Houston News Blog

​We have little understanding of how a local chemical manufacturing plant can flaunt state environmental regulations for an entire year and not get called on the carpet for it until nearly two years later, but that describes the goings-on at the Sunoco, Inc., plant in La Porte.

At its facility just off the Pasadena Highway, not far from the San Jacinto Monument, Sunoco makes high-quality polypropylene that's used to make synthetic fibers for everything from diapers and carpets to upholstery and syringes.

To do this requires the use of all kinds of substances not necessarily good for humans, so the state requires Sunoco and other chemical companies to keep records, which sooner or later are reviewed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Sunoco's review came Feb. 5.

The news wasn't good for us or Sunoco, whose Web site states the Philadelphia-based company to be "responsible stewards of the environment by operating in a manner that protects the Earth."

Photo by lcrf

​Hair Balls is always worrying about reducing our carbon footprint -- in fact, we're constantly using aerosol-spray cleansers and dusters to reduce it like a mofo -- which is why we were stunned to learn in the Houston Business Journal that beloved burrito builders Chipotle Mexican Grill will be installing solar panels in about 75 stores throughout Texas....but not in Houston! (And they're even teaming up with Houston-based Standard Renewable Energy to do so.)

Unlike Encore in Dallas and CPS in San Antonio, CenterPoint Energy wouldn't provide rebates for the installations, SRE spokeswoman Kelley Wright told Hair Balls. Which can only mean one thing: Centerpoint wants the polar bears to die, right?

​Stay the hell away from Houston's waterways. Don't swim in them and for heaven's sake don't eat the fish.

That was essentially the message this morning at a news conference held alongside the Houston Ship Channel, hosted by Environment Texas, an environmental advocacy group, which complied data from the EPA to produce a report detailing just how many hazardous chemicals were dumped into the water in 2007.

According to the report, industrial facilities released 13 million pounds of toxic chemicals into waterways in Texas in 2007. Shell Oil dumped 1.2 million pounds of the nasty stuff into the Ship Channel and was the third largest polluter of toxic chemicals that year. Overall, the Ship Channel ranked as the 15th-worst waterway in the country, on the receiving end of nearly 3 million pounds of toxic crap.

"The results are clear," said Environment Texas Field Organizer Alejandro Savransky. "Industry is still using our waters as a dumping ground."

Or as Ted Parten, president of Texas Black Bass Unlimited, said, "We allow industry to treat our waterways like their private commode."

Photo courtesy GHCVB

​Everyone knows that Houston is the smog-riddled energy capital of the world, so it was with a touch of irony that the annual Clean Air Through Energy Efficiency Conference awards were announced this afternoon in Houston.

Attendees from across Texas and other states, munching on a typical banquet meal of chicken cordon bleu and asparagus, were supposed to hear self-proclaimed clean-air advocate Mayor Bill White, but alas, he was too busy to show. Instead, Issa Dadoush, director of the city's General Services Department, said a few words about Houston's efforts to be efficient and go green.

He started off by saying that according to the EPA, the Houston area is the nation's top purchaser of energy. However, said Dadoush, the city government is currently buying nearly a third of its energy from wind farms and is planning to increase its usage of solar power. He claims the city is developing a 10-megawatt solar facility that could be up and running by June of next year, and that more than half the city's traffic signals use LED lights which reduce energy use by 90 percent and save city taxpayers about $10,000 a day in energy costs.
 

​A little over 10 years ago, we wrote about a "Killer Weed" that had been mistakenly introduced to some Texas lakes and was quickly covering them with a thick blanket of vegetation.

Salvinia molesta, also known as Giant Salvinia, reproduces itself faster than the Octomom and is a dire threat to freshwater plants and organisms that need sunlight.

The weed was first found at a Houston elementary school's pond, of all places. Texas Parks & Wildlife officials told us of how a bit of the weed, transported on, say, a Jet-Ski that was trucked from one lake to another, could bring the pain-in-the-ass vegetation to a previously clean waterway.

They especially worried about Sam Rayburn Reservoir. Surprisingly, a decade or so went by without any outbreak, but the good luck has ended, TPWD announced today.

​Standing under the long shadow of an oversized inflatable coal plant erected this morning in Downtown's Tranquility Park, members of the Sierra Club and local environmentalists said it's time for the EPA to put its money where its mouth is and stop permitting coal-fired power plants.

This comes on the heels of the EPA's announcement in early September that many of the air pollution and permitting rules used by the state's environmental agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, do not comply with the federal Clean Air Act. The EPA said that it would most likely reject portions of the state's permitting process.

