A mandatory apartment recycling ordinance could be the law in Dallas within three months after orders from a Dallas City Council committee Monday. Commercial buildings could also be added to the waste recycling program this year.
“It’s time to really get started in a very aggressive way to get something done,” said Councilman Rickey Callahan.
Currently, Dallas only requires recycling to be available for single-family homes with service the city provides. But more than half the city’s residents live in multi-family rental buildings. A few years ago the city hoped that landlords would offer recycling on their own, but less than 25-percent of the 2,000 or so multi-family property owners have done so, according to city officials.
“Sooner than later I’d like to bring this back with some kind of ordinance,” said Councilwoman Jennifer Gates. “I think at this point, just waiting for voluntary compliance, we’ve done that long enough and we can move forward.”
Other large Texas cities, including Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin, have required multi-family and commercial waste recycling for years.
“Gosh, I hate being behind Austin on everything,” said Councilman Mark Clayton. “We say we can’t do it, and then they do and they’re still thriving.”
Landlords have said it requires extra space on properties that were not designed for recycling. The extra collection will add expense for property owners, and tenants must be educated.
“We are ready to join with the city, and we know this is an important issue. Our biggest concern is how do we get over the details,” said Kathy Carlton, with the Apartment Association of Greater Dallas. “You have a lot of residents that aren’t really into recycling and so they don’t care very much about how they sort their materials.”
Sanitation Director Kelly High said Monday that the city’s McCommas Bluff Landfill near Interstates 20 and 45 may have only 35 years of space left. The city of Dallas’ long-term goal is “Zero Waste” to the landfill.
“This is not crazy. It has been done in other places. The city of Los Angeles is close to 80 percent diversion,” Councilman Philip Kingston said.
Council members Monday said they want to move forward with apartment recycling first but also want to include recycling for commercial buildings this year.
“And I think what we saw today was a major victory for the entire city of Dallas, for the citizens, who want to be better stewards of the environment,” said Corey Troiani, with Texas Campaign for the Environment.
By now, the entire nation has heard the horrors of Harvey and the devastation it wrought on Texas coastal cities. In one fell swoop and a whole lot of rain, the fourth largest city in the United States and dozens of communities along the Texas Coast were brought to their knees. Many Texans lost their homes, some lost entire neighborhoods, and several lost their lives to the torrential terror. However, as Texans are liable to do, Houston and Coastal Texas are looking forward, tackling the long road to reconstruction now that the sun finally shines on Space City and its neighbors once more.
FILE – A barbed-wire fence encircles the Highlands Acid Pit that was flooded by water from the nearby San Jacinto River as a result from Harvey in Highlands, Texas. Floodwaters have inundated at least five highly contaminated toxic waste sites near Houston, raising concerns that the pollution there might spread. (AP Photo/Jason Dearen)
I watched the flood waters from my window all week. As a canvasser and organizer for the Houston office of Texas Campaign for the Environment, I felt anxious to help my city during an environmental disaster, and helpless while trapped inside a moat of floodwaters. While I was going stir-crazy and checking updates every ten minutes, my coworkers in the Austin and Dallas offices, unbeknownst to me, were collecting their shared paid time off so that they could distribute it among Houston canvassers like myself. That way we could be paid during the days it was impossible to do our door-to-door organizing.
Even though Houston was in crisis and we were unable to work the week of Harvey, we were all paid our regular paychecks through the altruism of our fellow offices—even our newest hires. In the midst of this disaster, it was one less problem to manage and I will be forever grateful to those who donated their precious time off. I really do work with some terrific human beings and am constantly humbled by the daily humanitarianism in the organizational culture at TCE.
After Harvey left Houston, the city was still in a state of crisis and we were unable to open our Houston offices. Organizers from the Houston office travelled to Austin, where our co-workers there welcomed us into their homes and helped us transition so we could continue our important work for the week.
For months now, we have been focused in the TCE Houston office on the health hazard and environmental nightmare at the San Jacinto River Superfund site. Because this site had been leaking harmful toxic chemicals into the San Jacinto River and Galveston Bay, a hurricane was exactly what we all feared. Harvey tore through the Superfund site, flooding it and potentially sending toxic waste throughout the area. It highlighted the dangers of leaving Superfund sites unaddressed, and with that knowledge, we continued our campaign in Austin with great success. We cannot thank our supporters enough for their contributions and for writing thousands of letters to our decision-makers so that we can utilize your strength in numbers to fully remove this incredibly dangerous waste.
