JUNE 1998 · VOLUME 19· NUMBER 6
To a remarkable degree, Governor Bush himself rarely takes a high-profile stance on environmental controversies. Typically, the torch is carried by the Texas legislature or by Bush's regulators. But environmentalists say the buck stops with Bush because his appointees set and implement regulatory rules and his signature enacts bills into law.
"We don't have a governor who has come out with strong environmental statements either way," says Dwayne "Sparky" Anderson in the Austin office of Clean Water Action.
"It's Bush's personnel that have driven the agenda," Anderson says. "Everyone must remember that his appointees came from the same political, environmental and business perspective as Bush -- or he never would have appointed them."
Bush's top environmental appointee is Barry McBee, the chair of the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission (TNRCC). A born-again Christian and former oil specialist in a corporate law firm in Dallas, McBee served as associate director of cabinet affairs in the White House of George Bush the elder. McBee returned to Texas as deputy agricultural commissioner in 1990 after Republican Rick Perry defeated populist Democratic Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower, promising to bring the agency home to agribusiness. One marching order that McBee executed for Perry was rolling back "right-to-know laws" that protected farm workers from unannounced aerial pesticide strikes.
Bush's two other appointees hardly round out the interests of the three-member commission. Agribusinessman John Baker has served as vice president of the Texas Farm Bureau and as former President Bush's agricultural adviser to the Environmental Protection Agency. Finally, Ralph Marquez is a former vice chair of the Texas Chemical Council's environmental committee as well as a 30-year veteran of pesticide giant Monsanto.
The governor's propensity to cull environmental regulators from the ranks of the businesses that they regulate is a cautionary tale, local environmentalists say. "If Bush is elected president, Barry McBee could wind up head of the EPA," says Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk. "Now there's a scary thought!"
Since 1989, Downwinders has sought regulatory controls for a hazardous-waste-burning cement kiln south of Dallas, which has dodged ordinary incinerator regulations under the theory that it is a recycling facility. Owner Texas Industries, which is Texas' leading source of grandfathered air pollution, is seeking TNRCC permission to double this incinerator's output to 270,000 tons of hazardous waste a year. That would allow it to eclipse the nation's largest hazardous waste burner, a Rollins incinerator in Deer Park, Texas.
Given the TNRCC's composition and TNRCC's history of testifying against
tougher federal air pollution standards, the permitting requirement may
prove a small impediment indeed.
-- F.R. & A.W.