Bill Dawson Interview, Part 1 of 2

DT: My name is David Todd. I'm here for the Conservation History Association of Texas. And it is February 27th, 2008 and we're in Houston, Texas.

And we have the good fortune to be talking with Bill Dawson, who is a journalist, environmental reporter and has worked for, I think it's four newspapers as well as online publications and some outlets for Houston A-Advanced Research Center and other, sort of, more technical institutes and-and as well for the-for trade journals, such as the Society For Environmental Journalism-Journalists.

And so in that regard, it's great to hear what you have to say about-about your life today and-and I thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

BD: Thanks, glad to be here.

DT: Bill, I was hoping that you could tell us if there was a-some sort of early experience or influence or teacher, childhood, maybe during your education or-or later, that could've first exposed you to the environment or to nature, concerns about those two?

BD: Well, I've thought about that on a number of occasions and, you know, it's really difficult to say. One of my most vivid, early childhood memories had to do with being in the outdoors in Tennessee and Georgia, where my family lived when I-from the time I was born until the time I was about nine or ten, I guess.

And, in particular, in Atlanta we lived in a-toward the later part of that period, we lived in a-in a neighborhood that was near-it was right in the middle of the city, but it was near an undeveloped area that had been an old rock quarry and it was forested. And friends of mine and I, from the neighborhood, used to play in that area.

It was like having a-a wilderness area right there in the-i-in the neighborhood. And we walked through it on the way to school, along creeks and so on, along trails through the woods. And I-I think in retrospect that that-that experience may have had something to do with sort of an interest in conservation and nature and so on. But, that's the best I can-I can say, I think.

DT: Well, maybe we can roll forward a little bit and talk about your education. You went to Rice and-and later to the University of Texas and took your Master's there in journalism. And I-I'm curious what interested you in that field and-and-and that discipline?

BD: Well, I`d always been interested in current events and I was a history major at Rice and journalism's history on a deadline, I say. Looking for something to do and looked into going into graduate school in history, looked into going to law school and decided that the idea of being a journalist was the-the most interesting to me, getting out and about in the world and talking to people and intersecting with current events and the currents of history and so on.

And journalism was-American journalism was in one of its-one of its periods of-of flourishing at that time. I mean, it was the New Journalism as they called it, the coverage of Watergate and o-other-other things that were-were going on at the time. So it was just an attractive-seemed like an attractive area to go into. And I went to the University of Texas, got a Master's degree in journalism.

DT: What do you mean by the New Journalism?

BD: Well, there was a-there was a sort of movement at the time that didn't really continue that in as great force as perhaps people thought it would. But, you know, various people like Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson and so on, working in long-form narrative journalism and so on, and trying to bring some of the-some of the approaches of fiction writing and narrative writing, generally to non-fiction.

And so that was kind of an exciting thing that was in the air at the time. It was not something I really ever did in my career as a journalist, but it was something that-and I think helped it attract a lot of attention to journalism at time, by a lot of people. And not only that, but kind of a spirit of-of ferment and political and social change that was, you know, afoot in the country at large in the late 60's and early 70's.

DT: You-you'd also mentioned that this time when you were going to college and then grad school and getting an interest in journalism was the time of Watergate and I guess Bernstein and Woodward's work. Could you talk about the role of investigative reporting and how that might've influenced your-your interest?

BD: Well, it-it seemed like a-a-an interesting and worthwhile way to spend one's life, you know, trying to cast a critical and-and detailed-a-a critical eye, that-that events in the society and-and to try to interpret them and find out the larger part of the-of the-of the events and-and, you know, convey them to the public at large.

So this-I'm-I'm glad you raised that-that point because, you know, Woodward and Bernstein, the work on Watergate and other things that were going on, had brought, you know, investigative reporting to the fore in a lot of people's minds. And it was something that I decided I wanted to try to do and I've gotten to do some of during my career, both on environmental and other subjects.

DT: Well, maybe you can tell us about how your career got started after you got out of grad school, some of the first papers you worked for and what sort of reporting you did while you were there.

BD: Well, I worked for three newspapers before going to the Houston Chronicle, where I worked for most of my daily newspaper career. Started at a newspaper in the Houston area in Brazoria County, just down the road from Houston, the Brazosport Facts and worked there for a couple of years. Worked at the Arkansas Democrat, which is now called the Arkansas Democrat Gazette in Little Rock.

