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TCEQ: recommendations to improve accountability

tschuetz

The Sunset Advisory Commission is tasked with evaluating the efficiency of over 130 Texas state agencies. A November 2022 news article points out that the group has not reviewed TCEQ's operations for over a decade (Douglas & Martinez 2022). The article also summarizes the Sunset Advisory's recommendations to improve regulation of polluting industries in Texas: 

  • suspending a company's compliance history after major accidents (complicating approval of future permits)
  • increasing of non-compliance penalties from $25,000 per day to $40,000 per day
  • increasing the notice for public hearings and possbility to submit comments up to 36 hours after the hearing


Read more in the Sunset Advisory Commissions 2022–23 staff report.

TCEQ's mission and scope

tschuetz

"TCEQ regulates air, water and land pollution and had a $429 million budget in 2021; it oversees more than 250,000 permits ranging from small-scale landscape irrigation to major petrochemical plants." (Douglas & Martinez 2022).

"TCEQ Commissioner Jon Niermann said the agency’s permitting decisions could not be racist because the TCEQ does not choose the location of industrial facilities." (Douglas & Martinez 2022)

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a_chen

The policy is drafted based on the request of CWIRT (Chemical Weapons Improved

Response Team) that concerning the first responders’ liability during a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) terrorist incident. It is about the first responders’ liability for

spreading contamination while attempting to save lives.

pece_annotation_1478463979

a_chen

This might not receive well enough by the public, as the search results for this policy are main on the government’s website, not as the reference from articles. Even though this policy is not well informed to the public, but in recent days, the general publics do gain much more awareness on water (environmental) contamination.