Bio:
Adam Schwitters has been deeply involved in progressive politics since he pulled the lever for his mother for Walter Mondale at his elementary school in Boston in 1984. He lives and works in Austin.
On May 14th, Texas District Court Judge, Stephen Yelenosky, released a letter stating his intended ruling in a lawsuit seeking to reverse an air pollution permit which would allow the massive Las Brisas power plant and port addition to be built next to downtown Corpus Christi. The permit, issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), allows the proposed 1,320 megawatt power plant to emit massive emissions of toxic pollutants into the air.
Environmental Integrity Project attorney Erin Fonken, representing the Sierra Club in the lawsuit, said:
The court has announced that it intends to rule against the TCEQ because, in issuing the permit, TCEQ committed a number of critical legal errors. Among the legal errors are TCEQ's failure to require the new power plant to comply with the Clean Air Act's protective air toxics standards and the failure to adequately account for the millions of tons to petroleum coke that will be dumped and piled on site before it is burned in the power plant's main boilers.
A Valero Refinery Looms Over Refinery Row Neighborhoods Where Las Brisas Would Be Built
Las Brisas (the name is Spanish for, ironically, “the breezes”) would be located in the thin stretch of land between IH-37 and the Nueces River known as “Refinery Row.” In addition to 16 massive refineries and several chemical plants, Refinery Row is home to a number of small neighborhoods that contain a large portion of the city’s African-American population.
One of these neighborhoods, Dona Park, has a history as one of the most polluted places in the state. Residents of Dona Park have lived for years with dangerous levels of lead, arsenic, and cadmium pollution from the Encycle metal smelter located, literally, across the street from this modest community. While a 2011 TCEQ study of Dona Park residents and soil did not show unsafe levels of these toxic pollutants, a 2011 StateImpact Texas interview with local residents shows a deep distrust of that assessment. “There's a lot of birth defects, learning disabilities caused by the lead," said longtime resident Tammy Foster. "You've got kids born with no ear, miscarriages, cancer, Alzeheimer's, mysterious tumors on pets. Just all kinds of bizarre things.”
If Las Brisas were built, it would emit “approximately 12 million tons per year of greenhouse gases, as well as thousands of tons per year of dangerous pollutants that contribute to smog pollution and health impacts such as asthma attacks and heart disease,” according to the Sierra Club. As it is a plant built on speculation and not to meet current needs, the plant faces strong opposition from city officials, business owners, and local residents.
“The Las Brisas proposal is still the wrong answer for Corpus Christi,” said Flavia de la Fuente, with Sierra Club. “The city is taking such strong steps toward being a more livable, sustainable place. Proposals to further tie Corpus Christi to dirty coal and petroleum coke industries, like Las Brisas and potential coal export projects, are a step in the wrong direction. This court decision is great news for the leaders and residents who are working so hard to build a brighter future for Corpus Christi.”
US Representative Blake “Ducky Pajamas” Farenthold (R - 27th District), however, is a big fan of Las Brisas. He considers attempts to halt construction on the petroleum coke fired behemoth to be “another example of backdoor regulation.” There are several Democrats running to unseat Farenthold (including Ronnie McDonald, Rose Meza Harrison, and Jerry Trevino), but the 27th looks to be a strong Republican district this cycle.
In the run up to tomorrow’s Austin city council elections, the Austin Environmental Democrats (AED) announced their endorsements for Mayor Leffingwell and all of the other incumbents this week.
AED is a local chapter of the Texas Environmental Democrats (TED) which was almost pushed out of the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC) recently. SDEC members thought that TED did not represent a population demographic (the way Non-Urban/Ag Caucus or the Texas Young Democrats do). Thankfully, the vote to expel TED was unsuccessful, and there will continue to be a voice for environmental, as well as social, justice within the SDEC. AED is holding its endorsement forum for primary candidates on Monday. If you want to vote, the deadline for paying membership dues is today. You can pay dues here.
