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CEC ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS UPDATE – 2/28/03 COALITION NOTES Nature Discovery Center The Nature Discovery Center will host the next installment of the Inquisitive Naturalist Adult Lecture Series, we are pleased on Wednesday March 5, 2003. Speaker will be Chris Cunningham, environmental consultant for ERM and CEC trustee, discussing Houston Earth Day 2003. The lecture will be held at the Nature Discovery Center, 7112 Newcastle, at 7 p.m. For more information, visit the center on the web at http://www.naturediscoverycenter.org> or call 713-667-6550. Environmental Educators needed for workshop The Association for Environmental and Outdoor Educators is seeking workshop presentations that support the theme: Metamorphosis in Outdoor Education: The Change of Nature, The Nature of Change. Suggested topics for workshops include natural history, teaching methods, hands-on activities/games, naturalist/science skills, educational theory, career/educational paths for environmental educators, program development, outdoor/indoor & classroom curricula, science standards, reflective writing, group management, storytelling, stress management, and anything else pertinent to the EE/OE field. The workshops will be held from April 4-6 at Camp Jones Gulch in California. The deadline for presenter applications is March 21st. Visit AEOE online for more details. HCFCD Tree Planting The Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) will be planting 500 seedlings provided by the National Tree Trust along White Oak Bayou Detention Basin. All tools and shovels will be provided by the HCFCD, except optional gloves and rubber boots. Light refreshments will be available. Please register online or contact Rachelat 713-316-4815. Transportation Essay Contest The U.S. Department of Transportation is now accepting entries in the 2002-2003 Transportation Essay Contest. To enter, students submit essays that explore changes in society and technology and examine future systems. Essay length requirements are by grade levels, from grades 1-2 to grades 9-12. Regional and national winners will be chosen and awards made for first, second, and third place. Winners will receive a certificate and their essays will be placed on the Garrett A. Morgan Technology and Transportation Futures Program web site. The deadline for entries is March 15. Contest guidelines, entry forms and recources are available online. Local Citizens, developers clash over Grand Parkway On Tuesday, two public meetings were held to discuss Segment B of the Grand Parkway. Several design alternatives were discussed and environmentalists raised concern over air pollution, destruction of natural habitat and urban sprawl. Parkway officials touted the roadway as an emergency evacuation route. Houston Sierra Club's Brandt Mannchen dismissed the evacuation-route theory, saying paving over wetlands would only exacerbate storm conditions. "By creating and encouraging sprawl development, the Parkway will put more people and property in harm's way during hurricanes," he said. Mannchen said Segment B will cut into important wildlife areas including migratory bird and rookery habitat, rural communities, farmland, native prairies, prairie potholes, wetlands, streams, bottomland hardwoods, and bays. Elected officials also attended the meeting, some supporting the project, others expressing concern. Manvel Mayor Delores Martin advocated an alternate design over the proposed route, which crosses a flood plain. Segment B would begin at State Highway 288, near Iowa
Colony (Brazoria County Road 60), and end between League City and Santa
Fe, about 25 miles to the southwest. A four-lane divided freeway would
be built with the potential addition of two to four lanes. The overall
cost for the entire 170 mile Parkway is at $2-4 billion. If you missed the meeting but still want to add your voice to the debate send written comments to Mr. David Gornet, Executive Director, The Grand Parkway Association, 4544 Post Oak Place, Suite 222, Houston, Texas 77027, Mr. James G. Darden, P.E., Texas Department of Transportation, P.O. Box 1386, Houston, Texas 77251-1386, and Mr. John R. Mack, District Engineer, Federal Highway Administration, Federal Building, Room 826, 300 8th Street, Austin, Texas 78701-2483. Report finds pollution profitable for industry Texas industries have paid lower and lower fines for violating environmental laws in recent years, according to a coalition of environmental advocacy groups. The findings were contained in a 65-page report released
Wednesday by the Alliance for Clean Texas, a coalition of environmental,
religious and public interest groups. "Right now, it pays to pollute in the state of Texas," Mary Kelly, a senior attorney with Environmental Defense, told the Houston Chronicle for a story in Thursday's editions. Kelly was the lead author of the report, which found
that the average fine for an environmental violation in 1996 was $15,000.
In 2001, the average fell to $7,500. She cited the case of Equistar Chemical in Matagorda County, which paid a $19,250 fine for violating hazardous waste laws in 2001. The state estimated the violations earned $68,784 in profits. "It's a real possibility that it's cheaper for companies to pay penalties than clean up," she said. "Once you catch somebody, you want the penalty to be high enough to send a message to the regulatory community that it doesn't pay to cut corners," she said. At least one industrial official said that most violations are the result of paperwork, not pollution, and the lower fines are a result of better compliance and less serious violations. State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, has proposed legislation to force the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to make fines equal to how much a company earns by breaking the law. Rodriguez said the legislation would net about $3 million more for the state each year. State policy already calls for the state to consider the financial gain made by violating the law, but not to neutralize that gain. If more than $15,000 was made during the violation, fines are increased by 50 percent but not necessarily equal to the economic benefit. "There hasn't been real solid instruction for them,"
Rodriguez said. State officials and industry representatives said Wednesday that matching penalties to economic benefit isn't the only way to prevent violations. In fiscal year 2002, the state collected $5.6 million in environmental penalties, the largest amount in five years. "I don't know if you have to recoup economic benefit to deter somebody," said Ann McGinley, the TCEQ's director of enforcement. "The penalty itself can be a deterrent. I haven't heard too many people gleefully write a check and go on." Lawsuit: Maxxam concealed landslide data Maxxam's Pacific Lumber Co. withheld information about landslides to gain logging rights in Humboldt County, Calif., the county's district attorney says in a lawsuit. Pacific Lumber, which is owned by Houston-based Maxxam, concealed information in an environmental impact report that showed logging redwoods on slopes would cause landslides, District Attorney Paul Gallegos said in a state court lawsuit filed this week in Eureka. When trees are harvested from hillsides and banks surrounding creeks, the creeks can overflow and ruin pastures, irrigation ditches and redwood roots. Pacific Lumber in 2001 paid $3.3 million to settle a lawsuit with 26 residents of Stafford, Calif., who had blamed the company's logging for a mudslide that destroyed their homes. Pacific Lumber said in a statement there was no factual
basis for the lawsuit. Pacific Lumber's logging practices in Humboldt County received national attention in 1998 and 1999 when activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill staged a two-year tree-sitting vigil in a 1,000-year-old redwood. ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION CEC Environmental News Update is a weekly publication by the Citizens' Environmental Coalition, a 501(c)3 dedicated to fostering dialogue, education and collaboration about environmental issues in the Houston-Gulf Coast Region. Visit the CEC online at www.cechouston.org. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or to suggest items for inclusion, send your request via e-mail to Sarah Doss at sarah@cechouston.org. |
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