Nice property available. Just don't drink the water.

Emphasis mine:

How clean is clean?

That's the question facing Houston as officials consider easing strict standards for cleaning up contaminated groundwater. The plan, up for council vote Wednesday, is intended to help spur redevelopment of so-called "brownfields," former industrial properties with low levels of pollution.

A Superfund site in Westchase could be one of the first properties to redevelop if the city adopts the program. The now-defunct Crystal Chemical Company once manufactured herbicides on the 25-acre tract, just east of the Royal Oaks Country Club.

The current owner, Union Pacific Railroad, has treated much of the soil and groundwater for arsenic contamination. But the groundwater still has too much arsenic to qualify as drinking water, according to state and federal environmental regulators

Drinking-water quality — the cleanup standard under state law — can take years to attain. A city official estimated it would take hundreds of years of treatment for the water underneath the Crystal site to be potable, or clean enough to drink.

"Because of the expense, many developers back away from these brownfield-type properties," said Mike Frew, a technical water specialist with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

To promote redevelopment of these idle sites, the Texas Legislature created an alternative in 2003. Owners can apply for a "municipal setting designation," or MSD, from the state, with city approval. The MSD allows redevelopment as long as the contaminated groundwater never will be used for drinking.

Sounds like a suburbanite's dream, doesn't it? I bet they name the development "Blue Stream", or even better, "Crystal Water", after the company that laced the soil with arsenic.

In cities like Houston and Dallas, most properties use city-supplied drinking water instead of wells. It just does not make sense to require property owners to reach the potable standard, the city's environmental attorney, Ceil Price, said.

"This is groundwater that no one is using," Price said. "In some cases, the groundwater has been treated for 20 years and they just aren't able to get to drinking water standards. And there just isn't technology to get them to the standard."

If Houston joins the MSD program, hundreds of properties potentially could qualify for redevelopment, Price said. But the properties would have to pass a number of environmental hurdles, and owners would remain liable for cleaning up other pollution, such as contaminated soil or surface water.

Price emphasized that contaminated groundwater that possibly could hurt people in ways besides drinking, such as leaking to the surface or releasing hazardous vapors, still would have to be treated under the MSD program.

Oh, that's good to know, Mr. Price. I was afraid for a moment there you were helping make the case for development.

Local environmentalists do not oppose the MSD program outright, but view it with caution.

"Sometimes (contaminated groundwater) travels and gets into our streams and reduces the quality," said Brandt Mannchen of the Sierra Club's Houston Regional Group.

Nice to know that those environmental whackos aren't up in arms over this.

One concern is the presence of nearby drinking water wells. Seventy percent of the city's water supply comes from Lakes Livingston, Conroe and Houston, but the rest comes from wells. There are three public drinking water wells within a one-mile radius of the Crystal Chemical property.

Regulators say that those wells are protected from the arsenic-contaminated groundwater by a containment wall, a pump system and monitoring equipment. If the site wins MSD status, a deed restriction would prohibit drinking water wells from being dug on the actual site in the future.

The TCEQ has given MSD status to 34 properties statewide, accounting for roughly 577 acres. Most of the sites are in Dallas and Fort Worth.

Gotta keep up with the Metroplex, ya know. Bidness is bidness.

In Fort Worth, the MSD program allowed developers to build a Target, Marshall's and other stores on the downtown site of an old Montgomery Ward warehouse, Frew said. The water underground there still has traces of trichloroethene, a toxic cleaning solvent.

If Houston adopts the program, it should examine each applicant carefully, said James Kelly, president of the Bayou Preservation Association. The city also should be clear with the public that the relaxed standard will provide relief only for a narrowly defined group of eligible brownfields. The city should also create its own name for the MSD program, Kelly said, since "municipal setting designation" does not mean anything to most people.

How about "greenfield enhancement zone"? Or just "Green Zone"?

"Let's just make sure that in relaxing this requirement we don't undermine the incentives of landowners who are keeping their property clean and who are cleaning up pollution when it occurs," Kelly said.

Thanks to Mr. Kelly for thinking a little ahead on this one.

Really and truly, anyone foolish enough to buy a suburban property with arsenic-laced water as a feature is just the kind of fool who will vote to keep in office the Republicans in the Texas Lege who relaxed the rules enough for the developers to offer it for sale.

At a bargain price.

Weekly Texblog Wrangle

Here's your Texas Progressive Alliance Blog Round-Up for the week of August 20, 2007. This week's installment is once again compiled by Vince from Capitol Annex.

