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!

Sponsored By:

The Texas League of Conservation Voters is concerned about the lack of federal regulation of dangerous coal ash. There are two opportunities for Texans to sound off to the EPA on this important issue. The first is to testify at an EPA public hearing on coal ash on Wednesday, September 8 in Dallas Texas. The second is to send letters to the EPA online. Below is a letter from LCV President Gene Karpinski on this issue, and links to send a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

The League of Conservation Voters and CREDO Action are teaming up to help protect our planet from dangerous coal ash.

Coal-fired power plants are producing more than 130 million tons of coal ash every year. That’s enough waste annually to fill train cars from the North Pole to the South Pole!

And you know what is even more alarming? Coal ash contains toxins like arsenic, chromium, lead and mercury. And there are next to no federal regulations on it.

Right now, the EPA is considering options that could either reel in Dirty Coal’s assault on the environment or maintain the status quo. Will you let them know which option you support?

Click here and tell the EPA: No to the status quo! Set protective and federally enforceable regulations for toxic coal ash disposal NOW!

Coal ash is loosely regulated on a state-by-state basis. In some states, it’s less regulated than household waste. All too often, coal ash gets dumped into waste ponds and even our landfills– and from there it leaks into our drinking water and fragile ecosystems. The EPA is currently reviewing two options for the regulation of coal ash:

* Option One: Set federally enforceable standards for coal ash disposal. The EPA would set storage and handling safeguards and strict pollution prevention and monitoring requirements for coal ash disposal sites. And companies wouldn’t be allowed to operate a plant if they couldn’t prove they could pay for the consequences of a disaster.

* Option Two: No federal enforcement. The EPA would give non-binding “suggestions” instead of enforceable standards – and would maintain today’s unsustainable status quo where the states with the greatest amount of coal ash have the weakest regulations. Unsurprisingly, Dirty Coal and the powerful energy lobby are giving their full-throated support to this weaker option.

Tell the Environmental Protection Agency: Protect the environment, not Dirty Coal profits.

With your help, we can ensure that the EPA strengthens coal ash regulations and protects the environment from the perils of failed coal ash handling.

Thank you for all that you do for the environment.

Sincerely,

Gene Karpinski
President
League of Conservation Voters

A new report from the Mitchell Foundation by Billy Hamilton Consulting contains a lot of good news for new clean energy jobs for Texas. Specifically on the issue of jobs, the report states that:

If Texas chooses to support the clean energy sector with stronger state policies, the High Range scenario demonstrates that the economic benefits would be spectacular. If the 2011 Texas Legislature decides to raise the state’s RPS to 13,000 MW of clean power and sets aside 3,500 MW for solar photovoltaic energy, as the High Range scenario assumes, the state’s economic gains would be exponentially greater than the Baseline scenario. Job gains would jump to 22,900 per year, Texas GSP would increase by $2.7 billion per year, and state and local tax revenues would increase by $279 million per year, or more than half a billion dollars per biennium.

This is truly good news for building the green energy economy in Texas, and moving beyond old polluting energy sources like coal.

The full report can be found here.

Texas industries press to get EPA-approved permits

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI Associated Press Writer © 2010 The Associated Press

Aug. 6, 2010, 3:50PM

HOUSTON — After a lobbying push by oil giants, a bipartisan group of Texas legislators have asked state environmental regulators to quickly solve a permit dispute with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that has left some of the nation’s largest oil refineries in operating limbo.

A letter signed by 46 legislators is the latest indication that while Gov. Rick Perry and his Republican supporters are ready and willing to wage war with Washington on everything from environmental regulation to education spending, some battles are wearing on the industries that have helped Texas weather the recession.

Now, the state is trying to tiptoe the line between its federal fights and the need to keep industry — especially the oil giants — happy.

Twenty-nine legislators who signed the July 23 letter to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) are Republicans and support Perry’s increasingly public and bitter battle against Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration.

“This isn’t a political issue for us. This is a jobs issue for our constituents,” said Republican Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston, who supports the state’s challenges in court but wants decisive legislative and enforcement action that will allow industry to operate freely.

“The federal government is out of control in trying to interfere with the business of Texas on multiple levels and this is just one example,” Patrick said.

The permit issue has been rumbling quietly for years, but came to a head June 30 when the EPA officially disapproved Texas’ program, telling the state more than 120 industries were operating with papers that violate the federal Clean Air Act. Texas has challenged the ruling in court but still has to find a way to undo a permitting program that has been in effect since 1995 and involves some of the nation’s largest oil refineries, including Exxon Mobil in Baytown Texas and six owned by Valero Energy.