And worked for the Commercial Appeal, the sole surviving daily newspaper in Memphis, which is my hometown. I was born in Memphis. And then came to work at the Chronicle in 1984. The experience working at the Brazosport Facts was probably helped influence my growing interest in coverage of environmental issues.

I remember early on in my tenure at that newspaper, I checked a book out of the county library, which was a-a book by an investigative journalist with separate chapters on different occupations and the occupational hazards and diseases and safety issues which were prevalent or a feature of working in those-in those areas, different kinds of industrial work and other kinds of occupations.

It was a-it was investigative work on occupational safety and-and-and health issues. And I remember thinking it was a-a potentially interesting thing to look into there in Brazosport, which is a-a collection of small towns at the mouth of the Brazos River, Freeport and Clute and Lake Jackson and it's called Brazosport, although that's not a-that's not a-a-a specific city by that name, that's the name of the area.

I approached a-an editor at the newspaper with a-with a proposal, a-an idea, I guess, more than a proposal, to-to try to look at some of the occupational or community health impacts of the large chemical complex there in that area. And was told that wasn't something they wanted me to-to spend my time on.

So I went on to report on some environmental issues for the newspaper. But the fact that, you know, I was-my offer to do that project was declined was something that stuck in my mind, I think, and helped inspire my later interests in-in reporting on those-on those areas.

DT: Cou-could you elaborate a little bit about maybe any explanation that the editor gave you or any kind of reaction you had to, well, you know, what you thought about that kind of response from-from your editor?

BD: Well, there really was no explanation, it was just kind of a-a brief, I don't think that's something we want to do comment. And, you know, I'd only worked at the place for a few weeks and-and didn't want to jeopardize my employment, particularly didn't really know how the-the work world worked in the-in the world of journalism.

But, you know, I-I di-I don't really know why-what-what the answer was-what the answer is as to why they didn't want to do that. It-it was, I-I think, an inspiration in a vague kind of way, to want to report on pollution issues and-and related subjects later. And-but I-as I said, I did get to do some environmental coverage at the-at th-at the newspaper and as-as events warranted.

Sometimes I was assigned to-to cover a-a hearing or something. And-and that helped increase my-my interest in the-in the field as well.

DT: Do you remember any of your earliest environmental stories?

BD: That's-you know, I haven't looked at the clips in a long, long time, but I-I think some of them related to shrimping activities there, perhaps.

And there was a proposal for an offshore oil platform at the time in the Gulf of Mexico and so I-I did at least a-a couple of stories on that because it was something that was of interest to people in the community because the possible environmental and economic ramifications for the-for the area, not just that area, but the larger Houston area, the Gulf Coast as well.

DT: I-I could think of-of maybe some other topics that would've been common down there, maybe you can tell me if any of these things came up at the time.

One is that I guess along the Freeport Coast is one of the-the big surfing areas and also an area with a lot of small houses and-and erosion issues along that beach. Di-did you hear anything about the development along there or about water quality concerns that surfers or erosion along the.

BD: You know, if I did, I don't remember. Much of what I did at the newspaper was under assignment. I was a general assignment reporter but I received assignments and often would fill in for other reports on their beats covering various city councils or the county government or picking up coverage of the police department or so on.

So there wasn't a lot of-a lot of opportunity to, you know, try to develop a-a-a beat in that area, at least that's the way I remember it. But I-I did-I did do some environmental assignments as I-as I said and it-it kind of enhanced my growing interest in that area. It-it didn't make me think this is something I want to concentrate on at-to the exclusion of other things.

It was just a-a beginning job in the-in the newspaper industry and it was a good learning opportunity. It was a good paper in a lot of ways. And I enjoyed working with the folks there and I got a lot of e-good experience, especially covering local government.

And-and some of the basic stuff that reporters do, local government, police, local community college. I was assigned to cover the board at a local community college. So that was an ongoing-an ongoing thing that I did for a while.

DT: And then from-from Brazosport, you went on to work for larger papers in larger towns in Arkansas and Tennessee. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how the, you know, a s-a small newspaper differs from a big or-or how the-the politics might have-different from any-a very industrial area like the Brazosport area versus Arkansas or Tennessee that may not have had that kind of heavy industry and the pollution issues that go along with it.

BD: Well, it's a difficult question. I-I'm not sure how to answer it exactly. The-you know, to some extent, newspaper work is newspaper work in a small town or a-a larger city. I mean, some of the-some of the same duties e-exist, many of the same duties exist at-at papers regardless of-of the size of the community.