"TCEQ is issuing permits to coal plants that should be thrown out," said Eva Hernandez of the Sierra Club. "It is permitting plants illegally. This [EPA] ruling creates an opportunity."

Illustration courtesy drinktap.org

​A little more than a year ago, the Houston Press brought you a story about a growing movement aimed at ditching those store-bought plastic bottles of water for the stuff that flows from the tap. After all, advocates claimed, tap water is safe, cheap and environmentally friendly.

Then The New York Times dropped a bomb Sunday when it published its investigation claiming that tap water is anything but safe. Among the paper's findings, 40 percent of the country's public water systems have at one point been in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act and one in 10 Americans has been exposed to drinking water containing dangerous chemicals.

Not good news for the pro-tap water crowd. Or at least you'd think.

But leave it to the good folks at the Think Outside the Bottle campaign, based in Boston, to try to turn potentially crippling news into a positive.

​NRG Energy, a redundantly named company in New Jersey, has announced plans to build a wonderful new space-age "carbon-capture" system at their coal plant in Fort Bend County.

Well, they've announced plans to ask the federal government to pay for half the project, anyway.

The carbon-capture system reduces pollution tremendously, theoretically. And expensively. NRG has been searching around without success trying to get local governments to help with the cost of their test project, and the company won't say what kind of price tag the whole thing will end up with.

Tha carbon-capture idea became a craze among energy companies for a while -- visionaries touted it as another Apollo project, except one with long-lasting positive effects -- but the costs ended up daunting just about everyone who studied it.

​A couple of months ago we brought you the sad tale of the dwindling jaguarundi, and how an environmental group was suing the U.S. Department of the Interior demanding that the agency create a conservation and survival plan for the endangered cat from South Texas.

Now that same environmental group is trying to save six types of freshwater mollusk that also call Texas their home.

Mollusks, you say? They're not nearly as cute as the jaguarundi. Who gives a hoot about them?

Well, it turns out that mollusks, also known as mussels, improve water quality by removing bacteria and algae, which keeps the rivers nice and healthy. And WilldEarth Guardians, a nonprofit organization, thinks that's pretty damn important. The group is suing the Department of the Interior in Houston federal court to make the agency formally decide whether or not six types of mussels should be on the endangered species list.

​Think it's hot in Houston now? Just want for....(switch to stentorian voice)...The Future!!!!

That's the word from Climate Central, a non-profit scientific group that apparently believes all this climate-change mumbo-jumbo the socialist-fascists are trying to throw at us when they're not trying to force government health care and take away our Medicare.

In a new study released today, Climate Central says that by the year 2050, Houston will be like Phoenix in that half the days of a typical August will be over 95 degrees. (Unlike those cities, we add the lagniappe of suffocating humidity.)

Today, the only cities on the list where more than half the days in an average August exceed 95°F are Phoenix and Dallas; by the 2050's, Houston, Sacramento, Tampa Bay and Orlando could join them.

Today, seven cities break 90°F on at least half of the days of a typical August; by the 2050's, they could be joined by Atlanta, Denver, Indianapolis, Miami, and Philadelphia. And, by midcentury, a dozen cities could average more than one day over 100°F per August, where today only three share that dubious distinction.

Wait, Atlanta doesn't break 90 degrees at least half the time in August? Bastards.

​Let's be honest.

There aren't a lot of "bad days" for a global petrochemical company that made a record $45.2 billion profit last year, so we'll just say ExxonMobil had a less than stellar day on Wednesday when state regulators penalized it more than $600,000 for environmental crimes.

ExxonMobil's oil refinery and chemical plants in Baytown were responsible for $496,201 of the penalty and its Beaumont refinery accounted for the rest.

The penalty, finalized in Austin in an agreed order by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, covered 20 separate pollution cases against ExxonMobil, some dating back to 2005.

The violations cover unauthorized and excessive releases of hydrogen cyanide, benzene, carbon monoxide and a dozen or so other compounds used in the petrochemical industry.

In all but a few of the cases, the releases were "avoidable" because of poor operational practices, the environmental commission said.

Photo by rasmithuk

It looks like South Padre Island will be home to a wind farm featuring 500-foot tall turbines off the coast.

They'll be 10 miles off the coast, but that doesn't mean everyone's happy about it.

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson has signed a deal with British firm Baronyx to build the windfarm offshore on land owned by the Texas Permanent School Fund. Baronyx paid a nominal fee for use of the submerged land, but will pay a royalty to the PSF -- which benefits Texas public schools -- on all electricity it produces.

The Valley paper The Monitor reports that there have been complaints about the giant turbines spoiling the view and the environment around South Padre.

