Funding Matters
by Jane Dale Owen
Tremendous budgeting problems exist for environmental cleanup in Houston. Both the
Dallas and Houston clean air plans will be scrapped unless fully funded by the legislature
by September. Houston's air plan is already about 56 tons per day short of meeting
federal air quality standards.
The issue, of course, is how to come up with the money. Oddly, lawmakers have opted
to raise money by dramatically increasing the fee people pay on their vehicles when they
move to Texas from out of state. However that increase has been challenged and there
remains a big question mark as to how to fund the cleanup program.
It is not automobiles, but industries, which operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week that
generate the most pollution (approximately 70%). Therefore, taxing the refineries,
chemical plants and waste facilities that foul our air, and designating the revenue for a
massive cleanup is the only reasonable way to generate the necessary funds. Who else
could afford to come up with the four billion dollar shortfall of federal highway funds if
we do not come into compliance by 2007?
Today industry has received the equivalent of a slap on the wrist for violating
emissions standards, and other safeguards. It is only when fines exceed "the cost of doing
business" that we will see real progress in cleaning up Houston's air.
The White House is now taking the position that voluntary reductions make controls
unnecessary. Much the opposite was shown by the underpublicized Texas Air Quality
Study (TexAQS 2000). Scientists flying instrument-laden aircraft through the industrial
plumes measured chemical emissions so intense that their first reaction was to question
whether industry had been calculating its emissions correctly. They discovered that the
calculations were being made according to methods defined by the Environmental
Protection Agency, but something was completely wrong. The ozone precursors were
found to be seven to fifteen times higher than what industry was reporting. Some
chemicals were one hundred times higher than reported.
In general the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) the emissions calculation released
annually by industry, are from seven to fifteen times underestimated. So much for
voluntary reporting. In the absence of any real monitoring and reporting we have no way
to gauge our progress, or rather our LACK of progress.
Clean air has become a bi-partisan issue, a political football, and in the balance lies the
health of Houston citizens. Throughout the country we lack sufficient air quality
monitoring stations. Most of them have been hijacked for other purposes, such as to
determine whether or not there exists a threat of bio-terrorism. It is just as important to
warn citizens of early detection of the toxins and carcinogens that are a part of the highly
reactive VOC's (volatile organic compounds-ethylene, butene, propylene, 1,3 butadiene)
as it is to warn of bio-terrorist threats.
These chemicals are toxic. Many are known carcinogens, mutagens and teratogens.
These especially threaten the youngest and most vulnerable in our population, to whom
long term health impairments are a real and predictable consequence.
Eleven schools, nine of them elementary, are in the vicinity of the ExxonMobil plant
in Baytown. At a release rate of 500,000 barrels of chemicals per day, ExxonMobil is the
biggest of all local polluters within the industry. Young children are most affected by
long term low level emissions. The Texas Legislature is deliberating on a measure to put
air monitors outside the threatened schools. This is a program which we consider to be
urgent, and we vigorously support it, considering the stark fact that 202,983 children in
288 schools, 6 counties, are affected by 43.5 million pounds of toxic air emissions.
Meanwhile, in the absence of such a monitoring system, parents can learn how to operate
air sampling equipment. A widely used low-tech device, for example is a five gallon
bucket equipped with an inexpensive vacuum pump and a Tedlar bag to contain the air
sample. The sample can then be taken to the EPA or an independent lab for screening.
Citizens, especially parents, need to be proactive in protecting our most valuable natural
resource-our school children.
Sadly the very effective HGCAMP (Houston Galveston Citizens Air Monitoring
Project) is ending its citizen-government collaboration program due to lack of EPA
funding. However, one more training session is being offered , scheduled for February
12th . If you are interested, please phone Beverly Monday, 281-983-2201 at the EPA
Region 6 lab, 10625 Fallstone Rd., Houston 77099 to be included and learn how to take
air samples with various devices.
If you are interested in a continuation of this program, please call 281-983-2201 and
speak to Rick McMillan--or speak with Mr William Rhea, EPA, Dallas, 214-665-6767.
Several new air sampling buckets for citizen use have been added just this week, funded
by CLEAN and constructed at UTMB by John Sullivan, who merits our thanks for his
effective efforts in a variety of aspects of the HGCAMP program.
