Many years ago when my husband and I moved to Houston from Seattle I heard an ad on the radio that perplexed me. We had just moved and had not yet changed our driver's licenses nor had we registered to vote. The ad must have been played during an election cycle. A man with a soft drawl quietly declared "what is good for business is good for Texas." What does this mean, I wondered?
I was also profoundly confused when I heard our then mayor, a Democrat mind you, in response to a question about the city's abundant pot holes, tell a newspaper reporter that we are lucky to live in a city where everyone who wants a job can have one. The mayor insisted that we can afford to pay for our car repairs in Houston. He concluded that we are better off than we would be in a city with no potholes but with fewer jobs. What? I wondered. What do potholes and jobs have in common?
Finally, the mind blowing issue that stunned me the most in this then little regulated, no zoning and somewhat lawless city, was the fact that car insurance was not mandatory. Not knowing this my husband and I immediately purchased a car insurance policy within days of our arrival.
So alas when an uninsured driver whacked into my car at a stop sign one rainy afternoon, the police ticketed the driver for the accident but there was no penalty for driver's lack of insurance. Long story short, my insurance company paid for the damages and my insurance rates went up for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I remember telling my husband that there is no way we could stay in this seemingly lawless city despite the fact that he had been offered a fantastic teaching position at one of the city's private universities. It was a dream job for him and we ended up staying. I found my dream jobs too so it made sense to try to stick it out.
Once we made a commitment to stay in Houston we registered to vote. We vote. We joined our neighborhood's Civic Club. We volunteered at our son's former public K-12 schools, joined the PTOs and served on its boards as well as the schools' shared decision making teams. We became sustaining members of our county's Democratic Party.
Activism makes a difference. Small steps.
There is no doubt that Houston and Texas have changed a lot since we arrived in this former oil boom town. Drivers are now required to purchase car insurance. There is still no zoning but neighborhoods have imposed deed restrictions that help to maintain the residential integrity of subdivisions and city neighborhoods. (Except for the proliferation of high rise apartments/condos in upscale city neighborhoods inside the 610 Loop.) We still tend to elect Democrats for mayors though none are the same kind of good ol' boy as the one who served when we arrived. We now expect our mayors to be more sensitive to the needs of the city's residents.
But some things have not changed. Individuals are pretty much on their own because of the lax oversight of the chemical industry.
What is good for business is good for Texas businesses and the politicians that are business friendly. Sometimes at the expense of Texas residents and the environment.
And so I was not surprised to learn, in this Republican anti-regulation state of Texas, that two oil and gas regulators were recently fired for doing their jobs.
The reason?
They had the nerve to enforce the the rules.
PEARSALL, Texas — During their careers as oil and gas inspectors for the Texas Railroad Commission, Fred Wright and Morris Kocurek earned merit raises, promotions, and praise from their supervisors.
They went about their jobs—keeping tabs on the conduct of the state’s most important industry—with gusto.
But they may have done their jobs too well for the industry’s taste—and for their own agency’s.
Kocurek and Wright, who worked in different Railroad Commission districts, were fired within months of each other in 2013. Both say their careers were upended by their insistence that oil and gas operators follow rules intended to protect the public and the environment.
This should come as no surprise to any of us. After all this state has been driven by crony capitalism and pay to play politics. The oil and gas industry has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to most of the Republican politicians, from state lawmakers to Governor Rick Perry to the two U.S. Senators in Washington, D.C. The donors expect more than a little bang from their bucks.
The investigation has found that the Railroad Commission and its sister agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, focus more on protecting the industry than the public, an approach tacitly endorsed by the state’s political leaders. The Railroad Commission is controlled by three elected commissioners who, combined, accepted nearly $3 million in campaign contributions from the industry during the 2012 and 2014 election cycles, according to data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Gov. Rick Perry collected a little less than $11.5 million in campaign contributions from those in the industry since the 2000 election cycle. The governor-elect, Attorney General Greg Abbott, accepted more than $6.8 million.
Mr. Wright had a reputation for being a stickler and was frequently asked to bend the rules.
Wright’s job with the Railroad Commission was a particularly important one.
The commission issues permits for oil and gas wells, and Wright spent much of his time inspecting newly built wells and determining whether they were safe enough to become operational. Shoddy well construction is considered a primary cause of groundwater contamination at drilling sites. His job also included making sure decommissioned wells were properly plugged with cement, so residual oil and gas didn’t pollute groundwater.
