Juan Parras, Community Outreach Coordinator for the Environmental Law and Justice Center, explains his thoughts behind the location of Chavez High School and the decline of the zone's tax value.
August 2005
How can other communities protect themselves against this same type of occurrence?
Parras: There are a lot of things they could do to protect themselves especially if they are informed and have some understanding of environmental issues in their community. A great resource is Louis Gibb’s group, the Center for Health and Environmental Justice. Nationally, they have devised a plan for schools districts that are considering a construction site for new schools. They cite criteria should be considered prior to building a school. Locally, it is essential that a community gets organized and on top of the issues in order to be effective. How well connected is it? Does it have resources or experts to deal with the issue? Otherwise, if they don’t have any political clout, financial resources or technical help, they will not be heard. Without these resources a school’s administration will build wherever they please because they know they will not have a fight on their hands.
Why have you been working so feverishly to shut down the school?
Parras: It is a question I get asked all the time, and my response is that we need to look at it from different fronts. For example, initially, whenever we were protesting the siting of the Chavez High School, we would give tours of the area to EPA officials, city officials, people that deal with air quality issues, and they would comment to me that “this school should have never been built here.” Then they always say “but it’s a done deal already.” The way I see is it is that if anybody who has any sense claims the school never should have been built here, they should not have to use the word “but.” In my opinion they should say “therefore this is what we are going to do to shut it down or make sure that the environment is in keeping with the clean air act.” Nobody is giving us solutions. We have got a lot of problems in that area and everybody is pushing it aside thinking that these problems are going to go away simply because the school has already been built. It is simply a bad investment, a $100 million dollar investment that HISD does not want to let go with absolutely no money being generated, in the form of taxes, to pay off the school. What we really need to consider are several things, one, the financially bad investment; secondly, the economical aspect, and thirdly, the environmentally risk factors. Presently, we have a school that costs $100 million and we are not even able to afford to pay for the school. The Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone is a failure; money from other TIRZ zones is being used to pay for the Chavez School. In reality, the zone is not generating any revenues for HISD, and our students are being placed in “Harms Way” as Dina Cappiello puts it. You and I would go bankrupt if we made a 100 million dollar investment and in the end continue to pay an additional 4 million a year to keep the building up, in this case, the school. Remember this is a thirty year lease agreement. HISD is willing to loose $4 million dollars a year, rather than admit it is a BAD investment, both in terms of siting, student exposure to contaminants and lost revenues.
What do you envision for the future of this school as a long term viable solution?
Parras: The only solution, as I see it, is for industry in the area to be forced to equip its facilities with the best available control technology in the market to reduce its pollutants. This of course would benefit the entire surrounding communities as well. I also believe that HISD and the City of Houston have an obligation to the community to ensure that the industries in the area pay their fair share of taxes, above the appraised values established in 1997. Otherwise this is just another Enron deal.
How is this an issue of environmental justice?
Parras: “According to the EPA, the air in Houston is suppose to meet the Clean Air Standards by 2007. We are far from it. There’s no way it will be cleaned up by 2007. We need to be realistic. We need to realize that enforcement and regulations are severely needed to make sure that companies are abiding by the laws so that we can clean up by the year 2007. I have targeted the Chavez School as an Environmental Justice case because this school was built in the year 2000. Prior to 1994, we did not have an Environmental Justice Executive Order that allowed communities to file complaints of EJ with the EPA. This is the first time that an EJ issue, complaint has been filed with the EPA, from the Houston area regarding the siting of schools.Prior to that we didn’t have a say. Schools could be built anywhere and we had no mechanism to complain about the environment injustice. The Executive Order, 12989 gives us, minorities, hope in dealing with environmental issues affecting our neighborhoods. If you look at the demographics of the area, consider the student population attending the school, they are from low income families, they’re not politically connected, and they lack the resources to fight industries polluting their community, then they are indeed an environmental justice community. The EPA should never have ended its scoping process initiated as a result of our complaint. The bottom line is that the EPA is really having a difficult time in addressing EJ issues, and communities impacted are suffering as a result. Health and safety should be on the top of their list. Where are they?
What would have been a viable alternative for choosing a school location?
