Texas League of Conservation Voters—We elect conservation champions because conservation is a Texas Value.

Testimony – Sunset Public Hearing
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and Texas Railroad Commission
9 a.m., Dec. 15, 2010
Senate Finance Committee Room (E1.036, Capitol Extension)

On TCEQ and RRC Sunset Review
By David Weinberg, Executive Director
Texas League of Conservation Voters

Thank you, Chairman Hegar, Vice Chairman Bonnen and distinguished members of the Sunset Advisory Commission.

My name is David Weinberg, and I am Executive Director of the Texas League of Conservation Voters, a statewide organization whose broad-based membership believes firmly that conservation in policy and practice can enhance Texans’ quality of life, improve our health and preserve some of our state’s most precious natural resources and landmarks.

I appreciate the opportunity to share my organization’s thoughts with you on critical reforms that must be made to the Texas Railroad Commission and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in the interest of every Texan, not just the regulated industries these two state agencies serve.

Our opportunity to modernize, reform and ensure public interests – including public health and the preservation of our state’s natural resources – are protected by state agencies comes but once every 12 years.

And, in the case of the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, that opportunity couldn’t come at a better, more crucial time.

Today, Texas energy and environmental regulatory agencies are a disparate, unwieldy mess of elected and appointed officials with too many contradictory or competing roles in environmental regulatory matters. It’s a patchwork quilt of regulatory bodies that should be transformed.

The Sunset process presents an opportunity to make both energy regulation and utility regulation more streamlined, transparent and effective—serving the best interest of all taxpayers and the public at large, not just the companies that are regulated.

In both the TCEQ and the RRC, we can and must seize the opportunity to add teeth to enforcement and muscle to their regulatory roles.

The Sunset Advisory Commission aptly points to the RRC’s ineffectiveness on enforcement actions and the need to shift enforcement hearings to the State Office of Administrative Hearings while revamping the agency’s tracking of violations and enforcement actions to ensure clear, consistent and transparent sharing of information with the public and other regulatory bodies on violation data, trends, complaints and actions taken.

It is important to note that no amount of legislative changes to the RRC through Sunset review can overcome the fundamental issue of its effectiveness being tied to the adequate funding of the agency. The RRC oversees a vast oil and gas infrastructure in Texas. The RRC must have sufficient staffing to enable the agency to enforce its own rules and regulations.

On the TCEQ front, we believe the most vital reforms involve updates to the agency’s compliance history measurement system, permitting process and air fee caps. As a fundamental starting point to revamping TCEQ’s air permitting program, the agency needs clear-cut authority to turn down a bad actor’s permit or the renewal of its permit.

One size fits all rarely fits right or well, and in the case of the TCEQ’s compliance history measurement system, it’s a rigid approach that doesn’t allow the state to identify good actors from bad actors and protect the public, our health and environment.

Sunset Commission cites a good example of the current limits in TCEQ’s regulatory oversight. TCEQ applies the same system to their regulation of small car lots and of large complex chemical plants. Just one example where one size fits all fails most egregiously.

Lawmakers need to remove the roadblock that effectively blocks TCEQ’s ability to effectively and appropriately tailor permit conditions, enhance administrative penalties or deny permits to perennial bad actors.

As the state struggles with an anticipated $25 billion shortfall, it’s worth noting that reforms like this have no fiscal note tied to them. It won’t cost taxpayers a dime, but it will vastly improve the state’s ability to punish those who cause the most public harm while ensuring incentives go to those who earn them.

For air caps, by allowing TCEQ to administratively adjust the annual emission cap and tonnage fees, the agency can ensure it meets the requirements of an important provision of air quality requirements.

Facilities that emit air contaminants must already pay either an Air Emissions Fee or an Air Inspection Fee – whichever is greater – and those dollars go directly toward the state’s air permitting program.

If we don’t update state law and ensure TCEQ can meet the funding requirements of the air permitting program, we all stand to lose.

It could result in penalties from the federal government, the loss of federal transportation funds, and it would negatively impact the agency’s ability to protect public health through air quality monitoring.

And, here again, during tight budgetary times, the change would give flexibility and ensure additional revenue (to General Revenue, Dedicated Fund) that would help us meet our Title V Air Permit program budgetary needs. It would not increase individual families’ taxes nor add to or decrease the state’s budget shortfall.

