National Clothesline
Texas town drags cleaners into air quality fracas
Drycleaners in the Dallas suburb of Flower Mound, TX, may find themselves drawn
into a local controversy concerning air pollution from gas drilling operations,
according to a report in the Flower Mound Leader.
At a town council meeting last month, member Mike Wallace said he would like to
include drycleaners during future air quality tests and have an aerial photo
that shows where those cleaners are located in relation to homes.
“Typically, those types of places are located near homes, schools, restaurants
and churches,” Wallace said.
Wallace also said he wants information on the makeup of perc, the Texas
Commission on Environmental Quality’s (TCEQ) short-term and long-term effects screening levels and the health impact
of perc.
Wallace’s concern was sparked by a report given at a July council meeting by Dr. Kenneth
Tramm of Kleinfelder Central, Inc., an independent environmental testing agency
that conducted air quality tests in Flower Mound. Tramm mentioned perc as a
chemical that could be more worrisome than those that are emitted during gas
drilling.
Tramm’s air quality test was one of a series that has been conducted in Flower Mound
in recent months as the issue of pollution from gas drilling activities has
riled the community.
In hotly contested mayoral and council elections this spring, anti-drilling
candidates prevailed over a pro-drilling faction. Opponents believe drilling
increases the level of hazardous air contaminants and should be curtailed or at
least severely restricted and regulated.
Kleinfelder’s tests and others before it, however, have shown that concentrations of air
pollutants in Flower Mound are consistent with typical urban environments and
within state and federal guidelines.
Tramm said the most recent samplings found minuscule but measurable amounts of
perc in the air (0.28 parts per billion) and he noted that, aside from drilling
operations, emissions from vehicles and chemicals used by drycleaners impact
air quality.
“I’ve seen higher levels from drycleaners within a permissible limit than from oil
and gas,” Tramm commented at the July meeting.
That prompted Wallace to ask for more information on emissions from drycleaners.
At the August meeting, Harlan Jefferson, the town manager, reported that four
of the eight full-service drycleaners in Flower Mound use perc. Three of them,
he added are phasing it out.
Jefferson said drycleaners perform self checks to monitor the air around the
facility and that there are many reporting requirements and standards mandated
by the TCEQ. The town could supplement those requirements with spot checks to
make sure the facilities are in compliance with TCEQ, he said.
“They could come back and say nothing is wrong with the air, and that’s fine,” Wallace said. “But if they say that there is a problem with the air, then it would be good to
have this information for us to use.”
In addition to the May samplings and an initial round in January, the
Kleinfelder firm will conduct another set this fall and again this winter.
The May tests used the federal EPA’s testing methods and adhered to the TCEQ’s short-term effects screening levels and newly-adopted Air Monitoring
Comparison Values (AMCV).
TCEQ will place an autoGC air quality monitor in Flower Mound which will allow
for 24-hour monitoring via the Internet so residents can monitor the town’s air quality.
