February 7th, 2012 Dear Chairwoman Finkelman and Gas Drilling Task Force Members, We want to thank you

for your considerable investment of time and effort in tackling the job of re-writing the Dallas gas-drilling ordinance. From our perspective youve gotten many things right in living up to your charge and Mayor Rawlings vow never to put any neighborhood at risk because of money. But we also know that the chronicling of hazards associated with fracking of natural gas is a moving target and new information can make rules that have not even been codified yet obsolete overnight. Our groups represent those Dallas neighborhoods and residents that are responsible for the creation of this task force. We represent those neighborhoods eyes and ears and voice in the task force proceedings. Were disappointed the task force has chose not to review even one of our recommendations that we submitted in good faith to you. We believe those recommendations deserve at least as much consideration as the failed policies of a municipality like Fort Worth, whose examples have been relied on too often of late. The task force should be thinking of new, fresh, innovative ways to stay ahead of the fracking hazards curve, not cut and paste policies that are already in need of revision. Were writing you now because weve identified a handful of core issues that we feel have not been adequately addressed by the task force, if theyve been addressed at all. Were respectfully requesting that you use the remaining meetings on February 21st and 28thth to at least consider these issues, and the need for more protection of Dallas neighborhoods. 1. A truly protective setback distance, uniformly applied to everyone at risk As of last week, the task force has voted to support a kind of separate and unequal strategy in regards to where the gas industry may set up its hazardous facilities in Dallas. This public health double-standard is reflected in the vote for a policy in which residential neighborhoods, soccer fields, hospitals and schools begin with a 1000-foot setback, while places where people have to work for eight hours or more, five to six days a week, are relegated to a second-class of protection of only 300 feet less than 1/3rd as protective. Are people who work for a long period of time in the same place really less deserving of protection than those who stay in a house all day? Overlooked in the discussion of impacts of the 300-foot workplace setback was the devaluation of commercial property that would take place as a result of drilling being in such close proximity to businesses. Recent decisions by North Texas appraisal districts have seen drastic reductions in the value of residential and agricultural property where drilling is taking place. Similar reductions could affect commercial properties as well, leading to declining revenues for the citys coffers. Moreover, since the Task Force has also voted to allow the building of giant line compressors within a drilling pad site, it means these large sources of industrial air pollution (with documented emissions of up to tens of thousands of pounds of Volatile Organic Compounds, and thousands of tons of Greenhouse Gases) could be located only a football field away from places where people are chained to their location for most of the day or night. As a resident, you perhaps have an option to leave when the fumes get bad at home and spend an evening with relatives, friends, or in a motel. You dont have that choice at the place where you work. 1

This second-class protection is particularly egregious towards blue collar and outdoor workers, who will not have air-conditioning or filtering to buffer the air pollution coming from a drilling pad the way that some office workers might. Since notice of the application of a drilling site permit will only go to a property owner, hundreds, if not thousands of workers could be left clueless and helpless when the drilling rig starts to go up beside them and its too late to object. The Task Force separate and unequal approach is also reflected in its support to allow drilling in Dallas Trinity River flood plains. Supporters excused this act by pointing to all the other undesirable industries operating there already. This recommendation ignores over a century of Trinity River floodplain history wherein not just undesirable industries, but those that were then deemed undesirable minorities were segregated to the flood plain. West and South Dallas neighborhoods are living testaments to the attempt by the Dallas Powers That Be to squeeze people of color and polluting industries into what was then considered the same strip of worthless, flood-prone land. The long-term redressing of this institutionalized segregation is not to keep compounding the problem by allowing more polluting industries to locate in the same spots. By giving a green light to gas drilling in the flood plains, you automatically put historically-minority neighborhoods at a higher risk of being targeted again. Finally, the 1000-foot default setback that the Task Force supports does not look to be as protective as it might have when you adopted it. For one thing, it doesnt reflect any consideration of the scientific evidence linking fracking to increased seismological disturbances that has been published since the Task Force stopped taking expert testimony. Were not talking about the now acknowledged link between high-pressure fracking waste injection wells and earthquakes, such as recently occurred in Ohio. Were referring to the growing body of evidence thats associating fracking itself with seismic activity. In Oklahoma, which saw a tenfold increase in earthquakes since 2009 to over 1,000, officials at the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OKGS) stated in an August, 2011 report that, there is a possibility these earthquakes were induced by hydraulic fracturing. However, the uncertainties in the data make it impossible to say with a high degree of certainty." Cuadrilla Resources, a British corporation admitted that its operations in northwest England had set off three small quakes in April, 2011 from fracking rock two miles underground. According to a December 9th, 2011 article in Nature, geologists with the U.S. Geological Survey have developed a predictive model for the maximum size, but not the frequency, of seismic activity based on the amount of liquid being injected into the ground. It quotes a USGS geologist as saying that injecting as little as 2.6 million gallons results in a maximum-sized earthquake of magnitude 3.3 on the Richter Scale. The relationship is straightforward, but it is the first time that anyone has quantified it. As the evidence youve accumulated shows, fracking routinely uses 2 to 7 million gallons or more of fracking fluids and water for each and every gas well that is fracked and refracked. Full investigation of this hazard is particularly warranted in Dallas since the city is sprawled over the one-billion-year-old Ouachita Thrust Fault/Balcones Fault Zone that runs north and south, roughly following I-35. According to geologists, this fault zone may still be an area of weakness that becomes a preferred site for faulting when stress exists in the earths crust. 2

