Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Sounds like the score from a basketball game where the hometown came out the winner, but actually El Paso is the loser. These numbers represent the level of lead allowed in these respective cities after lead contamination was found in their soil. Cedar Park 100/ El Paso 640.

The City of Cedar Park, which is 3 miles northwest of Austin, found in 1990 that soil in its community was contaminated with lead like El Paso. In Cedar Park, the lead contamination came from a 1 million gallon water tank that needed repainting and had been sand blasted to remove the old paint. Well that old paint had a significant level of lead that contaminated the soil.

Local home owners in Cedar Park lobbied their state representative and state senator to require a clean up of the lead to a level that would reduce the risk of serious harm to children. The result being that the state air agency, Texas Air Control Board (TACB), now the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ), decided to use a soil cleanup level of 100 parts-per-million (ppm).

"The big concern is for the kids," said Kitty Moore in the months following the sandblasting. Moore is the caretaker of her two grandchildren in a house one block away from the water tower in Cedar Park. "There are about 28 children in this little area," she said, "and I resent it when the city isn't more careful where kids are involved. There's not much Granny wouldn't do for these little two." Along with other concerned parents, Kitty Moore was ready to fight for her family. "I don't want to hurt the city, but then again, I don't want the city to hurt us."

Some El Paso leaders, on the other hand, have not fought to get such a low cleanup level, instead they have allowed the cleanup level to exceed the state's standard of 500 ppm, placing the cleanup level at 640 ppm, highest in Texas.

The Texas Department of Health is aware that the 540 ppm difference between Cedar Park and El Paso translates into a 4.5 times higher risk of a child having an elevated blood lead level. They know this because they released research confirming the correlation in their April 2004 Health Consultation.

The TCEQ is also aware of the threat high lead levels have on communities as a whole, and they have set the maximum concentration level at 500 ppm. The idea is that by using a consistent standard, fewer assumptions or defaults are required and uncertainty regarding the various lead sources is then reduced.

The 500 ppm level is the Texas state standard. The Attorney General's Office asserts that 500 ppm should apply in El Paso, and that arguments about a higher standard do not justify an arbitrary higher level. In El Paso, a consultant for the City of El Paso with ties to industry polluters had a recommendation to raise El Paso's level to 640, the only Texas city to make its soil less safe.

"Indeed, I believe that it is the highest remediation level that I have ever seen" said Dr. Phil Landrigan in response to the proposed lead level in El Paso.

In his letter to TCEQ, Senator Shapleigh asked why El Paso kids should not get the same safe level as all kids in Texas. In his letter to the City of El Paso, he asserted "the only reason to change levels is to benefit ASARCO and make the cleanup less expensive."

"In El Paso, leaders and consultants with ties to industry fought to give ASARCO a break. In Cedar Park, mothers fought to give the kids a break," commented Senator Shapleigh.