Let me close by emphasizing that in spite of the significant reforms that I’d urge state lawmakers to make, we cannot, nor should not turn a blind eye to the substantial role these entities, along with the Public Utility Commission, can play in advancing a clean energy policy that serves Texas’ long range interests well.

In particular, we should continue to look for ways through statute and agency rulemaking to ensure that cleaner fuel sources are fully embraced and that we move away from our state’s stubborn and wrong-headed insistence to use more highly polluting coal and petroleum coke to generate its electricity. The TCEQ, in particular, has become nothing more than a rubber stamp for the coal industry, a commodity that largely is imported into Texas, provides few jobs to Texans and even less in terms of revenue through severance taxes.

As we look for ways to address revenue shortfalls in the state budget and as we work to ensure the state’s energy and environmental regulatory bodies are serving and protecting the interests of every Texan, we would be wise to look for ways to improve and diversify the state’s energy mix.

Converting coal plants to natural gas fired facilities or turning away outright from new coal plant approvals is a reasonable and responsible action. Couple those moves with appropriate regulation of and safe production of natural gas in Texas, and we’ll truly be on a bridge to a cleaner, greener Texas energy mix.

TLCV and our members are committed to ensuring that conservation is not a partisan value, but a Texas one, and we will continue to advocate for conservation and clean energy as a top priority for Texas.

Thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony. I hope the commission will seize this once-in-twelve-years opportunity to make meaningful reforms to the RRC and TCEQ that benefit Texans, not just the industries that stand before them.

Every 12 years, state agencies come up for sunset review, a process that determines if a state agency lives, dies or is reformed to better serve the public and taxpayers.

Ten years ago, the agency then-known as the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, survived a significant overhaul and review as part of the Legislature’s renewal of the agency back in 1999.

Many of the same criticisms of the predecessor to today’s Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) resurfaced in the much-anticipated initial report released yesterday by the Texas Sunset Commission. You can read the full report online here.

Sunset Commission staff found that the TCEQ performed “reasonably well,” but it did make a series of recommendations aimed at strengthening the state’s environmental agency, including increasing the caps on penalties for some polluters.

Perhaps the area of TCEQ that needs the most substantial reform is a topic that the Sunset Commission outright refused to address: Texas’ air permitting program. Citing pending lawsuits and looming implementation of Environmental Protection Agency rules, Sunset staff concluded, the controversy surrounding Texas air permitting program were “high-level political and policy issues that do not easily lend themselves to objective staff-level analysis or solution.” In other words, Sunset punted on an issue that has profound impact on our state’s air quality and public health.

On the whole, however, Texas League of Conservation Voters is pleased that the Sunset Commission staff recommends improvements in the agency’s enforcement, transparency, compliance history and public participation. We’ll watch how these recommendations play out in the weeks and months ahead as the agency’s sunset review progresses.

Up next, be sure to mark your calendar for the public hearing Dec. 15-16 where TLCV, other conservation advocates and the general public can make their voices heard.

Details regarding the December public hearing on TCEQ will be posted online soon, and if you follow TLCV and the TLCV Education Fund on Twitter and Facebook, we’ll keep you updated throughout the process.

Voters extend tax for aquifer protection and trails
By John MacCormack – Express-News
Web Posted: 11/03/2010 12:00 AM CDT

For the third time in a decade, city voters agreed to tax themselves to protect the Edwards Aquifer and build a network of trails and parks along area creek beds.

By strongly backing continuation of a 1/8-cent sales tax, first approved in 2000, the electorate made sure that ample funds will be available to buy land and development rights over the aquifer, and extend the trail system.

“I’m so thrilled that the voters are giving us another opportunity to protect our water supply and continue the linear parks program that has been so popular,” said former mayor Howard Peak, a longtime champion of the trails project.

So far, the sales tax revenue has resulted in protection of about 96,000 critical acres above the aquifer, either through outright purchases or conservation easements that leave the land in private ownership.

The approval of Proposition 1 will provide up to $90 million more for aquifer protection. The passage of Proposition 2 will provide up to $45 million to extend the trail program.

Already, 47 miles of trail have been built or designed along Salado and Leon creeks.

Peak said the new money approved Tuesday will build another 25 to 30 miles of trail on those waterways, and may also be available to start work on a new one.

