NEWSBYFLAVIA DE LA FUENTE

Linda Tucker is a real Texan lady who won't take no for an answer.  She has a rare form of non-smoker's lung cancer, and she knows exactly why she has it.

She can see the conveyor belt for a ignite mine, the Monticello strip mine, from her home. She can see the toxic dust created from the strip mine accumulate on her car and on her windowsills.  And the Monticello coal-fired power plant that burns that lignite, one of the biggest industrial polluters in the state, is only about 45 minutes away from her home in Sulphur Springs, a town nestled in East Texas an hour to the east of Dallas.

Lignite is the lowest grade of coal, and burning it generally produces much higher rates of CO2. It's also a top offender when it comes to mercury: Monticello is the fifth largest emitter of mercury of all powerplants, nationwide.

Tucker called the TCEQ to ask them to check out the situation. A representative showed up while she was out of town, but, she states, "my husband took care of them. They tried to blame the dust on the roofing construction going on. My husband took care of that too. He show them the pink dust on the windowsill, etc."

Tammy Mealer lives in Dona Park, a neighborhood located next to a string of Corpus Christi refineries and other industrial facilities. "I spend most of my day keeping an eye on the place, and making sure kids don't go play over there."

For folks who live near refineries, there are battles on all fronts. There's existing heavy metal contamination in their backyards. There's the risk of leaks of hydrofluoric acid, a toxic poison (when safer alternatives are available). And there's the fact that despite a pattern of endangerment, environmental agencies continue to do the community wrong. This time, by ignoring the community's concerns and moving forward with the demolition of a facility laced with toxic heavy metals.

For years, the Encycle facility operated illegally, accumulating a record of dangerous practices. Permitted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to be a recycling and reclamation facility for heavy metals, Encycle instead processed chemicals like cyanide and accepted, incinerated and stored chemical warfare agents in 22 rail cars for months.  For years, mishandled wastewater leaked lead, cadmium, and arsenic into the area and the neighborhoods nearby.

My experiences with truckers has been limited to commiserating with them in gas stations on endless Texas highways. Not last week. I attended the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in Washington D.C. and got to know another side of the life of a trucker.

It's not easy. Alex Mejia, a father of two boys and a trucker in the Port of Los Angeles, told us, "I work 14 to 18 hours a day, but I still am not able to bring enough money to the house to pay my bills. Sometimes I have to choose between buying a filter for my truck and a gallon of milk. That's what it is."

He used to own his own truck, and worked as an independent contractor for a trucking company. Then, the trucking company decided that it wanted to make full-time employees of all their independent contractors, but the truckers would have to give up their own trucks and drive newer models. But then the trucking company switched them again—back to independent contractors. The problem with this? They are now forced to bear the costs of upkeep for newer trucks that don't even belong to them. These costs include registration, maintenance, fuel, insurance, tires, and costly pollution controls. It's not cheap—an average of $60,000 over seven years, which is the average life of a lease.

Only a month and a half after Suzie Canales, a waitress from a fence line community in Corpus Christi, Texas, raised hell in what was supposed to be a self-congratulatory environmental justice forum at the White House, there is still no relief for community members living alongside one of the largest clusters of oil and chemical refineries in the country. Within the past week, Corpus Christi has been hit by a string of bad news:

Yet another study, done by none other than the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, has revealed shocking quantities of lead contamination in families' backyards. One backyard registered 728 parts per million of lead, another registered 679 ppm., and several more registered above 400 ppm.  The EPA's standard for lead in bare soil in play areas is 400 ppm by weight.

This, on the heels of a proposed demolition plan for the nearby ASARCO/Encycle plant, which according to most accounts is saturated with arsenic. The TCEQ's plan involves putting up a ten-foot high tarp around the plant, to prevent debris from the demolition flying into the nearby neighborhoods. Yet, as one resident pointed out, "the building is three to four stories tall...how is a ten-foot tarp supposed to protect us?"

But wait, there's more...the Las Brisas petroleum-coke plant received its fantastically flawed air permit from the TCEQ on Wednesday. If built, it'll produce 1,320 megawatts a year by burning petroleum coke, a product of refining oil that's regulated like coal but is actually a whole lot dirtier. The plant would emit 220 pounds of mercury a year and, by Las Brisas's own estimate, increase pollution in Nueces County by 82 percent. Nueces County, due to the Refinery Row area, also ranked with the highest U.S. refinery benzene emissions by county (1997-2008) and benzene could be prime factor in the elevated birth defect rates.