The most important thing is that we don’t stop now. With US EPA Director Scott Pruitt’s new “Superfund Taskforce” prioritizing fast cleanups and not necessarily thorough clean ups that protect public health we need to make sure that our voices are heard loud and clear. We’ve already seen what can happen when a Superfund cleanup is poorly executed for the sake of fast development. The MDI site in Houston’s Fifth Ward met this fate when a school was built on top of what the EPA said was a cleaned-up Superfund site. It resulted in faculty and children with elevated levels of lead in their systems, and lead in the groundwater around the site. We cannot allow this to happen with further sites.
We cannot allow neighborhoods (which are mostly poor communities of color) to be poisoned for the sake of fast development. We cannot allow these dangerous sites to sit unattended, waiting for the next natural disaster to spread some of the most toxic chemicals known to humanity around underprivileged areas. Houston and the Texas Coast are strong. We were strong enough to take on Hurricane Harvey, and we are strong enough to take on those who wish to prioritize short-term private gain over long-term human health. Thank you for your past, current, and future support: it lets us continue fighting. All of our efforts hinge on your support and your voice, and there is nothing more powerful than the support of the people.
From the bottom of all of our hearts at TCE Houston, thank you, and keep fighting.
HOUSTON — On Labor Day, Pireta Darby sat on the front porch of her house in the Kashmere Gardens neighborhood. The fruits of her labors were before her: the sodden objects lugged out of the home she shares with her mother and granddaughter. Here were two couches piled high with ripped-out carpet. A coffee table. A folding chair. And so much more, removed from the family home of about 60 years.
“I guess they’ll just come with the big truck with the claw thing” to haul it away, she said, gazing at the mess; at least the family has insurance.
Bryan Thomas for The New York Times
The piles up and down this street, and along many other nearby streets — shards of wallboard and mildewing carpet, artificial flowers and computer monitors — stand taller than some people. There are sofas and desk chairs, ironing boards and drum sets — discrete items all destroyed by a storm and the floodwaters that followed. And across this city, there are more than 100,000 such piles, many of them even larger.
Of all the challenges that southeast Texas faces after Hurricane Harvey, few will linger longer or more visibly than the millions of pounds of debris already crowding curbs and edging onto streets. The cleanup, needed from northeast Houston’s neighborhoods to the wealthy suburbs southwest of the city, will take months and cost billions of dollars.
Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston has identified two priorities for his city’s recovery: housing and debris removal.
“We’re going to pick it up, and we’re going to operate with the highest degree of urgency,” Mr. Turner said.
At the same time, Houston officials are asking residents to separate their Harvey-related waste into five piles: appliances; electronics; construction and demolition debris; household hazardous waste; and vegetative debris. A look at these streets suggested that few people seemed to be heeding the city’s pleas.
Other cities have been through this battle with a storm’s leavings. After floodwaters inundated East Baton Rouge Parish, La., last year, crews collected about two million cubic yards of debris. Superstorm Sandy, in 2012, led to about six million cubic yards of debris in New York State — the equivalent of four Empire State Buildings, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Katrina left behind 38 million cubic yards. Getting the stuff gone is a long process. It was only last month that Baton Rouge finished the debris removal process it organized in the wake of last year’s flooding there.
In Houston, where city officials say that some eight million cubic yards of debris will need to be hauled away, collection is farther along in some neighborhoods than in others. In Ms. Darby’s neighborhood, only a handful of volunteers were around to help in the disaster zone. In Bellaire, a wealthy city southwest of downtown, dozens of trucks were parked on the streets, their owners helping people bring their belongings outside. Poachers picked through the refuse for items that could potentially be sold, leading residents to spray-paint warning signs telling people to stay away from their debris.
Bryan Thomas for The New York Times
The job of deciding how to move these mountains has been left to county and local officials, who hire debris removal companies to help them dig out. FEMA will reimburse the local governments for 90 percent of the cost. One major removal company, AshBritt, already has “dozens of operations” going on in Texas from Harvey, said Jared Moskowitz, the general counsel for the company. He said he expects more to come.
Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency whose territory included New York and New Jersey, said that environmental considerations have to be part of the process, even after a disaster. Ms. Enck, who calls herself a “solid waste geek,” was heavily involved in debris removal after Sandy hit the Northeast. Figuring out what to do with debris is one of the most challenging aspects of any storm, and because decisions are generally made at the local level, she said, “every community has to kind of reinvent the wheel.”
Setting aside appliances like refrigerators for recycling, chipping downed trees for mulch instead of burning them, prevents pollution and extends the life of landfills. Leaking landfills can pollute groundwater. “The victims of these storms are already in environmentally compromised situations,” she said, “and the way debris is handled should not make it worse.”
She said that separating waste by type is anything but fussy, especially in the age of climate change, when scientists have shown that global warming is producing wetter storms and contributing to more destructive storm surges, and could also be making some storms more powerful.
“I fully understand people saying, ‘This is an emergency — let’s suspend the norms,’ ” Ms. Enck said. “But these hurricanes and floods are becoming the norm.”
Historically, Texas has not shown deep concern over environmental issues, and in the current crisis, its stance on debris removal has been similar. Governor Greg Abbott has temporarily suspended 19 environmental rules that the state said would “prevent, hinder or delay” Harvey disaster response.
After reviewing the changes, Andrew Dobbs, a program director with the Texas Campaign of the Environment, a nonprofit advocacy group, said, “They have suspended more or less every meaningful environmental protection.”
The communities hit by the storm “were already some of the most polluted in our country,” Mr. Dobbs said, “and the regulations in place were already insufficient to protect their health and well-being.” Relaxing the rules now, he said, will “escalate this problem in a dramatic way.”
At Ms. Darby’s house, the process of tossing and salvaging continued. With the help of some family members and their friends, the Darbys were packing some items into plastic containers for safekeeping at self-storage facility while they stay at a hotel. Flooding is not new to them: Tropical Storm Allison caused substantial damage in 2001, and the Darbys lived in a FEMA trailer while they fixed the house up that time.
As Ms. Darby decided what to toss and what to try to save, she reflected on how she had told herself a while back that she really should get rid of some things. “The Lord has a way of making you clean up and clean out,” she said with a laugh.
Her mother, Mary Darby, 84, was less sanguine, even after telling herself that the family had lost only possessions, not loved ones. Standing in her home, mold already visible on the walls, she began to cry.
“It’s material,” she said a few moments later. “But it hurts.”
Annie Correal and Manny Fernandez contributed reporting.
When Gov. Abbott issued his call for a special legislative session this summer, he only included one environmental issue: eliminating local tree protection ordinances in over 110 Texas cities. This gave Texas environmentalists a unique opportunity to organize an all-hands-on-deck effort focused on defending Texas trees and local democracy.
And you know what? We won.
Abbott pushed hard for this pre-emption legislation, calling local ordinances “socialistic,” a pretty big surprise for communities with tree protection rules like Mineral Wells, Mansfield and League City — hardly bastions of left wing politics.
In reality, trees minimize flooding, prevent erosion, reduce energy costs, raise property values and improve air quality. Some research indicates that they may even help keep crime rates low. Irresponsible tree removal threatens neighboring properties, but it can make big bucks for builders and developers.
Photo by Callie Richmond for The Texas Tribune
Someone has to balance these conflicting property rights, and local governments have been doing that for years now. Yet Abbott and other bill supporters never suggested that the state would take up that responsibility after kicking cities out of the picture. That would mean no balance, and would allow big developers to do whatever they want to homeowners and others.
This put the tree issue into the same context as a variety of other issues considered in the special session, a debate over the proper role of local governments. But when it came to trees we stopped this effort dead in its tracks. Local tree conservation non-profits, arborists, landscape architects, local government officials, environmentalists and citizen groups all came together to press our legislators to stand against the unwise legislation.
We also got a big boost from the U.S. military when retired Marine Gen. Juan Ayala — San Antonio’s director of Military Affairs — argued that local ordinances make it easier to train on base without being a nuisance for their neighbors.