In Austin’s council election, AED is backing Leffingwell, Mike Martinez, Bill Spelman, and Sheryl Cole, because, as Ted Siff, President of AED, said, they “believe that Austin has an enviable environmental record,” and “re-electing the current Mayor and Council incumbents is the best way to continue Austin’s environmental leadership.”
The endorsement sites several examples of Austin’s environmental leadership:
Austin will be the largest city in the country to divest completely from coal power, after the council unanimously “pledged” to sell the aging Fayette coal plant.
To be clear, there are a couple lingering issues with clean power in Austin. For one, the council’s pledge to shutter the Fayette plant is just a pledge, and has not come to a vote, nor has a timetable for closing Fayette been formulated. Also, Austin Energy’s voluntary green power program, GreenChoice, has some of the highest rates for energy of any utility program in the state. If Austin is to maintain its environmental leadership, while also maintaining a diverse population, these rates are unsustainable.
Siff and AED, however, believe that the city under the current council has a “strong environmental record to merit the Clean Energy title today, and it will also forever be an aspirational brand that should motivate us to continue to year after year to further green our city.”
In a significant victory for landowners and environmentalists yesterday, a state District Court judge overturned a three year old decision by the TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality) which would have denied nearby residents and the Sierra Club the right to a contested case hearing over a radioactive waste dump just north of Midland. Two weeks ago, the dump, operated by Waste Control Specialists LLC and owned by uber-republican donor Harold Simmons, won final approval to begin accepting “low-level” nuclear waste (low-level does not mean not dangerous) from 36 states across the country. The ruling mandates a new TCEQ hearing where two neighbors of the dump can prove how they are impacted by the dump and why the site is flawed.
Cyrus Reed, Conservation Director of the Lonestar Chapter of the Sierra Club, spoke about the judge’s decision:
[The ruling is] a stunning rebuke of TCEQ's decision to deny citizens the right to show how dangerous radioactive disposal would be in West Texas. This ruling confirms what we have been saying all along. The Sierra Club and its members in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico deserve the opportunity to show that radioactive waste dumped at the WCS site could impact people in the area through airborne radioactive particles and potential groundwater contamination.
The dump has been particularly controversial in recent weeks after State Rep Lou Burnam (Ft Worth) released previously confidential documents proving that several wells drilled near the site contained significantly more water than they should have. One of these wells sits over the vast Ogalalla Aquifer, the largest underground water feature in the US. The new hearing will allow lawyers for the Sierra Club to present this evidence before the TCEQ. Two of the three TCEQ commissioners are Rick Perry appointees.
Rose Gardner, one of contestants in the case and a rancher who lives within 4 miles of the dump, was grateful for the decision, “I'm very glad about the judge's decision today, since we'll now have a hearing where we can fully examine radioactive risks to our land and water. We now have more livestock than ever before and having the WCS radioactive waste dump nearby threatens our health and safety.”
Tom “Smitty” Smith, Director of the Texas Office of Public Citizen talks about the man behind the steaming pile of radioactive waste:
This case is of national significance because the dump's biggest investor is Harold Simmons, one of the largest contributors to Republican political campaigns and attack ads. He helped to fund the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and the "Obama is a Muslim" attack ads. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Simmons has spent $18 million so far this election cycle and plans to spend a total of $36 million before the end of this cycle. Why would he spend that kind of money? The amount and types of waste could be vastly expanded by a Republican President or Congress thus increasing the amount of money Simmons can make off of the dump and increasing the funds he has available to donate to future political campaigns. And if anyone doubts that his political spending will pay off in favorable treatment, all they have to do is look at how successful he's been in Texas.
Harold Simmons is such a nice guy, he was once sued by his own daughters for making illegal political contributions in their names. He was also the primary backer of Oliver North’s and John Poindexter’s legal defense fund during the Iran-Contra Affair, and has been fined repeatedly for exceeding campaign contribution limits.
