The Texas Observer

Updated below

Remember Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson’s brusque promise of “No guns, no deal” on the proposed transfer of the Christmas Mountains to Big Bend National Park? Well, the AP has a story today that should cheer Yosemite Sam Patterson:

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proposed new regulations Wednesday that would allow people to carry a concealed weapon in some national parks and wildlife refuges.

The new rules would allow someone to carry a loaded weapon in a park or wildlife refuge only if the person has a permit for a concealed weapon and the state where the park or refuge is located allows guns in parks, Kempthorne said.

Park rangers, retirees, and conservation groups are agin’ the idea, arguing that it could lead to heightened danger for visitors and park personnel.

At this point the rule is far from a done deal. The public has 60 days to comment and some Democratic lawmakers are blasting the rule as ill-conceived and untenable. One sticking point is that some local and state laws place restrictions on carrying firearms. That’s probably not a problem in Texas, thanks in part to the concealed handgun law that - guess who - Jerry Patterson passed in 1995 when he served in the Texas House.

In any case, one wonders how this affects the Christmas Mountains deal. We called General Land Office spokesman Jim Suydam for comment. When we hear from him, we’ll update this post.

Update: The Land Office just released a statement welcoming the “return of Second Amendment rights to some National Parks.” Patterson is quoted as saying, “When I’m in a state or national park, I’m armed. An unconstitutional rule promulgated by a federal bureaucracy is not sufficient to deny me that right.” He encouraged freedom-loving Texans to fire away at the Interior Department with comments supporting the rule.

The fastest-growing segment of the prison industry is for-profit detention centers housing immigrants. The Bush administration - with characteristic zeal - has given the job of holding this growing detention population — fed largely by the crackdown on illegal immigration — to prison peddlers who are dependent on taxpayer dollars. Texas has been ground zero for this growth industry.

“Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses… and we’ll lock ‘em up” seems to be the mantra of Corrections Corporation of America, Emerald, GEO Group, MTC, and other “corrections” companies. These outfits tend to operate with minimal oversight and little direction from government agencies. In truth, outside of a few attorneys, correctional officers, and the detainees themselves, few have first-hand knowledge of detention center operations.

However, documents recently obtained by the Observer paint a dismal picture of some Texas facilities. We wrote about the documents in a March issue of the magazine. Three of six Texas facilities inspected by the Office of Federal Detention Trustee flunked federal standards: the Brooks County Correctional Facility in Falfurrias, operated by LCS Corrections Services Inc. of Lafayette, Louisiana; the Willacy County Regional Detention Center in Raymondville, operated by Utah-based Management & Training Corp; and the East Hidalgo Detention Center in La Villa, also operated by LCS.

Brooks and Willacy both passed more limited inspections conducted by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

The facilities had numerous security, sanitation, management, record-keeping, and health care problems. In the case of East Hidalgo, the Federal Detention Trustee deemed the detention center “at risk” and ordered immediate federal intervention.

From the March issue of the Observer:

At East Hidalgo, the inspectors found dozens of violations of federal standards. Medical, dental, and mental health care is virtually nonexistent. Initial medical screenings are performed by unqualified nurses and do not include a physical examination, or an appraisal for chemical dependency, mental retardation, and suicide risk, according to the report. Moreover, the jail has no dentist or mental health professional on-site.

A hallway is used as an examination room. Staff are not trained to deal with suicidal detainees despite eight suicide attempts in the year prior to the report.Security is poor. At the time of the inspection, visitors didn’t even pass through a metal detector when entering the building. The jail has no “specific instructions” on when firearms may be used; no procedures for maintaining weapons or for controlling keys, kitchen tools, and medical equipment; no effective plan for a mass evacuation; and no training program on the use of force.

Sanitation is lacking. Employees are not tested for blood-borne pathogens, increasing the risk of disease to both guards and inmates. Detainees are issued “sporks,” but the utensils are not sanitized, nor are barbering tools.Two juveniles were discovered by the inspectors at the adult-only detention center and immediately removed.In addition, the report reveals that 19 inmate-on-inmate assaults had occurred in the previous year.

After six inmates escaped in 2006, the state jail commission cited the facility for employing too few guards, for the third time.

Richard Harbison, vice president of LCS, told the Observer last month that the company had corrected the problems and expected to pass an upcoming inspection. (We’ll update once we find out if the inspection has occurred and how the facility did.)

Because it’s so rare to get a glimpse of how bad some of these private lockups can be, we’ve taken the time to scan most of the pages from the East Hidalgo inspection report.

