The Texas Legislature is moving at break-neck speed, offering up both good and bad legislative ideas, committee hearings, and wrangling over budget items. As Sierra Club gears up for our Lone Star Lobby Day(s) on April 11t (and April 12 if needed), we thought we would take stock of where we are on our priority issues, with less than 60 days left until the end (aka, Sine Die).
Budget
The House approved their version of the budget last week (HB 1) right before midnight on March 27. At some $250 billion over two-years, the proposed House budget for 2020-2021 includes about $9 billion extra in public school funding, some good news in terms of additional inspectors at both TCEQ and the Railroad Commission, and generally good news on Parks and Wildlife, but local park grants and park acquisition would get shorted.
Some key Sierra Club priorities are not funded in HB 1 though, but we must remember that many of our budget riders were placed in that magical land known as “Article XI,” where proposed additions are in a kind of purgatory that can be brought back to the land of the living when the House and Senate name their conferees. Thus, studies of methane pollution, extra money for clean air if fees that fund the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan (TERP), and money for park planning and acquisition all sit in this waiting room, awaiting to get out!
Senate Finance is likely to approve the Senate version of the budget this week (SB 1), which is not quite as robust for natural resource agencies as the House version. Last week, the Senate went through their riders and initial decisions, and the news was mixed. In particular, there is no money for LIRAP (Low-Income Vehicle Repair and Replacement Program) no new inspectors for TCEQ, and mobile monitoring equipment is not fully funded, despite the continued issues we are seeing with fires at ITC (did you read our blog about that last Friday, btw?).
Expect a conference committee to be named in mid-April, at which point we will tell our members and supporters where they can make a difference.
Two budget-related issues are contained in bills that would require that the sporting goods sales tax be dedicated to parks (SB 26 and SJR 24) which have been referred to the full Senate, and the bills that would extend the fees that support TERP. SB 531 by Birdwell had a good hearing last week and HB 1746 by Lozano has a hearing on Tuesday. Unfortunately, while we support these bills, a compromise was introduced by Sen. Birdwell that would have the fees only extended two years through 2021 with an interim study in-between. Still, funding for two years (the fees would generate about $500 million) while we clean up the air in our major cities is better than no extension at all and a budget which only funds TERP with $150 million! That is, if the budget conferees add that funding!
Other clean air issues
Bills intended to do away with the dirty practice of “ rolling coal,” where dudes (it’s usually dudes) mess with their diesel emissions controls to purposely create black soot, are moving. HB 1212 by Rep. Israel got out of the House Committee on Environmental Regulation, while SB 882 by Sen. Jose Menendez just passed out of the Senate Committee on Transportation.
Other “car” bills, such as those designed to continue a new version of the LIRAP program, have yet to get a hearing. Some movement is occurring on how electric vehicles get “taxed” to pay for roads and bridges. Currently, all light-duty vehicles in Texas do pay the state and federal gas taxes but full electric vehicles, which comprise less than one percent of our market, do not. A number of legislators have filed bills to require an extra “registration” annual fee on electric and hybrid vehicles to help pay for our transportation needs.
The Sierra Club is generally against such “taxes” as punitive to EV drivers, but we do agree that as EVs increase, we need to figure out fair taxes for such vehicles. The first bill to get a hearing -- HB 1971 -- by Rep. Ken King gets it wrong. It would impose $200 on any EV, and $100 on any hybrid, significantly above the average prices that “normal” gas guzzlers pay over the course of the year in gas taxes. And in general, EVs are used more for short in-town trips, so in essence the Ken King bill creates an unfair disincentive to the use of EVs. A couple of bills more to our liking our heard this week, including Sen. Kirk Watson’s SB 1076, Sen. Beverly Powell’s SB 1471 and Sen. Charler Schwertner’s SB 1216, all of which more carefully tie an extra registration fee to the number of estimated miles driven by the vehicle and how much a gas or diesel vehicle would have paid.
ITC: Finally some attention!
One upcoming hearing sure to get a lot of attention is a special joint meeting being held this Friday by the House Committee on Environmental Regulation and the House Committee on Homeland Security and Public Safety, which will hear invited testimony about the recent ITC Deer Park fires, explosions, and environmental damage.
Unfortunately, several bills that might have helped prevent the ITC fires, including SB 1446 by Sen. Nathan Johnson, which would require better performance standards for storage tanks, have yet to get hearings. Two good bills (SB 2175 by Sen. Borris Miles and SB 2065 by Sen. Jose Menendez) that address the so-called “affirmative defense” that polluters can use to skirt punitive measures when they screw up and release more pollution, have not yet been heard in committee. Both have been referred to the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Economic Development. A bad bill by Rep. Greg Bonnen -- HB 2826 -- which would require local governments wanting to sue using outside counsel to get permission from the attorney general first. A lot of cities, county associations, and environmental groups expressed their opposition at the hearing recently.
Local building codes threat?
Two bills moving through the legislative process are companion bills, HB 2439 by Rep. Dade Phelan and SB 1266 by Sen. Dawn Buckingham. These bills are intended to prevent cities from making a change to their building codes which would limit builders on what type of products or building materials they could require. While the Sierra Club agrees that cities should not be picking “winners” in their codes, the bills are broadly written and could be used to limit local amendments intended for safety, better energy efficiency, or even water conservation. We do not believe this is the intent of the author’s but we ( as well as many cities and advocates for green construction) are worried about the bills as written.
