CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Landowners, citizen groups and environmentalists are concerned about legislation now before the House of Delegates that would allow drilling companies to keep secret the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Outreach coordinator Chuck Wyrostok, West Virginia Sierra Club, said the industry, led by the huge oilfield service company, Halliburton Corp., has convinced lawmakers in several states to treat the chemical formulas as trade secrets.

The drilling service company wants to do the same thing is West Virginia, Wyrostok warned. That is acting with contempt for the people living around Marcellus natural gas drilling, he said.

"It's pretty ludicrous to say, 'We're gonna pump secret chemicals into the ground, and we're gonna transport them through your towns, past your schools. And I'm sorry, you just can't know what they are,'" Wyrostok said.

Senate Bill 243 inserts what Wyrostok and others call the "Halliburton dirty-secrets amendment" into a bundle of rules proposed by the Department of Environmental Protection. It has passed the Senate and is now before the House Judiciary Committee.

Drillers use hundreds of chemicals to help break up the rock deep underground and get the gas out. Halliburton spokesmen have said the company wants to keep competitors from learning its formulas. But critics say it is more likely they don't want landowners and residents to know.

There are practical reasons for not treating the fracking formulas like CIA secrets, Wyrostok pointed out.

"Say a truck going through a town in West Virginia crashes or ruptures, and no one knows what the chemicals are. How do the first responders react to that? They don't know what's in that truck."

Landowners have a hard time testing their well water for contaminates if they don't know what they're looking for, he said, noting that doctors would have to ask the companies what chemicals might be making their patients sick. No one knows how long the company might take to respond, Wyrostok said, or even if it would. Plus, if the doctors find out what the chemicals are, the new rule would forbid them from telling anyone, he added.

"Basically, it's a gag order," he said. "I don't think the medical community is gonna go along with that. Doctors in Pennsylvania are suing the state over it."

Information about the status of SB 243 is available at http://www.legis.state.wv.us.




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Wisconsin has a new Office of Environmental Justice, which is tasked with centering equity and fairness as the state proceeds with a new clean-energy strategy.

The Environmental Protection Agency reports the heaviest impacts of climate change typically fall on underserved communities who are "least able to prepare for and recover from heat waves, poor air quality, flooding and other impacts," a disparity the new office will be tasked with addressing.

Gov. Tony Evers said at a news conference Friday the office will work across state agencies to ensure an equitable response to climate change.

"The cost of doing nothing is far too high," Evers asserted. "We can't ignore the reality facing communities across our state any longer."

A report by the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts found extreme storms and flooding are among the most common cases of extreme weather in Wisconsin. Frequent and extreme flooding can contaminate drinking water and lead to outbreaks of waterborne illnesses.

According to the governor's office, the state's new Clean Energy Plan could create more than 40,000 new jobs in the state by 2030.

Pamela Ritger de la Rosa, Milwaukee program director and staff attorney for Clean Wisconsin, said it is important those jobs are also available to workers from disadvantaged and low-income communities, a goal she said the new Office of Environmental Justice will help achieve.

"Investing in these changes could really help to solve the economic crises that many individuals in our underserved communities are living with every day," Ritger de la Rosa contended. "Because these are jobs that can't be outsourced and that can't be automated."

Evers previously proposed the Office of Environmental Justice in his 2021-2023 state budget, but the proposal was stripped out by Republicans in the Legislature. This time around, the governor bypassed the Legislature by using an executive order to establish the office. According to the governor, the office will be led by a yet-to-be-named director of environmental justice and a chief resilience officer.

The latest American Cancer Society research estimates more than 139,000 Texans will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in 2022. One of the "hot spots" for industrial air pollution is the Port Arthur area, where residents are voicing their health concerns.

Southeast Texas is home to three large oil refineries and other industrial facilities. These businesses are touted as the sources of living-wage jobs.

John Beard Jr., founder and CEO of the Port Arthur Community Action Network (PACAN), said the pollution they emit can be fatal to the residents of the mostly Black community. He calls it a "sacrifice zone."

"We challenge any and all expansions of the industry -- whether it be by pipeline or new petrochemical facilities, or LNG facilities -- we challenge their air permits," Beard explained. "We also challenge them, with regard to their federal permitting on the environmental level and on the environmental justice level, as well as the community impact."

PACAN filed a complaint last August with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency against the Oxbow Carbon plant, which releases as much as 22 million pounds of sulfur dioxide into Jefferson County air. The complaint has not yet been resolved.

A recent ProPublica analysis lists Port Arthur as one of more than 1,000 hot spots in the nation for cancer-causing industrial pollution.

The ProPublica research found pollution levels of each individual facility might be "acceptable," but the combined output of multiple facilities increases cancer risk.

Beard wants the county and state to stop downplaying those risks.

"We were declared a 'cancer cluster' in 2010 by the U.S. EPA," Beard pointed out. "Basically, Port Arthur then was declared a showcase environmental city. Being given this title, we were also told that Port Arthur had more than twice the state and national average of cancer, heart, lung and kidney diseases."

The cancer mortality rate for Black residents of Jefferson County is about 40% higher than for Texans overall, according to the Environmental Integrity Project.

A group of small-town activists who challenged a power company over its plans to use fossil-fuel generators to expand capacity got a win this week. The Arizona Corporation Commission voted 4-1 Tuesday to reject the Salt River Project's plan to add 16 gas-turbine generators to the Coolidge Generating Station in Pinal County.

Residents of the historically Black community of Randolph told regulators that an existing gas power plant near their town already causes dangerously high air-pollution levels, and that adding more gas turbines could only make things worse.

Sandy Bahr, director of the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the coalition of residents and environmental groups swayed the normally utility-friendly panel.

"They heard that it was a significant environmental injustice," she said. "They saw that SRP had not looked at cleaner, cheaper alternatives to this gas plant, and they voted to deny it."

Randolph was formed after World War II to house Black and Native American cotton workers away from the cities. SRP issued a statement saying it would continue to "evaluate what generation and market options" were available to them to meet Arizona's growing need for electricity.

Bahr said it made no sense to put more gas generators onto the grid with the cost of renewable energy steadily dropping.

"No one should be building big gas plants," she said. "We should not be putting more carbon into the atmosphere, more methane into the atmosphere. We need to turn this around."

Bahr said she hopes the ruling will get the attention of other energy producers.

"It's a pretty strong message," she said. "We need to stop burning coal. We need to stop burning gas. We need to move as rapidly as possible to solar and wind, and energy efficiency."


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