And there were environmental issues which presented themselves in-in both of the lo-the locations you mention, in Little Rock and-and Memphis. And I remember sort of volunteering to cover them because it was something that I had a growing interest in and they didn't have fulltime environmental reporters at the time, as I recall.

And so I got, you know, my-my offer was-was accepted and once you've done some stories in an area, you know, you become sort of known as the person they turn to. And in Little Rock, for instance, I worked there for nearly a couple of years and about halfway through, the management of the newspaper decided to expand their coverage of the state government and I volunteered for and was assigned to join the-the newspaper's bureau covering state government.

Bill Clinton was in his first term as governor at that time, so I got to cover Clinton in his first term as governor. And as we were trying to figure out how we were going to cover state government with this new slightly larger staff that had gone from one person to three or four, as I recall, three, I guess and I was one of those three.

We divided up different-different duties and I got the Pollution Control Agency and the Public Utility Commission, which regulated, you know, utility rates and so on.

And-and as a result of that assignment, found myself covering some environmental and-and related health issues and so on and including some hazardous wastes issues, which were-were gaining prominence in different parts of the country leading into the national discussion about hazardous waste that led to the creation of the Superfund Program and so on.

So that was, you know, an additional opportunity to-to cover environmental news. When I moved to Memphis a couple years after I went to Little Rock, there were a number of-I was a general assignment reporter there too and did a wide variety of things. But one of the things that was in the news was an old abandoned hazardous waste site.

It was actually a-a municipal landfill, now that I recall, where-where some chemical waste had been placed. And-and there were a number of-a number of issues related to whether or not the chemical wastes had-that had been placed in that city landfill in a largely African-American neighborhood had-were-were posing health risks to-to people in that neighborhood or perhaps to the larger community.

And so I-I covered some of-some of the news related to that and-and did some other environmental coverage in Memphis. And then when I applied for a job at the Houston Chronicle, I had that background and they happened to be looking for an environmental reporter at that time. It was just a-a coincidence.

I was not looking for a job to cover the environment but it was something I had covered at three newspapers and had gained some experience doing. And they hired me to cover environmental news at the Chronicle in 1984.

DT: Can you-I'm just going to.

DW: [IA] Memphis [IA] at the time, you're saying this is the 1980's?

BD: Yeah, I was in Memphis from late '79 to '84.

DW: [IA] Utilities Commission [IA].

BD: That was in Little Rock.

DW: Little Rock. A-but about that time, the Tennessee Valley Authority's nuclear program would've been melting down, if I'm not mistaken. They were shutting [IA] down because it was way over budget and [IA] you were-you were covering the-the.

BD: No, you know, we had a-we had a-an Energy and Utility reporter who did-who-who did that stuff, who covered the Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division, which was the municipally owned utility in Memphis and-and also covered the TVA. And-and so I-I really didn't cover that in Memphis.

DT: Perhaps you can tell the next chapter in your life, when you came to Houston and applied for and got a position as an environmental reporter. And-and at the time, it sounds like that was a very unusual thing to have a dedicated reporter for and I was hoping that you could tell about how that might've come about, maybe discuss Mr. Scarlett and Carlos Byars and how-how that job got sort of carved out at-at the Houston Chronicle.

BD: Well, you're exactly right, a-a lot of newspapers, at that time, did not have fulltime beat positions covering the environment. One of them that did was the Houston Post, the Chronicle's cross town competitor and one of the two newspapers in Houston at the time. Harold Scarlett was a legendary journalist.

He was, you know, renowned as one of the finest journalists in-in Texas and probably he was one of the finest journalists in the country at the time, although I don't think he ever got the kind of respect that he probably deserved for that. But he had been a reporter at the Post for a number of years, dating, I think, back into the 1950's, if I recall correctly. He was a World War II veteran.

And by the time the mid 60's came around, as I understand it, I-I was not working in journalism at the time, I was in high school in another-in another city, but as I understand it, by the time the mid 60's came around, he'd-he was a-working as a special assignment reporter or what we might now call a projects reporter for the Post, doing big in depth stories, investigations and so on.

And-a-as I later learned, he-one of his projects was a-an award winning, I think, series of articles on Houston's air and water pollution in 1966, if I recall correctly, which would've been, you know, several years before the landmark environmental legislation of the early 70's was passed, the Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act, creation of the EPA and so on.

So Harold was carving out a role for himself as a-an aggressive and, you know, really insightful reporter on environmental issues in Houston at an early date. After he-he died in-in the 1990's following his retirement from the Post by a number of years, I believe it was '96 when he died, I-I helped write the Chronicle's article about him, the-the obituary.

