Other Issues In the News

With most measures defeated, environmentalists cling to a few bills.

By Asher Price
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

With less than a week left in the legislative session, environmental groups are pinning their hopes for the session on a handful of measures. Chief among these are bills that deal with water conservation, energy efficiency and parks funding.

This session could be among the most successful in recent years, said Luke Metzger, legislative director for the advocacy group Environment Texas. But the environmental tenor of the session depends on how just a few measures play out.

Today, spectators can expect a give-and-take over how many reservoirs the Legislature includes in the session's big water measure. (The Legislature started discussion on the bill Monday night.) Speaker Tom Craddick said he would leave the issue up to House members.

The reservoirs would quench thirsty souls in cities such as Dallas. Environmentalists say Texans would be better served by cutting down on water consumption, especially lawn-watering, and spending the hundreds of millions of dollars required for reservoir construction on other projects.

In March, the Senate approved a $750 million plan to create as many as 19 reservoirs over the next 20 years, but the number could be whittled to 13 or fewer.

On Monday, the Sierra Club was rallying its members to oppose the reservoirs.

"Water development interests want to designate rural sites for costly, unnecessary, and environmentally destructive reservoirs to benefit cities that are not practicing good water conservation," read an e-mail sent out by the group.

Environmentalists support other measures in the bill, including a water-conservation public awareness program and the creation of an advisory group to determine how much water needs to be kept in Texas' rivers to satisfy wildlife.

They are joined by lobbyists for landowners who worry that the government won't pay them a fair price for the land to build the reservoirs.

One of the unresolved budget issues is state parks.

A gulf has opened over how much sporting goods sales tax money should be forked over to parks. House supporters say it should be as much as $100 million a year; some senators said the number should be closer to $40 million a year. (An advisory panel has said that parks need $430 million.)

Environmentalists have stepped behind an energy efficiency proposal authored by Rep. Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, that would require school districts, universities and state agencies to reduce their annual electricity consumption by 5 percent each year for six years.

And then there are the bills that environmentalists would do well to cross their fingers about, including an amendment to an air quality bill, now in conference committee, that requires efficiency standards for DVD players and residential pool pumps. The amendment seems unlikely to make it.

Also dicey is a proposal by Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, that calls for the environmental commission to determine strategies to reduce greenhouse gases that won't cost businesses money. Metzger gave it a 20 percent chance of survival.

asherprice@statesman.com; 445-3643