Growing Citizens

Building a New and Effective Grassroots Force for Clean Air in North Texas

Request for Program Support

Downwinders at Risk

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Growing Citizens

Downwinders At Risk

In 2000, Downwinders challenged a new permit by Holcims cement plant that doubled air pollution. We won the first advanced controls to ever be installed in a U.S. cement plant Those controls cut pollution at Holcim by more than 50% over two years. They are now standard equipment on all new U.S. cement plants.

Our New Clean Air Mission

In the last 10 years, Downwinders at Risk has made a rare transition for a grassroots group. Having won its original battle over the burning of hazardous waste in Midlothian cement plants, its leadership decided not to disband, but to grow into a regional force for clean air. Downwinders board members realized their own cause was linked with public health and environmental struggles of the region. They added the building of a better clean air plan for the entire DFW area to the job of monitoring the areas largest industrial complex. The groups mission was broadened. Its board was expanded across a wider Downwinders At Risk float in the 1995 geographic Duncanville Fourth of July Parade area. It took on more responsibilities. Over the last decade Downwinders has became the leading defender of regional air quality in North Texas. Downwiders negotiated the appointment of three public members to the North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee, the local organization providing recommendations to state and federal agencies. Instead of sitting in the audience watching others debate their airs fate, ordinary citizens have representatives at the table. Downwinders also opened up the Steering Committees business to more public scrutiny. The groups social media and live-blogging has become the only way the public can virtually attend the Committees inconvenient mid-day meetings.

How Downwinders Modernized The Cement Industry

When Downwinders at Risk began, eight cement kilns were operating in North Texas: seven of them obsolete wet kilns from the 1960s and four burning hazardous waste. In 2014, there will be 4 cement kilns: none of them wet kilns and none of them burning hazardous waste. In 2006, Downwinders began its Campaign for Green Cement to close the seven dirty and obsolete wet kilns in Midlothian. Over the next three years, Dallas, Arlington, Plano, Denton, Ft.Worth and Tarrant County all pledged not to buy cement from wet kilns. In 2010,TXI abandoned its four wet kilns and stopped burning hazardous waste. Today, it operates a single dry kiln built in 2000.

In January 2012, Ash Grove Cement submitted a new permit to close and convert the last wet cement kilns in Texas. In its application Ash Grove stated the move would eliminate over 100,000 tons of air pollution a year by 2014.

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Further expanding the reach of the group was an historic 2006 settlement with one of the Midlothian cement plants. Among other provisions, it made Downwinders the trustees of a clean air fund totalling $2.3 million - the largest private clean air fund in the state. Named after the groups founder, the Sue Pope Fund is in its fourth round of grant-giving devoted specifically to projects that reduce smog pollution in DFW. Although the fund cant be used to support Downwinders program work, its widely-dispersed grants have had the effect of building regional influence for the group, as well as forcing its leadership to examine clean air issues far beyond Midlothian. The same settlement that created the Sue Pope Fund also allowed Downwinders to hire a then little-known SMU associate engineering professor as its full-time technical advisor. In this role, he attended his first legislative hearings and over time became a much sought expert witness on DFW air quality. In 2009, Dr. Al Armendariz became the Regional Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. No previous local EPA Administrator has emerged from such a grassroots background. Downwinders continues to be on the front lines of clean air struggles throughout North Texas. The group is leading the charge to reduce toxic and smog-forming air pollution from gas drilling in the Barnett Shale. Its in Frisco helping residents to close a dilapidated and dangerous lead smelter. Its assisting Dallas citizens and city council members in drafting new strategies to reduce Greenhouse Gas pollution. These days, the entire North Texas airshed is Downwinders backyard.
Three electric-hybrid delivery trucks were bought for the Fort Worth Independent School DIstrict with a Sue Pope Fund grant. The Sue Pope Fund paid for the solar panals on this Congo Street house near Fair Park in Dallas as part of a Central Dallas Development Coporation project.

