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By Hanna Mitchel
There’s a sign in my neighborhood that I pass with my son on my shoulders, on a morning run, or while I catch up with my mom on the phone. It’s small and yellow, bearing a message I’ve seen so many times it’s practically part of the scenery: Warning Natural Gas Transmission Pipeline. When we first bought the house on the east side of Austin, the message made my chest tighten with anxiety. What if the pipe burst? But among all of the other worries of first-time homeownership, I swatted this concern away. Besides, I reasoned, who doesn’t have a pipeline near their house? As the largest oil and gas producing state in the country, gas pipelines, flares, and oil derricks may be a ubiquitous part of our Texas landscape but they are also leaking harmful, often invisible pollution. The good news is that we have a chance to change that.
Oil and gas pollution is dangerous, invisible, and present at every step of the oil and gas supply chain. The main component of this pollution is methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is over 80 times more powerful at warming the climate than carbon dioxide. In other words, methane gas makes climate change worse at a faster rate. The good news is that it remains in our atmosphere for a much shorter period of time and is a pollution easily reduced from oil and gas operations, if industry takes common-sense (and cost-effective) steps to do so.
Oil & gas also causes a much more immediate problem. In addition to methane, industry pollution also contains dangerous health-hazardous toxics like benzene, a known carcinogen, and smog-causing VOCs that can worsen respiratory illnesses like asthma.
Given all of this, why isn’t the oil and gas industry doing more? Well, there’s a catch: because most of this pollution is odorless and colorless, it’s impossible to know when we are exposed to it and very easy for companies to hide. A study published in Nature this year, notes that methane pollution is about three times higher than what companies are reporting and concentrated in areas with high levels of oil and gas production, like the Texas Permian. This pollution is resulting in an estimated $1B of lost product and nine times that amount in costs to the public. Fortunately, satellite and optical gas imaging is beginning to make this pollution harder to hide.
Responding to increased pressure to reign in these phantom vapors, Congress and the EPA respectively passed legislation and rules to track and reduce methane pollution. Over the next year and a half, it will be up to states to develop their State Implementation Plans to meet the new standard.
In Texas, this job of enacting rules to cut methane falls on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), a notoriously weak regulatory body made up of a three-member board that is appointed by the Governor. The TCEQ, flies under the radar of many Texas constituents and has a history of acting as a revolving door for well-paid lobbyists in the oil and gas industry. While the majority of Texans support methane regulation, the regulatory bodies tasked with protecting the 5.3 million people who live near oil and gas sites enjoy relative anonymity among the public and a cozy relationship with the very industries they are meant to regulate.
That is why it’s so important that we show up this November with our voices. The TCEQ is holding a series of public hearings on the methane rule. As Texans, it’s our job to submit comments on issues that affect our land, air, and water. As for the TCEQ, it’s their job to take input from Texans into their plan development – and if they fail to do their jobs- it’s the EPA’s duty to enact the minimum Federal standards for methane regulation.
For now, the nearby gas transmission pipeline haunts me like my concerns for wildfires and 50-year floods: once improbable it is increasingly likely to affect my family. Many families do not have this privilege of awaiting potential future impacts. Many are already forced to breathe air polluted with invisible yet toxic chemicals. Over 17.3 million people in the United States, reside within a half-mile health threat of active oil and gas production operations. Nearly 3.2 million children in the US attend schools this close to sources of harmful industry pollution. The statistics are particularly alarming for Black and Latino children who are seven and two times more likely respectively to die from asthma attacks as white children, in part because of systemic exposure to toxic air from the oil and gas industry.
While my son delights in identifying the fantasmas, calabasas, and other Halloween and Dia de los Muertos decorations festooning our neighborhood, I owe it to him to root out the truly scary things lurking here, the potentially dangerous oil & gas infrastructure all around us. All of our communities deserve clean air, and clean water, and strong methane regulations are part of making this a reality.