In the end, it was an effective, broad coalition focused on communities outside of Austin, mobilizing the most active citizens and leveraging the influence of mayors and city councils over their legislators that made victory possible. In less than 30 days, more than 5,000 Texans emailed their legislators through an online petition, and they made more than 1,800 telephone calls to legislative offices. Several dozen came to our Lorax storytime at the Capitol, and about half of those folks stuck around to deliver copies of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax to lawmakers.
By working closely with folks based all over Texas, reaching out through various networks and pounding the pavement from Benbrook to Port Neches, we made it so that many legislators would rather not deal with the possible fallout back at home if they voted the wrong way. As a result the main pre-emption bill — House Bill 70 — never came up in the House and three Republicans voted against its Senate companion — Senate Bill 14 — in the other chamber.
Later, when it became clear that the House would only tolerate HB 7, a compromise bill on tree removal mitigation fees, the Senate tried to hijack it — going so far as to change its caption, which describes the fundamental reason for the bill — with pre-emption language. That prompted another Republican, Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, to vote against the bill.
House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, didn’t tolerate the Senate’s scheme, and after an extraordinary Sunday night vote, HB 7 was restored to language nearly identical to a compromise bill the governor had vetoed earlier in the summer. This time he signed it, and all our local tree protections still stand.
Like most legislative victories, we didn’t get everything that we wanted. That would have meant no changes in state law whatsoever. But the legislative process worked the way it is supposed to, channeling public input and important interests into a system that takes them all into account, producing consensus policies that make Texas a better place to live.
Nobody will accuse us of a naive or idealistic notion that this is the way things normally work, but we hope we might have struck on a model that works for bringing out the best in Texas.
The key to making it happen? Heeding the words of the Lorax himself: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” We’re grateful to the thousands of Texans who cared a whole awful lot in the special session, and look forward to speaking for the trees in the next session too.
Robin Schneider is the Executive Director at Texas Campaign for the Environment
A series of recommendations made by a City Council working group seeks to address concerns from environmentalists and private waste haulers about how the city chooses the companies it pays to pick up and dispose of waste generated by its own employees and departments, from wastepaper bins at City Hall to giant piles of sludge created by wastewater treatment facilities.
For now, the main outcome of the Waste Management Policy Working Group, which included four Council members and a number of industry stakeholders and environmental activists, is a proposal to make changes to the city’s Anti-Lobbying Ordinance.
Council Member Leslie Pool, who chaired the working group, said that she plans to bring forward a draft ordinance in the coming weeks that will clarify the types of communications that haulers with existing contracts are allowed to have with city staff and city officials if they are also bidding on new contracts.
In addition, the proposed ordinance will reduce the penalties imposed on contractors found to have violated the policy. Currently, violators can be barred from bidding for city contracts, a consequence that some have argued is far too harsh a punishment for what in many cases could simply be a mistake or misunderstanding by an employee of what in many cases are small businesses.
“The idea of locking people out of city business because of a couple of mistakes is a dangerous thing,” said Andrew Dobbs, an organizer for Texas Campaign for the Environment.
Texas Disposal Systems, a prominent waste hauler, has declined to bid on a number of waste contracts recently, arguing that the Anti-Lobbying Ordinance prevents it from effectively making its case to be awarded the deal. Texas Disposal Systems representatives have nevertheless attended Council meetings to argue against approving contracts with other companies, earning it criticism for bullying and obstructionism from those other companies.
In response to the lobbying concerns, Council voted in April to temporarily suspend the anti-lobbying ordinance for waste contracts. The working group recommends that the suspension remain in place until Council revises the ordinance.
The working group also suggests the city tweak its solicitation policies to favor small, local businesses. Currently, a major national company with operations within city limits may be getting more credit for being “local” than a small business based just outside of the city.
Other recommendations from the working group focused on getting waste contracts back in line with Council’s stated environmental policy objectives. Over the last year, Council has rejected a number of contracts after objections were raised by the Zero Waste Advisory Commission, the citizen panel charged with guiding the city toward its goal of dramatically reducing the amount of landfill waste it generates.
In February, for instance, Council unanimously rejected a $7.7 million contract with Republic Services, a Phoenix-based hauler, despite its recommendation by city staff.