Nor did the 1000-foot setback anticipate the inclusion of a line compressor station on a pad site as is now allowed by the Task Force. These compressor facilities are huge sources of pollution. In the recently released EPA national Greenhouse Gas inventory, North Texas compressor stations were among the largest stationary sources of pollution, with emissions of up to 90,000 tons of CO2 in 2010 alone. The 1000-foot distance was adopted, in part, after evaluating the possible toxicological impacts of only one or more wells on a pad with perhaps a battery of storage tanks. It was not designed to account for, or buffer against, the tens of thousands of tons of emissions coming from a row of giant compressors on the same pad site. Finally, recent comments from representative U.S. Centers for Disease Control should give any regulator of fracking pause. According to Dr. Christopher Portier, director of the CDCs National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, We do not have enough information to say with certainty whether shale gas drilling poses a threat to public health. If the largest environmental health organization in the country cannot yet determine the public health impacts of fracking, Task Force and Council members would be wise to proceed with extreme caution in allowing the practice to enter the city limits at all. If you dont know if something is going to cause health harms, you dont want to place it in proximity to people. We urge you to please take these new factors into consideration in a review of what a truly protective buffer zone is for gas fracking and its associated facilities at a time when all of the industrys hazards are not yet fully known or researched. Wed once again recommend a 3,000 foot setback, based on the Army Corp of Engineers suggested distance for protection of dams from fracking, uniformly applied to residential dwellings, workplaces, schools, churches, hospitals and public spaces. 2. Full disclosure for first responders Fracking fluid is full of dangerous and toxic chemicals, including benzene, ethylbenzene, formaldehyde, naphthalene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, toluene, xylene, hydrochloric acid, and diesel fuel. Schlumberger, a large oil and gas industry giant, recommends that many fracturing fluid chemicals be disposed of as hazardous waste at hazardous waste landfills or incineration facilities. Waste fluid coming back up from the well for disposal can have all of these chemicals plus high levels of radioactive radium. Produced Water contains brine, but it likely contains much, much more. Thats why it took a special 2005 Congressional clause, known as the Halliburton Loophole that exempted fracking fluid from being regulated under Safe Drinking Water Act, before the technology could be widely used. In 2010, Dr. Theo Colborn and three co-authors published a paper entitled Natural Gas Operations from a Public Health Perspective. Colborn and her co-authors summarized health effect information for 353 chemicals used to drill and fracture natural gas wells in the United States. Health effects were broken into 12 categories: skin, eye and sensory organ, respiratory, gastrointestinal and liver, brain and nervous system, immune, kidney, cardiovascular and blood, cancer, mutagenic, endocrine disruption, other, and ecological effects.

More than 75% of the chemicals could affect the skin, eyes, and other sensory organs, and the respiratory and gastrointestinal systems. Approximately 40-50% could affect the brain/nervous system, immune and cardiovascular systems, and the kidneys; 37% could affect the endocrine system; and 25% could cause cancer and mutations. Colborns paper provides a list of 71 particularly hazardous fracking fluid ingredients associated with 10 or more health effects. These are listed below. Fracking Fluid Chemicals Identified as Having 10 or More Adverse Health Effects
Theo Colborn, Carol Kwiatkowski, Kim Schultz, and Mary Bachran International Journal of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, September, October 2011