Downwinders standing in a legal action resulted in the most successful good neighbor agreement in Texas history, including a clean air fund that allowed ordinary citizens to decide how to spend millions on new projects to reduce their own regions smog pollution. So far, almost $2 million has been given to projects and programs in four North Texas counties, ranging from commuter bus service in Arlington, to lawnmower exchanges in Plano, to energy efficiency upgrades in Ft.Worth, to solar energy panels and air-conditioned trollies in Dallas. Its the only clean air fund of its kind in the nation.

The Largest Clean Air Fund in Texas

Downwinders At Risk board members with former advisor Dr. Al Armendariz upon his swearing-in as EPA Region Six Administrator in February 2010

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Ive learned (and continue to learn) more about government on multiple levels in the past six months than I ever knew I COULD! Most importantly, Ive learned that I have the right to speak up for what I think is fair for my family. Its all so empowering and I would encourage any citizen to take an active approach in local politics. Meghan Greene, community leader with Frisco Unleaded, sponsored by Downwinders at Risk

What Makes Us Different?

In environmental regulatory jargon, residents who live downwind of a polluting facility that are most likely to be affected by its pollution are called passive receptors. This term could also be used to describe the resignation most people have in accepting their environmental fate. Despite what we might see with our own eyes, we want to believe that government agencies have everything under control and are looking out for our health. Even if youre skeptical, no one is knocking at your door asking your opinion on how to change things. Were not used to having any kind of say over how many, or what kind of chemicals are injected into the air we breathe. Downwinders at Risk teaches citizens that environmental protection is a Do-It-Yourself proposition, and that effective community organization is the key to providing it. We supply the tools citizens need to navigate the alphabet soup of government entities that have jurisdiction over their problems, as well as offer continuing guidance about strategy and tactics. Foremost among those tools is access to a full-time experienced community organizer. Downwinders is the only group to offer ordinary DFW citizens an advisor who knows how to help them build an effective organization and win their fight. When people realize they can change their fate, they become more interested in engaging in civil society. Passive receptors are transformed into active citizens.

A Frisco Unleaded member addresses his city council on lead contamination with stackhead supporters in the audience.

Almost 200 years ago, Alex deTocqueville warned that unless individuals were actively involved in their own governance, American-style democracy would vanish.

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Since WWII, Americans have increasingly ceded responsibility for public health and environmental decisions to either large, inaccessible, government bureaucracies, or to the large, inaccessible corporate bureaucracies theyre supposed to regulate. The people most affected by those decisions have often not been invited to the table. When things go badly, what looks at first glance to be environmental policy failures are in fact failures of our democracy. Downwinders doesnt just want to win better decisions from government and industry. We want to build a more citizen-friendly process for making those better decisions. How you win change is as important to Downwinders as the change itself. The group is in the business of bringing old-fashion American selfdetermination to modern environmental problems.
A local resident shows her displeasure with the new state clean air plan at a 2011 public hearing in Arlington.

Give me a place to stand and I shall move the world - Archemedes

In doing so, we give people the skills and confidence they need to be better participants in the ongoing American experiment.

There are many clean air groups. Downwinders at Risk is a clean

air group that also grows citizens. Downwinders is also the only group thats relentlessly focused on North Texas clean air issues. Environmental groups active in DFW are usually local chapters of a state or national group. They work on public policy from the top down. Priorities are set somewhere else and the local membership is used to fuel state or national fights. Downwinders at Risk reverses that flow. Its board is from the DFW area. It works from the bottom up, with local priorities driving its efforts in North Texas. Through effective organizing on local issues, the group wins national precedents.

Downwinders At Risk has a national reputation as a group that, through its actions, is leading to a number of significant developments in pollution control. When you look at the history of the group and the history of their accomplishments in the DFW area, there are a large number of firsts that happened directly because of Downwinders at Risk. Dr. Al Armendariz EPA Regional Administator

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North Texas Air Needs Effective Defenders

DFW has been in violation of the Clean Air Act because of its ozone pollution, or smog, for over 20 years now.