In addition to the deficiencies of the prisons, the documents also inadvertently reveal the pettiness of the secretive Bush administration. Whole pages of the inspection reports were redacted… sort of. The feds need to invest in some better Sharpies. Much of what they tried to hide could be read with the aid of a light table and a magnifying glass. While the redactions did obscure some sensitive security problems, other portions of the inspection reports hardly seemed worthy of a black marker.

For example, in the report on the East Hidalgo Detention Center, the Federal Detention Trustee redacted a section on spork protocol. “Sporks are not returned to food service for proper cleaning,” the redacted part reads. “All utensils should be properly washed.” A blacked-out section in the report on the LCS Brooks County Correctional Facility says, “Chicken was thawing in a sink for over two hours on Nov. [ ], 2007 and a turkey product was thawing at room temperature for over 7 1/2 hours on Nov. 7, 2007.”

The agency even redacted areas of the inspection where the prisons received passing marks.

As a legal basis for the secrecy, the agency cited a provision in the Freedom of Information Act that allows an agency to withhold information that “could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual.” But doesn’t the real danger to human safety come from the sorry state of the detention centers, not the disclosure thereof?

Buddy Garcia, Gov. Perry’s pick to head the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, apparently thinks everything is fine and dandy with Texas’ air quality.

“When the Environmental Protection Agency announced its new ozone standard, critics across the state jumped to the conclusion that the air we currently breathe is unhealthful,” Buddy wrote in an op-ed yesterday in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

So, Texas’ air is healthy then? Garcia never answers that question directly but he does tout the strides Texas has made in reducing air pollution. True enough - there have been sizable cuts of some pollutants - but that doesn’t mean we now breath clean air. His argument is kinda like the two-pack-a-day smoker who cuts back to one and declares victory.

The statistics Buddy cites to prove his point are misleading, if not specious, according to Matthew Tejada, executive director of the Galeston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention (GHASP). For example, Garcia claims nitrogen oxide emissions from industrial sources in Houston have dropped from 479 tons per day in 2000 to 157 tons per day in 2009. “There aren’t any number out there that would justify that [claim] other than industry’s own self-reported statistics,” said Tejada. Houston has managed to modestly reduce nitrogen oxides, smog-forming gases, but that’s primarily from more efficient vehicles on the road, Tejada said.

Where Buddy really gets into trouble is when he starts bashing the EPA’s decision to reduce the ozone standard from 85 parts per billion to 75 ppb.

Garcia wrote that he was opposed to the reduction. “It’s not that we don’t want further air quality improvements,” he wrote, “but the health benefits of lowering the current standard are debatable… If the yardstick by which we judge air quality is based on anything other than clear-cut scientific proof, we are using the wrong measurement.”

While it’s true that it is next to impossible to quantify exactly how many lives are saved from lowering a smog standard, the EPA’s scientific clean air panel estimated that a standard of 75 parts per billion would prevent 1,300 to 3,500 premature deaths a year. However, the panel members unanimously urged at least a 65 ppb limit, which would prevent an annual 3,000 to 9,200 deaths. The EPA administrator Stephen Johnson ignored the experts’ consensus and decided, somewhat arbitrarily, to go with 75ppb.

In short: There is no scientific debate on whether reducing ozone would save thousands of lives, especially those of the young, ill, and old. It would. There is a policy debate to be had about the trade-off between saving lives and hampering industry. But Buddy, it seems, is more concerned with the latter:

As emission limits become more stringent, control costs rise. Unnecessary regulation costs jobs and raises the price of all kinds of goods and services. The people most adversely impacted are not the wealthy but those who live paycheck to paycheck, or lose their jobs, or never get the jobs that would’ve been created if not for additional, burdensome regulation.

This is the kind of anti-regulatory, pseudo-populist claptrap that people at industry-funded think tanks are paid six figures to come up with, but, hey, Buddy does it for free. While the presidential candidates are talking about creating millions of green-collar jobs, here’s Garcia worrying that asking Texas polluters to clean up their act will be too “burdensome.” The really biting irony is that the clean air improvements Garcia wants us to be proud of are the fruits of hard-nosed regulation, not the munificence of big business.

“What motivated him to write this op-ed?,” asks Tejada, who has submitted his own rebuttal piece to the Startlegram. “It doesn’t achieve any policy purpose… What is he trying to achieve other than trying to mislead the public?”

Yesterday, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued a “revised” draft license to radioactive waste outfit Waste Control Specialists. The permit would allow Waste Control to bury about 1.17 million cubic yards of “byproduct” waste - mostly uranium mill tailings and radioactive leftovers from the Cold War - in a landfill at its Andrews County facility in West Texas. (Background here.)