2,2',2"- Nitrilotriethanol 2-Ethylhexanol 5-Chloro-2- methyl-4- isothiazolin-3-one Acetic acid Acrolein Acrylamide (2- propenamide) Acrylic acid Ammonia Ammonium chloride Ammonium nitrate Aniline Benzyl chloride Boric acid Cadmium Calcium hypochlorite Chlorine Chlorine dioxide Dibromoacetonitrile 1 Diesel 2 Diethanolamine Diethylenetriamine Dimethyl formamide Epidian Ethanol (acetylenic alcohol) Ethyl mercaptan Ethylbenzene

Ethylene glycol Ethylene glycol monobutyl ether (2-BE) Ethylene oxide Ferrous sulfate Formaldehyde Formic acid Fuel oil #2 Glutaraldehyde Glyoxal Hydrodesulfurized kerosene Hydrogen sulfide Iron Isobutyl alcohol (2-methyl-1- propanol) Isopropanol (propan-2-ol) Kerosene Light naphthenic distillates, hydrotreated Mercaptoacidic acid Methanol Methylene bis(thiocyanate) Monoethanolamine NaHCO3

Naphtha, petroleum medium aliphatic Naphthalene Natural gas condensates Nickel sulfate Paraformaldehyde Petroleum distillate naptha Petroleum distillate/ naphtha Phosphonium, tetrakis(hydroxymethyl)- sulfate Propane-1,2-diol Sodium bromate Sodium chlorite (chlorous acid, sodium salt) Sodium hypochlorite Sodium nitrate Sodium nitrite Sodium sulfite Styrene Sulfur dioxide Sulfuric acid Tetrahydro-3,5- dimethyl-2H-1,3,5- thiadiazine-2-thione (Dazomet) Titanium dioxide Tributyl phosphate Triethylene glycol Urea Xylene

Human exposure to fracking fluids most often occurs through direct skin contact or inhalation of the chemicals by workers, or nearby residents. But there is another category at risk individual: the first responder. Police, firefighters, EMS workers, and medical professionals are all on the front lines of exposure when an accident occurs at a gas well. Over the last 30 years a consensus has developed between the marketplace and government that these first responders must be protected from as many unknowns as possible by being fully informed of the toxic risks theyre encountering when they arrive on the scene. This is why every business in Dallas that stores or handles certain amounts of certain dangerous chemicals has their chemical inventories on file with the Dallas Fire Department. By not recommending full disclosure of the volume and ingredients of ALL chemicals being stored or used on well pad sites, with no exceptions for trade secrets, the Task Force is denying a basic protection that saves lives among the ranks of those we depend on to respond to catastrophes. The importance of full disclosure is illustrated by the case of ER Nurse Cathy Behr in Durango, Colorado. Behr was a 20-year nursing veteran who was working the day shift at Mercy Hospital in 2008 when an employee of an energy services company arrived complaining of nausea and headaches after being caught in what he described as a fracking fluid spill. The chemical fumes coming off the mans boots almost made Behr faint. Hospital officials evacuated and locked down the ER, and its staff was instructed to don protective masks and gowns. But by the time those precautions were enacted, Behr had been overseeing the workers care for a good ten minutes, completely unprotected. A few days later, Behr's skin turned yellow. She began vomiting. Her husband rushed her to her own hospital, where Behr was admitted to the ICU with a swollen liver, erratic blood counts and lungs filling with fluid. The diagnosis: chemical poisoning. The worker was released, but Behr lay in critical condition facing multiple organ failure. To save Behr's life, her doctors needed to know the chemicals involved but they were only given vague information. The information was considered a trade secret under state law, and Halliburton, the operator of the well where the accident had occurred, threatened to pull all its products out of Colorado rather than give up the recipe information Behr's doctors needed to save her life. Despite this lack of cooperation, Behr was able to recover slowly. Weeks after the incident her doctor finally learned the details of the chemicals involved, but he is sworn to secrecy. By not requiring full disclosure of all ingredients of fracking fluids used by the drilling industry within the city limits of Dallas, the Task Force is putting its first responders at the same risk. Contrary to some media accounts, a recent state law and actions by the Texas Railroad Commission DO NOT require full disclosure of all chemicals being used or stored on a pad site in Dallas. There are liberal allowances made for trade secrets. If the state is allowed the last word, Dallas first responders will still be showing up to a spill, blowout, or accident at a gas pad site without the information they need to save lives. Full disclosure means mandatory posting of all chemicals by CAS number, well, and company to a database accessible by all first responders. There should be no obstacles to first responders accessing all chemical information in an emergency. 5