And I later wrote a couple of articles for journalism publications, sort of obituaries but kind of tribute articles about-about Harold. And found out that he had been assigned to be the Post's fulltime environmental reporter in 1970. I talked to Bill Hobby, who had been the editor of the Post, was later Lieutenant Governor of Texas, of course.

And-and Mr. Hobby told me that Harold was assigned to that-to that role in-in 1970, which I did a little bit of research and found would've made him one of just a handful-just a very few fulltime environmental reporters at any newspaper in the country at that time. So the Houston Post was really ahead of the curve, in-in terms of assigning, you know, a fulltime reporter to concentrate on environmental problems, environmental issues.

The Chronicle did not do that until I came to work there in the mid 80's. They had a reporter just before I came to work there. It was a gentleman named Carlos Byers, who had been the science writer. And he covered a wide variety of subjects, including general science and the space program, NASA and the environment.

He covered the nuclear plant that was under construction at the time. So, he really had a lot on his plate and the editors at the Chronicle, I learned, had decided to, more or less, split his job in half and hire someone to largely do environmental news and let Carlos continue doing the other parts of the beat that-that he had been doing, science and NASA and so on.

And I just happened to show up at the Chronicle looking for a job in 1984. Had-had gone to college in Houston, had finished high school in Houston and thought I might like to live here again. And just by coincidence, they were looking for an environmental reporter. I showed up on their doorstep with some background covering environmental news at three newspapers and-and they hired me to become the Chronicle's first environmental reporter.

I didn't cover environmental news exclusively in the first couple of years there. I did the great majority of my time, but I-I-I handled some other assignments too, perhaps ten percent of my time or something I guess, probably ninety percent of the time on environmental news. And then at some point in the-in the late 80's, I was made the fulltime environmental reporter and had that job un-until I left the Chronicle in-in 2001.

And they've-they've continued to have a-a-an environment beat since then.

DT: Well this might be a good time to sort of jump into what sort of themes and articles you-you were interested in and covered during this period of 1984 to 2001, when you did have the environmental beat at the Chronicle. I thought perhaps we could just talk about some of the highlights that we'd mentioned earlier when we talked off-off camera. I believe one of your early series was something called The Air We Breath, that came out in, maybe, '86.

BD: I think that's right, yeah.

DT: ...on toxics. Do-do you recall much about that series?

BD: Well, I had been in Houston for a year or so and at the time I conceived that-that series and remember having received a-a-a visit from some people from an environmental group, I think it was from the Sierra Club, who were on a-a tour of newsrooms trying to inspire reporters to cover issues that they wanted covered and which is one of the things that environmentalists do.

And-and we got to talking about issues that were on the table in Congress at that time and air toxics was one of the-was one of the subjects that the environmental community and some of their allies in the public health movement and other-other areas we're looking at trying to get Congress to-to take new action on.

I knew from having lived in Houston before, that if air toxics was an issue anywhere in the country, it was an issue in Houston because it's the nation's petrochemical capital with a huge complex of refineries and chemical plants and associated industries and facilities and so on. And I did a little research and proposed to my bosses that they let me do a series of articles, an investigative series on-on air toxics.

I don't remember the exact timing on this, but during that period of time when I was either conceiving the series or had already started it, the big industrial accident at Bhopal, India occurred in which a-a leak at a-a runaway chemical reaction at a chemical plant killed thousands of people. I don't think the exact number will ever be known. But I ended up doing the series of articles.

There was a lot of attention paid by regulators in the United States and by industry people and by a-advocates and so on, to the possibility of a-a-a drastic chemical accident in this country that might immediately kill or injure lots of people near a-an industrial facility. So I ended up doing the series of articles probably too ambitiously, I think in retrospect, on both of those components of the broader air toxics issue.

One part was on the routine permitted, usually, releases of toxic chemicals into the air from industrial plants and other kinds of facilities, the chronic risk side of the issue, if you will.

The other part of the series was about the acute or immediate hazards posed by industrial accidents, ru-runaway reactions or explosions or whatever at-at chemical plants that might be illus-might w-were illustrated by the-the Bhopal, India accident.

And so the series ended up being a-a-taking a look at both of those sides, if you will, of the air toxics issue, in-interrelated because if a large accident occurs, you know, that poses immediate hazards to people.

It also puts pollution into the air, if it doesn't kill or inner-injure anybody in the-on the plant or in the community, it nonetheless puts additional toxic air pollutants into the air.

