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Probe Demanded as Second Houston-Area Petrochemical Disaster in a Month Kills 2
"This facility has a long track record of pollution, accidents, and violations of the law," said one advocate.
Oct 11, 2024
For the second time in less than four weeks on Thursday, residents of the fifth-largest metropolitan area in the United States were notified of an emergency and ordered to shelter in place due to an accident at one of the region's many oil facilities.
A plant operated by PEMEX, Mexico's state-owned oil company, was the site of a deadly hydrogen sulfide leak in the suburb of Deer Park, with at least two workers found dead at the scene.
At least 35 others were hospitalized due to their exposure or treated at the scene, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told reporters.
Gonzalez said the leak occurred while PEMEX employees were working on a flange at the plant.
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the colorless gas hydrogen sulfide—known for its strong "rotten egg" smell at low levels and commonly used in oil and gas refining—is extremely toxic at high concentrations, and can cause headaches, eye irritation, or serious effects including unconsciousness and death.
City officials in Deer Park and the neighboring city of Pasadena called on residents to stay indoors, keep all windows and doors closed, and turn off their air conditioners—on a day when the temperature was as high as 88°F—before assessing the air quality and determining the public was not at risk.
In mid-September, a fire at a liquefied natural gas pipeline owned by fossil fuel giant Energy Transfer went on for four days, damaged nearby homes and a playground, melted vehicles, and forced about 100 households to evacuate Deer Park and another nearby town, La Porte.
"This facility has a long track record of pollution, accidents, and violations of the law. Unfortunately Texas has a poor track record of forcing this and other petrochemical facilities to take safety and compliance seriously."
Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas Research and Policy Center, called for a "comprehensive investigation of what happened in Deer Park" and said officials must "make sure people and the companies are held accountable for letting this happen."
Environment Texas noted that it joined Sierra Club in 2008 in filing a lawsuit against the PEMEX plant for Clean Air Act violations. The suit was settled the following year, with PEMEX committing to make upgrades, pay a penalty, and reduce its air pollution, but the group found in a 2021 analysis that state regulators have failed to crack down on toxic industrial emissions.
Earlier this week, Oil and Gas Watch at the Environmental Integrity Project found that the PEMEX plant is "the worst source of benzene air pollution among U.S. refineries, as measured by the amount of the carcinogen measured by air monitors around the perimeter of the facility."
Prolonged exposure to benzene can cause blood disorders, threaten the immune system, and increase the risk of leukemia.
"My thoughts are with those who have lost their lives or are injured, and their loved ones, following this chemical leak," said Metzger. "It's just terrible. This facility has a long track record of pollution, accidents, and violations of the law. Unfortunately Texas has a poor track record of forcing this and other petrochemical facilities to take safety and compliance seriously. It makes me wonder if this awful incident could have been prevented."
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Forced Out by Right-Wing Official, Tulsa Superintendent Warns of Looming School Takeover
"This is about Ryan Walters using Tulsa and me as a political football and furthering his personal and political agenda," said outgoing Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist.
Aug 25, 2023
Warning that Oklahoma's top school official has shown in his seven months in office that he is willing to use the state's schools and young students to advance his personal and political priorities, Tulsa's outgoing school superintendent said the right-wing state official could stage a school takeover like the one that took place earlier this year in Houston, Texas.
Deborah Gist resigned as Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) superintendent on Tuesday in hope that the Oklahoma superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, would abandon his threat to take control of the district.
The Oklahoma Board of Education on Thursday evening voted to allow TPS to keep its accreditation "with deficiencies" that it was ordered to fix and to work with a new interim school superintendent to maintain control of the district, but at the meeting, Walters warned school officials, "Do not test me."
Gist expressed concern to NBC News that the district has been offered only a temporary reprieve from Walters' ongoing attacks on the school district, where more than three-quarters of students are economically disadvantaged and a majority are Black and Latino.
"This is about Ryan Walters using Tulsa and me as a political football and furthering his personal and political agenda," Gist told the outlet.
Walters has been focused on Tulsa, where just 13% of students met grade-level standards in 2022, since he took the state's top education position earlier this year, but at Thursday's meeting of the Board of Education, which he chairs, he made clear that his priorities lie not only in helping children who are struggling in school.
The superintendent railed against "gender fluidity" and called on schools to report their policies related to LGBTQ+ issues to the state to ensure they are not "indoctrinating" students.
He also accused the district of "funding some programs through the Chinese Communist government"—an allegation that stemmed, journalist David Heath said, from one Chinese-language teacher's attendance at an off-site program that was partially funded by China.
Walters has also previously called to restrict students' access to books with "sexual references" and to display the Ten Commandments in public schools.