Total Petrochemicals USA, Inc., based here in Houston, agreed this week to come clean on a rather big problem that was three and a half years in the making.

From a Houston point of view, it could have been worse, as the problem was over at Total's Port Arthur facility, sparing us from a long list of violations in the way of excessive air pollution, improper maintenance, improper notification and inadequate record-keeping.

Moreover, since the corporate overseers at Total USA are located way over in Brussels, the Belgian suits may not even know about this yet. But they're bound to notice when the $749,910 penalty assessed by the Texas Commission on Environment Quality passes through the accounting department.

What do you have to do to get hit with a $749,910 fine? Well, a lot can go wrong in three and a half years.

Photo courtesy Harris County Attorney's office

Luis Ortiz, the polluter who was sentenced to five days' jail time for failing to clean up his auto-salvage business, went behind bars today after a last-ditch effort to stay free.

Ella Tyler of the county attorney's office tells Hair Balls district judge Tony Lindsay ordered Ortiz to begin his sentence even though much of the clean-up has been done.

"It's been a long, long time getting it," she says.

Ortiz and the county have been fighting for three years, and the property owner had ignored several court orders demanding he fix the problem. He had one last chance to argue at a hearing this morning, but Lindsay wasn't impressed.

Photo by Daniel Kramer

Dennis Davis

In 2007, our Todd Spivak did a feature on  the "Toxic Town" of Somerville, 90 miles southnorthwest of Houston and home to a Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railway plant.

Residents there have much higher cancer rates than normal, a fact some traced to the arsenic, dioxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons used by the plant, which at one time was the nation's largest producer of railroad ties.

One of the residents, and one of the key parts of the Spivak's story, was Dennis Davis, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2006.

He sued BNSF, and a 10-week trial wrapped up yesterday. The jury found for the railroad.

The jury took about two hours to reach its verdict, the Bryan-College Station Eagle reported.

If you worry about pollution -- especially in light on the EPA's latest study of the cancer risk posed by air pollution -- you might see that instead of threatening our lives, air pollution actually helps all of us, especially those of us who are most vulnerable, the kids.

For purposes of illustration, we present a case handled yesterday by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which approved an agreed order that assessed the Dow Chemical Co. a penalty of $166,465 for violating state pollution laws.

That's a lot of money any way you slice it.

The case against Dow dealt with six separate pollution incidents at the company's Freeport complex, of which the most excessive began on June 26, 2005, and didn't end until Aug. 13, 2005.

In sheer volume, it was a doozy -- 148,905 pounds of volatile organic compounds, 105,438 pounds of carbon monoxide, 13,868 pounds of nitrogen oxides, and 1,682 pounds of benzene were released during a 1,160-hour time period.

And then there were five other incidents in the ensuing years, the documents show. The average citizen might ask, why? Why can't a world-class company and its array of brilliant engineers and technicians operate a chemical manufacturing plant a better way? And, perhaps more importantly, the average citizen even may ask, "Is this shit gonna kill me?"

This is where you have to get your mind right.

Got a couple of hours to spare Wednesday morning? The Buffalo Bayou Partnership is looking for some "heat-resistant" volunteers to help put in 9,000 wetland plants at the still under-construction nature park, Buffalo Bend Nature Park. (Okay, with that many plants it might take a little more than a couple of hours.)

The ten-acre park, which has been in the works for several years, is still in its first phase of construction and not ready for visitors yet, but eventually there'll be a series of ponds, a look-out mound/amphitheater, hike and bike trails, a boardwalk and observation deck. There'll also be an small island that's inaccessible to visitors and varmints alike. (It will serve as a predator-free rest stop for the thousands of migrating birds that fly through the area every year.)

The Jaguarundi

courtesy of blueskull611

Ever heard of the jaguarundi? Neither have we.

Perhaps that's because this unique type of cat that lives along the Texas border with Mexico is endangered. Perhaps it's because nobody really cares. We're guessing it's a bit of both, but that doesn't mean every animal shouldn't have some human in their corner pulling for them.

WildEarth Guardian, a non-profit environmental organization, recently waged war in the form of a lawsuit in Houston federal court against Ken Salazar, Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, demanding that he put a conservation and survival plan together for the animal. After all, the organization argues, the cat has been listed as endangered since 1976, plenty of time to create such a plan as required under the Endangered Species Act.

Two types of the endangered species call south Texas their home, the Gulf Coast jaguarundi and the Sinaloan jaguarundi. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they are larger than a domestic cat and have small ears, long, narrow bodies with short legs and flattened heads and tails. They generally look more like an otter or a weasel than a cat. They make their homes, according to the lawsuit, in the "dense thorny mesquite, cacti and cat claw thickets of southern Texas."