The crux of the debate is over the so-called flexible permits, which set a general limit on how much pollution an entire facility can release. The federal Clean Air Act requires state-issued permits to set limits on each of the dozens of individual production units inside a plant. The EPA says Texas’ system masks pollution, making it impossible to regulate emissions and protect public health. Texas insists its permits are enforceable and in line with the law.

“Regardless of who is correct in this dispute, the disapproval of this program has created a cloud of uncertainty for those businesses that are operating under a flex permit,” the 46 legislators wrote to the three governor-appointed commissioners who head TCEQ.

For companies that seek to “de-flex” their permits, “we strongly encourage the TCEQ commissioners and staff to dedicate all the agency resources necessary to address these permit alterations in the most expeditious manner necessary,” they added.

The letter was written after several oil companies lobbied legislators. The letter follows the format and wording suggested in an e-mail by Julie Klumpyan, Valero’s director of government affairs.

The letter and e-mails were obtained by The Associated Press from the Texas League of Conservation Voters.

Bill Day, a Valero spokesman, said the oil company is disappointed in the EPA’s ruling and supports Texas’ court challenge, but can’t wait the years it could take for a judicial ruling. So they asked TCEQ to “handle it as rapidly as possible because of this uncertainty we’re dealing with.”

“Uncertainty is the worst thing for business,” Day said.

Richard Hyde, TCEQ’s deputy director of permitting and registration, said the agency has been trying for months to find a structure that will be acceptable to the EPA, but has so far failed. In the meantime, at least three critical projects are on hold, including a major upgrade at the Motiva Enterprises LLC refinery in Port Arthur, Hyde said.

“We’re trying to work out an agreement with EPA that we can provide to those companies that will give them some certainty,” Hyde said. “This issue is totally a federal government issue.”

The EPA says it too is being approached by companies seeking federally approved permits, Al Armendariz, the EPA’s director of the region that oversees Texas, said in an e-mailed statement. “EPA encourages TCEQ to quickly provide flexible permit holders a pathway forward,” he added.

David Weinberg, executive director of the Texas League of Conservation Voters, a group that supports the EPA’s ruling on the flexible permits, said the letter and industry’s pressure indicates companies want a quick resolution.

“Valero is one of the largest flexible permit holders,” Weinberg said. “The fact that they’re rallying to get TCEQ to work tells you that what the governor is doing is not working.”

*****

The Valero letter from Texas State Legisators to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality can be found here.

kat swift
Executive Director
Green Party of Texas
P.O. Box 271080
Houston, TX 77277-1080

Dear Director swift:

I am writing on behalf of the Texas League of Conservation Voters to express profound disappointment in how the Green Party of Texas funded its recent ballot petition drive with corporate, out-of-state, partisan-directed funds.

The Texas League of Conservation Voters is a statewide non-partisan organization that works to elect candidates who support clean air, clean water, renewable energy and the protection of open spaces and wildlife habitat.  TLCV supports third party ballot access and would, under normal circumstances, support Green Party candidates who share the organization’s values and goals.

Unfortunately, the League cannot support Green Party candidates in Texas at this time as it appears the Green Party used corporate money directed from out-of-state partisan sources whose positions on environmental policy are antithetical to those of the Green Party. The League believes the use of corporate, out-of-state money directed from partisan operatives for a petition drive corrupts and manipulates the electoral process.

We also believe that candidates for office who owe their place on the ballot to funders who do not support cracking down on polluters and a clean environment cannot be trusted by the public to adhere to a pro-environment agenda if elected to office.  For these reasons, we respectfully request that Green Party candidates remove their names from consideration for public office in Texas in 2010.

Texas has suffered for 10 years from having a Governor who has put polluters before people, and is in the pocket of big oil and big coal.  We believe that the best option for moving Texas forward in 2010 rests with candidate Bill White, who showed extraordinary leadership as Mayor of Houston in cleaning up Houston’s air and understands state environmental regulatory agencies must be responsive to the people of Texas.

It stands to reason that the ballot petition drive funders’ primary interest was to siphon votes away from Bill White to the benefit of a big polluter like Rick Perry.  It is profoundly dismaying that the Green Party decided, by accepting this tainted money, to be a willing accomplice in this endeavor.

Again, The Texas League of Conservation Voters respectfully reiterates its call for Green Party candidates to remove their names from the ballot in Texas in 2010.

