Environmental Defense blasts Senate approval of CSSB 1317

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Jim Marston, Environmental Defense, 512-691-3402, jmarston@environmentaldefense.org

(Austin, TX- May 1, 2007) The following statement may be attributed to Jim Marston, Regional Director, Environmental Defense:

CSSB 1317 is nothing but a May Day gift to polluters, and we applaud Senators Whitmire, Gallegos and Ellis for standing up and trying to stop it with a filibuster today.

Air pollution doesn’t recognize city limits or county lines, but Senator Mike Jackson’s bill strips local elected officials of their authority to protect their citizens from pollution generated just across their borders. Currently local leaders are allowed to restrict pollution if the source is within 5000 feet of the city limits due to the pollution’s affect on neighboring communities and the citizens who reside in those areas.

The city of Houston – after careful study by an independent scientific panel – had begun to act to reduce cancer-causing chemicals coming from sources immediately adjacent to its city limits, as they are authorized to do under current law. Now, with Sen. Jackson’s bill, their citizens are left to rely on the understaffed and sometimes disinterested TCEQ that for years has been unable or unwilling to protect citizens in Houston and other parts of the state against dangerous levels of toxins in their air.

Senators Whitmire, Gallegos and Ellis were doing what was best for their constituents and the entire state. Sadly, two-thirds of the Senate voted against efforts to reduce cancer-causing pollution and instead are letting the big polluters continue with business as usual.