So-so the two-the two subjects were interrelated, but I-I say over-overly ambitious, perhaps, because either one of those probably warranted-aspects of the issue probably warranted its own investigation in its own right and maybe I stretched myself a little bit too thin.

But at any rate, it was the first of a number of big investigative and explanatory projects I did at the Chronicle over the years, including some later attention to air toxics. (?).

DT: Well, while we're talking about-about air pollution, I-I think that-that one of the early articles you wrote was about a smog episode down in Deer Park that helped create some sort of alert system.

BD: Well, it-it wasn't an early article; it was actually later in my tenure at the Chronicle. I think it was in, oh gosh, I don't remember, '99, I think, so actually toward the end of my tenure at the Chronicle, and had paid a lot of attention to air quality issues in between the time that that first series was published in '86 and the time of the episode you mentioned in-in '99, probably more attention to. (misc.)

DT: Well, let's return to this article you did about the smog episode in Deer Park.

BD: Right, it was in the late 90's and I was paying a lot of attention to air pollution and air quality issues at that point. I-I had throughout my career at-at the Chronicle, but was particularly paying a lot of attention to air pollution issues in the late 90's.

O-one key reason was the fact that the Clean Air Act Amendments, which were passed in 1990, had assigned some deadlines for cities that violated national health standards for key air pollutants.

And Houston's deadline, or I should say, the State of Texas' deadline for coming up with a plan to clean up the ozone problem in Houston sufficiently so that Houston would-would comply with the National Ozone Standard, the deadline for submitting that plan was in the year 2000.

And it was an enormous process, requiring a lot of study and planning and hearings and drafting of potential components of the plan and so on. And so backing up a number of years from that-that deadline for su-submitting the-the compliance plan or the attainment plan, as it's technically known, I was paying a lot of attention to air quality issues, covering process developments and so on, as the plan got-the plan was-was drafted and as discussions were going on about the plan.

But also there were just a number of other things which-a number of other news events and things that I was doing to pay attention to-to air pollution, and the Deer Park episode kind of fell right in the-in the middle of that, as I was devoting much of my attention to the air issue.

It was an episode in, I think, October of 1999, I-my memory may be hazy on that, but there had been a-an earlier story that I had written in which I had looked at the trend lines for ozone violations in Houston and in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles had been the-historically, the city with the worst ozone problem in the country, especially as measured by the number of days when one or more monitors records ozone above the-the standard o-Los Angeles had-had historically been far and away the-the worst ozone problem in the country.

Houston had-had historically been number two or number three, with one of the next worst, but well behind Los Angeles.

At any rate, I was attending a-a public meeting and a-a-a person who was there, a member of the-a-a health professional who happened to be representing the environmental community at this meeting, introduced the idea in a-in a brief comment, off the agenda I think,

that-that she thought that it looked like Houston's progress on cleaning up its ozone and Los Angeles' progr-greater progress in cleaning up its ozone were such that the two trend lines were going to cross and-and Houston might become the-the city with the largest number of days with a-an ozone measurement above the standard.

In other words, Houston might overtake Los Angeles as the-the nation's ozone or smog capital. And I looked into that and talked to a number of experts and wrote a-a-a story which I think the Chronicle ran on the front page, discussing the apparent possibility that those trend lines would cross.

Los Angeles' line was coming down; Houston's was zigzagging along at a more or less stable pace. It was not getting notably worse, but it wasn't getting notably better either.

It was kind of staying stable with some up and down over the years. And that article, as I recall, provided the springboard to-to cover the Houston/Los Angeles competition, if you will, for the unwanted title of-of ozone champion.

And a-a-a friend of mine who was covering air pollution issues at the Los Angeles Times, started writing articles about it too, so it sort of started to take on a life of its own. But, at any rate, I-I tell you that because it's the-it's the kind of background context for this episode in Deer Park.

And th-the L.A Times and the Houston Chronicle had been paying attention to the relative ozone rankings of the two cities going into the so-called ozone season. It was 1999 and it looked like coming up on the end of that season, that is to say, the end of the period of the year when ozone conducive weather conditions are pres-prevalent, the warm sunny parts of the year.

Coming up on the end of the ozone season, it looked like we were in a pretty dead heat there, l- Houston and Los Angeles. And this episode, if you will, as it was called, that occurred in Deer Park, was the day that pushed Houston's number of ozone violation days over Los Angeles' number of days.

