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TCEQ admits their testing cannot determine long-term risks.

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Grab your best comprehension skills, your bullshit detector and your asbestos underpants then read the Denton Record Chronicle article, Air test reveals traces of EDB: Residents want answers after banned pesticide detected near gas wells. All the supporting documents, including the taped confession, will be posted on the ABCAlliance website sometime Sunday.  UPDATE: For all supporting documentation see: Alphabet Soup: What ABCA gave the EPA and the DRC about EDB and the TCEQ

Cliff notes version:

  • GulfTex representative admits before the Bartonville Town Council to using biocide on the EPA banned docket in their fracking formula.
  • GulfTex is granted a permit and they proceed with well completion.
  • EDB detected six times in air samples near GulfTex wells in Bartonville and later downstream at Williams’ Argyle Central facility. Four times it was over TCEQ’s safe level for long-term exposure.
  • TCEQ says the EDB is from historical soil contamination so there is nothing they can do about it.
  • ABCAlliance members remember they have baseline air, water and soil testing from several different locations so they dig those up.
  • Baseline testing shows no EDB contamination.
  • When DRC reporter calls TCEQ for their statement prior to publishing story they backpedal.
  •  TCEQ admits their test results might not be accurate, SIX TIMES.

It’s not news to learn that TCEQ air testing is not really accurate, we have long suspected that something was amiss. Given that TCEQ admits their science is deficient, how do we know what’s in the emissions coming from these facilities? If the air testing is not accurate, how can industry say their operations are safe?

Is TCEQ’s Clawson saying that we cannot know for sure what we are breathing LONG-TERM because their science is not good enough? I live here long-term so it’s those numbers that most concern me. The EDB was over the long-term limits.

Or, is TCEQ trying to preempt a scandal?

 

About Sharon Wilson

Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.

Comments

  2. Tim Ruggiero says

    The TCEQ isn’t admitting they made a mistake, they are admitting the TCEQ is a failure. This is also the explanation-and coming from the TCEQ itself-that all prior testing is now in question. And Mark Vickery and Tony Walker wonder why the public believe that the TCEQ is “in bed with Industry”.

  3. FrackingCrazy says

    In this area 2 people have died of rare brain cancers, 1 is a 40 something year old mother. One person died of a rare kidney cancer. In the last year.

    Gulftex is made up of 3 people. 3 very shady people.

    I’ve been saying from the beginning, what we don’t know can kill us.

  5. Kim Feil says

    On TCEQ’s handheld VOC analyzer…depending on which investigator you talk to or what color underpants you put on that day…. their VOC parts per million detection starts at either 2ppm or 5ppm. Now understand that the TCEQ long term (ESL) Effect Screening Level for Benzene is 1.41 ppb…. so that if their handheld doesn’t start to detect in parts per billion between 200 or 500 ppb….they WILL and have been missing important readings …but then again you can’t find what you don’t want to look for. They don’t get the suma canister out for more sensitive readings if they are doing a routine drive by or unless they smell soemthing. They have told me they do use the suma for investigating complaints…yeah up to 12 hours later. Call TCEQ 12 hours before you think there will be an emission event or when you see them ramping up activity? At the very least you get your own baseline readings if they do not find anything. That is if you trust the readings. Don’t forget to ask for the multiple, cummulative ESL’s for living in the gaspatch. PS there is no safe exposure level for Benzene.

  6. Kim Feil says

    Yesterday my husband and I smelled a pesticide odor and we were downwind from a drilling site on the other side of the road at Collins and Pioneer in Arlington. They also were fracking at 360 and Pioneer yesterday and I saw that poor worker walking on top those frack tanks in the midst of the mist…no respirator!!!