An EPA Administrator is ‘crucified.’ An election in El Paso might hang on a bridge. Spills, fines, and lawsuits abound. The future might not be so bleak after all. All that, and more, in this week’s environmental roundup for Texas, the nation, and beyond!
Texas
Al Armendariz, the EPA’s Region 6 Administrator based in Dallas, was forced to resign after a video surfaced in which he likens his enforcement strategy to a Roman conquest, “they’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they crucified them.” Needless to say, those comments have not gone over well with members of congress or the oil and gas industry in Texas. Debbie Hastings, Executive VP of the Texas Oil & Gas Assoc, claims in a recent Op-Ed that Armendariz’s statement is part of a larger “federal undercurrent to undermine the oil and natural gas industry, which promotes our nation’s energy independence, provides millions of jobs and pays billions in taxes.” EnergyWire is convinced that the feud between the Texas energy industry and the EPA will continue despite the resignation.
The 16th Congressional District Democratic primary contest might hang on the construction of a new international bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. The incumbent, Silvestre Reyes, claims as many as 5,000 El Pasoans will be displaced by the bridge. There is a slight problem for Reyes. According to Roy Gilyard of the Metropolitan Planning Organization (which would be tasked with proposing the bridge in question), there is no current activity to build a new international bridge. Reyes’s Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke, called the controversy “the worst kind of pandering. [Reyes] is using lies to create anxiety and play upon that to try to win votes.” O’Rourke has called for the construction of a new bridge, which, he believes, will increase international trade and keep El Paso competitive with other inland ports.
After last year’s wildfire season burned nearly 4 million acres in Texas, Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples announced the creation of the Texas Wildfire Prevention Task Force. The task force is a partnership between the Ag Commission, the Texas Forest Service, the Texas Division of Emergency Management, the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board, and researchers at Texas A&M. It seeks to identify high fire risk areas and eliminate the risk through preventative measures, like controlled burns, before wildfires occur.
Four Southeast Texas marine-based entities have filed suit against BP, alleging that the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill “has had detrimental effects on the Gulf’s marine and coastal environments and is to this day affecting business and their ability to generate revenue.” This follows last week’s $7.8 billion settlement in another suit against BP, and federal charges brought against a BP engineer for supposedly trying to cover up the extent of the spill.
Flint Hills Resources, a Kansas based refining and chemical company that is “wholly owned by Koch Industries,” was fined $46,450 by the TCEQ for incorrect valve settings which led to the release of 4,875.5 pounds of hazardous organic compounds into the air from its chemical plant in Port Arthur. At a different Flint Hills facility in Corpus Christi, a leak was reported in an orthoxylene unit last week which led to the plant’s shutdown. The extent of the leak remains unclear.
Port officials say there is no risk for an oil spill after a 750 tanker collided with a drilling rig on Wednesday off the coast of Port Aransas. There were also no reported injuries from the incident.
While Houston remains the worst city in the US, outside California, for ozone pollution, its air quality has improved significantly, according to the State Of The Air 2012 report from the American Lung Association.
Austin’s transit agency, CapMetro, added a cool new toy this week. It is a zero emissions hydrogen fueled bus that has previously operated in Columbia, South Carolina. A privately owned hydrogen fuel station will fuel the bus.
The Nation
The Sierra Club has filed suit against dated coal-fired power plants across Oklahoma. According to Whitney Pearson of the Sierra Club’s OK chapter, all coal plants in Oklahoma emit excess emissions, and the EPA needs to “end the free pass that large polluters currently have which allows them to emit unlimited amounts of pollution during certain phases of their operations. Because people need to breathe all the time, limits of the amount of pollution that polluters can emit need to apply all the time.”
Amory Lovins, an “energy theorist,” claims in this TED Talk that ending the US dependence on fossil fuels will actually be easier, and more cost effective than most of us realize. His central point is that once industry, individuals, academics, and the military start moving beyond coal and oil we won’t need federal regulations or acts of congress to help us along. He also believes that this movement will begin soon. I hope, one day, to share his optimism.
