by Fran Sage,
Contributing Writer
While the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) affirms in its mission statement that it “strives to protect our state’s human and natural resources,” that protection has a qualifier: “consistent with sustainable economic development.” In any showdown between profit and health, profit usually wins out. In Texas, the regulatory agency for the environment is open for business. Below are four recent examples in which business interests were dominant over public and environmental health:
For years Waste Control Specialists (WCS), a company owned by Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, a major political contributor to Gov. Rick Perry, has been developing a nuclear waste disposal site west of Andrews near the New Mexico border. WCS has been storing nuclear waste and is seeking additional licensing for permanent disposal of waste. Waste would come from all over, including what is already being stored. WCS has several licenses pending at the TCEQ: low-level radioactive waste, for which a draft has not yet been issued nor a public comment scheduled and another license sought for disposing byproduct materials (that waste is produced by the mining and milling of uranium and thorium) for which public comments were invited and responded to.
In that case, the TCEQ has issued a draft license and denied a request by nearby Eunice, New Mexico residents for a public meeting. The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club has requested a contested case hearing before Administrative Judges but has not yet received a response.
Although the Commission has not yet scheduled action on the low-level radioactive waste site, the Executive Director, Glen Shankle, is on record as supporting the license. He overturned the agency scientists who urged the permit not be approved. They believe that the burial site will ultimately be about 14 ft. from the water table and leaking might be possible. WCS, however, has convinced Mr. Shankle that its study should be followed rather than the staff’s.
Oak Grove Power Plant, a coal-fired plant in Robertson County in Central Texas was approved for permitting even though the administrative judges recommended denial. Oak Grove construction will be finished and the plant started up this summer but it will be January before its electricity will be in the grid. The Administrative Judges worried that because Texas lignite is one of the dirtiest forms of coal and the proposed control technology is not proven to be adequate, that the permit should be denied. TCEQ Commissioner Buddy Garcia said that if the applicant could not meet the permit levels, then the agency would shut down the facility. That means we must trust TCEQ to actually shutdown an expensive plant if it violates regulations.
While the Ozone Standard just approved by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was not part of TCEQ’s responsibility, Mr. Buddy Garcia, Commission Chair, as well as the Executive Director and another Commissioner, wrote to the EPA urging that the standards should not be changed because it could affect business in Texas. They are fully aware that EPA can not take economic impact into account. One may note in passing that Governor Perry fulminated about the impact upon business in Texas right after a modest change in the standard was approved by EPA.
The recently approved renewal permit of ASARCO, (a wholly owned subsidiary of Grupo Mexico) to reopen its copper smelting plant in El Paso faced widespread and fierce opposition, an opposition that continues right now. ASARCO had been closed down for the last nine years and needed a ten year review to continue its permit. Although widely protested by public officials in Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas as well as by the mayor and city council of El Paso, state Senator Eliot Shapleigh, environmental organizations, and the administrative judges all urged denial, the TCEQ approved a renewal permit, claiming that under the Texas Health and Safety code (See section 382.055) it has no choice. It did renew it for five instead of 10 years and is requiring some special conditions to be met. Lead emissions might be reduced as a result. The ASARCO smelter could emit 7,560 tons of pollutants each year of which 6,673 tons will be sulfur dioxide. TCEQ, as a result of the renewed ASARCO permit, will model the facility's emissions as a part of the Regional Haze State Improvement Plan to determine if there is an impact on any Class I areas (Guadalupe Mts. and Big Bend National Parks). But the health of the cities most impacted from lead is of great concern to those citizens. Since the permit was approved, the City of El Paso and the state of New Mexico have petitioned the TCEQ for reconsideration of the renewal permit and revocation of the original permit.
This coming summer a State Implementation Plan (SIP) on Class One areas (in our case Big Bend National Park and Guadalupe Mts. National Park) will be acted upon by the Commission and sent forward to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The draft report projects the years 2155 for BBNP and 2081 for Guadalupe Mts. National Park to achieve natural air. I hope to write a full column as that process moves forward.
