how to regulate it here.

12 The Texas Water Quality Board has regulatory authority

13 over Texas's groundwater and has done a stellar job of

14 protecting our water resources. The Texas Commission on

15 Environmental Quality protects Texas's air quality and

16 has state regulatory authority. We do not need federal

17 regulations. EPA, we don't need you.

18 Thank you very much.

19 MR. THOMPSON: And thank you for your

20 testimony.

21 Are there any questions for Mr. Stapleton?

22 Okay. All right. Mr. Kuchar? I'm sorry?

23 MR. STAPLETON: Somebody had a

24 question over here.

25 MR. THOMPSON: No. Questions from this
Page 179

1 panel.

2 MR. STAPLETON: Oh, okay. I'm sorry.

3 MR. THOMPSON: That's quite all right.

4 If you could share the mic. Thank you

5 very much.

6 MR. KUCHAR: Evening, gentlemen.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Good evening.

8 MR. KUCHAR: My name is Frank Kuchar,

9 K-u-c-h-a-r.

10 I have a question. Most of the testimony

11 here tonight, since I got here late from work, has been

12 about fracking and air quality, but are other issues

13 that the EPA is looking to regulate also on the table

14 for discussion?

15 MR. THOMPSON: Sir, we don't respond to

16 questions. You can give us --

17 MR. KUCHAR: All right.

18 MR. THOMPSON: -- your comments --

19 MR. KUCHAR: Okay.

20 MR. THOMPSON: -- but we don't respond to

21 questions.

22 MR. KUCHAR: My concern is the fact that a

23 couple times this past summer when things got so hot,

24 thanks to the unconstitutional intrusion put into my

25 home by the energy and part of your agency in having
Page 180

1 Smart Meters on our house, my air-conditioning and power

2 was shut down. There was nothing we could do with the

3 thermostat to turn it back on until they decided to let

4 the air-conditioning unit come back on. It didn't lose

5 all power, just the air-conditioning. The thermostat

6 wouldn't work.

7 And so because of the regulations that

8 your agency is about to implement, we're going to be

9 losing some power plants here in Texas. You -- I don't

10 know if you gentlemen live here in Texas or you're from

11 somewhere further up north, but we've had 71 days this

12 year, one out of every five, in excess of 100 degrees.

13 That's hot.

14 If we lose more power plants because of

15 the excessive regulations that you are going to be

16 imposing upon our power facilities, we're going to be in

17 a world of hurt. We talk about old people dying because

18 they can't have -- their homes get too hot or perhaps

19 they can't heat their houses. If you insist on putting

20 down some of the regulations such as what is proposed in

21 the Cross-State Air Pollution Rate imposing a 47

22 percent, I believe it is -- yeah, 47 percent in- --

23 decrease in SO2 emissions, that's going to cause our --

24 a severe strain upon our power grid. And we're already

25 in a world of hurt as it is. More people are moving to
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1 this state. More power's being required.

2 And I -- the point I just want to make is

3 really quick. I think that the notice that the EPA

4 has given the power plants here in Texas, the short

5 notice -- they were first told they would not be

6 required to be compliant. This summer they've been told

7 they will be and they have to be compliant by

8 January 2012. The short notice time is not reasonable.

9 The reduction percentage is unrealistic.

10 And the question is then -- of course, you

11 can't answer it -- is what is the basis for these

12 reductions? Who determined them and how? People from

13 within the agency who have an agenda and a bias or those

14 from an objective outside third-party?

15 The impact is going to be had upon

16 unemployment when people lose their jobs from the coal

17 mines and the power plants that are shut down. That was

18 not taken into consideration. Where's the balance

19 between life quality and -- as well as our economy?

20 The inflationary impact on struggling

21 families during the recession when energy costs go up --

22 when energy costs go up, the price of everything goes

23 up. Yes, we want to have clean air and water. We want

24 to have that. But it doesn't do you any good to have

25 clean water if you can't afford to pay for it.
Page 182

1 And, finally, your agency -- if a company

2 wants to build a new power plant, well, make them jump

3 through innumerable hoops of compliance with

4 environmental impact studies. And if one little T is

5 not crossed, one little I is not dotted, they get shut

6 down and made to wait and wait and wait while we are

7 without power.

8 And my question to the EPA is: Why is it

9 that you require industry to commit these environmental

10 impact studies, but when you come out with these

11 regulations upon regulations, you are not required to

12 conduct an economic impact studies on your regulations?

13 That's my complaint. And if I am

14 successful in my run for United States Congress to

15 represent the sixth district here in Texas, perhaps I

16 can address these issues on a higher level.

17 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you for your

18 testimony.

19 Before you go, any questions?

20 Gentlemen, thank you both for coming out

21 tonight and thank you for your testimony.

22 At this time I'd like to ask Ed Pischedda

23 to come forward.

24 Good evening.

25 MR. PISCHEDDA: Good evening. Ed
Page 183

1 Pischedda, 1104 Auburn Drive, Arlington, Texas.

2 I'd first like to thank you folks for

3 spending your time listening to the citizenry of this

4 area. This is a very important issue.

5 I support the proposed regulations. If

6 anything, they are too timid. I wish they were

7 stronger, but we'll take what we can get.

8 The air quality of this area has been on a

9 downward slide, at least in Tarrant County, since the

10 advent of drilling in the Barnett Shale. It's been

11 getting better in Dallas. It's not in Tarrant County,

12 and I think there's a reason for that. It's the

13 increased drilling activity. And we need to see some

14 regulations put in place that will reverse that trend.

15 And I think these are a good first step in getting that

16 started.

17 I'm not clear on whether these regulations

18 will have much of an impact on wells and gas facilities

19 that are already in place and if these will just impact

20 future equipment, but so be it. I wish we could get

21 regulations that would impact all wells and equipment

22 that have been put -- put in place since the drilling

23 started, but we'll take what we can get at this point.

24 Something needs to be done.

25 That's it. Thank you.
Page 184

1 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Pischedda.

2 Are there any questions for Mr. Pischedda?

3 Mr. Pischedda, I've been asked to have you

4 spell your last name, please, for our court reporter.

5 MR. PISCHEDDA: Yes. P as in pickle,

6 i-s-c-h-e, dog, dog, a.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you very much. And

8 thank you for your testimony.

9 Well, as I understand it, Mr. Pischedda

10 was our last one to testify tonight. I want to thank

11 everyone for coming out. And this will conclude the

12 public hearing on the Oil and Natural Gas Sector: The

13 New Source Performance Standards and National Emission

14 Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants and Review here

15 in Arlington, Texas, on this day Thursday,

16 September 29th, 2011.

17 Thank you very much.

18 (Whereupon, at 8:22 p.m., the proceedings

19 were adjourned)

20

21

22

23

24

25
Page 185

1 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE

2 I, Christi Sanford, CSR No. 6720, State of Texas,

3 do hereby certify:

4 That the foregoing proceedings is a correct

5 transcription from the proceedings in the above-entitled

6 matter.

7 That the foregoing is a true and correct

8 transcript of my shorthand notes so taken.

9 I further certify that I am neither counsel

10 for, related to, nor employed by any of the parties to

11 the action in which this proceeding was taken, and

12 further that I am not financially or otherwise

13 interested in the outcome of the action.

14 DATED this 11th day of October, 2011.

15

16

17

18 ____________________________________

 Christi Sanford, Texas CSR 6720

19 Certificate Expires: 12/31/11

 Firm Registration No. 32

20 ABI Expiration Date: 12/31/11

21 Atkinson-Baker Court Reporters

 500 North Brand Boulevard, Third Floor

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