I’ve written before about how the Texas Commission on “Environmental Quality” (TCEQ) has long been weighing approval of a proposed landfill in Laredo that sits in the middle of a floodplain and is intended to house toxic waste imported from Mexican maquiladoras.
It turns out that’s not the only risky landfill TCEQ could be set to approve. From the Colorado County Citizen earlier this month:
Although a pair of administrative law judges recommended the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality deny a permit application for a hazardous waste landfill near Altair early last Wednesday morning, attorneys representing the county, Rice Consolidated ISD, and the local groundwater conservation in the litigation say the TCEQ could still grant the permit, attorneys for the county said Monday morning.
[...]
The judges’ recommendation, buried toward the end of the 172-page Proposal for Decision released by the two judges from the State Office of Administrative Hearings, includes findings that Altair Disposal Services/ Clean Harbors, the companies seeking the permit, failed to prove that the base of the proposed containment structure of the landfill would be separated from the underlying aquifer by at least ten feet of soil with specific characteristics required by state law, and that the proposed Altair site fails to qualify as a non-commercial hazardous waste disposal site.
[...]
The proposal for decision now must go before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The agency will then determine whether or not to accept the ruling of the administrative law judges, or to challenge it and proceed with permitting.
The judges found against Altair Disposal Services/Clean Harbors on each of the major issues the aligned protestants raised throughout the contested case hearing process, including that Altair Disposal Services’ application didn’t meet the standards to be considered non-commercial, that the water table was too close to the ground near the location of the facility, and that proposed lining mechanisms for waste pits proposed by Altair were not substantial enough to prevent discharge of contaminants in to the water table.
The good news here: This dump doesn’t sit in the middle of a floodplain. The bad news: Because it doesn’t, some minor modifications could probably be made to the plan and it will go through, despite obvious risk to the water table.
Again, it’s a highly localized issue but one around which Texas progressives should be organizing. TCEQ commissioners are appointed by the governor— so here, Greg Abbott who seems reasonably willing to let them get away with approving whatever the heck they feel like on any given day.
Under Abbott, major controversy has ensued, too. Following Hurricane Harvey, TCEQ rejected an offer from NASA to collect air pollution data. That data might have shown something different, and worse, than what TCEQ’s data showed; so no surprise, they took a hard pass on help from some of the world’s best scientists.
It didn’t get a lot of attention, but earlier this year congressional Democrats decided to investigate the decision— since the Environmental Protection Agency also passed on NASA’s offer. That’s good, and is the kind of action that shows some commitment on the national party to focus on local issues that could help turn Texas blue by demonstrating a commitment to the interest of local residents who may be becoming less-than-thrilled with the results of one-party rule in Texas.
But TCEQ should be the focus of a lot more attention, not just because it’s been a hotbed for anti-climate science “thought,” but also because of a variety of corruption issues. In 2008, its executive director quit to take a job as a lobbyist for a waste disposal company pursuing a big, nuclear waste dump in West Texas:
In 2008, TCEQ executive director Glenn Shankle quit the agency only to become a $150,000-a-year lobbyist for WCS. The company’s licenses to store radioactive waste were approved in May 2008 and September 2009. “Even the mafia was more circumspect than this,” Glenn Lewis, one of the TCEQ whistleblowers, told the Observer at the time. “It just shows that…big money and a lot of political power won once again.”
It’s very little surprise, given this history, that people in and around Altair and Laredo would be deeply skeptical that TCEQ is going to get it right this time, with regard to either, let alone both, landfills. The stakes for Laredo are probably higher, because the proposed dump literally does sit in a floodplain. However, any landfill proposal that involves water concerns needs to be taken especially seriously. It’s unlikely TCEQ will do that. And that’s a good reminder of why progressives need to take Texas seriously and start winning races in the state again. Texans’ health is literally at grave risk because of TCEQ’s rubber stamp approach.