Beyond
A recent study shows that exposure to toxic chemicals can have risks over a much longer time frame than most of us realize. Bruce Blumberg, a biologist at UC-Irvine, says, “it’s not just ourselves that are at risk. We’re condemning our descendants to have increased risks, too.”
Greenland’s glaciers are still melting, but the rate of that meltdown is not increasing as fast as some climate scientists had predicted. Earlier doomsday scenarios had the sea level rising by as much as 6 meters (20 feet) by 2100. Now it looks, as if Greenland’s melting will only cause a 2 meter rise. The vast majority of the Earth’s population lives less than 100 meters above sea level, so any rise could have a profound effect on millions of people.
The Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) and the Sierra Club filed suit against Energy Future Holdings Corp, and its subsidiary, Luminant (formerly TXU) in Federal Court in Waco earlier today. The lawsuit targets excessive emissions of particulate matter, or soot, emanating from from Luminant’s Big Brown coal-fired power plant in Fairfield, Texas, northeast of Waco. Soot contains mercury and other toxic metals, and can contribute to asthma, heart disease, respiratory illness, and contributes to “thousands of premature deaths every year.”
Luminant is no stranger to controversy. It was purchased in the nation’s largest ever leveraged buyout in 2006, and has proceeded to lose money ever since. It has already been sued, at least, once over excessive emissions at another plant, Martin Lake, in 2010. Three of Luminant’s North Texas coal plants (Big Brown, Martin Lake, and Monticello) are ranked among the nation's top ten worst polluting industrial facilities. Those three plants alone account for 25% of all industrial pollution in Texas and 46% of all pollution related to power generation in the state (there are over 125 large power plants in Texas according to the EPA)
Big Brown “ranks among the top polluting coal fired power plants across the country dumping harmful emissions upon rural people, our land, and our drinking water. With state regulators unwilling to address the pollution problems created by Big Brown, a citizen suit is necessary to expose, prevent, and protect those of us, in this rural area of Texas, who must live with the outdated and dirty operations going on at the Big Brown power plant," said Vicky Prater, with COPPS for Clean Air, and a resident of nearby Navarro County.
Luminant self-monitors its plants, and according to the company's own data, the Big Brown plant has violated the requirements of its own air permit thousands of times. What's troubling is that Luminant's Big Brown plant has very lenient pollution standards compared to other power plants, and the plant is still pumping out more than three times the legal limit. That impacts the health and wellbeing of Texans. For far too long Luminant has failed to clean up its harmful pollution and chosen not to install pollution controls, even as many other power plant operators were cleaning up their plants. Those days are over and in order to bring Big Brown into compliance, Luminant must decide if it will clean up the power plant or retire it.
Settlements and handcuffs are passed out in the wake of the BP Spill. Crazy SoCal water dispute has two sides and more than one story. FOX News wants to invade Russia. My tree is smarter than your honors student, or so it seems. All that, plus zombie Keystone XL Pipeline, and more in this week’s Environmental Roundup for Texas and beyond!
Texas
The Deepwater Horizon Disaster (Getty Images)
The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill was in the news twice this week. First, BP announced it has reached a settlement with thousands of individuals and businesses affected by the disaster. The company will pay about $7.8 billion in damages, including $2.3 billion to Gulf Coast fisherman whose livelihood remains at risk due to the massive plume of hydrocarbons released during the spill.
Also, Federal prosecutors charged former BP engineer, Kurt Mix, with destroying evidence (consisting of more than 300 text messages) relating to the Deepwater Horizon spill. David Uhlmann, of the University of Michigan Law School, believes this is “just the first of what will be multiple criminal charges” handed out to BP employees who might have been covering up the size and complexity of the spill.
