Open letter to Denton City Council

Any letter or email sent to the Denton City Council is subject to Public Information Requests so please excuse the redundancy in my title.

Below is a letter I sent to the Denton City Council today regarding the DME “Renewable Denton” proposal.

Dear Councilmen and Councilwomen,

The DME “Renewable Denton” proposal lacks transparency, and leaves too many questions unanswered.

Consequently, on behalf of Earthworks’ constituents in Denton, I request  the following:

ONE: When calculating the emissions for the proposed natural gas power plants, please make the total as accurate as possible by including all emission sources — including those from natural gas extraction, production, mobile sources, processing, compression and delivery.

TWO: Please conduct air modeling on the entire lifecycle of those emissions. We have experts on this subject right here in Denton:  Dr. John and Madhi Ahmadi at the University of North Texas’s, College of Engineering.

THREE: Please accurately assess the economics of the “Renewable Denton” proposal by including the costs of all the impacts from decades of natural gas extraction to feed these plants. The impacts include but are not necessarily limited to:

• Natural gas production, processing and compression,
• Property taxes lost from land that is lost to residential development,
• Damage to infrastructure,
• Water needed for drilling and fracking and to operate the plants,
• Health care costs as a result of the increased air pollution,
• Additional costs to the city for first responder training and equipment.

FOUR: Please form a citizen task force to analyze the DME proposal. Denton is full of smart, engaged people, as you know firsthand from the broad coalition that successfully banned fracking within city limits.

FIVE: To independently analyze the DME proposal, please have the citizen task force hire an unbiased energy consultant with a demonstrated and successful track record of helping jurisdictions lead the transition to renewable energy sources.

Sincerely,
Sharon Wilson
Earthworks’ Texas Organizer
Former Denton resident
Advisor to Frack Free Denton

P.S. Some important news!

Earth Day 2015:  “Leading scientists say 75% of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground if humanity is to avoid the worst effects of climate change.”

Today:  What Passing a Key CO2 Mark Means to Scientists.

This week is a big one for our world. Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels climbed above the 400 parts per million (ppm) at the Mauna Loa Observatory and it’s distinctly possible they won’t be back below that level again in our lifetimes.

Because CO2 sits in the atmosphere long after it’s burned, that means we’ve  likely lived our last week in a sub-400 ppm world. It also means that the reshaping of our planet will continue for decades and centuries to come, even if climate talks in Paris in two weeks are successful.

Note: Methane has spiked more rapidly in the past year than ever before. Methane reacts quicker than CO2 with our climate and is 86 x more potent than CO2 on a 20 year timeframe.

Last night:

Late last night, King County Superior Court Judge Hollis R. Hill issued a groundbreaking ruling in the unprecedented case of eight youth petitioners who requested that the Washington Department of Ecology write a carbon emissions rule that protects the atmosphere for their generation and those to come.

In a landmark decision, Judge Hill declared “[the youths’] very survival depends upon the will of their elders to act now, decisively and unequivocally, to stem the tide of global warming … before doing so becomes first too costly and then too late.”

My presentation given to residents Sunday on impacts to both health and climate. https://youtu.be/P1ms2JGfcOs

“The main barriers to getting to 100 percent clean energy are social and political, not technical or economic,”  Mark Jacobson, Stanford.

Previous posts on this issue:

• SOS from Denton Fracking Zone
• Greenwashing Denton Fracking
• What the hell Denton?
• Natural Gas Power Plant Bad Economics for Denton
• Don’t feed fracking, Denton