Greetings, allies!
If it’s the end of the month, it must be time for another CODA hangout. Please join us for a fun evening with like-minded folk to blow off a little steam and socialize. We’re going to take the Cards Against Humanity game for a test drive. If you’re interested in attending, drop a comment here, or reply to this email, and we’ll get you the details.
Our last newsletter featured runoffs. They’re making another appearance this time, but not in a good way.
(BTW hats off to all who worked so hard to help Dock Jackson in his mayoral runoff campaign on June 10. So close!)
The runoff we’re featuring this time is not the election type that indicates you are in a tight and exciting race that goes down to the wire. Nope. This is the other type of runoff, the kind you get when nasty stuff ends up in your water; when money matters more than protecting public health and Mother Earth.
Folks, we have a situation in our area. You may have seen it on the news recently. Our new neighbor Elon Musk (or ‘taintlord’, as
refers to him and his ilk) wants to use our glorious Colorado River as a dumping ground for wastewater from one of his manufacturing facilities.CODA supporters and environmental activists Mike and Lynda MacLeod have graciously agreed to fill you in with this summary of the river dump shenanigans. Below is a memo from the MacLeods describing what is going on, and how we can help.
From the MacLeods:
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is responsible for permitting wastewater discharge into the Colorado River. TCEQ is currently considering several permit applications that in total would allow disposal of over 1.2 million gallons of wastewater per day into the Colorado and Cedar Creek in the vicinity of McKinney Roughs. One of these permits will allow about 125,000 gallons per day of industrial waste from Elon Musk’s Boring Co.
I reviewed publicly available data from the TCEQ’s website, covering 1969 through the present, for information on their efforts to monitor toxic wastes such as insecticides, herbicides and heavy metals in the Colorado. There is NO DATA for McKinney Roughs, and at the closest upstream monitoring site (Webberville), they have not looked for these toxicants in 32 years!
TCEQ performed assays once in 1990 and once in 1991, but for most of the toxicants they used assay methods incapable of detecting low but toxic levels of the contaminants. How (or if?) they plan to monitor toxicants in the Boring waste stream is not clear.
If you care about the Colorado, join our fight. We must put all the pressure we can on elected representatives and government officials. A non-profit organization called Environmental Stewardship is taking the lead in combatting these attacks on our river. You can learn more and/or donate to the cause at their website: https://www.environmental-stewardship.org.
If environmental topics are a hot button issue for you, we encourage you to reach out to the MacLeods or the Environmental Stewardship group, or both, and see how you can help. Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you Saturday night!