The Keystone pipeline we never wanted just won’t leave us alone, as Transcanda submitted a new route to regulators for the 1,700 mile long pipeline from Alberta, Canada to Port Arthur, Texas. The updated path for the controversial pipeline would avoid Nebraska’s Sand Hills region, which was the focus of much of the earlier opposition to the project within Nebraska. The Oklahoma to Texas portion of the project (which will cross several environmentally sensitive regions including the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer recharge zone) has been fast-tracked by the Obama administration.
The great drought of 2011 has officially ended in Bastrop County. Bastrop, of course, experienced the worst fire in Texas history this past summer as flames fed by a fierce north wind and bone dry conditions destroyed almost 1,700 homes and 35,000 acres of forest. A hydrologist, Barney Austin, warns Texas that it must plan for future water crises like last summer’s drought, because they may become more common.
Researchers at Texas State University in San Marcos won a EPA P3 Sustainability Award for a neat process that converts rice husks (a generally useless agricultural waste product) into lignocellulose, a material which can be used for producing fabrics and biofuels.
The Nation
San Diego accused the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (a consortium of municipalities that provides water to 19 million Californians) of “conspiracies, illegal secret meetings and double-dealing.” The accusations stem from two 5% annual water rate increases that San Diego is challenging in court. A PR campaign accompanying the lawsuit includes an inflammatory website which implies the MWD is increasing rates to make up lost revenue due to San Diego’s increased water efficiency. San Diego is at the end of a very long system of pipelines, and may be suffering from “end-of-pipeline paranoia,” according to Lester Snow of the California Water Foundation.
If you weren’t already aware, the Obama administration enacted very real and beneficial environmental policies during the last three years. Along with funding for green technology and efficiency, Obama instituted landmark emissions standards which limit greenhouse gasses, mercury and other forms of toxic air pollution. These standards will protect countless children from chronic asthma and other respiratory diseases. His challenger, Mittens Romney, has pledged to “aggressively” roll back these critical protections, he would cut funding to new technologies which currently support 37,000 jobs, and believes in increasing subsidies to oil companies including ExxonMobil, the most profitable company in the world. Think Progress has a handy guide to the two candidates’ positions on environmental issues. Of course, Romney will likely change his position on each of these issues in the coming weeks.
Everyone’s favorite “news” outlet, FOX, ran a bizarre story which seems to imply that Obama’s hatred of drilling in Alaska (for what its worth, drilling has increased substantially there during his term in office) is forcing ExxonMobil to enter into a secret pact with Russia (the vast majority of Exxon’s business is overseas) to explore for oil in the arctic (its in their arctic, not ours) which will somehow raise the price of oil in the US (it won’t), and is cause for alarm (it isn’t). They “report,” you decide.
Beyond
The Royal Society, a British think tank, released a profoundly depressing report on the future of the planet titled People and the planet. It predicts that if humanity remains on the current course, “a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills” will follow. Its recommendations for dealing with these problems, however, are quite reasonable:
The international community must bring the 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 per day out of absolute poverty.
The most developed and the emerging economies must stabilize and then reduce material consumption levels.
Reproductive health and voluntary family planning programs urgently require political leadership and financial commitment.
Population and the environment should not be considered as two separate issues.
Here is a really cool reusable water bottle that actually keeps track of how many plastic water bottles you have saved by using it. 51 billion plastic water bottles were purchased in the US last year, and only 25% of them were recycled.
Plants are much “smarter” than we usually give them credit for, according to this piece from io9. They can hear, create communication networks, have memories, and can recognize their relatives among other nifty tricks.
Last week, a low-grade firestorm erupted in the Texas Capitol over a radioactive waste dump in Andrews, Texas just north of Midland, and just east of the New Mexico state line.
