. . . the city made the discovery when it recently dug up older steel water pipes from the ground in an attempt to replace them. When the city brought the older pipes to a local recycling scrap yard, the scrap yard turned them away as “too radioactive” to recycle.
Report from Brady–Water makes pipes radioactive/KHOU 11 News
A legislative update from Independent Texans Linda Curtis
* Senate stirs pot with TSA groping bill | By Mike Ward | American Statesman
Send your comments and news tips to roundup.editor@gmail.com, to Ms. Curtis at ljcurtis@indytexans.org or click on the "comments" at the bottom of the story
Conferees meeting ends with no resolution – Quorum Report "The Buzz"
Texas House and Senate members are locked in a stalemate on what to do about funding (or, more accurately, cutting) public education. Your typical member, Republican and Democrat, is catching absolute and deserved hell from their constituents. Because both parties lied to the people of Texas by not making the $27B deficit a front and center issue in the last Governor's race. Carole Strayhorn was right in her 2006 letter to Rick Perry, calling him on the plan to write a "hot check," predicting a $24B shortfall this year. But it was both parties that let him get away with it.
Huddle on the House Floor/Larry Kolvoord/AP
Both parties also managed to make a mockery of the Sunset Review process that failed to rein in agencies under extreme influence of industry special interests from TxDOT to TCEQ to the Texas Water Development Board. It is truly a theater of the absurd. Watch this 6 minute KHOU-TV report this week on how the TCEQ allowed water companies to alter reports on how much radioactivity is in their water!Tuesday, the lege passed a bill (SB 332/bill analysis) to signal to the Texas Supreme Court that groundwater should be commodified and sold to the highest bidder and to forget about local control. And do you believe that in the midst of a personal data breach of 3.5 million Texans, the Comptroller continues to push for a subsidy for the billionaires at the Formula 1 race track?
As Rick Perry tests the water for a potential presidential run touting the so-called "Texas miracle," millions of ordinary Texans see the nightmare on the horizon. The political class hasn't a clue (nor a care, apparently) as to how much pain they will inflict on students, the elderly, the disabled and everyone in this state who must do real work to pay their rent or mortgages, and to simply feed their families. And it was all for nothing. They could have fixed this budget problem by closing loopholes on property and oil and gas taxes, but they refused.
What can you do? Call your legislators tomorrow. Deliver them this simple message: Hello, my name is ________. I don't know all there is to know about all the bills you are working on, but I want you to know that I am going to see the results of your work next Tuesday. It will be the report card from the independents. We're going to look at how much you supported cutting the little people, while the big people and corporate lobbyists got all the breaks. Thank you – I'll be back in touch.
On the water front we have two things for you:
1. An interview with our friend, Phil Cook, following the strategic battle in central Texas over the "Trans-Texas Water Highway." This fascinating interview shows the various forces fighting over who gets their hands on the "Simsboro" portion of the great Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer.
CHECK OUT THE MAP!
An excerpt: Cook: To me, the train wreck – unless citizens intervene – is that the Carrizo-Wilcox will be depleted because, in fact, there isn’t enough water to go around, and developers will not back down from their projects. There is no evil intent there, it’s just that is how developers make money and, as good business people, profit is what drives them. That may or may not work in the best interests of residents, the consumers of their developments, especially when what is at stake is the local water supply.
2. An enlightening piece in the Houston Chronicle by Austin attorney and rancher, Malcolm Harris, about the passage of SB 332 – for "vested" ownership rights of groundwater.
Fed up! Get active, contribute or do something will ya?!
We will send you a report of the good, bad and the ugly next week after the session ends on Monday.
Join us on the next statewide conference call on Monday, June 6th at 8 pm OR join us at a face-to-face meeting on Saturday, June 11th, in Bastrop from 2-4 pm at the Bastrop Library. We will discuss the session and where we're going from here.
4 comments:
This is much ado about nothing as just about every scare story from Linda Curtis of the small Bastrop based so-called "Independent Texans", has been. The piece about radiation in the water is from a deplorable piece of yellow journalism perpetrated by KHOU-TV of Houston, known for this sort of exaggerated reporting. Those radiation readings they show are about what you would expect from a watch dial. Even they admit the radiation is thought to be from trace amounts of radium, a naturally occurring element in the ground. In one part of the report they state that the levels in the water are so low the Geiger counter can't pickup them up. In other words, it's no big deal.
KHOU-TV is trying to take advantage of the current scare over the radiation in Japan to pump up their market share. Houston media has a tradition of that type BS since the days of Marvin Zindler the inventor of this type of investigative scare story. Ms. Curtis is simply using this tactic to drum up $upport for her fledgling organization from the ignorant masses. Her organization is anything but independent and is very left leaning. It is just another Astro-Turfing organization from a lady with delusions of adequacy.
The last line of the article says it all, "Fed up! Get active, CONTRIBUTE or do something will ya?!"
Many bills involving groundwater were introduced in the 82nd Lege. Here is status on two of them as of May 27, 3:20 PM:
SB 737 (Hegar)-Becomes law on Sept. 1, 2011. Changes wording from "managed available groundwater" to "modeled available groundwater." Says that MAG is not to be the only factor used in determining DFCs (Desired Future
Condition). Other stuff, too.
SB 332 (Fraser) - Has passed both
houses but has not yet been signed by Gov Perry. Attempts to determine who owns groundwater, etc.
Looks like the TX Supreme Court will be determining the boundaries for the TX seats in the U.S. Congress. As of May 27, 3:30 p.m.,
that redistricting bill (SB 308, Seliger) hasn't even been acted on in the Senate committee. Most probable reason is that members of the redistricting committess invariably make some enemies when they draw up redistricting maps, and so they would just as soon leave it to the Supremes to do. The Supremes almost always try to safeguard re-election for current
legislators, anyway, so it's not
much of a risk for current Lege members to let the Court do the redistricting. Gov Perry would rather see the Republican-controlled Lege do the job, but he
is hesitant to call another special
session. Hopefully Lloyd Doggett won't be gerrymandered out of his
Congressional seat.
SB 31 (Seliger), the bill for redistricting of the TX Senate, has passed both houses and is waiting for signing by the Gov. It changes our Senate District 25 to now be made up of:
most of Hays Co. west of I-35
small part of Travis Co.
all of Kendall Co.
all of Comal Co.
part of western Guadalupe Co.
some of north Bexar Co.
The east side of San Marcos and of Kyle will be in Senate District 21, represented by Judith Zaffirini of San Antonio.
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