Math Alert: Ft. Worth interim air quality study

Ramon Alvarez has a blog post up explaining his dissatisfaction with the interim air quality study and the eternal wait.

Here’s an excerpt:

The interim report only presented high-level summaries of results of sampling at 66 sites out of 170 sites where emissions were detected in Phase I (no emissions were detected at another 31 sites). Stated differently, the interim report provided no information about nearly two-thirds of the sites with detectable emissions.

Now look at the numbers (try to ignore the spin) on the City of Fort Worth website:

The interim report included findings from 97 of the 201 sampled gas well sites. Of the well pad sites studied to date, 31 showed no detectable emissions, and 55 had emissions below the threshold for the basic air permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), according to the report.

Huh? Could someone please help me here?

The final word goes to Ramon.

While the final analysis may conclude that these emissions don’t pose a health threat to neighbors, there is no basis to downplay the significance before performing the necessary analyses