White: ‘Our people learned a great deal.’
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‘... what I was able to see today had a very, very powerful impact.’
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Clearing a Path to a Cleaner River
A fly-by may help turn the tide on Brazos mining pollution.
By WENDY LYONS SUNSHINE
“I’m determined, I’m humbled, I’m not overconfident,” said the small weathered blonde woman. “I don’t want to be an arrogant government agency type, but this is a real initiative for us. This is not business as usual, so we better not fail as far as I’m concerned.”
Kathleen Hartnett White, chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, made those crowd-pleasing statements in Mineral Wells earlier this month, after a visit with local horse rancher Alice Walton. White accepted Walton’s offer of a helicopter ride to survey pollution to the Brazos caused by riverside quarries. She was joined by Wendy Wyman, an advisor to Gov. Rick Perry. The Austin officials saw first-hand how stormwater runoff from rock mines has spread huge quantities of silt into surrounding waterways, transforming sections of the Brazos from a treasured recreational resource into a shallow, muddy bayou. “To be able to see what I was able to see today had a very, very powerful impact,” White said.
Nearly a year ago, senior citizens living along the Brazos in Parker and Palo Pinto counties began to organize in hopes of saving the once-pristine river. Their complaints to public agencies brought little change until they joined forces with Walton — the wealthy horsewoman, upstream land owner, and heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune. Walton agreed that the Brazos was suffocating and something had to be done, fast (“Mud Wrestling,” Fort Worth Weekly, May 12, 2004).
After Walton personally called the governor to discuss the river’s problem last fall, bureaucratic inertia suddenly melted away. The offending Osborn Mine in Santos was cited and eventually shut down by the state attorney general. Litigation has led to areas of that site being reseeded with grasses to curb further erosion.
During her visit to Mineral Wells, White explained how seriously the agency is taking its mission. She announced the “Clear Streams Initiative,” a new three-part plan to protect Texas’ waterways from rock-mining runoff. The first step wraps up on June 17. Using the secretary of state’s corporate database to identify quarries, the agency has inspected hundreds of mines across the state in an unprecedented 30-day enforcement blitz. Thirteen TCEQ inspectors were pulled from other duties to participate in the crackdown.
By mid-June, the effort had revealed 131 unpermitted quarries across the state, a whopping 45 percent of all the mines inspected. Even permitted sites have been found with violations such as unauthorized discharges, inadequate stormwater prevention practices, and poor monitoring records. Of the 66 sites inspected near Fort Worth, nearly one-third were missing the needed permits. By mid-July, TCEQ expects to have completed a report analyzing the scope and nature of the state’s quarry-runoff pollution.
What was the catalyst for this impressive initiative? White’s answer: “Osborn Stone, the governor’s interest in putting a real focus on this, and my assessment that the agency’s initial response was inadequate.”
Tony Goodwin, president of the Brazos River Conservation Coalition, found the agency leader “charming and disarming.” He hopes for the best but is doubtful that TCEQ can really stay on top of the rogue mines. “I do not know how TCEQ will be able to find the offenders without using airplanes and airboats, which she admitted they do not have,” he said.
Ed Newman, a river neighbor who attended White’s meeting, has been in the construction industry for 30 years and has worked with the environmental agency in its various incarnations. “I have not seen any improvement over the years except for consolidation of some offices where they can communicate better,” he said.
When Newman applied for a storm-water permit on a recent job, it took TCEQ a year to notify him of paperwork errors. As for the Clear Streams Initiative? “Too little, too late,” he said. “I don’t see what they’re going to be able to do different.” Newman did offer the suggestion that TCEQ start using electronic Geographic Information System (GIS) data from aerial maps to locate wildcat mines.
A follow-up phone call with chairman White revealed that she was already on track to address these concerns. She conducted a high-level meeting on June 10 with officials from the state’s river authorities and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, at which they discussed the second step of the initiative: inter-agency cooperation.
As part of that cooperative effort, the Parks and Wildlife Department has agreed to fly TCEQ inspectors and river authority personnel over the state’s rivers later this summer, with TCEQ helping defray fuel costs. “This is something we’ve never done before,” said White of the cooperative fly-overs.