Los Angeles had come upon the e-end of their ozone season and they have a shorter ozone season than we do. And the-so it had some-some significance, some news value that way, that there would be an ozone violation of whatever severity that late in the year, in October, because it meant that Houston was apparently going to be the nation's ozone violation leader for the first time in memory, at least.

And when that happened, it happened as a result of a-a very high level or some very high levels of ozone that were recorded, especially in the southeast part of the Houston area, especially at a-a monitoring station in the city of Deer Park, which is near the Houston Ship Channel, near some of the large industries there.

And those very high l-l-levels, which were recorded, prompted me to write a story about the apparent fact that Houston was going to be the ozone leader for that year.

Afterward, if I recall correctly, and my memory may be a little hazy on this, but as I re-if I recall correctly, after that article ran, I got a call from a-a member of the local environmental cl-community who worked with residents in parts of the city with particularly chronic or acute air pollution issues.

And-and this caller had heard from a number of the residents in Deer Park who reported that there was an outbreak of respiratory ailments among high school and, I think, middle school athletes at Deer Park schools coinciding with that very high and prolonged l-level of ozone that was recorded there in Deer Park, coughing-that kids couldn't stop, wheezing.

I think it-it concerned some of the school officials and so on and so I did some articles about that-that aspect of the episode, the-the-the-the health aspects of the episode as-as reported by people living and, as it turned out, engaged in recreational activities outdoors in that community at the time.

After those articles appeared, I think other news organizations, you know, started d-doing similar reports, if I recall correctly. And the Harris County Judge, Robert Eckels decided that he was going to respond to some of the concerns which were reported by the Chronicle and, I think, other news organizations, about the-the fact that there had not been a-a real-time alert system in place to notify residents,

particularly sensitive individuals like people outdoors, elderly people, children, people with asthma, whoever, that air pollution readings were-of ozone or whatever-were especially high in a location. There had been a institute a-a-a s-a few years before, a system of-of forecasts based on expected weather conditions.

In other words, the state would develop this forecast saying it looks like tomorrow's weather conditions are going to be conducive to high levels of ozone in the air and you might want to, you know, take action accordingly if you're a sensitive individual.

So that-that warning system was in place and-and there were so-there was information, I think, already being put on the internet, at that point, about air pollution readings and so on. But there was no kind of real-time or near real-time warning system in place communitywide for-for high levels of-of air pollution.

And Judge Eckels decided he was going to-to do that and announced that he was going to be adding air pollution alerts to an e-mail alert system that the county already had for other kinds of emergencies.

DT: Well, it's interesting, you-you talked a little bit about air toxics and then ozone/smog problems. Maybe a third air pollution problem that-that you've covered and-and I think covered quite early, were carbard-carbon dioxide related, methane related, global warming issues.

I think that you wrote one piece in 1988, mistaken, and then returned to that topic later. I was hoping that you could tell us what sort of coverage you-you gave to it and-and how the issue kind of evolved over time as people started to understand it and-and be more concerned about it.

BD: Well, let me say up front that I-first I-one of my regrets working at the Chronicle was I didn't pay more attention to-to climate change, I guess that's hindsight in a way, now that we know it's-more about it, but I-I-I really didn't write a lot about the issue. I-I did write about it occasionally over the years at the Chronicle. But perhaps the-the l-the biggest coverage I gave it was in 1988.

It was a very hot summer in many parts of the country and Dr. James Hansen, the NA-NASA scientist who is probably is still very active in that arena today, twenty years later and is probably the best known, most prominent-prominent climate scientist in America, if not the world, testified before congress and-and got a lot of media attention,

saying that he thought there were links, possible links between that very hot summer that was being experienced in many parts of the United States and this issue or subject of the greenhouse effect, as it was commonly known at that time or global warming, global climate change as it's more often known today.

And that-Hansen's testimony and-and the questions that were being raised and increasingly raised because of his testimony about the hot weather con-especially hot weather conditions that year, gave rise to a lot of-a lot of media coverage.

I proposed to my editors that I do a-a-a, you know, a-a collection of articles, a small series on-and they ran over a couple of days, a collection of articles on the global warming issue and the potential ramifications, especially for-for Texas. And, you know, I g-I guess in retrospect, it was one of the earlier in depth looks, you know, by a newspaper at-at the climate issue.

This is pre-internet, so I wasn't as aware of what other newspapers were doing, as we all are now, when, you know, you can sit down at the-at the computer and-and read a dozen newspapers in a couple of minutes or st-stories from a dozen newspapers. But-so that was an-an early example of my coverage of climate change.

