Great Un-Expectations

Readers of the October 13 issue of Time magazine were presented with a centerfold advertorial touting Houston, Texas. This creative marketing piece featured a scratch-off "Houston's Great UN-Expectations Game" offering prizes that any good Houstonian would fight for: a one-on-one with Hakeem, dinner with a Rice Nobel Prize Winner, or custom cowboy boots.

The purpose of the Houston Image Group, with a budget of $5 million dollars approved by city council, is part of a campaign to promote Houston as a beaming megalopolis with a mix of big-city amenities - opera, theatre, ballet, commerce, sit-down restaurants - and down-home Texas charm. Much is made around these parts of the fact that we have the tallest building in the U.S. outside of New York and Chicago, and that the first word ever uttered from the moon was "Houston."

And while there's a lot to love here, many of us who call Houston home are frustrated that so much of our civic leaders' time and money is being spent trying to convince others how great our city is, when it could be spent actually building the city they want to believe we already live in. The truth is Houston holds a number of not particularly laudable distinctions. We have had the second worst ozone pollution problem in the nation behind Los Angeles (per the EPA's National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone for 1992-1994) and surpassed L.A. for the highest ozone readings in 1997; we are the most sprawled out major city in America; and we are the only major city in the United States without a high-speed transit system.

Our pollution problem is perhaps the most pressing. The American Lung Association states that over 160,000 people in the Houston area suffer from asthma. Furthermore, a recent study showed that nearly 1,000 Houston deaths a year can be attributed to air pollution alone, more than auto accidents or crime. Industry - and especially the petrochemical and energy industries - causes half the man made pollutants in our region. Half of that comes from plants that have been "grandfathered" out of the permitting process and can essentially pollute at will. In contrast, California requires its industries to •reclaim' or to reduce their emissions from year to year.

Astonishingly, the response from the government and business sectors to these dire numbers has been to actively work to hide the problem. Until two years ago, there wasn't even any mechanism to alert the pub lic to "bad air" days. And until this September (the end of the ozone season), bowing to pressures from local businesses, the state did not even provide Houston's ozone data to the newswire, as they did for other cities, making it difficult for TV and radio stations to notify the public about the 56 exceedance days we had this year.

Contributing to the pollution problem, and creating a few new ones of its own, is our urban sprawl. While funding is in place for new highway projects on the outskirts of town, like the Grand Parkway and the southern part of Beltway 8, money for transit has been diverted to other city uses. These actions only continue to promote sprawl, reducing both the short term effectiveness of rapid transit and our quality of life by requiring us to spend more time in our cars.

An environmental disaster is looming as new roads, houses, strip malls and airports continue to take their toll on the delicate and vanishing ecosystems of the Galveston Bay and the Katy Prairie. These habitats are central to the environmental health of the entire Southeastern United States, playing a key role in everything from North American bird migration to fishing in the Mississippi Delta.

Closer to home, environmental disaster is a daily reality for thousands of the region's residents who live in the shadow of industry. As in many heavily industrialized cities, these tend to be our poorest neighbors and the ones most powerless to stop corporate abuse. Throughout the energy corridor, toxic leaks and industry secrecy have robbed a generation of their health, their homes and their hope for a better future , while complaints go ignored and government turns a blind eye.

Houston is in many ways a wonderful place to live, and we are proud to call Houston home. But we don't think our city can become an international showcase only through slick advertising and catchy slogans. If we really want to promote Houston, let's honestly assess our problems, develop realistic solutions, and pool our considerable talents and resources to meet the challenges we face.

When that happens, we truly can begin to expect the unexpected.