Wright was known as a stickler for regulations. One industry executive complained that Wright returned unapproved applications “dripping in red pen.”
Wright said he was often encouraged to bend the rules.
Mr. Kocurek was fired because he blew the whistle on a disposal pit that had a permit for water based waste but not oil. But waste pit's operators allowed for the dumping of oil there, permit or no permit.
Kocurek thinks his downfall came when he pushed hard against another waste disposal pit, where he often saw ducks sitting on top of a berm surrounding a pool of sludge. The facility had a permit for water-based waste, not oil. But Kocurek said the waste was black and sludgy thick. It had an oily sheen on the surface and smelled awful.
“This place was a disaster,” he said. “I went after them. I wrote report after report.”
One of those reports showed the facility hadn’t responded to his notice—issued more than a month earlier—that it needed to remove the oil from its site.
“There has been no visible progress of oil removal,” he said in the April 2012 inspection report.
When Mr. Kocurek noticed dead ducks floating in the pit's oily water he contacted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Commission. His call to the feds is what ultimately did him in given this Republican state fights the EPA and federal regulators tooth and nail. But Mr. Kocurek's call to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Commission did finally result in the pit's closing.
“When I saw the carcasses floating in the water, I knew I had a way to finally stop what was going on with this place,” he said in an interview.
Kocurek documented the scene with notes and diagrams, and called the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“I did what had to be done,” he said. ”I went to the feds because the commission wasn’t doing anything.”
A Fish and Wildlife special agent collected the bodies of two birds at the site, a redhead duck and a mourning dove. The agent’s supervisor, David Hubbard, said the agent saw a sheen floating on top of a black, soupy pond. He said heavy petroleum odors hung in the air.
Hubbard said Kocurek briefed the agent on the pit’s history and the notices he had issued. “It didn’t look like they had met the deadlines in the notices,” Hubbard said the agent told him.
Forensic tests showed the birds died after becoming coated in sludge, Hubbard said. The pit operators were fined $700—an amount typical for a first offense of this sort—under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a federal statute that makes it illegal to kill migratory birds.
It didn't take Mr. Kocurek long to figure out that officials for the Railroad Commission and the TCEQ are in cahoots with industry.
Kocurek said he realized soon after he was hired that the industry held great sway with the commission: Phone calls were made, and violations disappeared.
“It didn’t take long to see what was happening,” he said. “Go through the motions, but don’t really do your job. That’s what everybody wanted.”
In this right to work state these two men were fired with little recourse. While Mr. Wright has hired a lawyer to fight back, Mr. Kocurek prefers to put his experience with the Railroad Commission in his rear view mirror. The Railroad Commission and the TCEQ will continue to give a wink and nod to industry while nearby residents, wildlife and the environment will continue to pay the price for the lax oversight of the oil and gas industry.
But what has happened to these two professional regulators who took their responsibilities seriously is merely the tip of the iceberg. The oil and gas industry has been running roughshod over the health and well-being of its nearby residents for as long as I can remember. The hydraulic fracturing in North Texas has been an unmitigated nightmare for many residents. Health worries pervade North Texas tracking zone.
Propped up on a hospital bed, Taylor Ishee listened as his mother shared a conviction that choked her up. His rare cancer had a cause, she believes, and it wasn’t genetics.
Others in Texas have drawn the same conclusions about their confounding illnesses. Jana DeGrand, who suffered a heart attack and needed both her gallbladder and her appendix removed. Rebecca Williams, fighting off unexplained rashes, sharp headaches and repeated bouts of pneumonia. Maile Bush, who needed surgery for a sinus infection four rounds of antibiotics couldn’t heal. Annette Wilkes, whose own severe sinus infections were followed by two autoimmune diseases.
An environmental activist in North Texas,
TX Sharon has been writing about the horrors of fracking for years. Fracking in the area has wreaked havoc on the lives of most of the residents there.
So for those of you who are new to Texas now that thousands of newcomers are moving here every week, just know that when you hear expressions such as what is good for business is good for Texas is not necessarily good for you.
What to do? Become an activist. Register. Vote. And please don't ever vote R even if you are a Republican from a moderate state. Most Republican candidates here are far right wing religious nuts or they knee jerk vote on behalf of corporate interests over those of individuals.
Get involved. Volunteer.
Join us for the Daily Kos statewide meet-up in Austin on February 28.