Fort Worth City Meetings

We had someone tell us today they watched a Fort Worth City Council meeting online recently and were shocked at how abrasive and arrogant the council and Mayor were to the citizens. We guess if we were witnessing for the first time we would be too.

Here are some meeting notes from last night's first Fort Worth Air Quality Study meeting. Sounds like another typical Fort Worth meeting, done the Fort Worth Way. Reminded us of last week's Riverside Park (aka Trinity River Vision) meeting. Sad, ain't it?

All, yesterday afternoon and evening the first meeting of the Air Quality Study Group was convened by City Staff. There was a surprise right at the beginning. There was a non-voting, non-member, non-resident of Fort Worth, as meeting facilitator, and he guided the discussion. His dubious and only qualification for being a part of the proceedings was that he was Region 6 EPA Administrator during George Bush's reign. His name--Richard Greene.

See http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/e8f4ff7f7970934e8525735900400c2e/a0386518e18d1d88852570d6005e7e41!OpenDocument .

It was clear from the beginning that this is another distracting phony group set up by the Mayor to give an appearance of propriety while giving the drilling industry and their shills a grand opportunity to pontificate and create doubts and distract the public. This study group is being financed by our taxes. The group was not given a clear charge at the beginning of the meeting and though it lasted from 4 PM to 7 PM nothing of real value was accomplished.

Alisa Rich was the only scheduled presenter who had a grasp of what needs to be done. She was scheduled for 5 minutes while the TCEQ presenter (who had delivered, in February, the obscenely flawed report on a deceptive air quality study they did in FW in December) was given 20 minutes. The facilitator permitted Ed Ireland, Ph. D., (in economics from an obscure institution) and director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council (a propaganda mill) to speak--he wasn't on the agenda--and permitted his contractor, hired by the 4 largest drilling operators in the B. S., to describe the tests they are doing in Fort Worth.

Several other air quality measurement contractors were also allowed to describe their work. One of these was a contractor to CHK or XTO and was the one the City had originally proposed hiring before the public demanded an independent study.Then Alisa Rich was introduced.It was clear, as soon as we all began to hear what Alisa's message was about, that the city staff became extremely agitated, with Susan Alanis (Planning Dept Director) and Sarah Fullenwider (Asst City Attorney) whispering frantically to each other. Then Susan walked over to the facilitator and whispered in his ear, then there was more whispering between her and Fullenwider, and a high sign to Brian Boehner (City Environmental Dept Director) which resulted in his rising and interrupting Ms. Rich rudely.They do not want any of this kind of information discussed at any public meeting.The TCEQ presenter who made the long droning unintelligible speech after Alisa had nothing new to say at all. He is the man who gave the first set of results to the FW City Council at a pre-council meeting in January.

The entire meeting yesterday was an insult to the citizens of the city, who expected this working group to be charged with writing a proper statement of work and a statement of required qualifications for bidders. None of that was accomplished, and when both Ramon Alvarez of EDF and Jim Bradbury, study group members, expressed concern about this, Susan Alanis gave the most amazing speech, describing her idea of how the contractor would be selected and the tests defined. It was clear that she has absolutely no training in procurement procedures and practice. She used the term RFQ as an abbreviation for "request for qualifications" when anyone familiar with procurement terminology knows that RFQ means "request for quote". Her idea of the process the city will follow is that the group will solicit qualifications and a narrative of how the contractor proposes to do the work, and I suppose, some estimate of the cost. Then they will review this information and narrow the field down to two contractors and call them in to discuss their plans in more detail. Then one contractor will be recommended to the Council. The scope of the work was not mentioned as a topic for the study group to address. This is ludicrous in the extreme and a harbinger of yet another faux advisory process (We've already had two others.) that will precede the selection of the contractor who will give the Council and mayor the results they want to hear.Please review the prediction I made regarding this meeting two days ago (below), and note that I sent a copy to Susan Alanis and Zim Zimmerman. I never got a response from either of them. They're getting a copy of this message too.

Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:13:34 -
Let's back up a minute and see why we object to Susan's "DRAFT QUESTIONS" sheet.

History:
1. The attempt by Moncrief and TCEQ to whitewash the December test results was transparently a continuation of an incestuous relationship between the city, the TCEQ, and industry.

2. This ludicrous attempt at fraud was exposed, and the mayor proposed an "independent study" at the request of aggrieved citizens.

3. His "independent study" turned out to be a plan to use one of the contractors who does business with industry here.

4. Again, this was exposed, and the response was to set up a committee whose job was to be to ensure that the study is independent and hire a contractor selected by a bid process. The proper tasks of such a committee are as follows:

a. Prepare a statement of work for bidders qualified to do air quality studies, including the task of plume geometry measurement sufficient to localize the source of pollutants.
b. Ensure that measurements are taken with potential sources fully operational. This means no telegraphing of the schedule of measurements and ensuring that the facility of interest in each measurement operation is operating at full capacity.
c. Specify the compounds to be tested for and the desired accuracy of measurements.
d. Ensure chain of custody integrity for all samples delivered to the analysis laboratory.
e. Ensure that the contractor has no major O&G producer clients and no present or scheduled future business with the industry or city.
f. Oversee the proposal evaluation effort to ensure that the process is unbiased and compliant with competition rules.
g. Oversee the work to be sure that proper data is collected and analyzed.
h. Oversee the city's response process upon delivery of the final report.5. Instead of preparing for the job outlined above, the city has produced a list of "Brainstorming" questions (See attachment) quite obviously designed by the gas industry for the purpose of allowing the industry representatives and their shills on the committee to take up all the time of this first meeting pontificating on the point of view of industry--(There really is no substantial problem. We are expert at this and wouldn't put people at risk. All this is just hysteria, and wholly unwarranted.)Now, folks, you can see how the charge of this committee has been morphed by industry and their friends even though we have called them out on this issue three times before.If they get away with this at tomorrow's meeting the credibility of the city will have been completely, finally, and forever destroyed. If this happens, the tests and everything associated with them are a waste of taxpayers' money.