Sincerely,

David Weinberg
Executive Director
Texas League of Conservation Voters

If air is important, the choice for Texas governor is clear

Posted Thursday, Jun. 03, 2010

By MIKE NORMAN

The sudden flare-up of hostilities between the EPA and state environmental regulators should make for a clearer choice in November’s election for Texas governor.

If you’re a refinery manager or a petrochemical plant owner, Republican Rick Perry is the candidate for you. Caricature of the rough-ridin’ Texan that he has become, the nine-year governor has gone to battle against “Washington’s command and control approach” and make it easier for you to poison the air.

Democrat Bill White — while his campaign has been slow to seek any real leverage from it — was an environmental crusader during his six years as Houston’s mayor. He fought for stronger regulations to reduce toxic emissions from the massive refining and chemical plants in and near the city.

The difference couldn’t be more clear.

The EPA said last week that it will take away the state’s ability to issue operating permits for heavy industries because the process followed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality does not comply with the federal Clean Air Act.

The Washington agency delegated its permitting power to the state in 1992, but since then Texas has changed its plan more than 30 times with no formal federal approval or disapproval. The EPA said there had been “lingering disagreements with Texas because of potential inconsistencies with federal air permitting regulations.”

The feds stepped up their complaints in 2006 under President George W. Bush. Perry blames an Obama administration “campaign to harm our economy and impose federal control over Texas.” Apparently Barack Obama was able to exert extraordinary influence on the Bush administration well before there was an Obama administration.

Then a group calling itself the Business Coalition for Clean Air, along with the Texas Association of Business and the Texas Oil and Gas Association, sued the EPA, seeking relief from the regulatory purgatory that had sprung from years of negotiations between the EPA and TCEQ. The business folks wanted the feds to hurry up and get out of the way.

The EPA agreed to hurry things along. In September, the agency published a notice in the Federal Register citing 17 points of law under which it planned to formally reject TCEQ’s permitting plan. It has continued negotiating with TCEQ, but the expedited schedule calls for the state to submit a plan to comply with the Clean Air Act by June 30.

So Perry’s in a tizzy. It’s all “a blatant example of obsession with red tape” and “yet another federal power grab.” It’s “on the verge of killing thousands of Texas jobs.”

He cites ways in which Texas air quality has improved since 2000, but they all have to do with lower levels of ozone and its precursors.

There’s more to air pollution than that, and White has seen it big time. Perry is right to say Texas refines more than 25 percent of the nation’s fuel supply and manufactures roughly 60 percent of the chemicals used in the U.S.

But while White was mayor, Houston issued a report showing that Texas has almost 50 percent of the nation’s carcinogen emissions related to petroleum refining. Texas refineries, the report said, emit more cancer-causing benzene per barrel of oil produced than those in any other state.

Last year, White fought renewal of an operating permit for Houston Refining, which he said emits more benzene into the air than any other refinery in the nation. TCEQ had amended the permit 17 times without full public input. It did so again this time, albeit with a long list of new emission caps.

Who can guess what would have happened if White had not spoken up? I can.

Mike Norman is editorial director of the Star-Telegram/ Arlington and Northeast Tarrant County.

The big environmental news out of Texas this week was that the Environmental Protection Agency was stepping in to take over issuing operating permits for refineries and other heavy industries with “flex-permits” issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The EPA is investigating whether flex permits allow these industries to side-step compliance with the Clean Air Act. Today, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram defended the actions of the EPA against criticism from Governor Rick Perry, noting that “At a time when a botched oil well has spewed nobody knows how many thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Texas officials should think twice before downplaying concerns about the environment.”

The full editorial can be read here.

In other big news, The Fort Worth Star Telegram reported this week that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality gave inaccurate test results to the City of Fort Worth about air pollution tests in the area, and then failed to notify the city or the public for weeks.

The full article can be read here.

As TLCV noted in its 2009 Scorecard, “TCEQ must do a better job at protecting the environment and ensuring the health and safety of the public.”

Rick Perry’s rhetoric during the worst environmental disaster in US History, and TCEQ’s failure to protect the public health in Fort Worth signal that it is time for new leadership in Texas, and time for serious reform of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

UPDATE: Republican Congressman Michael Burgess is now calling for an investigation of TCEQ over its handing of air testing in Fort Worth.  “Those responsible should be held fully accountable, and I believe that a robust investigation by the Texas attorney general’s office would be appropriate,” Burgess said in a statement.

Read more on this story here.