The participating agencies have also agreed to assess and share their monitoring resources, including GIS data from the river authorities going back several years. In yet another first, TCEQ inspectors and a permitting agent recently surveyed the Brazos in Palo Pinto and Parker counties by helicopter, through a special arrangement with the Texas Department of Public Safety. “It took some funding on our part to do so,” admitted White. “Our people learned a great deal, and they’re going to go back on the basis of several things they saw and do more investigations. It was very useful.”
As the third step of the Clear Streams Initiative, White wants to consider improved rules or laws governing quarry operations. However, TCEQ has thus far left legislators out of the loop. State Sen. Troy Fraser, whose district stretches from Abilene to Fredericksburg, is currently leading a task force authorized by Perry to examine air pollution and other environmental problems caused by rock quarries. Fraser’s spokesman said that the senator was not notified in advance about the quarry crackdown or other elements of TCEQ’s initiative.
Chief of staff William Scott said Fraser was also unaware of proposed changes to stormwater permit applications that White discussed in Mineral Wells. “I guess she’s not compelled to inform us,” said Scott, “but it sure would be nice. There’s a little bit of a pattern here, not necessarily a desirable one.”
TCEQ’s sudden and dramatic attention to waterway silt pollution is bittersweet to environmentalists who have spent years watchdogging Texas’ natural resources. “For far too long the TCEQ has let the biggest polluters go free, and when they have assessed fines, have not even slapped them on the wrist,” said Tom “Smittty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office. “We hope they are turning around, and that they are beginning to take their role as the pollution police more seriously.”
Still, he admits skepticism about the commission’s motives. “When the governor says, ‘I have a donor who is interested,’ TCEQ responds very quickly,” said Smith, referring to Walton’s role in prompting the Clear Streams Initiative.
Dallas and Houston both rank among the top 10 metropolitan areas nationwide with ozone air-pollution problems, so it seems curious for TCEQ inspectors to be pulled off other assignments — such as air quality enforcement — to focus on preventing muddy rivers at a time when the summer ozone season is settling in. White explained, “That’s why [the inspection blitz is] a month long, and we have not permanently shifted things. We are asking people to do more with less.”
While there are strategies to help quarry owners prevent runoff pollution, such as state tax relief and a variety of conservation resources, TCEQ inspectors won’t be spending much time educating business owners about these options anytime soon. “This is the flip side of enforcement, which we call compliance assistance,” White said. “And, oh boy, I sound like a bureaucrat, but there’s very little money for that.”
Perhaps TCEQ would have more money if it just collected outstanding fines. According to a state auditor’s report, delinquent pollution penalties exceeded half a million dollars in May 2003. White defended her agency. “We refer all penalties of $5,000 and above to the attorney general, and you wouldn’t believe the backlog,” she said.
Angela Hale, spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said, “I don’t know about a backlog. In the case of Osborn Stone we took action quickly and effectively. TCEQ is charged with enforcing environmental laws; we simply represent them in court.”
White assumed the environmental agency chairmanship in October 2003, about the same time the agency launched the current enforcement process review. All the commissioners had a hand in planning it, and White said it was a priority for her. “We actually planned that ... a year from the time we initiated it,” she said. “We knew we wouldn’t have time to do it during the legislative session, because that really occupies agency resources.”
It’s too soon to tell, but her leadership could give TCEQ backbone. The agency recently announced a pilot program in Houston to enhance real-time air pollution monitoring. And then there’s the quarry crackdown and Clear Streams Initiative.
“We have begun an initiative and it is merely a first step,” said White to the small group in Mineral Wells, a replica of her ranch’s brand strategically pinned to her lapel. “I don’t think government tends to be too effective. Whether I’m the chairman of this agency or not, I think it’s incredibly slow.” Too often, she said, TCEQ takes aim “with great procedure and paper” and still misses its mark.
Further, it’s a challenge to balance priorities in a state with 160,000 miles of surface water, 220,000 operations with stormwater permits, and a regional staff of 1,000 to handle those. “I would ask you all to consider the scale of what we’re dealing with in Texas,” she said, shortly before her hostess’ private jet flew her back to Austin, “We really are like another country.”
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