TX Succeeds In Gutting Its Air Quality Monitoring Team; Quick, Shallow Investigations Now The Rule

[hatrack]

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Regional investigators, often hired out of college with bachelor’s degrees, make up the infantry of the TCEQ, producing thousands of rapid on-site air quality investigations every year—the primary metric by which the agency is judged by state lawmakers. Yet from their introduction in late 2021 to Sept. 3, 2024, the new regional mobile monitoring vans contributed to just 195 of these investigations, according to agency records. “They want investigators to pump out these investigation reports,” said Sheila Serna, a former TCEQ investigator who left the agency in 2022 and now works for the City of Laredo. “But they are not looking at the quality of the work, just the quantity.”

Furthermore, agency data doesn’t support the claim that investigations with air monitoring equipment have recently increased. The number of on-site investigations of air quality by regional TCEQ offices has declined in the past decade, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of agency data. Investigators have also made less frequent use of their optical gas imaging cameras, one of the primary handheld monitoring devices used to measure and visualize gas leaks and emissions. The mobile monitoring team has completed significant projects in recent years, but it generally refrains from identifying polluting companies by name in reports. And although the monitoring team is quick to announce when it finds clean air during disaster response, it seldom publicizes the problems it finds during proactive efforts.

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During its last visit, on Oct. 12, 2022, the monitoring team measured hydrogen sulfide at 1,145 parts per billion at the fenceline of a gas plant a half mile outside Goldsmith, but it didn’t stop to take a 30-minute or one-hour average. Later that same day, on West 44th Street in Odessa, between homes and oil wells, the team measured a one-hour hydrogen sulfide average of 374 parts per billion with a maximum instant concentration of 21,400 parts per billion, both well above federal ambient air quality standards, though not an immediate threat to human health. The team returned the next day and measured a one-hour average of hydrogen sulfide at 6,616 parts per billion, with a maximum instantaneous concentration of nearly 62,000 parts per billion.

Texas law prohibits any facility from creating concentrations of hydrogen sulfide above 80 parts per billion, averaged over 30 minutes, that affect homes or businesses. Federal ambient air standards limit concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, also known as H2S, to 10,000 parts per billion in any instant or 200 parts per billion averaged over one hour. “As far as I know, TCEQ has never done anything to acknowledge either a problem with H2S in the Permian or the results of these mobile monitoring reports,” said Jack McDonald, a research assistant at Oilfield Witness and co-author of a 2022 report on hydrogen sulfide in Texas. Cann, in response, said the monitoring projects were part of larger agency processes, and that the situation required further investigation before the TCEQ could act. “Although hydrogen sulfide concentrations were detected above regulatory limits by mobile monitoring vehicles, a specific source was not identified,” Cann said.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06102024/texas-diminished-air-pollution-monitoring-team/

[Old Crank]

1. No surprise there

Just white washed reports.