Articles tagged: TCEQ
One Texas-Sized Loophole is Letting Lone Star Polluters Off the Hook
Texas facilities emitted 174 million pounds of pollution above permitted limits last year.
This story is co-published with Grist. Sign up for their daily newsletter, The Beacon. Unauthorized pollution has become the norm in Texas. Every single day las...Read More
A Battle is Brewing Over a Trump EPA Official’s Confidential Emails
Will Michael Honeycutt’s legacy as an “honest broker” at the EPA be undercut by his efforts to weaken cancer protections in Texas?
This story is co-published with Grist. Sign up for their daily newsletter, The Beacon. When the Trump administration tapped Michael Honeycutt to lead the Enviro...Read More
How Texas Lawmakers and Industry Have Weakened Citizens’ Rights to Fight Pollution
At the behest of the industry, legislators have chipped away at the environmental permitting process in Texas, stacking the deck against concerned people protesting industrial projects.
In 2008, Chase Power Development LLC, a Houston-based energy company, made plans to build a coal-fired power plant in the coastal Texas city of Corpus Christi. ...Read More
Texas Relaxed Environmental Enforcement During the Pandemic, State Data Show
Even as the agency reduced enforcement, it continued processing permits that allow businesses to pollute up to certain limits at about the same rate that it did last year.
This story was originally published by Grist. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is one of the largest and most influential environmental prot...Read More
In Southeast Lubbock Neighborhood, Residents are Fed Up With a Feedlot
Kathy Stewart has complained for years about the fecal dust invading Yellowhouse Canyon. But so far, her concerns have mostly been ignored.
The wind is high in Yellowhouse Canyon, a working class neighborhood on Lubbock’s southeastern outskirts, as Kathy Stewart collects her chihuahua from the fro...Read More
With Coal Plants Offline, the Air in Central and East Texas Has Cleared
After three plants shut down in late 2017, legal air pollution in Texas fell by 150,000 tons.
Residents in rural parts of East and Central Texas can breathe a little easier. State data shows that the closure of three coal-burning power plants in late 201...Read More
Something in the Air
In the Texas Panhandle, which produces a fifth of the U.S. beef supply, communities are being choked by fecal dust from nearby feedlots. The state’s regulatory agency isn’t doing anything about it—and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
In the Texas Panhandle, which produces a fifth of the U.S. beef supply, communities are being choked by fecal dust from nearby feedlots. The state’s regulator...Read More
Report: As TCEQ Sits Idle, Polluters Double Illegal Air Pollution in 2018
Unauthorized emission incidents resulted in 135 million pounds of illegal air pollution, according to a new report by Environment Texas.
The oil and gas industry in Texas is largely responsible for doubling the amount of illegal air pollution in the state last year, according to a report released...Read More
How BP Oil Spill Fines Could Help Protect the Texas Coast
Other states were harder hit by the spill, but Texas is still receiving millions of dollars that can be used for vital restoration and conservation efforts.
Nine years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill—one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history—recovery funds are still trickling in to rebuild...Read More