It means listing all chemicals and estimated maximum volumes, not just those appearing on Material Safety Data Sheets, which are only designed for worker safety. There can be no exemptions for trade secrets which could potentially harm first responders. Full disclosure also means the city having the means to enforce disclosure through inspections and sampling. State efforts do not prevent Texas municipalities from passing their own disclosure measures on behalf of protecting first responders. Dallas would be acting within its municipal rights in protecting its own employees by requiring full disclosure, and should not shy away from demanding such protection for those that are already at highest risk of on the job injury. 3. Better protect Dallas water The heat and lack of rainfall in 2011 was the worst one-year drought on record. The state climatologist suggests that it could be the beginning of a ten-year drought event. To date, the city has done an admirable job of supplying the water needs of modern Dallas but now faces unprecedented challenges. One of those is the drought itself and the possibility it could be a long-term event or one of many such to come. Another is the huge demand for water that fracking new gas wells could create. Each fracking of a well can use up to, 3, 5, 7 million gallons of water, or more. If only one well were to be fracked at just the 200 sites the city has already offered the drilling industry on its own land, the total could be almost one and half billion gallons of water. There can be as many as 10 to 12 wells at a pad site, and all will be fracked multiple times. In 2010, the City of Dallas sold approximately 3.8 billion gallons to nonresidential users. Fracking in Dallas could easily surpass that demand and represents a significant new source of demand of Dallas water. Dallas Water Utilities has already told the City Council that continued water sales to other entities may require Dallas to implement tougher drought restrictions sooner. Unlike many other industries, once the water is used by gas drilling operators, it cannot be reintroduced back into the water cycle via a water treatment facility. Water used in gas drilling water is permanently removed from the ecosphere and disposed of deep underground. We urge the Task Force to revisit the issue of water availability and make the following recommendations: - Ban the exporting of Dallas water for fracking in other cities. Arlington bans the export of its water for fracking in other jurisdictions. Dallas should do the same. - Add a ban on water for fracking as a part of Dallas Stage III drought restrictions. Grand Prairie has banned its water for fracking within its city limits. Dallas should ban using its water for gas drilling during a drought, just as it restricts residential use. - Charge operators twice the usual rate to replace water taken out of hydrological cycle. Since water used for fracking is not recycled back into the water cycle, it costs more to replace it.

4. Neutralize the massive new greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions drilling will bring In 2005, the Mayor of Dallas signed the U.S. Mayor Climate Change Agreement that committed the city to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from its own municipal activities, as well as the citys activities as a whole, by 7% below 1990 levels by 2012. By March of this year, the Office of Environmental Quality is expected to announce the results of a new city-wide Greenhouse Gas inventory that will indicate if the City of Dallas has managed to reduce the 98,401 metric tons of greenhouse gases necessary to meet its own goal, and the 5,748,843 tons of reductions necessary for the community to reach its promised target. In forecasting future GHG pollution loads for the city and community, gas-drilling emissions in Dallas were not considered. In addition, the Dallas Sustainable Skylines Initiative is the only initiative of its kind that partners the city with the Environmental Protection Agency and the North Central Texas Council of Governments to reduce air pollution air emissions. One of its seven major projects is developing a strategy to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions. In the Citys own documents touting its commitment to reducing Greenhouse Gases, staff cites Dallas role as a major land owner to make advancements in the area of sustainability and resource conservation. And yet in that role as landlord, Dallas has already offered up approximately 200 separate well pad sites on city-owned land for use as gas drilling sites. Each pad site can be the location of multiple wells. Each well can be the source of many tons of greenhouse gases. Fracked wells can leak 40 to 60 percent more methane than conventional natural gas wells. When water and chemicals are forced down a well, it flows back up and is stored in large ponds or tanks. But volumes of methane also flow back up the well at the same time and are released into the atmosphere before they can be captured for use. This giant belch of "fugitive methane" can be seen in infrared video taken by government and industry. Green completion can help mitigate this effect, but leaks in pipes, tanks and connections can still release significant amounts over the lifetime of a well. Methane traps 20 to 25 times more heat in the atmosphere than does carbon dioxide. Line compressors and compressor stations, like those now allowed on well pads by the Task Force are separate and much larger sources of Greenhouse Gases. A survey of North Texas compressor station pollution from the EPAs new 2010 national GHG inventory shows CO2 emissions from 25,000 to 90,000 tons a year. To put that figure in perspective, the 2005 GHG inventory of Dallas estimated that the total amount of GHG pollution from ALL stationary sources within the city was then only 23,000 tons a year. In its material describing a commitment to reducing GHG pollution, city staff writes that, additional reductions of greenhouse gases will be necessary to meet the challenge of the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. The City has the opportunity and the obligation to work collaboratively with the community to create a sustainability framework by which to meet our obligations as a signatory to the Climate Protection Agreement and to lead the region. Meeting that historic obligation will be impossible if Dallas allows a wave of gas drilling to take place without trying to blunt the impact of new emissions of greenhouse gases such drilling will bring. We urge the Task Force to protect an historic Dallas initiative to reduce air pollution by requiring the off-setting of Greenhouse Gas emissions produced by gas drilling within the citys limits. 7