And I-and I did a number of stories over the years, especially reporting scientific findings that looked particularly relevant. But there were so many other things that seemed more pressing, air pollution in particular, but other issues that I really didn't pay as much attention to climate change as, you know, probably should have in the ensuing years.

However, I did do a-a large in depth article in-that ran toward the end of 1999, I believe, which sort of revisited, if you will, some of the questions I had raised, some of the subjects I had reported on in 1988. That is to say, the possible impacts on-on Texas. The Chronicle did a-that year, 1999, a-a series of articles called The Coming Millennium, I think, or The N-The New Millennium or something like that.

2000, as we know, is not really the beginning of the new millni-millennium, that was 2001, but everybody was acting like 2000 was going to be the beginning of the new millennium. And the Chronicle went along and so we ran our new millennium, new century series in 1999.

There were twelve articles, if I recall correctly, one on a-each one on a different subject or issue, different reporters-twelve different reporters, I think, or-did the twelve articles. And as the environment reporter, I was asked to come up with an idea for an article looking ahead to the coming century that I thought would be a big deal on the environment beat or in the arena of environmental affairs.

And I chose climate change and so did that article in '99. I mean, in-in hindsight, I guess it looks pretty prescient, but I guess I'd have picked something else pretty easily and been wrong, you know, and picked a-a subject that hadn't-didn't turn out to be quite as-quite as prominent as climate change has become since then.

But it's-it's grown in such prominence, both in the public mind and in the activities of people in the environmental community and the business community and in discussions about politicians and so on, that, you know, it-it seems like it might just come to dominate the-the environmental-the area generally in years ahead.

And there're so many different links to-to other problems and other issues. It could aggravate air pollution in a city like Houston, for instance if, you know, some of the forecasted climate changes occur in this part of the world. But I continued to-to do some work in the-in the climate arena.

I'm-I'm writing for a-a new online publication called The Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, which was launched last year by the Yale School of Environment and Forestry.

And we-we write about how climate change is covered and how journalists and scientists communicate and so on. And I've also done some-some writing on climate change for The Society of Environmental Journalists Quarterly publication, SEJournal. So I'm still in-in the climate change area, I guess you could say.

DT: I think it's interesting that-that you-you've written so much about air pollution and-and you mentioned some of these issues already, the air toxics, the ozone, climate change related emissions. I think it would be interesting to hear what you wrote about when you looked sort of upstream and downstream of some of these pollution issues.

On the upstream end, you wrote a series on grandfathered industries. And on the downstream end or it's a more-more of the result and about the-the rise in pediatric asthma. And I was hoping that you could talk about those two interests and-and the kinds of articles that you wrote.

BD: Well, air-air pollution is such a-an immense s-subject and it's, you know, impossible to-to capture it in daily snapshots of reality, which is essentially what-what daily newspaper reporting is. In combination, those stories may do a-a fairly good job of conveying a-a large picture.

But I always wanted to do larger, in depth, work that helped people understand these issues in more detail and in more of their complexity and with-with more dimensions, with more context, because they really are very complicated.

And the-the-the grandfathered industry's reporting was not, however, really a large in depth reporting project of the sort we've been talking about-the first air toxic series I did or the global warming articles of 1988. It wasn't conceived as an investigative or in depth project.

It was really a-an example, I guess, of just kind of routine newspaper work, which got into an issue or-or-or revealed some things that were going on an-that then led to other coverage and larger public discussion as it turned out, somewhat to my surprise. I say somewhat to my surprise because the work of a-a daily news reporter is often not accompanied by any obvious impact or influence in-in the world at large.

You write the articles and there they go, you don't hear from anybody, you go and write another article, you know.

In the case of the grandfathered industries thing, we're talking about a somewhat arcane perhaps element of clean air law in Texas, in which the state's Clean Air Act passed in the early 70's to implement the first federal Clean Air Act of, I think, 1970, created a-an exemption, a permit exemption from the legal obligation of major polluting industries to have air pollution permits.

That exemption was-was created for older plants which were grandfathered, as it were, and given this exemption and weren't required to have emission permits un-unless and until they underwent major modifications, parallels in federal law, so it wasn't just a-a Texas thing.

The understanding at the time, in the early 70's or the-the-the-the general understanding was that many of these industries would either be mothballed, would-many of these plants would either-would either be shut down as they became obsolete or would undergo major modifications, thereby triggering the permit requirement so that the grandfathered exemption wouldn't be in place for many of them for very long.