The license is virtually unchanged from its previous iteration, despite voluminous comments filed by Waste Control as well as the Sierra Club and eleven New Mexico residents opposed to the project. TCEQ executive director Glenn Shankle rebuffed the protestants’ calls for a public meeting and rejected out-of-hand their criticisms of Waste Control’s proposal. Shankle argued that conditions on the license “increase the overall safety” of the radioactive landfill.

Cyrus Reed said the license, even with the conditions imposed, can always be amended. “Once you say go, it’s hard to say no,” Reed said.

Agency staff have warned that the landfill could be situated dangerously close to two water tables. In August 2007, two state geologists went so far as to write to their bosses that the proposed landfill did not meet the requirements of state law.

“[H]ydrogeologic uncertainties and unknowns and modeling that shows water encroachment into the byproduct material landfill shows that the application lacks the requirements to demonstrate compliance with the rules” governing byproduct materials, they wrote. Waste Control has said that recent borings conducted at the site have proven that water is not anywhere close to the proposed landfills.

Waste Control sought to strip out a number of license conditions that would require further extensive study of the site’s geology and hydrology, but the TCEQ executive director rejected almost all the proposed changes. Waste Control also asked TCEQ to allow for disposal of “bulk waste,” soil-like stuff that state engineers worried could escape the landfill and contaminate the surrounding area. The executive director preserved the ban on such waste in the license.

Waste Control had also asked TCEQ to replace whole sections of the agency’s environmental analysis with text written by their own experts. The agency’s analysis raised questions about the presence of water in the proposed landfill and criticized the proposal for being inconsistent and incomplete in spots. However, the executive director decided to stick to his staff’s analysis.

On balance, it seems Waste Control won this round. Their shoot-for-the-moon strategy of trying to get TCEQ to tailor the license exactly to their liking failed, but they still got a license. The company certainly declared victory.

“This is a great accomplishment for our company and we are pleased that the Executive Director and his staff have recommended the issuance of the license to the TCEQ Commissioners after an exhaustive and thorough review of our application and our site,” said Rodney A. Baltzer, President of WCS, in a press release. “This license will allow us to safely dispose of the 3,776 canisters of by-product material received from the Fernald, Ohio site remediation currently in storage at our site as well as provide a more economical disposal facility for uranium miners in Texas and New Mexico.”

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club and the other protestants will have to hold out hope for a contested case hearing. The three Gov. Perry-appointed commissioners will decide soon whether opponents get a shake at overturning the permit in a hearing.

Late Update: A reader pointed out in an email that the other pending Waste Control license, for low-level radioactive waste, does allow for disposal of soil-like bulk waste. The same potential problems with wind dispersal of radioactively-contaminated soil would apply to the low-level landfill as the byproduct dump. Rod Baltzer, Waste Control president, told the Observer today that their modeling shows that a person standing in the middle of the byproduct area during a wind storm would receive a dose of radiation far below the legal limit.

Imagine this: By 2100, the Gulf rises 2-4 feet, inundating Galveston as well as portions of Harris County and Southeast Texas, threatening roads, rails, pipelines and ports; average annual temperatures climb 2-4F and very hot days get even hotter, stressing vehicles and energy systems and buckling Houston’s METRORail; increasingly powerful and more frequent storms hammer the Port of Houston, airports, and petrochemical facilities in Port Arthur, Beaumont, Freeport and Houston. Sound like a far-fetched scenario hatched by a Hollywood imagination? Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

A major study of likely climate change impacts to the Gulf Coast has just been released by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. The Bush administration has predictably downplayed the 439-page report, entitled Impacts of Climate Change and Variability on Transportation Systems and Infrastructure: Gulf Coast Study, Phase 1. Drawing on a growing body of scientific literature, the authors examine how rising sea levels, increased storm intensity, warming temperatures, and changes in precipitation present risks to transportation and infrastructure in the central Gulf region from Houston-Galveston to Mobile, Alabama. It’s gonna be one hell of a ride.

Despite the serious consequences posed for Houston-Galveston and Southeast Texas there has been scant media attention to the study. Worse, the authors also found that “most [transportation planning] agencies do not consider climate change projections per se in their long-range plans, infrastructure design, or siting decisions.” (How much you wanna bet Gov. Perry’s TxDOT is one of those heads-in-the-sand agencies?)