Such off-setting is used currently by the federal government to help lessen smog pollution in metropolitan areas throughout the country, including DFW. A new large industrial source of pollution is not allowed to begin emitting either Nitrogen Oxides or Volatile Organic Compounds without first agreeing to off-set, or neutralize, that new pollution with reductions in the same pollutants elsewhere within the region. The result is that total pollution levels do not increase locally. Unfortunately, even though gas industry sources are currently estimated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to be emitting more smog-forming VOCs than all on-road vehicles in DFW, they remain too decentralized to come under the jurisdiction of this off-setting requirement. Pre-emption prevents the city from closing that loophole for smog pollution, but it does not prevent the city from requiring off-sets for the greenhouse gas pollution caused by fracking wells and their associated facilities. Neither the state nor federal government regulates the greenhouse gas emissions of the natural gas industry. Dallas could. And to guarantee that it has some hope of meeting its historic air quality commitments, it should. To prevent the arrival of gas drilling in Dallas from making a very difficult goal an unlikely one, the city should require a one-ton-for-one-ton neutralizing of any new greenhouse gas tonnage estimated by an operator, and make it easy by supplying a list of potential projects that could help the operator meet the requirement. For every ton of GHG pollution a gas operator is seeking a permit to release, it would have to cut a ton of existing GHG pollution somewhere in the city limits. Such a policy would not reduce overall GHG pollution, but it would keep it from shooting into orbit as a result of an invasion of new gas drilling rigs, compressors, pipelines and tanks. 5. Dallas must accept full responsibility for monitoring and regulating gas drilling If the past decade has taught North Texas residents anything, its that current state and federal efforts to police gas drilling in the Barnett Shale have failed miserably. Its clear that neither the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality or the Texas Railroad Commission have the resources or political will to effectively monitor operations on the ground, enforce current law, or protect the public health. Dallas State Representative Rafael Anchia served on the states Sunset Advisory Commission that spent a good portion of the last several years examining the TCEQ record on responding to citizen complaints. Hes written that, In hearings weve held, weve heard complaints from all over the state and theres definitely an issue at the TCEQ when it comes to the response to citizen complaints. Theres no doubt about it. And in my opinion, we need to shake the agency up and make it more responsive to the public. In reaction, TCEQ has pledged to respond faster to Barnett Shale gas facility complaints. Now the agency guarantees an inspector will be on-site within.12 hours. Thats clearly not acceptable for Dallas residents. There are even fewer EPA inspectors, and their first suggestion is to contact the state. The final 2011 Sunset Commission report on the Railroad Commission recommended a wholesale restructuring of the bureaucracy after finding that its monitoring efforts rely on incomplete databases and conclude in enforcement actions against only 4% of all violations that begin as complaints.

This is not a new failure of the TRC. As the Sunset Commission members write in their final report, enforcement action taken by the Commission is not a new concern. The 2001 Sunset review of the Commission found that the agencys enforcement efforts did not adequately address serious pollution violations and noted that even then, poor enforcement had been a long-standing problem for the Commission. If operators are rarely brought in for enforcement action, a pattern of non-compliance can develop leading to escalating violations, which can eventually result in costly State-managed well plugging or remediation, large environmental impacts, or public safety hazards. In the absence of any other effective public watchdog, the price of Dallas allowing gas drilling to take place within its city limits must be the establishment and adequate funding of a separate office of gas drilling oversight. This office must have enough well-trained personnel, equipped with the latest technology, to be able to provide help to residents 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It must operate a network of sophisticated databases and monitoring operations just as devoutly. Its vital that the city understand that no other entity will have the interest or tools to be able to provide the kind of protection against frackings hazards that Dallas residents want. We urge you to recommend the city fund a modern, well-staffed, department of gas mining oversight so that level of protection can be obtained and maintained for the duration of gas mining in Dallas. Thank you for your consideration. Dallas Area Residents for Responsible Drilling Dallas Sierra Club Downwinders at Risk Mountain Creek Neighborhood Alliance Texas Campaign for the Environment Texas Oil and Gas Accountability Project