Number of Clean Air Violations 2011 was the worst year for smog in DFW since 2006.

The Fort Worth skyline during an ozone-alert day.

In 2012, more smog-forming VOCs will be released in DFW by oil and gas industry sources than by all the cars and trucks in the region.

Despite three separate clean-up plans submitted by the state of Texas to the EPA , six million North Texans still arent breathing safe and legal air during the seven-month long ozone season every year. In fact, 2011 was the worst year for smog pollution in DFW in the last five. We went from two air monitors out of compliance with the Clean Air Act to six; our ozone pollution levels rose from a benchmark of 86 parts per billion to 90. North Texas now has worse air than Houston. Despite this, the state is officially predicting the regions ozone levels will plunge to unprecedented lows in 2012 because residents will buy newer cars to replace their older, dirtier ones. Meanwhile, the EPA will begin enforcing a new, lower ozone pollution standard of 75 ppb over the next five years that will be even more difficult for North Texas to meet than the one we have yet to conquer after a decade of trying. That new standard will require its own, separate clean-up plan that begins with meetings of the North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee. A major reason for the lack of recent progress in improving DFW air quality is the inability of government or industry to rein-in the huge volumes of air pollution from a growing north Texas oil and gas industry. Although it accounts for more emissions of smog-forming Volatile Organic Compounds than all the cars and trucks in the region combined, most of this gas industry pollution is unregulated for its impact on North Texas ozone levels.

Oil and Gas: 114 tons per day Cars and Trucks: 80 tons per day

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In addition to adding to DFWs chronic smog problem, pollution from gas industry sources can be also toxic, releasing thousands of pounds of carcinogens like Benzene and Formaldehyde into North Texas skies. Gas and oil sources are also major Greenhouse Gas polluters. Despite the public health impact of gas industry air pollution on North Texas residents, there is still no region-wide strategy to significantly reduce it. Nor is unhealthy smog DFWs only violation of the Clean Air Act. Besides the nine-county federal non-attainment area for ozone, the EPA has declared a two square mile non-attainment area for lead air pollution in Frisco, just north of Dallas. Unlike the DFW smog non-attainment area that has many causes, this new lead pollution violation has one cause - the nearly 50-year old Exide lead smelter. Since 1964, an estimated 300,000 pounds of lead has fallen out from the smelters smokestacks over an area encompassing most of current-day Frisco The smelter refuses to install the same state-of-the-air controls that could reduce pollution by 90%. The states proposed clean-up plan for Exide was rejected by EPA on the same day it was submitted.
Smokestacks from the Exide Lead smelter poke out between downtown Frisco and the citys High School, less than half a mile from Exide.

Particulate Matter is the New Ozone

Particulate Matter, or PM pollution, is really small pieces of soot.The soot is so tiny, its inhaled into your lungs and can stay in them doing damage for years, or can migrate through the lung lining into the blood stream.

Because scientists have linked even low levels of PM pollution to such a wide variety of health effects including heart attacks strokes, diabetes, and IQ loss, many experts believe air quality standards need to be tightened.

DFW is a Hot Spot for PM Pollution DFW already has a PM pollution problem. From 2007 to 2011, there was an average of 41 days when PM readings at one of two monitoring stations in Dallas were at levels associated with increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. By comparison, DFW experienced 38 days in 2011 when the new ozone standard was exceeded.There are about three times as many ozone monitors as PM monitors in DFW.

DFW is also still downwind of the largest concentration of cement plants in the U.S. Despite giving up the burning of waste officially classified as hazardous, all three Midlothian cement plants are still burning other kinds of industrial wastes for fuel. In 2011, TXIs plant was granted a permit by the state to burn a longer list of wastes, including plastic garbage, tires and car interiors, without any public notice or opportunity for public comment. Long-standing chronic air pollution problems persist for DFW. New threats abound. North Texas air needs effective defenders.

