Sunset hearing could cast shadow over TCEQ

Houston Chronicle 11/14/10
Sunset hearing could cast shadow over TCEQ

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality takes center stage in Austin today as a panel of state lawmakers again considers whether the agency is tough enough on polluters.

Environmentalists say the TCEQ has become a rubber stamp for anyone with land and a blueprint for a coal-fired power plant, as well as a toothless regulator whose penalties scare no one.

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Average fine $8,300

In this latest debate over the TCEQ, environmentalists are focusing on the Sunset staff's call for higher fines. The state now caps penalties at $10,000 for each violation per day.

A Quiet Hell
Thanks to lax enforcement by TCEQ, plants along the Houston Ship Channel launch tons of toxic gases into our air, and face little penalty even when they exceed pollution limits over and over again.
By Chris Vogel Wednesday, Dec 16 2009

It was just after dawn along the Houston Ship Channel when all hell broke loose inside the Valero oil refinery. What had begun as a small fire in a storage tank quickly sparked an explosion, sending 3,461 pounds of sulfur dioxide into the air and five workers to the hospital.

None of the toxic pollutant, which can trigger a range of respiratory, heart and lung diseases and forms acid rain, was permissible under the refinery's state-issued permit.

Shortly after the blast, television news stations broadcast images of burning equipment and charred debris. People living in the nearby Manchester neighborhood were ordered to close their windows and doors and stay inside.

The oil and gas industry gives more money to Texas political candidates than to those in any other state, and Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, leads the pack.

According to The National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonprofit that tracks campaign money, Texas candidates hauled in more than $15.2 million in oil and gas industry campaign contributions during the three election cycles from 1999 to 2004, more than double that of the next closest state, California. That accounts for 25 percent of all campaign dollars that the industry donated to state political candidates across the country during that time.

www.window.state.tx.us/trccsunset/
About the Texas Residential Construction Commission

The Texas Residential Construction Commission will be closed September 1, 2010 (pursuant to provisions under Sec. 325.017 of the Government Code). All records and property will be transferred to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.

Houston Chronicle 12/16/10
TCEQ gets an earful from public

AUSTIN — Dozens of people, including doctors, school teachers and church-going grandmothers, pleaded Wednesday with Texas lawmakers to make the state's environmental agency tougher on polluters.

The hearing, which was part of the first legislative review of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in a decade, drew people from around the state, with many of them saying the agency had failed to protect them from pollution.


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But the TCEQ's critics asked for even more changes, accusing the agency of being too cozy with industry and ignoring public concerns. They expressed frustration over the recent approval of air pollution permits for coal-fired power plants near Abilene and Bay City, about 60 miles southwest of Houston, even though state administrative law judges recommended denying both permits.

"It seems like these three TCEQ commissioners have all the power, and it's not working for the state," said Allison Sliva, a Bay City resident who opposes the recently approved White Stallion Energy Center, a 1,320-megawatt power plant.