One of the principal objections was that the company proposed dumping the waste in the Austin Community Landfill, a site in Northeast Austin that has been a longtime target of complaints from nearby residents and whose controversial expansion Travis County tried unsuccessfully to block in court.
In addition, Texas Disposal Systems objected to the size of the contract, arguing that the city was trying to consolidate a number of different waste services under one contract, departing from the tradition of divvying up the city waste hauling business among a number of different companies.
The working group did not issue a recommendation on the merits of consolidating more contracts but instead called for more analysis of the costs and benefits of such a move.
“Consolidation may create economies of scale and better reporting capacity; however, it also may have undesired effects on the ability of small vendors to compete,” the document stated.
One option that nobody at City Hall appears to be considering is letting the city deal with its waste on its own, rather than contracting with private haulers. The city’s own garbage collection service, Austin Resource Recovery, only serves single-family residences and multifamily properties with four units or fewer. As a result, the city has to hire private haulers to pick up its trash, just like commercial and multifamily properties.
Kaiba White, a member of the Zero Waste Advisory Commission who works on energy and environmental policy for Public Citizen, a progressive advocacy group, noted that the city would have to make a big capital investment in equipment and vehicles if it wanted to do its trash collection in-house or to expand its services to apartment buildings and private businesses. But in the long term, she said, the city might be better off, financially and environmentally.
“Right now people in single-family housing receive various educational outreach about recycling and composting,” she said. “Whereas people in multifamily housing, it’s up to the company. You’re lucky if you have the service and you’re lucky if (the Dumpster’s) not filled up right away.”
Dobbs said an expansion of Austin Resource Recovery’s current responsibilities would be a non-starter politically. The balance the city has currently struck with private haulers was “the product of years of stakeholder engagement,” he said. For the city to change course would be seen as a “rollback of all the efforts.”
Pool also dismissed the idea, noting the upfront cost to the city and the prospect of undercutting local businesses.
“Frankly there’s an industry in Austin that’s been doing it for decades,” she said, “and it would have a significant impact on their livelihood.”
This story has been corrected to include the fact that ARR serves multifamily properties with four units or fewer. Photo by David Villa made available through a Creative Commons license.
The City of Houston’s recycling contract ends in 2018. Some environmentalists are hoping for some specific things to be a part of the next one.
In the coming days, Mayor Sylvester Turner and the Houston City Council are set to hear proposals from recycling companies that could form a new recycling contract with the city once the current one ends in 2018.
The advocacy group Texas Campaign for the Environment has been following the process closely and is eager to see Houston take advantage of the economic incentives of recycling.
Joshua Zinn spoke with Rosanne Barone, the Houston Program Director for TCE, about the current state of recycling in Houston, the possibilities of implementing a Zero Waste Plan, and what her organization would like to see come out of a new recycling contract.
Again taking a cue from Gov. Greg Abbott’s vow to call out those state legislators who defy his agenda during the Texas Legislature’s ongoing special session, we call out legislators who supposedly represent our area but are more intent on undermining local control. That means calling out Sen. Brian Birdwell for complying with Abbott’s demand that the state uproot local tree ordinances — a matter ideally left to town councils and the neighborhood folks who elect them. By contrast, Reps. Charles “Doc” Anderson and Kyle Kacal support a more thoughtful approach respectful of local control.
The governor demands state lawmakers gut any locally approved ordinance that prevents or discourages one from cutting down trees on his or her property. The scenario closely parallels what we saw recently in a battle regarding short-term vacation rentals in Waco — a classic case of property rights versus neighborhood sentiment in which the Waco City Council ultimately sided with neighborhoods after a strong push by angry residents of the historic (and tree-shrouded) Castle Heights and Karem Park neighborhoods.
And that’s the big problem with the governor’s edict. Some neighborhoods are very defensive about preserving a broad canopy of trees — not only because trees improve air quality and prevent soil erosion but also because mature trees shield yards and homes from intense summer sun and add a picturesque quality absent from developments where trees are clear-cut from the landscape.