Ryan Daly, the father of Tulsa Public School students, said at Thursday's meeting that Gist had been forced out "to save our district from what would surely be a bungled and disastrous takeover by someone who shows zero interest in our kids other than as a pawn for his political career."
Gist told NBC, "Unlike Ryan Walters, I'm not willing to put my own interest above the needs of the children of Tulsa."
By retaining its accreditation "with deficiencies," TPS was ordered to implement a professional development plan and a corrective plan for schools that have been graded "F" by the state, and to provide the board with monthly updates for the next four months.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Walters' threatened takeover was part of an "anti-public school" agenda similar to the "extremist attack on local control" that took place in Houston earlier this year.
As Common Dreams reported in March, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's administration took over Houston's school district despite recent improvements in schools' performances. State-appointed managers can now control the district budget, curriculum and library book policies, collaborations with charter school networks, and other decisions.
Ahead of the school board meeting in Oklahoma on Thursday, Tulsa students staged a walkout to stand with the district and with Gist, who during her tenure has aligned with teachers' unions and called for more school funding and higher pay.
The Oklahoma Education Association (OEA), which represents teachers across the state, called the meeting "unnecessarily chaotic" and expressed solidarity with the district's teachers and students.
"Rhetoric and demands will not change the lives of students," said the OEA. "Those who do not spend time inside our schools may have a superficial understanding of what it actually means to educate and support a community."
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Texas GOP Passes Bills Allowing Abbott Appointee to Take Over Democratic County's Elections
"These bills are not about election reform," said one Harris County official. "They are entirely about suppressing voters' voices."
May 29, 2023
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Sunday warned that Republican state legislators had made a "shameless power grab" by passing a pair of bills aimed at allowing the state government to take control of elections in the Democratic stronghold, which includes Houston.
Senate Bill 1933 passed on Sunday as the state's legislative session came to a close, with lawmakers sending to GOP Gov. Greg Abbott's desk a bill that could give Secretary of State Jane Nelson—who was nominated by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate—the authority to run elections under circumstances in any county with more than 3.5 million residents.
The legislation was passed two days after Senate Bill 1750, which also applies to counties above that population threshold and would abolish the nonpartisan county elections administrator position.
Harris County, which President Joe Biden won by 13 points in 2020, is the only county is Texas with a population above 3.5 million, making both bills apply only to its elections.
Hidalgo denounced the legislation as two "election subversion bills" and warned that they will set a "dangerous precedent" for Republican governors who wish to take control of voting in heavily Democratic counties.
\u201cThe two Texas election subversion bills have now passed. They remove Harris County\u2019s nonpartisan Election Administrator and empower a Republican state official to micromanage elections in Texas\u2019 largest (Democratic) County. This is a shameless power grab and dangerous precedent.\u201d— Lina Hidalgo (@Lina Hidalgo) 1685331039
"These bills are not about election reform," said Hidalgo at a press conference last week, as the legislation was advancing. "They're not about improving voters' experience. They are entirely about suppressing voters' voices. The reasoning behind these bills is nothing but a cynical charade."
Hidalgo and other officials said at that event that they plan to file a lawsuit against Abbott's administration if the governor signs the bills into law. The Texas Constitution bars state lawmakers from passing laws that apply only to specific jurisdictions, but Republicans' use of a population threshold instead of naming Harris County itself in the legislation may be used at their defense if the lawsuit moves forward.
S.B. 1750 requires Harris County to change how its elections are overseen starting September 1, when Houston will be two months away from voting for its next mayor. Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth and County Assessor Ann Harris Bennett will oversee elections in the county starting in September.
If, after Hudspeth and Bennett take over, Nelson finds "good cause to believe that a recurring pattern of problems with election administration or voter registration exists in the county," the secretary of state would be permitted to take legal action to remove the two women from office and to install members of her staff in the county's election offices.
Republicans have said Harris County didn't have enough poll workers in the March 2022 primary and that polling locations opened late and ran out of ballots during the November 2022 general election.
"The fact of the matter is, there has not been a single successful lawsuit that proves that there were any kind of problems," said Hidalgo on Sunday. "And I hope that anybody talking about this understands that you are amplifying exaggerations and rumors when you repeat the excuses that these folks are using."
\u201cAs intriguing as an impeachment of the Texas Attorney General is, we can\u2019t lose sight of the fact that legislators in Texas are still trying to disenfranchise 4.7 million of their own constituents by taking over elections in Harris County. This fight is far from over.\u201d— Lina Hidalgo (@Lina Hidalgo) 1685308988
The legislation was passed two-and-a-half months after Abbott's administration announced its takeover of the Houston Independent School District, which has made recent improvements in academic performance that were achieved despite chronic underfunding.
"Houstonians," Emily Eby French, a staff voting rights attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said last week, "will soon live in a different Texas than the rest of us."
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