Flash forward to the mid 1990's and the run-up to the preparation and submission of the Ozone Compliance Plan in 2000, which I mentioned earlier, state officials charged with the responsibility of devising that plan to demonstrate mathematically how the pollution controls in the plant were going to reach attainment or compliance with the Ozone Standard in Houston.

Those officials were facing the really huge task of coming up with enough pollution reductions to add up to the total that was needed, that's somewhat oversimplifying their mathematical efforts but-but that's the way I would often explain it in-in the Chronicle.

And one of the-one of the places they were looking for possible pollution reductions was to find out how much pollution was still coming out of these old grandfathered industries.

There was a gentleman named Ralph Marquez who had-I believe he was a chemical engineer, he had worked his career in-in the chemical industry and had been appointed by Governor Bush to one of the positions as a Commissioner for the state's Environmental Agency, one of the three people who-who ran the Agency on-on the Commission.

And with his background knowledge in the way industrial operations worked, Mr. Marquez was certainly aware that that was a potential area where some air pollution reductions could be achieved, which perhaps hadn't been achieved before.

And-he and-he had the staff there at the Agency working under a gentleman named Jeff Sattis, develop some statistics to try to get a handle on how much air pollution was still coming out of these grandfathered industries years after it was thought that they would be out of business or have permits and the permits bring stricter controls in many instances.

That-those statistics were not publicly reported in any way. This was a working document, which the staff had developed to try to enable them to-to develop the-the Ozone Reduction Plans and the-and the Attainment plan for Houston.

I got a tip from a source who knew about this-this attention that was being given to the-to the issue within the Agency and in, as it turned out, in discussions with some of the affected industries. And the tip suggested that perhaps I should try to look at those statistics.

And I don't remember if I asked first or filed a letter under the state Open Records Law first, I-I think I-I just asked first, which I typically do and-and ended up filing a request under the state Open Records Act.

And a-a while went by-I think it was a couple of weeks, it was, you know, not immediately forthcoming, but-an-and before too long I-I got a copy of these statistics and it indicated that-that-the-the statistics indicated-and I was able to understand them because I'd covered the-some discussion of the grandfathered issue back in-in the 80's when it was last in the public-in the public arena as a public policy discussion.

I understood and did some reporting to help me understand better that this was a significant, you know, a-amount of air pollution that was still coming out of some of these grandfathered plants and interviewed some people and wrote a story.

And thought it was probably just going to be another one of those stories that news reporters write that, you know, you-you write it, it gets published and maybe do a follow-up and that's-that's it, you know, enters the public domain and maybe gets read by people, maybe not, you never know.

A-as it turned out, this was one of those stories which quite unexpectedly sort of catalyzed a broader public discussion of the issue. The Texas legislature was meeting at the time and I was told by some-some state officials that this article that I had written was being-being handed out or shown around in-in a committee meeting in the legislature.

And environmentalists picked up on it, they hadn't known about this study, these statistics that the state had developed. And suddenly it snowballed into just a major air pollution environmental debate in the-in the state.

And it was a public discussion that prompted a-a lot of more media attention by me and other reporters and action by the legislature, proposals by Governor Bush, who came up with a-an idea to ask these grandfathered industries to voluntarily come in for permits.

And he held press conferences at the Houston Ship Channel and up in Dallas with industry officials announcing this voluntary plan. It figured in, oh gosh, the-the issue figured in I think three legislative sessions, that first one in '97 and again in '99 and then again in 2001.

I-if I recall correctly, Governor Bush was criticized for the voluntary aspects of his approach to the issue by Gary Morrow, who ran unsuccessfully against him for governor in '98, I guess it was. And I-I think it came up again in the 2000 presidential campaign in which the governor, now president of course, was criticized for favoring voluntary measures to-to clean up air pollution.

That was, of course, sort of an oversimplification of Bush's record because his-his a-appointees at the-at the state Environmental Commission were simultaneously working on some mandatory controls which were,

in fact, proposed in the-in the Ozone Plan in-in 2000, which he as governor submitted to the federal government for approval and later became president and presided over the EPA that I-that approved the plan that his administration had submitted as-as Texas governor.

So it-I-I-I guess more than any other thing that I ever worked on, it illustrated to me how unexpected it is whether or not and to what extent, news coverage is going to have an effect on the-the world at large. You asked about.

DT: Please stop right there. [End of reeel 2417]