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 How Four Years of The Bush Administration's Policies Have Harmed Houston Communities There Is a Better Way to Protect Texas' Families and Communities
Texas is rich and abundant with delicate habitat, grazing land, and wildlife. Regardless of the season or region, we Texans enjoy a special relationship with our natural inheritance. We know that protecting our state's natural resources and beauty makes Texas' economy stronger and our families healthier. From Padre Island National Seashore to the pristine prairies in northern Texas, from the national forests in the east to Big Bend National Park, natural resources have always been important to our residents and civic leaders. Today, however, our state's treasured environment has been put at risk. Bush administration policies that weaken and ignore federal environmental safeguards are already harming our communities' health and our natural heritage. The Bush administration is allowing the electric companies, chemical companies, coal companies, and other industries to weaken the laws and regulations that protect the health and safety of Texas' families, enabling corporations to benefit at our expense. The administration has allowed electric companies to build more outdated, polluting coal-fired power plants instead of requiring them to use modern technology to cut pollution, or encouraging them to build cleaner facilities that rely on renewable power generation. The administration has also opened up millions of acres of public land to environmentally destructive activities, blocked plans to protect the last wild areas of our national forests from development, and increased the risk of mercury poisoning for Texas' women and children. The administration's undermining of our nation's most basic environmental protections leaves the people of Texas exposed and vulnerable to increased amounts of asthma-triggering smog, development-retarding mercury, and other contaminants. Encouraging the creation of more polluting power plants instead of cleaner energy alternatives puts our citizens-especially children and the elderly-at risk. This report documents the consequences of Bush administration actions-and lack of action-on the health and safety of families in communities across Texas. It also serves to remind us what we have learned over the last thirty years-that there is a better way; that we have the know-how and a successful track record cleaning up the pollution in our air and water and the poisons in our soil. But know-how, effective laws, and proven technological solutions are clearly not enough when the Bush administration is determined to let corporations off the hook, weaken the regulations that reduce pollution, and strip funding from the agencies responsible for enforcing environmental laws and the programs that encourage environmentally-sound development. Only public pressure on lawmakers will ensure that the last three decades' of progress is not lost, and that we instead continue to keep our communities safe, protecting our children's legacy of clean air, water, and still-wild lands. Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use | © 2008 Sierra Club |
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