In a major ruling yesterday, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) turned down Valero Energy’s request, on bogus grounds, for a tax rebate that would have cost Texas school districts up to $93 million out of budgets already pushed to the brink by the disastrous results of the 2011 Texas Legislative session. State Senators Wendy Davis and Rodney Ellis were instrumental in applying the political pressure to TCEQ and released this statement celebrating the victory for Texas’ teachers, children, and hard pressed communities along the Gulf Coast:
Senators Wendy Davis and Rodney Ellis today commended the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) staff for protecting potentially hundreds of millions in public education funds from a flawed tax exemption request.
Following a call by Senators Davis and Ellis to protect Texas schools, TCEQ rejected a pollution control tax break request filed by a refinery company that failed to meet the statutory criteria of providing on-site environmental benefits. The tax exemption would have required a school district outside of Houston to refund tens of millions in tax dollars. It was a pivotal decision because dozens of similar requests remain pending.
“School districts across the state are certainly breathing a sigh of relief today that the TCEQ staff has not buckled under political pressure and that the agency is rejecting this request that would potentially bleed hundreds of millions from Texas classrooms,” Davis said. “We must fight for every dollar for our public schools, especially following the more than $5 billion in state funding cuts that are impacting our schoolchildren.”
Senators Davis and Ellis had called on TCEQ to reject the request because the company’s investment failed to meet the letter or spirit of a 1993 Texas constitutional amendment that allows for tax exemptions when companies install pollution control equipment that provide an on-site environmental benefit. Earlier this month, Senators Davis and Ellis submitted a formal request for an opinion from the Texas Attorney General to clarify the law. In their letter to the AG, they wrote that the request does not meet the statutory guidelines of the law because “... the equipment at issue provides no environmental benefit at or near the site.”
In communications with TCEQ and the Texas AG, Senators Davis and Ellis had said that San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp.’s request, if approved, would require a school district just outside of Houston to cough up tens of millions of dollars. And the refinery company’s request before TCEQ could have had a broad impact on Texas school funding as dozens of other requests similar to Valero's remain pending.
The request that was rejected today by TCEQ staff was filed by Valero in 2007. It was already rejected once by the TCEQ staff. But that earlier recommendation was disregarded by Governor Perry's politically-appointed TCEQ Chairman Bryan Shaw, who asked the agency staff to re-evaluate Valero’s request. Shaw has been criticized as an industry ally. Perry has received the second-most donations in Texas from Valero - more than $147,000 from the company, its PAC and employees since 2004, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Shaw has also stood with Perry in public denials of climate change being caused by humans and he was recently accused of censoring an environmental report on Galveston Bay by a Rice University oceanographer, removing any references to a causal connection between human activity and the rises in sea level or the changes in the climate.
Senators Davis and Ellis requested the AG opinion to clarify the intent and the application of the 1993 law in order to assure that Texas taxpayers and schoolchildren are not victimized by political maneuvering that would override the intentions of the constitutional amendment.
Up to 200 school teachers, parents and children protested outside today’s Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) hearing in North Austin today against a proposed property tax rebate for Valero Energy which would refund up to $93 million in property taxes to the energy giant. The protesters claim that the funds would overwhelmingly come directly from local school district budgets that are already cash strapped due to over $4 billion in cuts to school funding during the last legislative session.
Patricia Gonzalez, Vice President of the Pasadena branch of the Texas Organzing Project (TOP), stated that Pasadena I.S.D. alone would be forced to repay $11.3 million and would lose a huge source of future school revenues. She added that several other refinery companies were waiting to file similar claims if Valero’s is successful. She implored the commissioners to deny the request, as they had in 2009, stating “everyone should pay their fair share.”
Jennifer Sylas of Houston said that HISD would lose $13.3 million from a district budget that has already seen the loss of such critical programs as buses, books for each individual student, and one on one help for students with dyslexia.
Despite the impassioned pleas from gulf coast residents in attendance, and the clearly audible chants from protesters outside, the three commissioners were unable to comment on this issue as their mandate prevents them from commenting on issues not in the current agenda. As the TCEQ’s general counsel put it, the Valero “matter is not ripe for consideration at this time.”
While their was no pronouncement on the Valero tax rebate issue, their were several other interesting issues up before the commission during the 3+ hour long hearing. One was a hearing request for a “major ammendment” of a Rio Grande Mining Company Texas Land Application Permit which would allow the mining company to directly discharge wastewater into state waters at a “daily average rate not to exceed 360,000 gallons per day” at a facility near Shafter Township in Presidio County. Presidio County Judge, Paul Hunt, argued, via letter, that the permit should be denied due to concerns about arsenic contamination, though the commission will let the hearing go forward.