Key excerpts from the report, which can be read in its entirety here:

The changing climate raises critical questions for the transportation sector in the United States. As global temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and weather patterns change, the stewards of our Nation’s infrastructure are challenged to consider how these changes may affect the country’s roads, airports, rail, transit systems, and ports. The U.S. transportation network – built and maintained through substantial public and private investment – is vital to the Nation’s economy and the quality of our communities. Yet little research has been conducted to identify what risks this system faces from climate change, or what steps managers and policy makers can take today to ensure the safety and resilience of our vital transportation system.

…

Warming temperatures are likely to increase the costs of transportation construction, maintenance, and operations. More frequent extreme precipitation events may disrupt transportation networks with flooding and visibility problems. Relative sea level rise will make much of the existing infrastructure more prone to frequent or permanent inundation – 27 percent of the major roads, 9 percent of the rail lines, and 72 percent of the ports are built on land at or below 122 cm (4 feet) in elevation. Increased storm intensity may lead to increased service disruption and infrastructure damage: More than half of the area’s major highways (64 percent of Interstates; 57 percent of arterials), almost half of the rail miles, 29 airports, and virtually all of the ports are below 7 m (23 feet) in elevation and subject to flooding and possible damage due to hurricane storm surge.

…

In addition, the climate analysis indicates that the number of hurricanes may increase as the temperature of the sea surface continues to warm. Simulated storm surge from model runs across the central Gulf Coast at today’s elevations and sea levels demonstrated a 6.7- to 7.3-m (22- to 24-ft) potential surge for major hurricanes of Category 3 or greater. Based on recent experience, even these levels may be conservative; surge levels during Hurricane Katrina (rated a Category 3 at landfall) exceeded these heights in some locations. Many of the region’s major roads, railroads, and airports have been constructed on land surfaces at elevations below 5 m (16.4 ft). Storm surge poses significant risk to transportation facilities due to the immediate flooding of infrastructure, the damage caused by the force of the water, and secondary damage caused by collisions with debris.

Many of us will see these impacts become a reality in our lifetimes. In fact relative sea-level rise (the combination of sinking land and rising oceans) is already a bitter truth for Galveston Island, as I wrote last November in the Observer. Check out the interactive map on how rising seas will affect Galveston here. And here’s a graph of the tide gauge at Pier 21 in Galveston. The trend is about 1/4-inch per year, but by all indications the rate is accelerating due to climate change.

Mass chaos reined at two precinct conventions I attended in Houston last night. Hard not to conclude that the state and local party could have done a better job. Confused voters, traffic jams, overcrowded polling places, election officials tossing the rules, and -let’s just say it was not democracy at its finest. My evening started at Precinct 157 in the Acres Home area, an overwhelmingly African American part of north Houston. At 6:50pm traffic around the polling place was at a virtual standstill, with cars snaked around the block in pursuit of a parking space. I finally found a spot in a soggy field not too far away.

By 7:15pm the tiny Highland Park Recreation Center was packed with voters. The rec center was at least a third the size required for the number of people attending the convention. Long queues formed almost immediately. Many people, including the elderly, simply left rather than stand in the chilly evening. “It’s like they say - Don’t Mess With Texas,” said an exasperated Charles Nelms while waiting in line. “But it looks like Texas is going to be a mess tonight.”

Conspicuous in the crowd was Bob Meals, an attorney from Seattle working for the Obama campaign with a sign on his chest that read “Obama Voter Protection.” He carried with him a marked-up 32-page manual on the precinct conventions issued by the Obama campaign. His job was to make sure the rules were followed, he said.

Volunteer poll workers shouted contradictory instructions to the waiting voters. Many were confused about whether their vote would count if they left after signing-in. It would, but one man didn’t help things by yelling to the crowd about Hillary “propaganda.”

The actual sign-in process went quickly once people were inside, but tallying the returns proved messy. Caucus organizers huddled around a table quickly realized that many people hadn’t filled in all their identifying information. Some hadn’t registered a presidential preference. Someone suggested calling out the names of those with missing information. That idea was shot down. No one could find a calculator to add the totals. The attorney for the Obama campaign was handling the sheets (at least until an official noticed it). Some people were still trying to sign-in despite the fact that the sign-in had been closed. I never got a clear answer on how voters without a stamped registration card or receipt from the primary were verified to make sure they were in fact eligible to vote in the convention.