In testimony before the Senate Business & Commerce Committee, Andrew Dobbs of Texas Campaign for the Environment acknowledged that some ordinances may be “out of whack” in certain demands they make of homeowners. However, this would seem to justify individuals working with their elected council members to improve or revise such ordinances. And, he said, if the state must assume a role, it could best help by setting reasonable parameters for all. But simply scrapping any ordinance that blocks or deters tree-cutting “seems like we’re falling off the other side of the horse.”
Jaye Russell, a real-estate agent who testified before the same committee, asked how the state’s zeal to supersede local control would help Texas. (She never received an answer.) She also questioned any supposed populist push to fell local tree ordinances, given few such individuals were in evidence to testify: “I’ve heard here anecdotal stories [from legislators] about people who have been harmed by these local community ordinances. I don’t see any of them here today. I don’t know where they are. I don’t know their names. I’m assuming they had real problems and that happens. Nothing’s perfect.”
The message was clear: The Senate bill is more a big favor to home builders and developers than individual homeowners. Then she went on to outline how fallen trees in her area can impact her property in terms of flooding and soil erosion.
“Many cities have chosen not to have tree preservation ordinances, and that’s perfectly OK because each Texas city is unique,” said Live Oak Mayor Mary Dennis, president of the Texas Municipal League. “The city of Live Oak does have a tree ordinance that we passed in 2000 and I’m very glad to say we have been designated a Tree City USA. And we have an Arbor Day where arborists come out and we give trees away to our residents and this has worked really well for our city.” She also decried state intrusion into local affairs.
The Trib editorial board has mixed feelings about what should and should not be in any ideal tree ordinance. (The city of Waco offers a broad tree guideline, urging “avoidance of clear-cutting outside necessary construction areas.”) But we ultimately believe this is the business of cities, communities and their elected councils — not some state-ordained, one-size-fits-all law covering an expanse as environmentally diverse as Texas. (Our state has at least 13 ecologically different terrains.) So-called heritage trees might be important in places such as windswept West Texas — or perhaps not important at all. But for Austin-based lawmakers to kowtow to deep-pocketed home-builder associations is not only overreach but something far worse.
Birdwell, a Granbury Republican, earns an F from us for doing the bidding of Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to the exclusion of local control. We give Republicans Anderson and Kacal a B for supporting a more nuanced compromise plan in the House, allowing those who cut down trees to at least partially address city tree mitigation fees by planting yet other trees (with many of the specifics left to the cities themselves and even tree experts). We appreciate this considerate approach. However, the Senate bill is a glaring abuse of state power and yet another attack on local control.
AUSTIN — Tree activists of all ages joined forces at the Texas State Capitol to save the trees, with the help of lawmakers and Dr. Seuss.
Rep. Carol Alvarado, D- Houston, and Rep. Wayne Faircloth, R-Galveston, read The Lorax to constituents under the shade of a historic oak on the Capitol Grounds on Wednesday.
The book details the struggles of the environment, targeted by corporate greed. The Lorax character speaks on behalf of the trees.
The bipartisan reading aimed to “stand in opposition to current anti-tree legislation,” including House Bill 70, organizers said.
“These bills would wipe out these protections and let developers and others just wipe out trees all over Texas,” Andrew Dobbs, legislative director for Texas Campaign for the Environment said. “This is something we’ve got to stop.”
“There’s some very powerful lobbies that want to be able to cut down trees wherever they want, whenever they want, for whatever reason they want, and local governments have decided that in terms of protecting property owners from floods, from erosion, to be able to protect us from high energy costs, we have established local ordinances to protect trees and to regulate how they’re managed,” Dobbs said.
“The Senate bill I think is very overreaching, and has a lot of preemption in it, and won’t stand tall,” Alvarado told reporters. “We already passed the tree bill, and this is what everybody has agreed to, and this is what should be the law, and we hope that Governor Abbott signs it.”
“We just feel like the people that live and work and invest their time and their talent, raise their family there, that they know best how to order their own lives and what’s important to them, and they have their priorities,” Faircloth stated. “We have public elections for local representation, and as she has said, we’ve passed a common-sense bill that was agreed upon by the members of the House. We’re not sure what the Senate will do or how it will play out, but I think what we found is the best alternative to solve this issue.”
Others advocate local control over tree ordinances violate the property rights of landowners.