If you think you've got a lot to do getting ready for the season's first hurricane, imagine if you had a museum full of millions of dollars in art you had to protect. Gulf Coast area museums don't have to imagine -- they do. Among the most prepared is the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, but it's the Aurora Picture Show where visitors will have the most fun.

The Aurora Picture Show can afford to be a little more lax than AMSET -- it's hard to drown DVDs. "It would take a massive storm," laughs Associate Director Rachel Tepper. "Everything [in the DVD library] is up off of the floor and they're in cases. So it would take the destruction of the building before it would affect the DVDs."

Hurricane Ike, which pretty much shut Houston down for a couple of weeks, didn't affect the Aurora Picture Show's programming schedule last year. "We continued with the screening we had planned," says Tepper. "The city was still a wreck and the turnout was extremely modest, but we went ahead. We actually served Hurricanes, the drink, during the show. A lot of people still weren't driving after the storm, so it was just people from the area. Everyone came over; we had air-conditioning and Hurricanes. It actually was a fun, little community event."

What are the group's preparations for this year's storm season? "Our plan," Tepper jokes, "is 'We'll serve Hurricanes.'"

If you live in Needville or  "the unincorporated portion of Beasley," the Fort Bend County Health & Human Services Department is warning you to stay away from skunks.

We've never quite lived in a place where people had to be warned to stay away from skunks, but then again we've never even been to the incorporated part of Beasley, much less the unincorporated part.

But two rabid skunks have been discovered in the greater Beasley-Needville Metropolitan Area, and health officials are warning residents to protect themselves and their animals.

Pet owners should make sure their animals' vaccinations are updated. "It is also important to keep your animals restrained and not allow them to roam freely as this will further protect them from confrontation with wildlife," said Vernon Abschneider, the county's animal control director.
 

Photo by Scott Barnes

Spencer Langford paddles his canoe west from Eleanor Tinsley Park along his usual route through Buffalo Bayou. He tries to get on the water every day. A nature buff, he notes the different species of birds, fish, turtles and snakes. But as he nears Studemont, by the dog park, he stops at something else: an impassable dam of garbage that has developed around a cluster of logs.
 
"This used to be gorgeous," Langford says. "But now it's, um ... shit water."
 
The trash collects in storm drains throughout Houston, then flushes out into the Bayou whenever it rains, according to Scott Barnes, the conservation director at the non-profit Buffalo Bayou Partnership, which maintains the area through private donations and funds from the city and county.
 
The trash had been floating around since the last big rainfall about two weeks ago. Barnes and his crew had to work through a logjam around the bridge columns downtown before they could reach the Studemont "dam."

The World Health Organization has declared swine flu to be a pandemic, the first in over 40 years.

It's doing it mostly on the basis of a sharp growth in cases in Australia, Japan and Chile, but just about every story on the subject -- at least in America -- mentions Houston.

We were, of course, the first American city to have a swine-flu death; we also had Travis Elementary close after a bunch of kids came down with stuff, some of which included swine flu.

But all that seems to have calmed down lately -- just as experts said it would, before a possible resurgence.

So is the city going to change its swine-flu plans now that it's a pandemic? Cancel Astro games? Tell HISD they need to shut down summer school? Order citizens driving within three blocks of Travis Elementary to wear masks?

Not really, Health Department spokeswoman Kathy Barton tells Hair Balls.

Travis Elementary's swine-flu heyday came just as the topic was losing its national cachet, but the school made the most of it -- closing completely after days of frantic parents keeping their kids home, leaving the school a ghost town.

At first HISD said a weekend scrub-down would be enough to set things right, but eventually officials threw in the towel and closed the school completely for the few remaining days of the year.

It's now re-opened, for summer school, but it's not exactly back at 100 percent.

The school is "still on bottled water, sack lunches and portable bathrooms, for now," HISD spokesman Norm Uhl says.

Portable bathrooms in the heat of a Houston summer? Sounds great!

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has announced a major case against BP Petroleum and its Texas City refinery, claiming almost 50 separate violations of the state's clear-air act.

"BP Products is charged with polluting our environment, concealing information from authorities and harming Texans," Abbott said. "In recent years, more than 45 unlawful pollutant emissions occurred at BP's Texas City facility. This enforcement action holds BP accountable for failing to comply with environmental, health and safety laws that are intended to protect Texans from harm."

The incidents include the explosion that killed 15 people.

So what is Abbott after?

"The state is seeking an injunction requiring the company to implement all necessary measures to eliminate future unlawful emissions," the AGs office announced. "The enforcement action seeks to require that BP install additional air quality monitors that will ensure future compliance with emissions restrictions. The state is also seeking civil penalties, fines and attorneys' fees."

