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Quarry Quandary Texas’
Untoward Underground
by Brewster Hudspeth |
Outside
of a small mention of a reopening of a quarry near Honey
Grove for the Red River courthouse restoration - it’s been quite a while since
I’ve seen quarries mentioned in a Texas newspaper. But that changed on July 14th,
2004 when the Austin American Statesman published an editorial on the subject.
In this interesting piece I learned that there are 314 rock quarries in Texas
and 132 of them were operating without air or water pollution permits. Some had
no permits at all. The Statesman feels as though the Texas Commission on Environmental
Quality was asleep at the switch - and it certainly looks that way.
Quarries range from the familiar granite and limestone quarries of Central Texas
to the Barstow sandstone quarry in West Texas and even the “asphalt” quarries
of Uvalde County.
The quarries that were in violation might’ve gone on
breaking the law forever if it hadn’t been for Alice Walton, one of Sam’s heirs.
Alice bought property along the Brazos River in the 1990s. Supposedly she chose
the land for its beauty (but I think its distance from Arkansas might also have
been a factor).
Texans think nothing of their rivers being clogged or
even going dry, but since Alice Walton was from a water-rich state, when her stretch
of the Brazos started looking sick it was a new experience for her. She was “alarmed.”
No results came from her calls to lower level bureaucrats so she called the Governor’s
office and the wheels started turning.
The commission conducted a survey
of the states 314 quarries from May 17th to June 17th - which has to be some sort
of work record for a state office. That kind of efficiency needs to be studied.
The Statesman’s article closes with an admonition stating that stricter laws
“won’t matter if the commission fails to enforce them - or the ones already on
the books.” But the fairness of the piece comes in the editorial’s penultimate
paragraph where it states: “The commission is also trying to determine just how
and why so many quarries could open and operate without required permits or inspections.”
Maybe the commission will appoint a committee to discuss the feasibility
of a study to determine how and why. If it’s the same group that surveyed the
314 quarries in 30 days - they could wrap it up in five minutes. |
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