BUSH THE "ENVIRONMENTALIST"
The closest thing Texas has to an EPA is the Texas Natural
Resource Conservation Commission - abbreviated TNRCC and
usually just pronounced as "Trainwreck."
It was established in 1991 to monitor air quality and grant state permits
for new refineries, chemical and industrial plants, and landfills.
One of Shrub's first actions as newly elected governor of Texas in 1995
was to rid Trainwreck of its three appointees by the previous governor.
He replaced them with a flunky from the Texas Farm Bureau (which, while
purportedly speaking for Texas farmers, is really not much more than
a large insurance company with a portfolio loaded with agricultural
chemical stocks), a man who'd worked with Monsanto chemical for
30 years before becoming a lobbyist for the Texas Chemical Council
(a chemical industry promotion group), and a fire-breathing evangelist
who's slotted to become the next head of the EPA should Bush win
in November (whose first act in his previous job had been to dismantle
a program for posting signs in pesticide-sprayed fields for the safety
of the farmworkers).
Highlights of the new Trainwreck crew's first months on the job
included spending tens of thousands of dollars lobbying against
the new federal air-quality health standards enacted in 1997, and
attempting to vastly reduce public participation in its "public"
hearings. The latter policy was challenged in court by a grain
farmer in the Panhandle who opposed a permit granted to build a
corporate hog farm across the road from his house. (Believe me, I
grew up 3 miles away from a hog barn an order of magnitude smaller
than the one they wanted to build, and when the wind blew the
wrong way it was hogshit hell downwind. And I was even somewhat
used to the smell having raised the critters for several years.)
He got a court order to reopen the hearings, although Trainwreck
has recently published rules attempting an end-around of the court
order to close the hearings again.
This troika - despite their vehemently anti-environment and pro-business
inclinations - decided in 1996 to deal with the problem of the refineries,
utilities, and chemical and industrial plants that had been "grandfathered"
past the 1971 Texas Clean Air Act.
The exemption was meant at the time to give the older
polluters up to five additional years to come up to the new pollution
standards.
Almost 30 years later those same 850 grandfathered plants produce
more than a third of the state's total air pollution.
What probably finally moved the Trainwreck three to action was that
every major metropolitan area in the state has exceeded (or soon will)
EPA air pollution standards, where noncompliance means a loss of
federal highway funds and tighter restrictions on some businesses.
For example, Houston has beaten L.A. two years running for the
"worst air pollution" award.
So what did the Green Governor do just as Trainwreck was about
to take action against the worst offenders?
After his "environmental director" warned him in 1997 that those
tree-huggers in Trainwreck were "moving too quickly" and "may
rashly seek legislation this session," Shrub called two oil company
presidents (i.e. Dad's old cronies) and asked them to outline a
voluntary program for the grandfathered polluters.
These two nature worshippers in turn convened a meeting of
two dozen industry representatives at Exxon's corporate headquarters
in Houston (catered with sparkling mineral water and oxygen from out
of state), at which point they handed them an outline of the voluntary
emissions reduction program, i.e. told them to shut up and sign it.
In 1999, two years after the handiwork of those two oil company presidents
had been the unofficial law of the land, Shrub moved to have it written
into law. The bill, written for Shrub by an energy and utility company
lobbyist, was a joke.
Every newspaper in the state (in a state where liberal dailies are
as common as hen's teeth) ran editorials angrily denouncing the
proposed legislation.
The bill proposed that the companies use ten-year-old pollution
control technology - as opposed to the Best Available Control
Technology usually specified - and that even the use of that
would be voluntary.
The bill passed.
The upshot is - that nearly three decades after 850 companies had
been grandfathered out of pollution abatement - that 28 of them have
come up with voluntary plans to reduce pollution, and 3 of them have
actually done so.
Oh, and the companies that had participated in the industry confab
in Houston contributed $260,000 to his 1988 gubernatorial campaign
(during which he never led by less than 25%), and another $240,000
to his presidential campaign within a month of the formation of his
"exploratory committee."
It is exactlly this legislation that is trumpeted by Shrub and his handlers
as proof of his deep concern for environmental issues.
That's right. This is what supposedly makes Georgie Green, while
in the real world the only green he sees is the mountain of cash poured
upon him by the polluters in every other state who want the same sweet,
sweet deal he cut in Texas.
As a matter of fact, a recent planned secret meeting between
the Bush mafia and regulators
and industry representatives from 17 states at a hotel in Detroit was
canceled when the Detroit News ran an article on it.
The chair of Trainwreck was to be the chief Bush representative, but
canceled after the story leaked, as did the representatives from all but
4 states.
This was compiled from recent stories in the
Texas Observer, one of which was itself excerpted from
Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush" by
Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose.
posted by Steven Baum
5/31/2000 11:26:32 PM |
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