Environmental Insider News articles from June 2000

Environmental Insider News archives from June 2000

Greens Get Big Win, Cannot Celebrate.
June 14, 2000... Odd, is it not, that when the Texas environmental community won one of its biggest concessions in the never-ending battle for cleaner air, the only thing the activists could do was complain. On May 31, to be sure, TNRCC's Commissioners voted...

Cars, Ozone Grieve Greens.
June 14, 2000... Just prior to voting, TNRCC Chairman Robert Huston said that the two delays in the vote had been needed - the first to get the auto makers to go along with the tougher evaporative standards, the second to make sure that EPA would qualify the...

Clean Air Plan Lawsuits.
June 14, 2000... Three lawsuits filed against various segments of the Dallas-Fort Worth area clean air plan that were adopted by TNRCC on April 19 "could damage efforts to protect citizens in Dallas-Fort Worth and across the state," according to Executive...

Sunsetbacks for TNRCC?
June 14, 2000... The Inquisition that will constitute the public hearings at the Capitol [E1.030, the House Appropriations Committee room] beginning on June 20 may be directed more at staffers of the Sunset Advisory Commission than on Texas Natural Resource...

Idle Landfill Permit Plan.
June 14, 2000... At a May 19 work session, TNRCC's Commissioners approved a staff plan to require those holding permits for inactive pre-Subtitle D landfills to seek major permit amendments to reopen the landfills - but beginning on May 19, 2003, not...

Texas Tidbits.
June 14, 2000... *** Earlier this year [see EI NEWS, February 28, 2000] we reported that a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals, Third District, in Austin, had unanimously overturned a decision by State District Judge Margaret Cooper that had rescinded a...

Tony Garza and the RRC: Plugging Wells, Not Profits.
June 28, 2000... Former Secretary of State Tony Garza, seen by many as Governor Bush's point man on the three-member Texas Railroad Commission, has found himself a major cause: abandoned, unplugged oil and gas wells that constitute both economic and...

CWSRF Money for Oil Wells?
June 28, 2000... Garza created further controversy when, back in April, he proposed to end unlimited well plugging extensions under the RRC's "W-1X" program. Too many companies, he said, were abusing the program, under which operators pay the $100 annual fee to...

TXU, Landfills Sue TNRCC.
June 28, 2000... One might think TNRCC Executive Director Jeff Saitas would be relieved by the June 26 decision of state district judge F. Scott McCown not to issue a temporary restraining order blocking the state's newly adopted restrictions on ground support...

TNRCC, TxDOT Confer.
June 28, 2000... The emergence of the Texas Department of Transportation as one of the state's primary environmental protection entities is perhaps a little known fact. The breadth and depth of TxDOT's involvement in the environmental arena was much in...

Texas Tidbits.
June 28, 2000... *** In his role as Chairman of the Texas Alternative Fuels Council, Land Commissioner David Dewhurst on June 26 announced three grants to improve air quality by using clean-burning alternative fuels. Dewhurst said, "The air in Texas under...