The other major topic at hand was how the commission should interpret House Bill 2694 in the commissions rules. The law can be interpreted to deny the ability of state agencies to become conflicting parties in litigation, as I understand it. It could then, for instance, limit the ability of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Deparment from suing the Railroad Commission for threatening wilderness areas.
I will keep checking in with TCEQ to see if there are any new developments with the Valero case, or any of these other cases in the future.
Despite the crippling budget shortfalls afflicting Texas’s school districts and county budgets in the wake of the 2011 Legislative session, energy giant, Valero, has requested a $92 million property tax refund from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Valero claims that this refund is due to them based on a 1993 consitutional amendment, proposition 2, that helps property owners comply with local pollution regulations by granting them property tax exemptions. This is a good law that requires owners to “provide an environmental benefit at the site.”
The problem here is that Valero’s proposed environmental improvements have nothing to do with reducing on or near site pollution. The exemptions would fund the installation of hydrotreaters at several of its Texas refineries. These hydrotreaters reduce the sulfur content of the gasoline produced so that it can be used in all modern automobiles. According to the TCEQ’s own staff, these hydrotreaters “do not provide an environmental benefit to the site.” In fact, according to TCEQ engineer Minor Hibbs they “actually increase pollution.”
We are facing such serious issues in the North Texas Barnett Shale. All of the bills that are intended to help us are falling on the deaf ears and the hardened hearts of this GOP-controlled legislature.
Now comes the poisoning. Making decisions like this for ALL Texans...for many years, without our knowledge. These guys running our state are really beyond sick.
Since they keep getting elected...I suppose we can expect that "Poisoning the Electorate". Strategy to remain in their Playbook.
H/T to TX Sharon for her tireless efforts and determination to bring drilling reform to Texas and for giving those within and outside of her community a ray of hope in the daunting battle that confronts each and every one of us. The map at the end of TX Sharon's diary over at Daily Kos tells us the very ugly, sickly and heartbreaking stories imposed by hydraulic fracturing across the U.S.
Please head on over to Daily Kos to give TX Sharon a little support.
Last week, hundreds of students and community members from Corpus Christi, Texas, disappointed with the carelessness of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's permitting policy, began appealing directly to the Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement offices.
The proposed petroleum coke plant, the Las Brisas Energy Center, was proposed in 2008 and is currently undergoing the contested case hearing process to obtain a permit. The hearing, conducted by the State Office of Administrative Hearings, will result in a non-enforceable recommendation made by the Administrative Law Judges to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The hearing is set for late October.
"We decided that we can't wait while the TCEQ issues a questionable flex permit to the Las Brisas Energy Center. So we decided to gather petitions at our university calling on the EPA to intervene and sent them directly to Gina McCarthy, the head of enforcement at the EPA and assistant to Administrator Lisa Jackson" states Daniel Lucio, student at Texas A & M, Corpus Christi.
"We have a real problem with the TCEQ's permitting process," says Jim Klein, chair of Corpus Christi's Clean Economy Coalition, "Chairman Bryan Shaw and Commissioner Buddy Garcia have stated that a case by case MACT analysis is not needed for this plant, and we know that this flex permitting isn't complying with the federal Clean Air Act."
Hal Suter, of the local Sierra Club, explained, "Over a hundred of us took action and called, emailed, or signed a petition that went directly Gina McCarthy's office last week, because we can't wait while this dirty petroleum coke plant, Las Brisas, moves forward."
Rick Perry, recently chided by the Texas natural gas industry for politically-motivated comments directed at Bill White, orchestrated a stunt in Fort Worth yesterday in the hopes of mending fences with an industry that has traditionally supported the career politician. You'll recall that CBS 11 nailed Republican Perry over his Jerusalem junket with Guma Aguiar, who made billions of dollars in the Texas natural gas industry. Unfortunately Perry's political stunt usurped the diligent and aggressive work that Senator Wendy Davis has done on potential environmental ramifications and overall efforts to measure North Texas air quality as a result of high pressure hydraulic fracturing in the Barnett Shale.
Rick Perry dispatched Republican Senator Troy Fraser and Republican Representative Byron Cook into Fort Worth to announce a loosely put together, politically-motivated plan that would place air quality monitors in areas of the Barnett Shale. This is an initiative that Senator Wendy Davis has worked on since her election to District 10 only to have Rick Perry and Republican allies in both chambers of the legislature ignore Davis' aggressive efforts time and again. At first glance one might cheer over Perry's politically-motivated plan until further examining the details.
