Editorials
Hope is a real thing
As someone who works on air pollution issues, I get to hear stories from a lot of people. People have shared stories about kids with asthma, parents who got cancer from exposures at work, neighbors who got nauseous from the unavoidable accident at the plant down the street, employees who participated in illegal dumping, and just questions from average people about whether or not it is safe for them to take a walk in the morning.
Don't stay inside
- submitted to the Houston Chronicle (but not published)Â
"Stay inside until the smell is gone, or until the air isn't so heavy." That's what Rosaria Marroquin, one of our constituents, tells her children when they want to go outside to play with squirt guns. Parents should be urging their children to go outside, but in the industrial east end of Houston, the toxic air creates a daily parenting challenge.
Similar concerns have been voiced in a project sponsored by Mothers for Clean Air and funded by EPA. The Southeast Houston Project is addressing the problem of air quality by bringing together elected officials, universities, regulatory agencies, residents and local industry at monthly meetings. Residents are monitoring the air using organic vapor monitoring devices at 23 stations.
Are permits just paperwork? Gulf Chemical and Metallurgical seems to think so.
It isn't difficult to find an air pollution scandal. The evidence is in plain view, if only someone looks. That's what I found when I reviewed the file of Gulf Chemical and Metallurgical, a metal recovery facility in Freeport.
Photographs, lab tests and inspection reports warn of urgent hazards. Neighbors have described the metallic vapors passing through the neighborhood as something that "burns your throat." Yet the public has been largely unaware of the serious failure of environmental programs that have allowed excessive emissions of toxic pollutants in Freeport.
Who runs the TCEQ?
Who, exactly, runs the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality?
On paper, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality reports to three commissioners, appointed by the Texas Governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate. Yet in practice it is widely assumed that the oil, gas and chemical industry has an extraordinary amount of influence over the commission's business.
Recent events suggest that industry actually has a formal place in the bureaucracy, and that its consent is required before the commissioners may act. No law grants such sweeping authority to industry, but the evidence suggests that nonetheless the staff at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is responsive to decisions made by industry.
Privatization
Air might seem like public property, but Houston's air is increasingly falling into private hands. Here are just three examples that show how Texas leaders are giving control of our air quality to oil refinery and chemical plant executives who have consistently failed to clean our air.
Example 1: With oil refinery lobbyists calling the shots, will there be action to clean our air?
Here's the story: The Texas House of Representatives voted to prohibit the state's environmental agency from making rules that affect the content of diesel fuels. This new law is being pushed by the Texas Oil & Gas Association.
Fresh ideas - and a fresh attitude, too?
Texas environmental officials are once again planning . . . to clean Houston's air.
Meetings will be held on March 22 and March 27 to discuss traffic, rail, construction and other such sources. Pollution from industry and smaller fixed point sources will be discussed at meetings on April 19 and May 24.
The silence before
Remarks to “Citizens State of the Bay,†GBCPA conference, September 10, 2005
As someone who works on air pollution issues, I get to hear stories from a lot of people. People have shared stories about kids with asthma, parents who got cancer from exposures at work, neighbors who got nauseous from the “unavoidable†accident at the plant down the street, employees who participated in illegal dumping, and just questions from average people about whether or not it is safe for them to take a walk in the morning.
I’m fortunate to be in good health, and to have three children and a wife who are also in good health. We don’t live very close to a chemical plant. Yet I am going to beg your indulgence and begin with my own story.
Clean Air Lawsuit Filed
If environmental groups filed lawsuits every time the state's environmental agency made an insincere promise or missed a deadline, the courts would be clogged. Yet few such lawsuits are filed, as the latitude allowed by judges gives great flexibility to state and federal environmental agencies. With such flexibility, comes a responsibility to lead and innovate, not to break promises and make excuses.
With a track record of broken promises and excuses, it is time for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to be held accountable for failing to clean up Houston's air. For this reason, the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention recently joined with the Galveston Bay Conservation and Preservation Association in a lawsuit seeking federal sanctions against the State of Texas and key polluters.
Environmental enforcement under threat
Protecting the air and water of Texas requires a partnership between the citizens, companies, and state and local government. Two laws being considered by the Texas Legislature would weaken an already shaky partnership.
The first bill, sponsored by Senator Todd Staples, simply states that the state's environmental enforcement agencies, "may not use information received from a private individual or testimony by the private individual regarding that information as evidence in an enforcement action."
While members of the public regularly send videos, give identifications in lineups, and provide countless other types of evidence to assist with the conviction of violent criminals, this bill would leave our state agencies to act alone when it is necessary to take action against pollution and other environmental crimes. Polluter's lawyers will own the courtroom when they can exclude any and all "information" received from a "private individual." How far will lawyers hired by deep-pocketed corporations be able to stretch this exclusion?
Plastic City USA
Houston is still in search of a nickname that will really stick, and I think I've got it: Plastic City USA. Houston isn't just home to the largest plastics manufacturing complex in the nation, we live and breathe plastic.
Well, we don't actually breathe plastic, we breathe the raw chemicals used to make plastic.
One definition of plastic is "capable of being molded," and the reality of air pollution seems to be molded in new ways every day. Take, for example, the amount of olefins released into the air by ExxonMobil's refinery and chemical plants in Baytown. Olefins are a class of organic chemicals that evaporate very quickly. Some olefins can be toxic, and they readily form ozone smog on warm, sunny days. Ground-level ozone is a transient, corrosive gas that over time can seriously affect the lungs. Several olefins are key raw ingredients in the manufacture of plastic, and Plastic City USA is home to one-seventh of the world's olefin production.
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