A bill we like -- HB 4080 -- by first-term legislator Rep. Alex Dominguez, has yet to get a hearing. It would allow counties to adopt and enforce building codes just like cities do.
Radioactive waste bills move forward?
Well, the good news is that neither SB 1021 by Sen. Kel Seliger or HB 2269 by Rep. Brooks Landgraf have passed out of their respective committees after receiving hearings last week. The bad news is that they may pass this coming week, even after great testimony from both environmental groups and even some representatives of the oil and gas industry (who are concerned about turning West Texas into a haven for imported radioactive waste). Also of concern is the large fiscal note, since the companion both would REDUCE payments to the state of Texas even as the bills look to EXPAND imports of radioactive waste. In all, the prepared fiscal note says we would get about $3 million less in revenues to the state, and about $5 million less in revenues to a special account (Perpetual Care) intended to clean up old abandoned radioactive waste sites. Sierra Club is working with our allies to try to keep these bills stuck in committee but both WCS and those who generate nuclear waste are eager to see them get across the finish line.
Charge peaceful protesters?
Unfortunately, two really bad bills carried by Sen. Brian Birdwell (SB 1933) and Rep Chris Paddie (HB 3557) would significantly increase the extent and severity of penalties ostensibly against those who destroy, deface, or tamper “critical infrastructure,” including pipelines, power plants, chemical plants, refineries, and confined animal feeding operations among others. How could SIerra Club possibly be against any bill that would well enforce the law against those wanting to impact critical infrastructure? The bill is so broad, it could apply to people peacefully protesting a proposed pipeline, who could find themselves facing criminal charges, and an association found sponsoring such individuals could be found “vicariously liable” with a required fine of $1 million. Again, the bills are currently in committee but they may start to move this next week unless we can continue to pressure the authors and committees.
Solar and renewable policies
A good bill by Rep. Richard Raymond -- HB 2860 -- had a hearing last week. The bill would require fair treatment of distributed generation sources like onsite solar panels. Utilities and cities could not unfairly tax or provide undue burdens on the development of such technologies. Unfortunately, the Association of Electric Companies of Texas, and several large transmission companies, were not totally on board with the bill, which means it faces an uncertain future in the Committee on State Affairs.
Meanwhile, HB 2908 by Rep. Jared Patterson, which would force ERCOT and the PUC to change rules and protocols essentially to cancel out the impacts of the Production Tax Credits that wind receives from federal tax policy by increasing its costs, was substantially changed to be a study of the impacts of the PTC on our market (due to widespread opposition). The new version of the bill matches a bill being heard this week in the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce, SB 2232. While we don’t think studying issues is bad on its face, the problem with these bills is they pick on one “subsidy” - the wind PTC - and ignore all the subsidies that coal plants, nuclear plants, and natural gas plants receive, essentially picking on wind!
Border wall
It might not seem like the Pink Dome is the place for border wall legislation, but Rep. Roland Gutierrez has a bill this Tuesday -- HB 990 -- that would call on the Texas Water Development Board and TCEQ to study the impacts more border wall would have on flooding, storms, and water quality. Sierra Club will be there to document the ongoing problems from the existing fences, but also what would be a disaster should all those proposed “walls” actually get constructed.
Wastewater dIscharges
Environmental Regulation Committee Chair Lozano held a hearing on HB 2771 last week where it became clear that, while authorizing the TCEQ to grant wastewater discharge permits to oil and gas operations, it still has a long road ahead of it. The purpose of the bill is to begin that regulatory process. In other words, the companies supporting the bill would expect, if passed, that the TCEQ would then seek delegation authority from the U.S. EPA to run such a program, even though the EPA is still studying the issue of whether its standards for wastewater discharge permits even from centralized wastewater treatment plants are adequate. Sierra Club told the committee and Chair Lozano that Texas should study the issue further before authorizing such a step.
Pyrolisis
What should one do with all that solid waste? Rep. Ed Thompson and Rep. Kelly Hancock want to pass a bill, sponsored by the Texas Chemical Council, which would allow “gasification” and “pyrolisis” companies to take a variety of waste streams, not register them as “solid waste” (thus getting out of pesky permitting requirements), and gasify (or pyrolisize) them to make fuels and other products. SB 1656 and HB 1953 would allow this process. The bill has already passed out of the Committee on Environmental Regulation in the House, and is likely to pass out this week in the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Economic Development. Sierra Club is working on several amendments to improve the bill by tightening what products can escape those pesky regulations.
Good bills without hearings
Even as we fight these controversial bills, we are still pressing to get hearings for the many good bills that did get filed.
Methane
In particular, we need help making sure that two study bills -- SB 1380 (Rodriguez) and HB 225 (Reynolds) -- get the hearings they deserve. The companion bills would require TCEQ to take a fresh look at their inspection and maintenance requirements for oil and gas facilities and study whether improvements are needed to reduce air emissions.
Above-ground storage tanks and underground oil and gas wells
As mentioned above, Sen. Johnson’s SB 1446 would require that TCEQ develop rules to improve performance standards of above-ground storage tanks, while HB 1147 by Rep. Eddie Lucio III would require the RRC to develop requirements for subsurface safety valves for oil and gas wells along the coast.
Water conservation
Two great bills supported by Sierra Club -- SB 1379 by Sen. Rodriguez - and HB 2957 by Erin Zweiner -- also have yet to receive committee hearings even though we are into April. The bills would require any public water utility that requests more than $500,000 from the Texas Water Development Board to enact common-sense outdoor watering limits.