Johnson County recently issued a disaster declaration and asked the Governor to join them. It's all in the news, here from the CBS affiliate:
What's the Governor doing about it? We do not know. We called Johnson County and we called the Governor two days ago.
On the heels of the Governor doing a massively mass text across the state urging Texans to call our legislators to support his education vouchers, Harvey Kronberg (Quorum Report) released this super-interesting take on vouchers and the political dynamics surrounding the new Speaker, Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock). Kronberg begs the question for us at LIV as to whether the Governor's mass text would better serve Texans' interest in regulating the reluctant regulator known as the TCEQ, the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality.
The agency has so far been unwilling to issue a warning to landowners not to use the fertilizer using wastewater sludge or risk land contamination from "forever chemicals". The EPA failed to warn us, so one self-respecting Texan might expect Texas regulators to clue us Texans in.
We called the Governor's Office two days ago, not seeing anything on his website. We haven't heard back from anyone.
Call the Governor as well at 512.463.2000. Ask him what he's doing to help get the TCEQ to protect our land and water from forever chemicals contained in sludge-based fertilizers and to join the Johnson County officials by declaring a disaster.
We have also reached out to Rep. Helen Kerwin* who has introduced HB 1674 to address the problem. We haven't heard back yet, but hope to by the time we meet again on Tuesday. (Sign in at our Events page to join us.)
Kronberg says it’s likely vouchers will pass, but the question will be to what extent public ed will be “trashed” or wind up with a better deal.
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* An interesting fact about Rep. Kerwin is her daughter, Brooke Rollins, is the current U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.
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