Representative Cook said the following at yesterday's press conference:
"The additional air monitors will offer Texans greater transparency about the air quality in the Barnett Shale region because more scientific data will be available to the public, in real time, via the TCEQ's website."
We know about the Bad Health Brigade, and that coal ash contains toxic amounts of them, but there's an insidious friend of theirs that just isn't getting any attention at all.
Burning coal can produce Radon (it's actually TENORM, technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials), Polonium 210 and Lead 210- and it can be emitted as solid radioactive material, as gases, and as both.
For example, Radon gas emissions at the proposed NRG coal-fired power plant result from its presence in the coal, which means that alarming quantities of radon gas will be released into the air during large-scale coal combustion.
Radon gas emissions at the proposed Oak Grove plant result from the presence of radon in the coal, and significant quantities are released into the environment. The highest potential concentrations of radiation would be in the Robertson County area closest to the oak grove plant.
However, there is NO information about the average concentrations of radon and its radioactive relatives in the coal in the permit application, the TCEQ's technical review, or the draft permit for the Sandy Creek plant.
The Law:
1) TCEQ's Regulatory Definition of "Air Contaminant" in state law includes "radioactive material".
2) Radon is a radionuclide classified as hazardous air pollutant/HAP under Title III of the Clean Air Act.
Why isn't the TCEQ regulating radon exposure to radon and its carcinogenic byproducts? Well, they don't regulate much.
Has any radiation been detected near coal plants? In Texas!?
Yes.
The U.S. Geological survey conducted extensive flyovers of the US looking for radiation hotspots. Every coal-fired power plant had two radiation hotspots. One for the coal and one for the coal ash piles.
The highest concentrations would be in the Robertson County area closest to the Oak Grove Plant. Radon gas emissions at the proposed Oak Grove coal-fired power plant results from its presence in the coal, and significant quantities of radon gas are released into the air during large-scale coal combustion.
Get involved, fight coal ash at www.cleanuptexasnow.org
Former TCEQ Commissioner Larry Soward says the dispute over the Texas flexible air permitting program not working can be easily fixed if the TCEQ will just listen to the EPA’s concerns and go from there. “Get on with the business of getting the program compliant with the Federal Clean Air Act and get those permits that have been issued that are not compliant, get those adjusted to make them compliant.” Soward says changing the air permitting program to make it compliant won’t cost the state jobs. “These same companies are operating in other states with fully compliant air programs, they’re not losing jobs, the companies aren’t moving away or shutting down, and the same will be true with Texas.”
Soward was appointed Commissioner by Rick Perry in 2003. Here's what Perry said in his speech at Soward's oath of office ceremony:
I know Larry Soward is the right person to serve as a Commissioner at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality because I have worked side by side with him for many years...By virtue of more than 25 years of public service in high-level positions, and his background in environmental and water law, Larry Soward is imminently qualified to serve as the newest TCEQ Commissioner.
You could say this just by looking at his resume, but I know it because I have gotten to know the tremendous person that Larry is. Larry is a humble, hardworking Texan who believes in providing great customer service to the citizens of this state, and who has a deep and abiding love for the natural resources we must protect: the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, and the land that we live upon...
Larry is a good man and a devoted public servant. Texas is blessed to have him.
(Great live coverage from a big event in Houston. Broad coalition of Texans working for clean air and water! - promoted by Katherine Haenschen)
Hey all, We're live at the Discovery Green in Houston, moments from kicking off the Great Texas Clean Up Festival, what is being touted as the largest environmental event in Houston in decades. That's right, decades!
We'll be updating between acts and speakers, bringing you all the action and all the fun.
Juan Parras of Tejas (tejasbarrios.org) is calling the event a success before it even starts, simply because "it's brought a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds together to fight for environmental justice."
The speakers' lineup is pretty long and pretty deep- expect some food for thought from Houston Director of Sustainability Laura Spanjian and Representative Ana Hernandez, representing a large portion of the Houston area. We'll give you their comments when they happen!
From the unverified rumor-mill: there are Tea Party protesters nearby.
From the verified rumor-mill: there's a woman working for BP public relations going around with a flip cam asking people if the entire oil industry should be penalized for the spill. Spin much? We're onto you, sister.
Note: It's currently 105 degrees, but we've still got a turnout from people concerned with cleaning up Texas and having a good time (at the same time, of course). We'll be right back!
