Environmental Cage Match

[scentopine]

Source: Austin Chronicle

TCEQ's failure to protect Texans from the illnesses, diseases, and early deaths caused by air pollutants is no shock, unfortunately, to those familiar with the agency. The litany of its laxity is long and, yes, infuriating – if you don't happen to own an oil refinery. The state environmental agency has a long record of prioritizing the needs and demands of busineses – the oil and gas industry, petrochemical companies, coal-fired power plants, and other major pollution sources – at the expense of public health. For example, the EPA and the Clean Air Act set a cap for allowable levels of carcinogenic air pollutants at a level that, statistically speaking, increases Americans' lifetime risk of cancer by 1 in 1,000,000. Yet the TCEQ puts Texans at 10 times that risk; according to Health Professionals for Clean Air, the agency "has adopted a less protective policy of 1 in 100,000 increased lifetime risk of cancer."




Read more: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:1035009

---

Texas is demanding Obama back off. Will we see another cluster fuck of industry/government partnership that continues to place profits above human life and our inalienable right not to be poisoned by Fortune 500?

Houston Chronicle: Perry asks Obama to rein in EPA action

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7027492.html

AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry, citing improvements in Texas air quality, asked President Barack Obama on Friday to get regional Environmental Protection Agency administrators to back off efforts to take over the state's air quality permitting process for refineries and power plants.

Perry told Obama the state process has improved air quality while ensuring economic growth.

“EPA's unwarranted actions will kill good American jobs, reduce our economic output and undermine critical domestic energy and petrochemical supplies for all 50 states,” Perry said in a letter to the president. “Worse still, EPA's actions are unwarranted given the tremendous air quality improvements that have been made in Texas.”

Neil Carman, Clean Air Program director for the Sierra Club said improvements in Texas' air quality stand out only because of how polluted the state was.

[kestrel91316]

1. There's no such thing as "illnesses caused by air pollution". There's not

even such a thing as "air pollution". If people get asthma or lung cancer or whatever, it's because they have fallen out of Gawd's favor and are sinners. And anything in the air belongs there because Gawd himself put it there. The air hasn't changed a bit since Gawd made it 6000 years ago.