Please take action online by BY FILING A PUBLIC COMMENT with the TCEQ, no matter where you live in Texas, or your community could be next if it isn't already. (Click on the link at the end of this paragraph for all details and how to FILE A PUBLIC COMMENT.) And read more details from LIV below. Projects are too often rammed on rural communities without regard to their health, peace, homes, and property values. If you are facing similar problems with TCEQ’s ability to regulate, we also want to hear from you. See more below and/or simply visit the Stop TCEQ Permit 47084 website HERE.
If you live in Lee County, please attend a special meeting of the Lee County Commissioners Court on Monday, December 16 at 10 am in the District Clerk Courtroom in the District Clerk Office Building, 289 South Main Street, Giddings. The Commissioners Court will consider a resolution that opposes Sandow Lakes Energy’s plan to locate a massive natural gas power plant in the pristine rural Blue community, a community already fighting to keep its groundwater from depletion by urban areas as far away as San Antonio. The community is not opposed to the plant, but they want it moved to Milam County where land has already been contaminated by the old ALCOA stripmine. Important details are HERE at Move the Gas Plant.
Read On!
At a meeting we attended last night in the community of Lincoln in Lee County just 60 miles east of downtown Austin, hundreds of residents from Lee and surrounding counties packed into a church. We were there feeling threatened by some of Austin’s plans to “go green”.
What should have been a good thing -- diverting methane (CH4)-producing waste from the City’s landfill in favor of recycling it --- backfired. Break it Down LLC, the private company that stepped into aerobically “compost” that waste stream in an Austin facility was fined by TCEQ for nuisance odor violations and apparently agreed to stop composting that waste stream in outdoor windrows in their East Austin neighborhood. See news coverage here. After settling with TCEQ in 2022, the company’s owner has apparently shut down in Austin, formed a new “Break it Down Ranch Road LLC”, and notified TCEQ that the new LLC intends to resume composting in outdoor windrows in rural Lee County.
Residents expect the new plant to threaten Lee and surrounding counties' air, water, and homes with unbearable odors, health effects, water contamination, increased vermin and predator populations, and property value decline.
To boot, no one in local government was asked about the placement of the plant, much less we "peons," who happen to live there. And, don't forget that Lee County and its neighboring counties, Burleson and Milam, are at the center of the "water grabs" going on for years to incentivize growth from Williamson County to Bexar County, for its "San Antone Hose."
We are sure that Austin residents would not approve of this plan if they knew about it. There is obviously a concern that a company with a troubled environmental history may not clean up its act. Rural residents are concerned the company’s application to operate will now be rubberstamped by our "reluctant regulator," the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality, to the detriment of Lee and surrounding counties. We used to call the TCEQ, previously the TNRCC, "train wreck" for a reason. They've been a captured agency for a long time.
Special Note! Texas Senate heavyweight Lois Kolkhorst, third-term State Rep. Stan Gerdes, and first-term Lee County Judge Frank Malinak are united to keep this plant out of Lee County. They are joined by LIV’s friend, former and beloved Lee County Judge Paul Fischer, who had the foresight to lay the regulatory groundwork to manage the disposal of solid waste in the county.
What You Can Do:
No matter where you live in Texas, projects are barreling down on Texans! Your community could be next. If it already is, we want to hear from you as well.
Read this easy-to-understand posting of Stop TCEQ Permit 42084 HERE.
Then, post your opposition to this project as directed on the website above in the paragraph entitled, "Submit a Public Comment." Do it before you hit the holidays as public comments, which are critical in this case, are due on January 2. The TCEQ will be counting the numbers of how many people have weighed in and must respond to all of them. Opponents have also requested a public meeting where TCEQ and Break it Down will hear from them and must answer their questions in public.
LIV is the only voter association (not a political party) for the millions of Texans who do not party salute. We are working to bring Texans together to focus on basic needs and priorities for all citizens and local governments regardless of party or ideology, rural or urban.
Thanks for reading this post about the crucial Texas captured agency TCEQ. Now, please share it, especially on your local NextDoor and/or from our Facebook page here.
And please consider joining LIV and getting involved. Yes, we need donations too!
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