Subject: Texas Commission on Environmental Quality

• Port Arthur Residents Sue Premcor Refining

  November 20, 2007

• Special Report: Toxic Town

  December 5, 2007

• Tough Times At The Gas Station

  July 25, 2008

• Port Arthur Shares The Polluting Load

  August 1, 2008

• The Bright Side Of Pollution

  August 15, 2008

• What a Dump: British Petroleum Fined for Unauthorized Disposal of Hazardous Waste

  September 5, 2008

• A New Environmental Group Offers Houston Info And Donation Requests

  September 8, 2008

• Dow Chemical Leads The Way In Pollution

  October 8, 2008

• The Pollution Hits Keep Coming

  October 23, 2008

• Formosa Plant Keeps On Polluting

  November 6, 2008

• Shell Oil Finally Gets Fined For What It Puts Into Deer Park's Air

  It took awhile, but state environmental regulators and Shell Oil finally came to meeting of the minds about a slew of pollution violations committed at the Deer Park refinery. Upshot: Shell will pay a $345,744 penalty for 35 emissions events and record-keeping violations that occurred from 2004 to 2006. Hair Balls took the time to slog through the paperwork compiled in the Shell investigation and concluded that it's not user-friendly enough to regurgitate here, unless you have an engineeri

  November 20, 2008

• Dow Chemical Forgets To Leave The Light On

  Ever have trouble keeping your hot water heater pilot light on? It's annoying, yes, but the worst repercussion is a surprise cold shower.Pilot light problems occur in the petrochemical world, too, but the repercussions are decidedly more consequential.In the case of a Dow Chemical Co. plant in Texas City, the consequences are 1,216 pounds of volatile organic compounds and 218 pounds of carbon monoxide that spewed into the atmosphere last March.All of it was avoidable, as the Texas Commission on

  January 15, 2009

• Oldies, And Not Goodies, On The Pollution Front

  The wheels of environmental justice move ever so slowly. To call it a snail's pace would be an insult to mollusks everywhere. But it is what is, as we say in the parlance of our times, so now we have the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality assessing penalties against two local polluters for violations that occurred as long ago as 2005.The commission yesterday popped Chevron Phillips Chemical $168,416 and Shell Chemical and Shell Oil $166,530 for environmental crimes. The problems cited

  January 29, 2009

• Valero Gets Fined For A Damn Impressive Bit Of Polluting

  If you've ever pondered how much pollution an oil refinery can spew out in 4,008 hours and 50 minutes when the gasoline-making process goes wrong, Valero Refining in Texas City has provided an answer: -- 345,624 pounds of sulfur dioxide-- 3,752.30 pounds of hydrogen sulfide-- 63.30 pounds of of nitrogen oxidesCompared with other "emissions events" around Houston that Hair Balls has studied in recent years, the incident at Valero on Feb. 20, 2005, is impressive for its longevity and volume.

  February 12, 2009

• Houston Turns Back to Tap Water

  August 14, 2008

• ConocoPhillips, Art Car Shenanigans and Concrete Canoes

  Panic for ConocoPhillips' stockholders

  June 5, 2008

• Toxic Runoff : Somerville Mayor Tommy Thompson Discusses the Public Health Situation

  December 27, 2007

• Toxic Town: Cancer and Birth Defects in Somerville

  In Somerville, chances are far better than normal that you will die of cancer or give birth to a deformed baby

  December 6, 2007

• Naked Men: The ManKind Project and Michael Scinto

  October 4, 2007

• Mail Call

  Woodwind Lakes Edition

  April 26, 2007

• Woodwind Lakes: County Gofers

  With a lot of prompting, HCAD files a lawsuit the neighbors never did

  April 12, 2007

• Woodwind Lakes subdivision built on oil and gas field turns on neighbor who pointed out the contamination

  April 12, 2007

• Without a Trace

  Professional death cleaners are hired to disinfect, deodorize and make it seem like it never happened

  August 3, 2006

• Hold the Salt

  Too much of a good thing threatens the oysters in Galveston Bay

  April 6, 2006

• Veggie Tales

  An alternative to gasoline-based fuel gains traction in Houston

  November 10, 2005

• Letters to the Editor

  October 27, 2005

• A Mighty Wind

  A mountain of garbage in northeast Houston is looking to get bigger. Neighbors cry foul.

  October 6, 2005

• Lowering the Boom

  Not all Houstonians revel in our God-given right to be loudly obnoxious

  April 21, 2005

• More Help (The Hard Way) For Retrofitting School Buses In Brazoria County

  Solutia Inc. is a "small business" in the overall scheme of things in the petrochemical universe, but the organic chemical production plant outside of Alvin managed to outdo the big boys on Wednesday when it racked up the biggest pollution fine of the week in our great state.For its achievement, Solutia was assessed a $117,048 fine by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. In sporting terms, which we can't help but use here, it sounded like a "total team effort" by Solutia to underperf

  May 7, 2009

• Dow Chemical Thankful It's In A Pollution-Loving State Like Texas

  The Dow Chemical Co. got whacked last week with a $202,325 fine for air pollution violations, but if we had to guess, we'd say the world's second-largest chemical company thanks its lucky stars it does business in a state like Texas, where a history of violations doesn't mean much.In calculating the various wrongs Dow committed in 2007 and 2008, the staff of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality pulled out their calculators and determined the penalty should (or maybe "could," we suppose

  May 27, 2009

• Dow Chemical, Always Helping The Kids. By Polluting The Air

  If you worry about pollution -- especially in light on the EPA's latest study of the cancer risk posed by air pollution -- you might see that instead of threatening our lives, air pollution actually helps all of us, especially those of us who are most vulnerable, the kids.For purposes of illustration, we present a case handled yesterday by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which approved an agreed order that assessed the Dow Chemical Co. a penalty of $166,465 for violating state

  June 24, 2009

• ExxonMobil Fined $600,000; We Think They Can Come Up With It

  ​Let's be honest.There aren't a lot of "bad days" for a global petrochemical company that made a record $45.2 billion profit last year, so we'll just say ExxonMobil had a less than stellar day on Wednesday when state regulators penalized it more than $600,000 for environmental crimes.ExxonMobil's oil refinery and chemical plants in Baytown were responsible for $496,201 of the penalty and its Beaumont refinery accounted for the rest.The penalty, finalized in Austin in an agreed order by the Tex

  August 13, 2009

• Houston's Waterways Are Filled With All Kinds Of Stuff They Shouldn't Be Filled With, Group Says

  ​Stay the hell away from Houston's waterways. Don't swim in them and for heaven's sake don't eat the fish.That was essentially the message this morning at a news conference held alongside the Houston Ship Channel, hosted by Environment Texas, an environmental advocacy group, which complied data from the EPA to produce a report detailing just how many hazardous chemicals were dumped into the water in 2007.According to the report, industrial facilities released 13 million pounds of toxic chemica

  October 21, 2009

• Sunoco -- Doing Whatever It Takes In La Porte

  ​We have little understanding of how a local chemical manufacturing plant can flaunt state environmental regulations for an entire year and not get called on the carpet for it until nearly two years later, but that describes the goings-on at the Sunoco, Inc., plant in La Porte.At its facility just off the Pasadena Highway, not far from the San Jacinto Monument, Sunoco makes high-quality polypropylene that's used to make synthetic fibers for everything from diapers and carpets to upholstery an

  November 5, 2009