The dump in question is complete, and pending approval by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), set to receive “low-level” nuclear waste(LLW) from 36 states around the country. LLW is a somewhat misleading term because, in the US, low-level waste is considered anything that is not tailings from uranium mines, spent nuclear fuel, transuranic waste (elements with an atomic weight higher than 238 which emit alpha particles), or high-level waste (the highly radioactive, hot waste generated in a reactor’s core). LLW, therefore, can be anything from lab coats, to x-ray machines, to the rubble of reactor buildings. Tons of this waste will be brought to Andrews by trucks crossing major highways throughout the state as soon as next month.
State Rep. Lou Durnam (D-Ft Worth) held a press conference and sent letters to AG Greg Abbott, and the TCEQ urging them to release confidential documents pertaining to the dump, and to hold off approval of the Andrews site “until key questions are answered about the presence of groundwater inside the 100 feet buffer Zone around the facility.”
The private company licensed to operate the facility, Waste Control Specialists (WCS), which stands to reap millions in profits in disposal fees once the site is operational, is pressing for the agency to allow the site to open even though documents show significant groundwater present at the site, confirming the worst fears of TCEQ scientists that objected to issuance of the license five years ago due to the likelihood of groundwater intrusion at the site in future years.
“It appears that serious public health and safety risks are being ignored in the interest of getting this site up and running,” Burnam said in a press conference at the State Capitol, adding, “Until we know the source of this water, the likelihood of groundwater contamination, and the risk to the public, it’s simply irresponsible to open this site.”
The groundwater contamination Burnam speaks of stems from TCEQ studies of the site which show significant water levels remaining in wells drilled from the site into the vast Ogallala Aquifer. The Ogallala is one of the largest aquifers on the planet and provides 30% of all water used for irrigation in the United States. Even with round the clock pumping, the TCEQ expects these wells to remain wet for at least 18 months. As the aftermath of the Japanese Fukushima disaster has shown, the radioactive contamination of food supplies is a huge problem with long term effects on agriculture and consumer confidence.
The TCEQ’s rules are clear regarding potential groundwater contamination: “In the event that saturated conditions are detected inside the buffer zone, the Licensee shall cease all waste disposal operations and notify the executive director immediately.” According to Burnam, “WCS would be in violation of its license on its first day of operation.”
While the dump itself is highly objectionable, the man behind WCS, Harold Simmons (the second most active political donor in the country according to open secrets) would be one of the more polarizing figures in the country, if he were better known. Simmons has been fined several times by the FEC for exceeding legal donation limits. He was a primary contributor to the legal defense funds for Oliver North and John Poindexter during the Iran-Contra Affair. He donated $4 million to the “Swift Vets And POWS For Truth PAC” which derailed John Kerry’s presidential bid. So far, he has contributed over $13.7 million to Republican SuperPACs during the 2012 election cycle. His own daughters sued him in 1997 for making political contributions in their names out of a trust in their names of which he was the sole trustee. D Magazine has called him “Dallas’ most evil genius.”
Burnam is pessimistic about the chances of halting this dump noting that “the attorney general has received over a half million dollars from … billionaire Harold Simmons in the last five years,” but believes “The public has a right to know what the scientists whose salaries are paid by their tax dollars thought about the adequacy of the site, the possibility of groundwater contamination, and the risks to their safety.”
More than 450 Austin residents joined together this Sunday to celebrate Earth Day and urge the City of Austin to transition away from coal fired energy as quickly as possible. They took part in the city’s largest ever aerial photo, forming the words “Move Beyond Coal.” Austin’s City Council recently pledged unanimously to move Austin off of coal. At this time, Fayette Coal Plant still remains operational.
Austin Residents Celebrate Earth Day With The City's Largest Ever Aerial Photo
Ian Davis, of the Lonestar Chapter of the Sierra Club said, “We want Austin to be the Clean Energy Capital of the World, but to truly lead, the city of Austin needs to transition away from its old, expensive, and polluting Fayette coal plant. This fall, Austin Energy will release findings from its study to see how soon our city can transition away from the plant. All the Austinites who participated in today’s aerial photo, as well as the thousands who have signed petitions and taken action, will be calling on city leaders to remember their pledge.”
