El Paso Children Deserve to Breath Clean Air
April 13, 2006
El Pasoans want to breath clean air. We want our children to grow up strong and healthy, not afflicted with asthma and chronic respiratory infections. However, in order to protect our children, we have to clean our air.
Written by Senator Eliot Shapleigh, www.shapleigh.org
On Wednesday, April 12, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the state agency that oversees Texas' environmental laws and policies, began the implementation process for recently passed Senate Bill 784. S.B. 784, introduced by Senator Shapleigh and sponsored by Representative Haggerty (R-El Paso) last spring, is a proactive effort to ensure that innovative programs to protect El Paso's sensitive air shed are effective.
Since taking office over ten years ago, Senator Shapleigh has worked tirelessly to improve the environmental quality for the El Paso Region. In addition to fighting against a proposal to locate a radioactive waste disposal facility in the region and working to keep ASARCO from further polluting El Paso, Senator Shapleigh has passed multiple environmental protection bills including: a bill to protect El Paso's long-term water source, a bill to provide tools for County brownfield clean-ups, and a bill to allow the state flexibility in curtailing harmful air emissions, among others.
On Wednesday, the first steps were taken to implement Senator Shapleigh's latest Legislative efforts to clean up El Paso and the surrounding region. SB 784 is the continuation of a project started several years ago. In 1997, numerous air emission control programs were implemented by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on behalf of the State of Texas and the United States that would have benefited from the ability to encourage emissions reductions in Mexico. SB 1561, authored by Senator Shapleigh in 2001, allowed for the initiation of the first recognized emissions trading program on the United States-Mexico border. Through a partnership with TCEQ, El Paso Electric has built 32 cleaner-burning brick kilns in Ciudad Juarez, resulting in a nearly 100 tons/per year reduction in harmful emissions into the Juarez-El Paso air shed.
El Paso and Ciudad Juarez share many things. When the Juarez economy is strong, El Paso benefits, when El Paso grows, so does Juarez. Conversely, when Juarez's air is hazy and unhealthy, so it El Paso's. Just as ASARCO's documented history of releasing harmful pollutants into the air has greatly affected the quality of life in Cd. Juarez, that city's harmful pollutants affect El Paso. Senator Shapleigh's efforts to protect El Paso's air must cross the Rio Grande, just as the air does. SB 784 does just that.
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