HOUSTON, TEXAS--Texans United and the Sierra Club
Lone Star Chapter filed a formal civil rights complaint
yesterday with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), charging the Texas Natural Resource Conservation
Commission (TNRCC) with "concerted and systematic
discriminatory conduct to deny minorities, including
people of color and low-income citizens, equal protection
of the law..."
Both groups charge the TNRCC with violating Title VI
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits
discrimination in programs using federal funds. TNRCC's
actions also violate an Executive Order on environmental
justice, which requires that federal programs and
federally funded projects not be allowed to increase "the
disproportionate burdens of environmental hazards in
communities of color and low-income neighborhoods."
While the complaint focuses on the TNRCC's failure
to prevent the illegal pollution at Crown Central
Petroleum's Pasadena, Texas, refinery, it charges the
agency with a pattern of skewed permitting practices and
lax enforcement in pursuing violations at industrial
plants across the state.
Texas now leads the nation in civil rights (Title
VI) complaints filed against a state environmental
agency. At least nine civil rights (Title VI) complaints
have been filed against the TNRCC with the EPA's Office
of Civil Rights since 1994. Grassroots community groups
from Texas communities (Winona, Corpus Christi, East
Austin--2, Houston, Sierra Blanca, Lubbock, College
Station, and Herold), allege numerous discriminatory
practices of the TNRCC.
The neighborhoods around Crown, like the
neighborhoods close to many refineries and chemical
plants, are low income and predominately minority.
"Everyone knows that company and government officials
would never tolerate the same pollution in their own
neighborhoods," said Texans United director Rick Abraham.
"These neighborhoods have been abandoned as sacrifice
zones because residents don't have money or political
influence."
According to the complaint filed today, the TNRCC
compromised its enforcement process at the expense of
public health and the environment, and did so in order to
protect Crown's financial interests. Crown is one of the
first ten companies that in 1996 joined in a public
relations effort to promote Governor George Bush Jr.'s
"voluntary" program to reduce air pollution. Governor
Bush's appointees run the TNRCC.
"The TNRCC's handling of Crown is another example
that Governor Bush's environmental justice program at
TNRCC is a complete sham," said Neil Carman, a former
state air pollution official who is the clean air
director with the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Crown's violations of federal Clean Air Act
standards total more than 15,000 operating hours in the
last six years alone. In just 1996 and 1997 alone, Crown
emitted nearly 1,000 tons of excess sulfur dioxide into
the community due to upsets. The EPA has found that
sulfur dioxide is acutely toxic and can cause impairment
of breathing, respiratory illness and aggravation of
existing cardiovascular disease.
"Contrary to what Bush appointee and TNRCC
Commissioner Barry McBee represented to Congress in his
testimony of August 1998, the TNRCC has no meaningful
environmental justice program to protect low-income
citizens and people of color from toxic pollution across
the state," said Carman.