TCEQ Helps Industries In Fighting Smog Limits

This should come as no surprise to us whatsoever:

Some of Texas’ biggest industries have an important ally in trying to keep the Environmental Protection Agency from ordering nationwide smog cuts: the state’s top clean-air officials.

At least four times since the EPA previewed its proposal in March, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality – which is responsible for fighting ozone in smog-bound areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth and metropolitan Houston – has urged the EPA not to tighten the federal limit on ozone, smog’s chief component.

Given that all three TCEQ Commissioners are Perry appointees–including two who have served on his office staff and one professor who doesn’t believe in global warming–it isn’t surprising that they exercise such blatant disregard for the environment in favor of large corporations.

And, of course, this has been a systematic problem with the TCEQ–it’s nothing new:

However, the Texas environmental commission’s chairman and his predecessor, both appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, have told the EPA that those experts are wrong. The agency’s executive director and its chief engineer, the official in charge of air quality and toxicology, also have delivered that message.

They have urged the EPA to consider costs when setting a new ozone standard, which would be against federal law. They also have argued against a tighter standard using scientific objections that experts have called misinformed.

“In summary, I do not believe that lowering the ozone standard would improve public health in Texas,” TCEQ chairman Buddy Garcia wrote to EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson on Sept. 25. “Given the existing scientific debate and the extreme economic impact and obvious difficulties in meeting a new standard, I encourage EPA to maintain the current standard.”

Previous TCEQ chairman Kathleen Hartnett White used nearly identical language in an April 19 letter to Mr. Johnson. TCEQ toxicologists wrote the scientific critiques in the officials’ letters, said chief engineer David Schanbacher.

That the level of anti-environmental thinking has become institutionalized even at the lower levels of the TCEQ–down, in fact, to the science guys–is simply sickening and is symptomatic of a larger anti-health, anti-environment, anti-consumer thread running through the administration of Texas Governor Rick Perry.

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