“This time we are joining forces with the West Side Creek Coalition that is working with the San Antonio River Authority. We’ll partner with them to some extent on those projects,” he said.

“Neither the amount or timing have been determined. They are still in the planning process,” he said.

The two “quality of life propositions” had the backing of almost every important political figure in Bexar County, including San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff.

TLCV congratulates the following TLCV-PAC endorsed State Senators and State Representatives on their 2010 election victories and thanks them for their commitment to conserving Texas:

TLCV would also like to thank the following State House Representatives for their public service to the
people of Texas and pro-conservation voting records:

Stephen Frost, Mark Homer, Jim McReynolds, Abel Herrero, Yvonne Gonzalez-Toureilles, Diana Maldonado, Joe Heflin, Carol Kent, Kirk England, Allen Vaught, Kristi Thibaut, Solomon Ortiz, Jr., Robert Miklos, David Leibowitz, Jim Dunnam, Joe Moody, Patrick Rose, Chris Turner, Ellen Cohen, Valinda Bolton, Paula Pierson.

The Texas League of Conservation Voters looks forward to working with all returning incumbents and
newly-elected State Senators and State Representatives on issues of clean air, clean water, renewable
energy, and the preservation of parks, open spaces, and wildlife habitat in the 82nd Legislative Session.

By DAVID WEINBERG
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Oct. 20, 2010

Texas gets a bad rap for its work on clean energy and pollution reduction. The state is the nation’s leader in wind energy production and has made notable reductions in toxic air pollutants including carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide over the past decade. It is unfortunate that Gov. Rick Perry is erasing these gains through a stubborn and wrong-headed insistence on building more coal and petroleum-coke power plants across the state.

The governor’s appointees to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) are bending over backward to permit new coal plants. The impetus for this rush is new federal rules for carbon pollution coming online in early 2011. Perry and his TCEQ commissioners are worried — and rightly so – that the EPA’s new source rules for carbon pollution will hamper the state’s ability to build new smog-belching coal plants.

With the clock ticking on the new carbon pollution rules, TCEQ is trying to fast track a new pet-coke plant in Corpus Christi. Just last week, commission Chairman Bryan Shaw urged the administrative law judges tasked with reviewing the contested case to “take every opportunity to find ways to expedite the process.”

The state’s environmental agency is putting speed ahead of good judgment and politics ahead of responsible deliberation and review. It’s an unprecedented move and one that’s especially troubling given the fact that the Las Brisas plant in Corpus Christi will dump an estimated 10.4 million tons of carbon dioxide, 8,096 tons of sulfur dioxide, 3,776 tons of nitrogen oxide, 1,620 tons of particulate matter and 216 tons of mercury in Texas’ environment every year.

What’s more, this Texas-sized, ill-advised coal rush is not just bad public policy; it’s utterly unnecessary. According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the demand for power in Texas has decreased or remained steady over the past few years. A recent study by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy showed that Texas ranks 32nd among states in cost-saving energy efficiency policies. The state can also increase its power generating capacity through increased use of Texas-produced natural gas and renewable energy sources such as wind power. The average capacity factor for natural gas-fired plants in Texas for 2009 was only 34 percent.

Natural gas as a fossil fuel is much cleaner than coal and petroleum coke. Natural gas in power generation produces roughly half the carbon emission of coal and vastly less mercury, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. Domestically produced natural gas has the added benefit of providing severance taxes for Texas – a critically important source of revenue for a state with a budget shortfall estimated as high as $21 billion. Coal brought in on trains from Rocky Mountain and Upper Midwest states provides no such benefit for Texas taxpayers.

Does Perry have a personal burning desire to erase the gains Texas has made on clean energy and pollution reduction in the past decade by building new dirty coal and petroleum coke plants? This is unlikely. The unfortunate answer is that Perry’s decisions are likely driven by political contributions from the coal industry, which has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions into Perry’s coffers over his 10-year term.

If Perry wanted to pursue a responsible energy policy for Texas, he would support legislation similar to a clean-energy bill passed in Colorado this year that mandated increased use of natural gas and retiring or converting old, dirty, coal-fired power plants.

