Why Isn't Texas Suing the EPA?
by Jane Dale Owen
One part ignorance, one part denial and two parts greed equal a recipe for disaster as the Bush Administration rolls back the Clean Air Act and lets industry build and improve plants without upgrading pollution control equipment. As this disaster unfolds, the spotlight should be on Texas, the state responsible for two-thirds of U.S. petrochemical production. Here, for a long time, the industry has used our air and water as a dumping ground without knowing or wanting to know how much toxic pollution the refineries and plants spew out each day. A weaker Clean Air Act means Texas industry stands to reap financial savings for not installing pollution control devices. Left to live with the illness and health care costs are the communities and families that cannot escape the health effects of the pollution.
But this problem is not new in Texas, especially the Houston-Galveston area in Harris County, home to petrochemical plants located along the Houston Ship Channel where most of the state’s production and pollution occur. In his campaign for governor of Texas, George W. Bush vowed to be tough on local polluting industries, but that never happened. In 2000, the year Bush became president, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the city with the nation’s worst ozone. That summer, The Texas Air Quality Study discovered that industry vastly underreports the magnitude of its emissions. Scientists involved in the $20 million study found it hard to believe the readings that came from instruments carried by aircraft as they flew through industrial plumes measuring chemical emissions: The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), known as ozone precursors, coming from plants and refineries in the area were seven to 15 times higher than what industry reported. Some chemicals were 100 times higher than reported.
Long before this study, Houston had data connecting industry emissions to serious health problems. In 1948, one of the first cancer epidemiologists in the U.S., Eleanor Macdonald, was hired by M.D. Anderson. She and her staff reviewed more than 180,000 death certificates and discovered high cancer death rates in neighborhoods downwind of the Houston Ship Channel. Her study, published in 1976, showed that Houston cancer death rates were tied to air pollution, but it was ignored by Houston’s medical establishment. After her retirement in the early 1980s, M.D. Anderson discontinued her work and no serious epidemiological study on the health effects of air pollution has been conducted in the area since then. Latest data from the Environmental Protection Agency show the largest releases of recognized carcinogens to the air in 2001 occurred in Harris County – 570 times higher than the Clean Air Act’s goal to reduce lifetime cancer risks from hazardous air pollutants to one in one million.
Growing health concerns have prompted some area citizens to take on the responsibility of monitoring air pollution. Between March and August 2002, the Houston Galveston Citizens Air Monitoring Project (HGCAMP) responded to reports of physical annoyance such as air pollution, disagreeable odors or discomfort, took samples of the air and had them analyzed by the EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. They found and reported a long list of toxic substances, including benzene and c3-alkylbenzene that are linked to cancer.
The petrochemical industry continues to be protected from accurate and comprehensive reporting of emissions. Recently industrial groups representing Houston-area refineries negotiated a deal that let’s them off the hook for installing equipment to monitor exact quantities of all toxic pollutants that come from individual plants and instead provide seven general air quality monitors near industrial complexes and to measure only the few organic chemicals that contribute to ground-level ozone. The trade-off means less scrutiny of toxic chemicals released by the refineries that can be more detrimental to human health. The excuse coming from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is that requirements for facilities to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to install the monitoring equipment would be overwhelming to the industry and to the agency.
The rationale given by the Bush Administration for the roll back of the Clean Air Act is that upgrades required to clean up pollution would cost industry too much money and, therefore, be detrimental to the country’s economy.
While avoiding installation of new pollution control devices might save the petrochemical industry billions of dollars, their savings would not necessarily improve the U.S. economy. A study released from the Office of Management and Budget, which assists the President in the development and execution of policies and programs, reveals that enforcing the clean air rules administered by the Environmental Protection Agency would actually produce annual benefits to the economy of between $101 billion and $119 billion measured in terms of fewer premature deaths, hospitalizations, emergency room visits and lost work. The cost for industry to comply with these rules would be less than $9 billion.
Time and again the national, state and local government officials who are expected to protect our health and safety seem much more interested in protecting the profits of the petrochemical industry. This needs to change. I believe our environment is in crisis and our health is in jeopardy, especially in Houston where I live. I hear from mothers and grandmothers living near the Houston Ship Channel whose children are suffering with rare forms of brain cancer.
I know about the rising rates of childhood asthma here and across our nation, and increased admissions to hospitals for children having asthma attacks. More and more of us are suffering from chronic coughs and allergies aggravated by the dirty air.
I commend the 14 states including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and more than 20 cities that have taken action against the Environmental Protection Agency to block the changes to the Clean Air Act.
My question is this: Why isn’t Texas and Houston suing the EPA?