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In July of 2011, Downwinders launched its first new local grassroots group not centered on cement plants or smog when it accepted an invitation by Frisco residents to help them close the almost 50 year-old Exide lead smelter. Operating in the middle of Americas fastest growing city, the smelter has created DFWs second nonattainment area by violating federal ambient air pollution standards for the toxic metal. Exide releases a selfreported 3 to 4 thousand pounds of lead annually. There is no safe level of exposure to lead, especially for children, who can have their nervous systems permanently damaged by even small amounts in their bodies.

Strategic Campaigns That Make a Difference

Downwinders stands alone in North Texas as a citizens group thats made the monitoring and improvement of the local air quality planning process such a central part of its mission.

Downwinders has been involved in every clean air plan written for the DFW area since the mid-1990s. The group used these plans to help draft innovative public policy and bring about a host of new pollution reduction measures, including new smog controls for the Midlothian cement plants and central Texas coal plants. Beginning in the summer of 2010, the state began to draft a new do-over air plan for DFW that was supposed to bring the region into compliance with an old ozone pollution goal by 2013. Through funding provided by grants to the Safe and Legal Air Project, Downwinders at Risk was able to bring needed transparency to a process An example of the live-blogging Downwinders at Risk Director Jim Schermbeck did on the groups thats often Facebook page during a North Texas Clean Air cloaked in Steering Committee meeting. obscurity despite its importance to regional public health. Downwinders provided continuous coverage of the air plans progress on our websites, pressed for web-casting of the meetings, and publicized the Committees work to the media.

The Safe and Legal Air Project

Downwinders is acting as a sponsor, resource center, and experienced guide to a group of residents who believe the smelter is fundamentally incompatible with modern Frisco and the surrounding land uses, including schools and parks.Theyre promoting amortization and closing of the smelter by the City of Frisco - the same measure Dallas implemented in the 1980s with its urban lead smelters. In just six months, Frisco Unleaded was able to claim a significant victory when the Frisco City Council voted to deny Exide new permits and declared the smelter a nonconforming use the first step toward amortization.

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This new transparency was critical in winning the incremental pieces of progress that emerged from the Steering Committee and the states Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). After an embarrassing vote in December that prevented the adoption of new control measures for consideration in the new state air plan, Downwinders sounded the alarm in its enewsletters, blogs and social media sites. The group was particularly critical of the vote in light of rising volumes of gas industry pollution that had never been regulated under previous air plans.

As a special project within its on-going Safe and Legal Air campaign, Downwinders has launched an effort to reduce smog-forming pollution from the gas industry doing business in the Barnett Shale.

The Fair Share for Clean Air campaign is specifically aimed at the need to cut gas industry releases of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). As part of this effort, we commissioned a report by Dr. Melanie Sattler of The University of Texas at Arlington to estimate the amount of money saved by gas operators by implementing existing pollution controls. Leaking Money: Potential Revenues from Reduction of Natural Gas and Condensate Emissions in North Central Texas concluded over $50 million in lost product could be captured and sold. In our effort to include more gas industry pollution cuts in the 2011 DFW clean air plan, Downwinders won the support of seven DFW city and county governments representing three and a half million residents, as well as both daily newspapers. Because of this public support, the state did cut gas emissions in a DFW clean air plan for the first time, albeit insufficiently. Downwinders is still working for more.

Dallas on a bad air day

In March, the Committee reconvened for a second vote on the question of new controls on gas industry sources. This time, the recommendations passed by a wide margin and they were one reason why the TCEQ ended up adopting a small cut in gas storage tank emissions - the first ever proposed by the state. Soon, a new air plan will begin being built to meet the new ozone pollution standard approved by the Obama administration in 2011. Downwinders will once again use the process to try and win further clean air progress for North Texas and make the decision-making system itself more accessible and responsive to citizen participation.