According to seismologist Bill Ellsworth, lead author of a recent USGS study, there has been a “remarkable increase” in earthquakes magnitude 3.0 or greater in the midwest and southern plains in the last few years. As it turns out, these quakes are “almost certainly” man-made. The likely cause of cause of all these quakes is a by-product of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) the drilling process by which oil and gas companies shoot a slurry of water, sand, and chemicals into deep shale formations at extremely high pressure to “unlock” the fossil fuels locked within. Fracking has sparked a natural gas boom of historic proportions causing prices to drop from nearly $15 per million BTU in 2005, to less than $2 today.
It isn’t the drilling itself that is causing these fracking quakes. Actually, they are caused by the disposal of fracking wastewater. The process requires a ridiculous amount of water. A single fracking well pad (which supports up to 16 individual wells) can use over 80 million gallons of water a week! That water is not cheap to treat and is often injected deep into the earth into supposedly stable sandstone formations. Here, that water acts as a sort of lubricant, allowing (generally) small faults within the rock to slip, which produces the temblors not normally associated with Dallas or eastern Ohio.
While unsettling, the quakes in Ohio, Texas, and Oklahoma are unlikely to cause significant damage. The faults in these areas are very small, and the underlying geography is stable. As fracking moves into less stable geography, however, the earthquake risk could rise significantly. A geothermal energy project in Basel, Switzerland, which used a process very similar to fracking, caused a 3.4 magnitude earthquake which resulted in some minor damage. While that quake was not particularly large, a quake on the same fault in 1356 completely destroyed the city. Swiss citizens were alarmed, and work on the project was halted. Much, much scarier was the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in western China which killed approximately 70,000 people. According to Fan Xiao of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau, it is “very likely” that the construction and filling of the Zipingpu dam and reservoir in 2004 led to the disaster. The dam was positioned on top of a fault line, and the combination of the weight of the lake, and water seeping into the rock probably caused the quake.
Now, drilling companies are moving into fracking California, which possesses the largest shale formation in the US, and, of course, a problematic geologic history. Hopefully, the release of this study will give pause to drillers eager to explore gas deposits in Los Angeles itself. We cannot allow fracking drilling companies to cause the “Big One.”
Quico Canseco’s campaign manager, Scott Yeldell, made this curious claim about the Republican Party’s strategy going into November, “There is a lot of support for building the Hispanic base in the Republican Party.”
TDP spokesperson, Rebecca Acuña was quick to point out the obvious flaws in that logic:
Any Republican who thinks their party is making advances with Hispanics is living in a fantasy land. The Republican Hispanic outreach plan is to launch unrelenting attacks on the Latino community. Seventy two percent of Hispanics feel that Republicans are down-right hostile or don't care about them. Republicans attempted to draw Latinos out of Canseco's district because Hispanics don't support Republicans, and they definitely don't support Canseco. We're confident that Hispanics will come out in droves to vote against Republicans like Canseco who have supported some of the most anti-Hispanic rhetoric in modern politics.
An email exchange obtained by the TDP between redistricting lawyer, Eric Opiela and a Lamar Smith staffer “shows that Republican mapmakers tried to draw Quico Canseco a district that would leave the level of Hispanic registered voters at the lowest level possible.” Opiela said that these tactics would be “especially invaluable in shoring up Canseco and [Blake] Farenthold.”
A party that thinks it can build a Hispanic voting base, while simultaneously drawing Latino voters out of a district represented by a Latino congressman, is a party living in a “fantasy land.”
Meanwhile, there are several Democratic challengers lining up to take on Canseco in the fall, including State Rep. Pete Gallego, former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, and John Bustamante. Since there actually are a large number of Hispanics living in District 23 (despite attempts by Republican legislators), any of these candidates should give Canseco a strong challenge.