As the federal EPA fails to act and the TCEQ continues to steamroll over the community, the fence-line problems associated with living near one of the largest clusters of refineries in the country continue.

It's a frigid 35 degrees in central Texas (that's cold for Texas), and I'm going to visit Harvey Hayek, a former pecan farmer in the small town of Ellinger.

I say "former" pecan farmer because his livelihood has been nearly wiped out due to sulfur dioxide pollution from the Fayette coal plant, only a couple miles away, which provides a third of the city of Austin's power.

We drive onto his orchards, and he's going to point out the dead and dying trees. "I don't even know where to begin, they're all dead, it's everywhere. Here, there, there, there...," he says. One after another, in rows, in piles, there are oaks, elms, willows, and, of course, pecan trees. All look like they will turn into dust at a single touch.

"They're saying that it's drought, but that doesn't make any sense. They have survived drought before, they're made to do that. It's not a water issue."  We walk to a pond and he shows me the willow trees around the water.  They have a constant source of water, they take directly from the pond, and yet, they too are disintegrating.

Further evidence that it couldn't be drought? All of the orchards were irrigated. He points out piles of rusted pipes. "Those piles of irrigation pipes, they would take days of work to install," he pauses, then reflects, "I guess I don't have to worry about that anymore."

"All this week, the air smelled toxic.  I called the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and they came, but they come too late.  La única manera en que hagan algo es quejarnos. [The only way they'll do something is if we complain]."

Juan Parras lives in Eastwood, a neighborhood that lies along the Houston Ship Channel, the nexus of America's oil and gas industry. The huge array of refineries and power plants are the skyline of a primarily Latino, low-income area in the corridor.

"A lot of the health impacts you can see, but a lot of it you have to know the community to know who has cancer, leukemia, rashes, asthma, and who is skipping school because they have asthma," he says.

Juan is an army of one who is carefully building an army of more. He's the founder of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, a community organization dedicated to empowering people to take on environmental challenges in their neighborhoods. Among other things, Juan regularly gives toxic tours of the refinery area.

In a world of strongly-worded letters and blustering statements for the press, last week was pretty dramatic as Obama's EPA prepares to regulate greenhouse gases in 2011. Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator to EPA chief Lisa Jackson, wrote to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's Chairman, Bryan Shaw, and stated that the EPA was poised to take over the permitting of power plants, refineries, and other sources of greenhouse gases in Texas, since the TCEQ clearly has no plans to obey federal law and implement the climate regulations. 

"Officials in Texas have made clear ... that they have no intention of implementing this portion of the federal air permitting program," McCarthy wrote. "The unwillingness of Texas state officials to implement this portion of the federal program leaves EPA no choice but to resume its role as the permitting authority, in order to assure that businesses in Texas are not subject to delays or potential legal challenges and are able to move forward with planned construction and expansion projects that will create jobs and otherwise benefit the state's and the nation's economy."

Last week, we told the story of a city at a crossroads- a proposed petroleum coke-burning plant in downtown Corpus Christi, Texas. This past week, people from Corpus Christi demanded that their voices be heard by Governor Rick Perry's Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

At 1:00PM Central time on Friday, 13 protesters sat on the floor of the area headquarters of the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, demanding that the commissioners follow the non-binding recommendation of administrative law judges that the permit for the Las Brisas Energy Center be denied.  They were contacted at 3:00PM, and told that the commissioners would not speak to them, and that they would be forcibly removed at 5:00PM.  Ultimately, they decided to leave before arrests were made.

If an environmental protection agency fast-tracks a permit for a petroleum coke-burning plant that violates the Clean Air Act, and people pretend not to hear it, does it make a sound?

The Las Brisas Energy Center (Get it? It's just a nice breeze...of particulate matter) was proposed about two years ago for construction in Corpus Christi, Texas.  If built, it'll produce 1,320 megawatts a year by burning petroleum coke, a product of refining oil that's regulated like coal but is actually a whole lot dirtier. The plant would emit 220 pounds of mercury a year and, by Las Brisas's own estimate, increase pollution in Nueces County by 82 percent.

But it's okay, y'all. They told us they're bringing jobs. Eighty of them. Wow, guys, 80 whole jobs!