The election judge finally hustled the remaining caucus-goers outside and into the bleachers of a nearby softball field. He said he would be going through some of the outstanding problems with everybody, but that never happened as far as I could tell. “This is like a high school fire drill,” remarked a man. A precinct chair was elected and the returns announced - of 291 votes, Obama received 271 and Clinton got 20. Of 31 delegates at stake, Obama got 29 and Clinton two. “That’s all?,” called out a man in the bleachers. “Aw, come on now.” It did seem to me that more than 291 people had attended the convention but who really knows.

The new precinct chair took nominations for delegates but then hand-picked those he thought should go on. “You gotta do this the democratic way,” he said. “You gotta have some youth. That’s what Barack Obama is all about - the youth. Let me do my job.” Not to be a stickler, but the rules require that a vote be taken on each nominee.

Finally, by 9:45 p.m, the voters had all left and the poll workers sat around trying to figure out how to get the required paperwork to the state party. No one could find the sheet with the preference totals. Someone had taken it home with him. There was also the matter of voter certificate numbers missing from the sign-in sheets. The election judge decided to have a meeting the next day to finish the verification. It was 10 p.m. and he still needed to take the primary returns from earlier in the day to the tabulation office downtown.

As I was driving back to the motel, I heard a live radio report that chaos had also broken out at another north Houston polling location. I rushed over to find the aftermath of quite a scene. Two precincts had tried to cram into a small courthouse annex. A constable said that earlier in the evening organizers had been blowing on whistles in an attempt to corral the crowd. KHOU estimated that 3,000 people had shown up. It was hard to sort out whether the rules were actually followed. One of the temporary chairs claimed that when she showed up to run the caucus, names were already on the sign-in sheet. Another man immediately shushed her, saying “you’re going to negate the whole process.” Other observers said the caucus began before the primary had concluded.

Apparently voters were turned away who did not have a stamped registration card or a receipt from the primary. However the party rules state that voters may present ID and then are to be checked against the poll lists to confirm they are eligible to vote. The sign-in sheets used at this location also contained a space for a “voter certificate number.” However the Secretary of State phased out the six-digit certificated number in January 2007. Anyone registering after that date is issued a ten-digit voter identification number. A few weeks ago, I was told by the state party that they would correct the forms. Apparently not.

When elections are not smooth and fair voters lose confidence in the system. The majority of voters last night seemed excited that they had a say in picking a presidential nominee, but frustration with the process was nearly universal.

One of the key races in the so-called “Craddick Primary” is between Democrats Armando Walle and incumbent Kevin Bailey in north Houston’s District 140. Bailey has been a prominent Craddick supporter while Walle has promised to oppose the speaker if elected. Bailey has been seen as one of the most vulnerable Craddick Ds.

Today, I hung out at the Clark Community Center in a pleasant working class neighborhood where voters from five different precincts in the district are voting in the Democratic Primary. By 4 p.m., 368 people had voted at the community center, an especially high turnout in a district in which only 1,300 people total voted in the 2006 primary.

Outside the polling place Walle and Bailey campaigners passed out fliers and mingled amicably, sharing food and political tidbits. “We’re all Democrats,” the two sides chimed almost in unison.

It’s impossible to gauge how the candidates are doing at this point, or what effect high voter turnout will have, but most voters interviewed said they had voted for Walle. One man, Carlos Venegas, sounded a theme. At first he struggled to explain why he liked Walle. Finally Venegas said, “[Walle] knows where we come from. In this area it’s a lot of Hispanics, very working class.” Identity politics may be a major factor in deciding this race. Ironically, union support for Clinton has driven Hispanics to the polls in this district, even though the same unions support Bailey. (The incumbent pushed important collective bargaining provisions through the Lege.) It is assumed that increased Hispanic turnout will help Walle.

Another voter, George Hernandez, approached a Bailey supporter to tell him why he would be voting against the incumbent. Hernandez said he was offended by a mail piece he received from the Bailey campaign. The piece accuses Walle’s campaign of destroying Bailey signs and includes a picture of Walle holding a beer at a University of Houston football game. “I took it personally,” said Hernandez. “I interpreted it as being down on Hispanics.” Jesse Sifuentez, the clerk of the Urban Affairs Committee that Bailey chairs, said that was clearly not the intent of the mail piece.

Sifuentez argues that turning out a nine-term veteran of the House in exchange for a young unknown will hurt the district. At least one voter agreed. “He’s gotten a lot of projects done that needed to be done,” said David Hulsey. “I know know Bailey has worked hard for this area.”

Walle has had to work hard to overcome Bailey’s 18 years in office and the power of incumbency. “I’m confident that wearing my boots out is going to pay off,” said Walle, standing outside the polling place. “In politics there is no secret weapon - it’s just hard work, shoe leather.”