(Dave Fehling/State Impact Texas)
Standing outside her tidy house in Pasadena, Texas, Patricia Gonzales succinctly sums up her community’s dilemma: “No one is saying we don’t want the jobs. It’s just that we don’t want the pollution coming with it.”
Her home is just two miles from the Houston Ship Channel, which is lined with the biggest concentration of petrochemical plants and oil refineries in the nation.
Gonzales was talking about her latest concern: the Keystone XL pipeline. If completed, it will bring millions of barrels of Canadian crude to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur. But the crude, from the tar sands mined in Alberta, is a heavier, dirtier variety than “sweet crude” from places like West Texas.
“We’re already in the highest level of the polluted [places in] the United States and you bring in more. And you want us to accept that?” (Full story at State Impact Texas)
OTHER HEADLINES:
- Update: Feds Reject Texas Voter ID Law (Texas Tribune)
- Rally States: Don’t Mess With Texas Women (KUHF Public Radio)
- School Officials: High-Stakes Tests Failing Students (Houston Chronicle)
- Spring Branch ISD Embraces Popular Charter Schools (Houston Chronicle)
- “Homeless Hotspot” Program at SXSW Criticized by Some, Supported by Others (Austin 360)
OPINIONS ON THE NEWS:
- Texas Should Consider Education Standards Waiver (Editorial/Austin American Statesman)
Education Secretary Arne Duncan was in Austin last week, and while here, he encouraged Texas to apply for a waiver from meeting certain performance standards demanded by the No Child Left Behind law. - A Rejection of Discrimination (Editorial/New York Times)
When Texas lawmakers were writing one of the nation’s most restrictive voter-identification laws last spring, they rejected a proposal to allow voters to use other forms of ID beyond a narrow list. They rejected another suggestion to help voters without an ID card apply for one. And when a lawmaker offered an amendment to offer free access to birth certificates in order to get a card, instead of charging $22, they rejected that, too. So it was no surprise on Monday when the Justice Department did the right thing and forcefully rejected the state’s voter-ID law entirely.