Sen. Donna Campbell, R- New Braunfels, requested an opinion from the Texas Attorney General over the issue, saying the legislature “must ensure that city bureaucrats and central planners are not infringing on local citizens’ liberty.”
“City tree ordinances are some of the most egregious examples of property rights violations in our state, affecting millions of property owners in Texas,” Campbell said in a news release on June 12.
After listening to The Lorax, participants of Wednesday’s reading delivered copies of the book to several lawmakers, urging them to vote against legislation they say would threaten Texas trees.
It’s important to protect the trees and so we can breathe,” said elementary-schooler Elizabeth Luck. “I’m happy that trees are here and that we can keep the trees safe.”
Governor Abbott made cracking down on local tree laws part of his call for the special session because he believes they can violate private property rights. Wednesday, a group of tree advocates came to the state capitol to keep those laws firmly planted in place.
Under the canopy of an oak tree, on the east side of the Texas capitol, the words from a popular Dr. Seuss book could be heard Wednesday morning. The reading from the Book, The Lorax, was done by state representatives Wayne Faircloth ( R ) Galveston and Carol Alvarado ( D ) Houston.
“One morning I came to this glorious place, and I first saw the trees,” read Alvarado.
Several parents and their children listened as the 2 lawmakers from two different political parties took part in this rally for trees. “I’m the Lorax who speaks for the Trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please,” read Faircloth.
Faye L. Holland brought her three children to the event.
“I was just really happy it was a republican and a democrat that were talking together, because I just like bipartisanship so much, it gives me hope,” said Holland.
The gathering was organized to throw shade on Governor Abbott’s Call to cut back local tree ordinances.
“We don’t need a City Council of Texas, we’ve got our local city councils that are best able to balance the interest of property owners in their communities and we need to respect their ability to do that,” said Andrew Dobbs with Texas Campaign for the Environment.
Lizzy Milani, one of the kids at the event, has seen the movie adaption of the Book, but this is the first time she has had it read to her. The lesson of the book, according to her, is very clear.
“You’ve got to take care of trees, because if you don’t bad things will happen, because that area was ugly in that illustration,” said Milani who came to the reading with her mom and younger sister.
Legislation to prevent a tree ordinance from being enforced on a homeowner’s private property has already cleared the Senate. A similar Bill is pending in the House. But a different compromise Bill, drafted by Rep. Dade Phelan, has already moved out of House Chamber.
“It’s not a Republican, or Democrat, liberal or conservative; it’s really a Regional issue,” said Rep. Phelan.
Phelan’s HB7, allows property owners to offset mitigation fees if they replant what they cut.
“So the city gets trees, they get half the fee, and the property owner gets to reduce their overhead, whether they are developing it or it’s their home, say they want to add on a garage or swimming pool, it will reduce those fees in half,” said the Republican from Port Neches.
The fate of Phelan’s bill remains as uncertain as that of the trees in the story of The Lorax. But those at the rally, like the characters in the book, believe as they meet with lawmakers – some seeds of hope will be planted.
AUSTIN – The groups Texas Campaign for the Environment and Defend Texas Trees held an event outside the Capitol Wednesday to oppose bills filed in the Special Session related to trees.
Representatives Carol Alvarado (D-Houston) and Wayne Faircloth (R-Galveston) read Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax” to a group of kids under one of the historic oak trees on the Capitol grounds. In the story, the Lorax speaks up for trees that are being cut down and advises against destroying the trees.
The event was held in opposition to Senate Bill 14 and House Bill 70 which prohibit cities from making ordinances regulating cutting down trees on private property.
Representatives Alvarado and Faircloth said on this issue, they support local control.
“We just feel like the people that live and work and invest their time and their talent to raise their families there, they know best of how to order their own lives and what’s important to them,” Faircloth said.
The House did approve House Bill 7 (HB7) which creates a tree planting credit to offset the fees cities charge for removing trees. Faircloth calls it a common sense bill that everyone can agree with.
The Senate Committee on Business & Commerce has scheduled a public hearing on HB7 for August 4 at 9:00 a.m.
The language of HB7 passed in the House and Senate during the regular session, but was vetoed by the Governor.
Senate Bill 14 has passed in the Senate and is awaiting a committee assignment in the House. A public hearing was held on House Bill 70 but it was left pending in committee.
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