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Call (Downwinder Director) Jim Schermbeck anything you want: community organizer, environmental activist, true believer or even tree-hugging nut job. But on the whole over the past 22 years, call him tenaciously successful. Mike Norman, Columnist, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Building a Bigger and Better Force for Clean Air in North Texas
For over 18 years, Downwinders at Risk has won results completely out of proportion to its size and budget. Working as a perpetually-underfunded grassroots group, its achieved more than many larger, and better-financed environmental organizations. Downwinders has been extremely lucky to have a loyal base of supporters and major funders whove enabled the group to keep working long after most grassroots efforts like theirs have gone out of business. However, with an expanded regional mission has come expanded responsibilities that Downwinders cannot meet with our historical levels of support or organization. To become a regional clean air group strong enough to carry out the mission weve assigned ourselves, Downwinders must grow its infrastructure. The group has prioritized a fiveyear path to reestablishing itself as a much larger, more resource rich, institutionalized force for cleaner air in North Texas. Over 100 people attended a citywide This time line organizing meeting on gas drilling in corresponds to the Dallas that Downwinders co-sponsored. schedule for the building of a new clean air plan for the region. Downwinders believes that without more and better-organized attention from the public, the chance to write a truly effective clean air plan for DFW will once again be lost.

Downwinders at Risk Director Jim Schermbeck speaks at a TCEQ air quality hearing.

Downwinders Jim Schermbeck is the go-to guy on clean-air activism in Texas. Jim Schutze, Columnist Dallas Observer

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Tier One 2012-2014 A Competitive Directors Salary

Downwinders Director Jim Schermbeck has over 30 years of experience with North Texas environmental issues but is still paid as if he just graduated from college. The board has decided its imperative they attempt to pay its Director a living wage thats competitive with other comparative non-profit salaries.

Hiring a Development Director

In order to take fuller advantage of the support we get now from local sources, as well as spending more time cultivating new ones, the Downwinders Board believes its necessary to bring on a Development Director.

Tier Two 2014-2016 Hiring a Field Organizer

As Downwinders increases its regional commitment to provide professional help for citizens and groups struggling with clean air issues in their communities, there are simply too many for one organizer to work with effectively. The group needs at least one more full time staff person in the field.

Establishing a Door-to-Door Canvass

Downwinders at Risk believes a door-to-door canvass can help the group educate far more people about clean air in DFW as well as increase its financial self-sufficiency.

Tier Three 2016-2017 Hiring a Staff Scientist

Many of the issues Downwinders must deal with on a daily basis would benefit from having accessible staff technical expertise that could translate complex scientific data for staff, citizens and policymakers. The board would also like to prepare for the eventual operation of our own EPA-certified laboratory.

Downnwinders At Risk is a great example of a group of interested citizens who were willing to stay committed to the effort until some results began to develop. You have to stay involved for a long time or youre not going to get anything done. That kind of commitment is hard to come by, especially in a volunteerbased group. Richard Greene Former EPA Regional Administrator, 2003-2008

Hiring a Staff Attorney

Although Downwinders has successfully challenged EPA regulations relying on out-of-state legal counsel, the group has too often had to pass on opportunities to help a group take on local and state matters. Downwinders needs an attorney who would be as resourceful in court as the group has been in the court of public opinion.

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5 Year Total Budget

The most persuasive reason for funding grassroots organizing as a strategy to achieve environmental victories in public policy and public opinion is quite simple: mobilized and organized communities can challenge power and create lasting change with ripple effects that benefit us all. Sarah Hanson Cultivating the Grassroots

Directors Salary $50,000 a year for five years Director of Development $25,000 a year for five years plus commissions Field Organizer $35,000 a year for three years Canvass Director and Canvass Expenses $50,000 a year for three years Staff Scientist Staff Attorney Office rent and utilities IT hardware and software Research and publishing IT Services Travel Five year total: Annual totals: Year One Year Two Year Three Year Four Year Five $131,500 $131,500 $181,500 $271,500 $271,500 $45,000 a year for two years $45,000 a year for two years $26,000 a year for five years $2,500 a year for five years $20,000 a year for five years $1,000 a year for five years $7,000 a year for five years $970,500

