Over the years he's made some noise with both TCEQ and the EPA. We need more mayors like him! The article begins the story as Hurricane Katrina has slammed into New Orleans and 200,000 evacuees have ended up in his town...
He is learning, as the rest of America will soon realize, to its horror, that the federal government cannot be counted on for much of anything. Nor, really, can the State of Texas. Nor, really, can anyone else.
He has instead taken on more than a dozen major issues, many of which carried considerable political risk. He banned, for all practical purposes, lobbyists from city hall and from any involvement in city contracts, thereby cleaning up what many had come to call “the trough.”
White also went after Lyondell Chemical, the city’s largest emitter of the carcinogen benzene. Unable to force compliance under city laws, he tried an inventive strategy: He challenged Lyondell’s operating permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. “If the company believes that it’s just fine to put tons and tons of benzene in the air,” White told the Chronicle last year, in full trial lawyer mode, “then we would like to hear what scientific evidence they have that benzene is good for you.” The matter is still pending.
In July 2008 White went even further: He challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s basic methods of estimating levels of pollutants. He insisted that because of the EPA’s flawed methods, emissions of harmful chemicals in Houston were many times what they were reported to be. The EPA’s reply, which made national news, came in April 2009. To the amazement of many, the agency agreed with White and promised to overhaul the way it calculates cancer-causing emissions from plants.
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