{"id":39407,"date":"2015-01-08T10:06:09","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T16:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=39407"},"modified":"2015-01-08T10:07:11","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T16:07:11","slug":"environmental-group-wants-loophole-closed-on-oil-and-gas-pollution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2015\/01\/08\/environmental-group-wants-loophole-closed-on-oil-and-gas-pollution\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmental Group Wants Loophole Closed On Oil And Gas Pollution"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_16160\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Flaring gas at well site in DeWitt County\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/08\/Flare-DeWitt-Co-leveled.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-16160\" alt=\"Flaring gas at well site in DeWitt County\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/08\/Flare-DeWitt-Co-leveled-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/08\/Flare-DeWitt-Co-leveled-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/08\/Flare-DeWitt-Co-leveled-620x465.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/08\/Flare-DeWitt-Co-leveled.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\"> <\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flaring gas at well site in DeWitt County<\/p><\/div>\n<h4><em>Lawsuit Filed in Washington Hits Home With Houston\u2019s Biggest Industry<\/em><\/h4>\n<p>According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tceq.state.tx.us\/assets\/public\/compliance\/enforcement\/enf_reports\/AER\/FY14\/enfrptfy14.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">biggest source of air pollution in Texas are oil and gas wells<\/a>, emitting far more pollution than petrochemical plants or refineries. Yet, federal law exempts those drilling operations from having to report all their chemical releases to a publicly accessible national database called the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www2.epa.gov\/toxics-release-inventory-tri-program\" target=\"_blank\">Toxics Release Inventory<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/184961831&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat would be very useful to an average citizen in Texas to know that they can go and find out the whole picture,\u201d said Adam Kron, a lawyer with the Environmental Integrity Project.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The group is\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/environmentalintegrity.org\/archives\/7129\" target=\"_self\">suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency<\/a>\u00a0in an effort to get the agency to change its rules and start making oil and gas operations report pollution to the national database. Afterall, the group argues that industries as small as maple syrup makers and greeting card companies have to do it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt doesn\u2019t make sense that those little guys report and we\u2019ve got this big, big industry that doesn\u2019t have to put up this basic information,\u201d Kron told StateImpact Texas.<\/p>\n<p>The oil and gas industry says it should not have to report such data because it says emissions from individual well-sites are so small, they\u2019re below the reporting threshold set by current rules.<\/p>\n<p>The environmental group counters that over 200 well sites in Texas would qualify.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lawsuit Filed in Washington Hits Home With Houston\u2019s Biggest Industry According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the\u00a0biggest source of air pollution in Texas are oil and gas wells, emitting far more pollution than petrochemical plants or refineries. Yet, federal law exempts those drilling operations from having to report all their chemical releases to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[182,33],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39407"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39411,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39407\/revisions\/39411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}