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Anticipated Milestones Providing Assistance to Citizens Who Need It

Basic among the unique benefits Downwinders offers citizens in need of help is face-to-face time with an experienced organizer who knows the regulatory landscape the citizens are encountering for the first time. Having access to this kind of professional help is often the differnce between a grassroots group that thrives and one that dies on the vine. That service is expanded by doubling the number of staff available for work in the field to two. It also greatly expands the scope of expertise Downwinders can offer by having a local scientist and attorney on staff to respond to local problems. No other DFW environmental group currently offers these kinds of resources despite North Texas becoming the sixth largest metropolitan area in the nation.

Downwinders volunteers at the Dallas Earth Day booth in 2011.

Growing a Large Base of Support for Clean Air in DFW

With the establishment of a door-to door canvass, Downwinders expects to be able to build a base of support that is tens of thousands of residents strong by the end of the Project. Canvasses give the group the ability to educate large numbers of concerned citizens in a very short amount of time. A canvass also gives Downwinders a chance to be more self - sufficient. By the third year of operation, we expect to see the canvass not only paying for itself, but generating revenue for Downwinders.

Downwinders at Risk is one of the best environmental groups I have worked with as both a journalist and an elected official. Downwinders at Risk is a strong advocate for clean air, and it does its homework meticulously. Laura Miller Former Mayor of Dallas

Building a Better DFW Clean Air Plan

By 2015- 2016, work will be underway for the first DFW clean air plan under a new and tougher federal ozone standard. Unless theres substantial energy invested in public education and outreach towards a sincere effort, the results will probably be disappointing again. This request for support is timed to crest at the very moment public involvement in air quality planning will be most needed.

A DFW resident speaks about the costs of air pollution to his family at a rally before an EPA hearing.

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Adults take 10-20 breathes per minute Infants take 20-40 breathes per minute Pre-schoolers take 20-30 breathes per minute

Who Benefits?
Everyone in North Texas who breathes air will benefit from reducing smog, lead and gas pollution. The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that even short-term exposure to ambient levels of smog are linked to heart attacks and strokes. We dont have to be exposed for weeks or months or years, to see these effects, according to one doctor involved in a recent international study. The same thing is true of lead. In the last year, the federal level of concern for blood lead levels has been cut in half and scientists now believe theres no exposure to the toxic metal that isnt capable of doing some harm. Toxicologists have identified hundreds of toxic chemicals in the fracking fluid used in Barnett shale gas drilling. A Colorado School of Public Health study concluded that residents living within half a mile of a gas well had a 66% higher cancer risk. However, there are sub-populations that are more susceptible to air pollution and would benefit more if that pollution was reduced or eliminated. 1. Asthmatics Studies show exposure to smog increases the risk of death among people with severe asthma. Patients with the condition have a greater risk of not only suffering an attack but of actually dying on days with higher levels of smog. According to the American Lung Association estimates there are at least 110,000 asthmatics living in Dallas alone. 2. Children A ten-year USC study of children produced evidence that ozone can cause asthma in children. It also showed that the most athletic children in polluted areas are three times more likely than inactive children to get asthma.

Who Benefits?

Because we need so much air to survive, breathing is the way that most people can be exposed to the most pollution.