Parras: Originally there was a space available next to Burnett Stadium which is roughly three miles from where Chavez is currently located. The property size would have been about the same without its close proximity to industry. Currently Chavez is 1000 feet from three huge petrochemical plants. When HISD conducted an environmental assessment of the present location, they should have conducted other assessments of other potential areas. What I mean by other alternatives, they don’t just consider it, and they actually have to make environmental assessment at two or three sites. Then they can realistically say they looked at three sites. The school district can tell you they had alternatives but they can’t give you environmental assessments regarding the other choices they had because they didn’t do it.
What efforts are being taken by the Environmental Justice Clinic to address the TIRZ issue?
Parras: The clinic itself has not taken any action as far as pursuing legal action against the City of Houston or the Houston Independent School District. What we are trying to do is to be proactive in getting out information regarding the lost of revenues, the bad investments made, the exposure of daily pollutants, the lack of industry paying their fair taxes, the lack of concern for the community as a whole and the failure of TCEQ in its enforcement and regulations. We bring up the issues of increasing rail traffic, the worst case scenario, the pipelines, etc. Responsible parties should consider the investment they made, the pollution those students are exposed to and potential impacts to future generations. As long as those companies, industries, are there and the school is still there, every student that attends will potentially be impacted. There is already data showing that this area is highly polluted. Anybody with a conscience in my opinion will say “look we made a bad investment, again, in terms of location and student exposure to toxics, now let’s clean it up or rebuild somewhere else.”
How have residents in the community reacted to the school’s location?
Parras: In the beginning a lot of community activists protested against the site. Because of the school bond election failure in 1996, a lot of those activists assumed the school was not going to get built. Then back in 1998, HISD and the City of Houston passed the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, which did not have to be voted on by the public in general, which is how they were able to get around the failed bond election. Many of the same activists felt like they could not do anything else and gave up. As far as I am concerned, there are a number of things that we can still push forward. For instance, again, referring back to the articles written by Dina Cappiello that brought lots of attention to problems we have been talking about for quite sometime. However, Dina Cappiello was able to focus on community environmental hazards and people living in close proximity to industries. So much so that it got the attention of State and Federal regulators. We need someone to conduct epidemiology studies, to conduct health surveys, to research rates of cancer and other illnesses. On another note, there are those living in the community that wanted the school and are willing to live with the situation, as some living near industries say, “we knew the risk factors, however, what can you do?” Students at the Chavez School are having to shelter in place, even when there are no alarms. Obviously all these factors should indicate to somebody that this is not right, for this community or any other community in a similar situation to tolerate.
It seems some feel that we have to accept risks with industry. We don’t have to take risks, some think we have to, but we don’t. So if you assume the fact that companies are here to stay and we have to live with air pollution and accept it as a way of life, then you are wrong. Many of these companies are reporting enormous profits, while continuing to contaminate our communities. They should be using that money to invest in cleaner technologies, minimize their emissions and be better stewards in the communities they operate in. For example, look at our cars. We as individuals have to make sure that our cars past emission standards in order to drive them. Industry should be held to the same standards, they should not be able to operate their business without conforming to strict air emission standards.
Do you have any comments regarding the responsibility of industry & Tax Incremenet Reinvestment Zone 6:
Parras: If you look at the financial statistics of the industries in TIRZ 6, it’s easy to see they are making huge profits. Yet while the industries are making huge profits, they’ve been able to convince the Harris County Appraisal Board to reduce their taxes from 391 million down to 129 million. As long as the Taxes for these industries does not measure up to 391 million dollars, HISD will have to come up with 4 million per year, from other sources, to pay for the Chavez School, money that could be used to pay for teachers pay raises, students’ books, or other needed school programs. I think industry ought to be a good neighbor. If they are not going to pay their taxes they can at least reduce as much as possible by investing money into new technologies that have almost zero emissions. A responsible company should not want to harm its community. Pollution causes harm and they should deal with that issue. In this case, industry is hurting the community economically as well. Considering these business practices, they’re stealing from us. They are stealing our health and they’re stealing from our economy.
How can community persons get involved with EJ issues or related environmental hazards?
Contact Martina Cartwright, Environmental Staff Attorney for the Environmental Law and Justice Center, 3100 Cleburne Ave, Houston, TX 77004; or contact Juan Parras, Community Outreach Coordinator, 713-313-4270.