Photo courtesy Sheltering Arms

People are sometimes suspicious when one of Scott Pool's inspectors calls. The offer -- to weatherize one's house for free -- sounds too good to be true.
 
"We have to convince them that, really and truly, nobody's going to charge them," says Pool, the weatherization director at Sheltering Arms Senior Services, a multi-faceted non-profit in Houston. "People have to be assured that there's no scam involved."
 
Weatherization means caulking, insulating or otherwise fixing up a home to make its energy consumption more efficient. It can save hundreds of dollars on annual utility bills. Sheltering Arms focuses on the elderly but targets poor households in general. Its weatherization program had a budget of $1.4 million in 2008. It has been servicing between 250 and 300 homes a year.
 
Pool expects those numbers to soon jump ten-fold.
 
Houston's weatherization efforts recently drew national attention (via an article in Thursday's Wall Street Journal) for the incoming boon of stimulus money heading this way. Sheltering Arms and a similar service run by the city will each receive about $22 million over the next two years pegged specifically for weatherization. They will be able to service families ranging to 200 percent of the poverty line, up from 125 percent.
 

The Dow Chemical Co. got whacked last week with a $202,325 fine for air pollution violations, but if we had to guess, we'd say the world's second-largest chemical company thanks its lucky stars it does business in a state like Texas, where a history of violations doesn't mean much.

In calculating the various wrongs Dow committed in 2007 and 2008, the staff of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality pulled out their calculators and determined the penalty should (or maybe "could," we suppose) be enhanced 418 percent.

Why? Because Dow's megacomplex in Freeport had received written notices of violations for 61 similar violations, plus 28 notices of unrelated violations. Moreover, Dow had agreed to four previous orders of violations with denial of liability and three previous agreed orders of violations without denial of liability dating back to 2003.

Sounds pretty damn serious.

But it essentially means nothing because in Texas, past instances of violations are ignored by the state environmental commission, even though they tote them up on their penalty calculation worksheet.

Even more kids are out at Travis Elementary today, HISD spokesman Norm Uhl tells Hair Balls -- of the 712 registered, 378 stayed home today. Another dozen felt sick at school, went to the clinic and were sent home.

Oddly, teachers don't seem to be affected: Only two are out sick. (Another two are home with sick kids.)

Two cases of swine flu have been confirmed.

"We don't know how much of the kids staying out is the concern parents have caused by seeing stories in the media," Uhl says. "But we understand that -- we're parents too."

The plans now are to keep the school open. Some cleaning and sanitizing is going on now, and as soon as the building empties today a large-scale operation will begin.

The hallways are pretty empty today at Travis Elementary near the Woodland Heights. Of the 712 students there, 242 are out sick.

It can't be a Senior Skip Day, so what is up, HISD?

"Twenty-six additional students at Travis were sent home sick today bringing the total to 242," spokesman Norm Uhl tells us. "We are working closely with the City Health Department which has identified seven cases of type A (REGULAR) flu. It is suspected, however, that the majority of the students are being affected by some sort of viral illness. We do not know how many of the 242 are out due to parental concern and we understand that."

It appears that some kids have gotten the regular flu, and some parents have gotten the OHMYGOD IT'S SWINE FLU!!!! hype disease.

"I was just at the school and things at the clinic were slowing down, so we hope we are turning the corner on this," Uhl says.

Also important: "Absences during this period will not count against perfect attendance awards."

Thank God for that.

Strange as it may seem, Houston -- The City That Recycling Forgot -- has implemented a nifty new program that helps the environment.

Two weeks ago it opened a Houston Building Materials Reuse Center that helps contractors pick up environmental brownie points and save money, and lets non-profit groups get a chance at some needed construction materials.

Contractors drop off excess material at the warehouse, "which benefits them in three ways: 1) eliminates landfill fees, 2) provides a tax deductible donation, and 3) provides LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification points," says city spokeswoman Sandra Jackson.

Non-profit groups then can come in and see what's available and take it away.

Photo by Kyle Simourd

What do you do when a company wins the right to put up a 170-foot tall landfill near you?

You make lemonade out of lemons, or out of indestructible, non-recyclable plastic containers of lemonade.

Via Swamplot comes this video by Lysle Oliveros, a student at the Rice School of Architecture. The video, which indulges a little too much in seizure-inducing graphics and cutting, is Oliveros' thesis.

It proposes landscaping the mountain (well, a mountain by Houston standards) into a pleasant green park.

Anyone who's been out to Wildcat Golf Course knows what Oliveros is talking about.