Environmental Group Hails Clean Air Settlements & Nightly Roundup

By KERA News & Wire Services

Dallas, TX –

A group of environmental activists is hailing settlements reached by a container glass-maker and a cement manufacturer with the federal government.

The Justice Department says Saint-Gobain Containers Inc. of Muncie, Ind., and Lavarge North America Inc. of Herndon, Va., could end up paying $282 million to cut emissions at 28 plants around the country under the Clean Air Act settlements.

Downwinders at Risk is a Texas environmental group that's often critical of the nation's largest concentration of cement kilns, just south of Dallas. Group director Jim Schermbeck says the deals will have sweeping effects on the industry.

For years, Schermbeck's group has been promoting the selective catalytic reduction system for the 10 kilns in the town of Midlothian. He says they would go a long way in cleaning up the notoriously polluted air in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

NWS says tornadoes caused Wednesday damage

The National Weather Service has confirmed that at least five tornadoes damaged parts of east Texas. The tornadoes near Canton, Sulphur springs, Larue and Poynor left trails up uprooted trees, shattered homes and toppled trucks Wednesday afternoon. Two injuries were reported near Sulphur Springs.

Van Zandt County Chief Deputy Sheriff John Turner said that 50 buildings suffered varying degrees of damage from the afternoon's storm. The National Weather Service says one rural church was destroyed and at least one house was stripped of roof and some walls. Inspectors estimated the tornado packed winds of 110-120 mph.

At least two tornadoes snaked across part of eastern Henderson County. The first near the town of Larue collapsed structure walls with winds estimated at up to 130 mph. Another tracked from near Poynor northeast toward Coffee City, near Lake Palestine, dislodging a mobile home and damaging a wood-framed home with winds estimated at 90-100 mph.

The weather service says least two twisters tore across parts of Hopkins County in northeast Texas. One tracked 1 1/2 miles near Sulphur Springs, destroying one mobile home, injuring two occupants, and damaging a metal shed with winds estimated at near 80 mph. Another twister near downtown Sulphur Springs and tore northeast for 1 1/2 miles, damaging about 50 homes and impaling one with large tree branches with winds of about 80-85 mph.

Report cites flaw in New Mexico facility

An engineer's report for the University of New Mexico says the school's football practice facility is vulnerable to the same type of winds that caused the Dallas Cowboys' practice field canopy to collapse.

The report, completed earlier this month, says the Albuquerque school's steel and fabric facility could be subjected to unforeseen pressure if hit by a major wind storm.

The New Mexico facility was designed and built by the same firm, Summit Structures LLC, that erected the failed Cowboys' structure. A dozen people were injured in the May 2 collapse.

A similar report prepared for Texas A&M in September found that the school's Summit-designed indoor football and track facility also wasn't built to withstand the maximum winds prescribed by the building code.