President's Message

From the desk of George Farenthold...

One of the many privileges of this office is the opportunity to share my thoughts and feelings with you. My apology for the tardiness of this issue; my flu has meant repeated delays to my articles.

Foresight Committee: 1; Skeptics: 0.

Congratulations to John Wilson of the Center for Global Studies of the Houston Advanced Research Center for guiding the Houston Environmental Foresight Committee to successful consensus and publication of "Seeking Environmental Improvement".

Trees: 1; Newt: 0.

Last Friday's front page New York Times featured a story about 30 moderate Republican congressmen and Linda Divol, one of their most well respected pollsters, urging Speaker Gingrich to back off the anti-EPA blusterings and the 104th Congress anti-environmental protection rhetoric in general.

The reason for the GOP-backdown: Divol's polling was showing that only 30% of the Republicans contacted trusted Republicans to protect the environment and the Republican freshman congressmen were creating results that were worsening their political prospects almost daily, and costing the Republicans support among almost every constituency they currently claim.

The article even went on to suggest that the issues surrounding environmental protection are becoming "third rail" issues like Social Security and Medicare that are so politically charged as to be too hot for any politician to handle.

City: 1; Citizens: 1.

Congratulations to the City of Houston for receiving an outstanding rating on our drinking water quality recently. (See article this issue.) The city's efforts to protect the public's health exceeded legislated standards to give Houston one of the highest scores. Thanks.

Thanks, too, to Richard Dreith, CEC Board of Trustees member, and one of the newest members of the Local Emergency Planning Committee. The committee is a vital ingredient in the successful response to either natural or manmade disasters in our area. All the volunteer members of this group are to be commended for the time and energy they put into caring for the public's safety.

This service is provided by the Citizens' Environmental Coalition with support from NASA and Rice University, through the Creating the Public Connection project. CEC is a partner of the Environmental Fund of Texas. World Wide Web design by Sense Interactive.