Manufacturers and power plants dumped 13 million pounds of toxins into Texas waterways in 2007, according to a new report from a state environmental advocacy organization.
The report, released last week by Environment Texas, is based on data from the Environmental Protection Agency Toxic Release Inventory for 2007, which categorizes industrial discharge by the waterways. The report also found that 232 million pounds of toxic chemicals were released into 1,900 waterways across all 50 states.
Most of the pollution in Texas was happening along the Gulf Coast, where big industries and power plants are based, said Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas. The report found that Shell Oil Co. released 1.2 million pounds of toxic chemical waste into the Houston Ship Channel alone. Shell was rated the third-highest polluter in the state by the report, and the Houston Ship Channel ranked 15th in the nation for total toxic discharges.
Most industries are granted water discharge permits by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality or the Environmental Protection Agency. The report doesn’t look at violations of water discharge permits but instead at what facilities in Texas are dumping into Texas waterways within the confines of the law, Metzger said.
“It’s a deliberate philosophy to let businesses do what they want to without properly accounting for the environment,” Metzger said.
Toxins include any chemicals that have the potential to cause cancer or developmental disorders in children and reproductive disorders in women, including nitrates that kill fish as well as lead, mercury and dioxin.
According to a statement released by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Texas’ streams, reservoirs and estuaries are required to meet state and federal water quality standards.
“Every year, the TCEQ and other water quality partners sample the surface waters of Texas over 18,000 times a year to evaluate water quality conditions. Two-thirds of the water bodies sampled showed a water quality that satisfied or exceeded the desired standards,” according to the statement. “Any discharge that comes from a source, such as a waste water treatment facility, is limited by permit restrictions that are designed to protect the water and its uses.”
According to EPA data, 14 facilities in Austin discharged chemicals in 2007. One company called Flextronics, an electronics manufacturer, discharged waste into Austin waterways, Metzger said.
“There’s a variety of ways that humans could be exposed to toxins — and these have real impacts on environment and human health — such as swimming or eating fish pulled from contaminated waterways,” Metzger said.
Environment Texas recommends looking for alternatives in inherently safer chemicals and practices.
“When a company has operated in the same way for decades, it’s like a recipe that’s passed down through the generations,” Metzger said. “Part of the solution is being innovative and looking at alternatives and implementing them.”
The Clean Water Act of the 1970s called for the potential of water discharge levels to reach zero. Though this has not happened, the reach of the Clean Water Act must be clarified, said Ken Kramer, director of the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter.
Kramer said the report and toxic release data underscore the fact that there’s a lot of work left to do to achieve clean waterways.
“We need to reduce the number of permits we give as they come up for renewal every five years,” Kramer said. “Since we’re not talking about any unauthorized discharges, there’s still a heck of a lot of toxins going into the waterways that are legal.”
This is a disgrace and the states congress and Perry is a fault all the way up to thie eyes and greedy little pockets books.