We ingest approximately 200 gallons of water a year

We breathe over 2 million gallons of air a year

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According to a University of California at Los Angeles study pregnant women exposed to high levels of smog are more likely to give birth to children with heart defects. It found as much as a threefold incidence in infant heart problems where mothers were exposed to air pollution. Locally, a Cooks Children hospital study on childhood health in DFW found an epidemic of asthma among school-age children. It located the heaviest concentrations of childhood asthma directly downwind of the Midlothian cement plants. 3. The Elderly Along with children, those over 65 are among the most vulnerable to the effects of dirty air. Theyre the population with the highest percentage of existing chronic conditions that can be exacerbated by air pollution. The Harvard School of Public Health found that deaths from stroke among the elderly increased consistently with rising concentrations of smog and other kinds of air pollution. 4. Women Besides being more susceptible to stroke than men, and thus more vulnerable to dirty air, women are twice as likely as men to visit the emergency room due to asthma and women accounted for 65% of asthma deaths according to the American Lung Association. 5. Communities of Color According to the EPA, asthma is almost twice as common among African-Americans as it is among whites. African-American children are three times as likely as whites to be hospitalized for treatment of asthma. African-Americans are four times more likely than whites to visit the emergency room because of asthma. Emergency room visits due to asthma was almost twice as high for Hispanics than for non-Hispanic Caucasians. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention close to 50 percent of all Hispanic-Americans live in counties that frequently violate ozone standards.

Scientists now link air pollution to many cognative disorders. One study found children exposed to urban air pollution were already developing debilitating proteins in their brain similar to those found in Alzeimers patients.

Links Between Air Pollution and Brain Disorders

Whats interesting about air pollution is that other factors that may cause dementia are generally found at the more individual level diet, weight, smoking. And we can help to try to prevent them at that level. But in this case, were looking at something that we can do to intervene at a broad scale, with society at large. Its a whole new way to think about prevention for dementia and cognitive decline. Dr. Jeanifer Weuve Rush University Medical Center

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The History and Success of Downwinders at Risk Who is Downwinders at Risk?

501 c3 and c4 Board Members Carolyn Bell Becky Bornhorst lives in DeSoto and was a key organizer in the Texas PTAs condemnation of cement plant pollution. Cherelle Blazer Sandra Breakfield is a Dallas based accountant who also serves as Downwinders treasurer. Diane Castillo is a young mother who lives in Duncanville and joined Downwinders as a college student. Grace Darling Margaret DeMoss Reecea Henderson is from Cleburne and was Staff Director of Clean Water Actions DFW office in the 1990s. Jeff Jacoby Kerrie Kimberling Nelda Mills Sue Pope, a Midlothian rancher, is founder of Downwinders At Risk. She began organizing against cement plant pollution in 1991. Molly Rooke Carolyn Ross Gary Stuard Peter Wilson Downwinders has a long history of bringing effective, science-based advocacy to regional air quality. 1995 Downwinders assists the American Lung Association to produce Danger Downwind, the first film on the burning of hazardous waste in cement plants. 1996 Downwinders is the first group in Texas to fund an independent scientific review of the states Toxic Effects Screening Levels system. 1998 Downwinders sponsors the only peer-reviewed, journal published survey of human health near the Midlothian cement plants, authored by UT toxicologist Dr. Marvin Legator. It finds a 30% higher rate of acute respiratory problems among those living near the plants. 2004 Downwinders leads the successful campaign to include Ellis County and its three cement plants in the official DFW non-attainment district. 2005 Downwinders negotiates the largest good neighbor agreement in Texas history with Holcim Cement, providing for new pollution controls, an independent scientist to monitor the facility, and $2.3 million for DFW area smog reduction measures. 2006 A legal settlement with Downwinders requires the state to fund the most extensive independent study of smog reduction pollution controls for cement plants ever done in the US. It finds 90% reductions are feasible with current technology. 2007 Dallas announces the nations first Green Cement procurement policy. A dozen more local governments follow over the next three years. 2008 TXI announces its suspending operations at its Midlothian wet kilns and quits burning hazardous waste. 2009 Former Technical Advisor Al Armendariz becomes EPA Regional Administrator. 2011 Ash Grove announces it will close and convert its Midlothian wet kilns.

PO Box 763844 Dallas, TX 75376 info@downwindersatrisk.org Phone: 972-230-3185