Texas is at a crossroads. Texas can continue down a path of building new polluting coal and pet-coke plants – erasing the gains it has made over the past decade – or it can embrace and rely upon domestically produced sources of clean energy such as wind and natural gas. For Texans and their families, the answer couldn’t be more clear.

Weinberg is executive director of the Texas League of Conservation Voters and the Texas League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.

Dear TLCV Supporter:

It’s that time.  Early voting starts in Texas TODAY.  Please take the time to vote for pro-conservation candidates.  But voting isn’t enough.  Remind family, friends, co-workers and neighbors to vote.   Take some time to volunteer with a campaign.  Candidates also need money to get their message out, so we encourage you to contribute to campaigns as well.

The Texas League of Conservation Voters Political Action Committee endorses candidates for state office who stand for clean air and water, renewable energy, and parks and open spaces.  A list of 2010 TLCV-PAC endorsed candidates and links to their websites can be found here.  To find out who represents you, click here.

TLCV-PAC’s top priority for 2010 lies in the Texas Governor’s race.  Simply put, Rick Perry has been and continues to be a failure and an embarrassment for environmental policy in Texas.  From pushing fleets of new coal plants, to vetoing a television-recycling bill passed overwhelmingly by his own party, to calling the BP oil spill an “Act of God” Rick Perry earned a top spot in LCV’s first-ever state “Dirty Dozen” list of candidates.

On the contrary, candidate Bill White’s experience as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy and Mayor of Houston, where he championed energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean air, and got results, make him a light-years better choice for Governor of Texas.
TLCV-PAC very enthusiastically endorses Bill White for new environmental leadership for Texas.

Thank you for voting early.  Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need assistance voting.

Regards,

David Weinberg
Executive Director

“THERE’S A BETTER WAY:” TEXAS LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS
CALLS OUT TCEQ FOR ACTIONS ON LAS BRISAS AIR QUALITY PERMIT

Thorough deliberation, public input and cleaner energy alternatives are smarter choices

AUSTIN, TX—The following statement regarding the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s status update meeting and the accelerated timeline for State Office of Administrative Hearing’s review of the Las Brisas Energy Center contested case should be attributed to David Weinberg, Executive Director of the Texas League of Conservation Voters.

“The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is turning the permitting process on its head by accelerating the timeline for review of the controversial Las Brisas Energy Center air quality permit.

“There really is a better way forward.  We don’t need dirty petroleum coke plants for power generation when Texas wind and natural gas are abundant, cleaner and safer alternatives that also, in the case of natural gas, provide valuable severance tax revenue for the state.

“It’s a costly and ill-advised move to press for an accelerated timeline in the Las Brisas permit contested case.  If Las Brisas’ permit is approved, it will affect taxpayers all across our state through the costs associated with possibly pushing Corpus Christi into non-attainment with ozone standards and higher costs for Texas health care in an area that already sees higher rates and costs for emergency care for children with asthma.

“A broad cross section of Texans—from doctors and medical societies to environmental and public policy organizations—agree that Las Brisas will do more harm than good.”

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The Texas League of Conservation Voters works to preserve and enhance the quality of life of Texans by making conservation a top priority with Texas elected officials, political candidates and voters.  Find us online at http://www.tlcv.org and follow us on Twitter @tlcv.

Join TLCV, presenting sponsor Enviromedia Social Marketing,  and special guest  State Representative Mark Strama at Frank (Downtown Austin at 4th and Colorado) for snacks, dollar beers, cold drinks and a good time to gear up for the 2010 Election on Wednesday, October 13, from 7-9. (Suggested $10 donation.) RSVP to ewilliams@tlcv.org or on Facebook.

Mark your calendar for Tuesday, September 21st! Austin’s own State Senator and Conservation Champion Kirk Watson is joining TLCV at the Belmont (305 West 6th Street, Austin) from 5-7 PM for the Green Tie Benefit. TLCV will fight during the 2011 legislative session to make sure that support for renewable energy and clean, sustainable solutions is a top priority for elected officials. All Texans will reap benefits from cleaner air and a stronger, more diverse economy: come out and join us on September 21st to help us make it a reality! Individual tickets are $25, and sponsorships begin at $250. Click here to RSVP!

Sponsors:

Griffin Davis and Heather Keating

Tom Weber

Lisa Chavarria and Chuck Stephens

Rick Fine

Brent Stahl