Krazypuppy at Texas Kaos keeps track of What You Will Not Find at Laura Bush's Library.

TXSharon at BlueDaze asksL "Would you make Osama Bin Ladin director of Homeland Security?" If you said no, read about who wants to protect our water in Barnett Shale: Devon wants to conserve our water? Like hell!

Hal at Half Empty sees vultures flocking to pick over the bones of Tom DeLay's old seat.

Texas Toad at North Texas Liberal exposes the hypocrisy of chickenhawk Republicans taking shots at Rick Noriega.

Vince at Capitol Annex tells us about the coming storm surrounding implementation of religious viewpoint "anti-discrimination" policies in Texas schools to comply with a bill recently passed by the Texas Legislature.

WcNews at Eye On Williamson points out the hypocrisy in sentencing in recent child molestation cases in Williamson County.

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs fries up a double order of e-Slate voting woes: an advance of the meeting over security issues with Houston Mayor Bill White and the Harris County (Republican) clerk; and the disappointing results of that meeting, including the news that the TDP lawsuit over "emphasis voting" was dismissed.

Captain Kroc at McBlogger suggests the incumbent in the Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector race is using a page or two from Turd Blossom's playbook.

Boadicea at StopCornyn tells us about John Cornyn's Badge Of Fiscal Irresponsibility.

CouldBeTrue at South Texas Chisme exposes another Republican minority district suppression scam - using immigration raids to minimize population counts for the 2010 census.

Kuffat Off the Kuff asks "How many felonies could you commit with an oyster?"

Glenn Smith at Burnt Orange Report gives a "political type's" perspective on the media's fascination with Karl Rove.

Also, don't forget to check out these other great Texas Progressive Alliance blogs: People's Republic of Seabrook, Three Wise Men, Musings, Bay Area Houston, In The Pink Texas, Who's Playin?, Feet To The Fire, Easter Lemming Liberal News, Winding Road In Urban Area, Common Sense, B & B , The Agonist, Texas Truth Serum.

"This Week" Prez debate wrap

Live-blogging at The Great Orange Klan, and also Texas Blue. The ABC News online poll shows Obama the winner and Joe Biden a somewhat surprising third ...

Who do you think won the Democratic debate?

Barack Obama
4,028
Hillary Clinton
2,866
Joe Biden
2,063
John Edwards
1,736
Dennis Kucinich
1,336
Nobody won. I'm voting Republican. (Ha ha)
576
Bill Richardson
473
Mike Gravel
358
Nobody won. I'm waiting for Al Gore to get in the race. (Give it up, people.)
348
Chris Dodd
119
Total Vote: 13,903

Dodd's Talk Clock:

Sunday Funnies (best of the rest of the news edition)

TDP lawsuit over e-voting machines dismissed

DeeceX, at Burnt Orange:

Earlier this year, the Texas Democratic Party sued then-Secretary of State Roger Williams in his capacity as the state's chief election officer, alleging that the eSlate touch-screen voting machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic and certified by the Secretary of State were defective and inaccurately tallied voters' intentions, depriving them of their voting rights as protected by the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, the suit alleged that the machines mis-counted so-called "emphasis votes."

Yesterday, federal district judge Sam Sparks granted summary judgment and dismissed the lawsuit. Chad Dunn, the TDP's General Counsel and the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, had this to say:

“We’re disappointed in the judge’s opinion. We’re taking the time to analyze it thoroughly and we’re considering our options on how to proceed. The Texas Democratic Party continues to believe that the eSlate machine fails to record the intent of voters in a significant number of instances.”

The bottom line is this: the eSlate STILL inaccurately counts certain straight-ticket votes, but neither the courts nor the Secretary of State will, for now, do anything about it.

In this posting I mentioned a meeting local e-voting activists were having with Houston and Harris County officials over concerns about e-Slates. That meeting was similarly a total washout.

It turns out that Bill White no more gives a damn about the myriad of security issues surrounding electronic voting than any of the county's Republicans. He came off not just disinterested but passive/aggressively hostile to the idea of asking a local expert in the field -- Rice University professor Dan Wallach -- to head a nonpartisan committee to oversee testing and make any security recommendations. He considered this request an attempt to "sell him a vendor".

Disappointing, but not unexpected by this first-hand observer. Perhaps the mayor was fatigued at the end of a long day which included Hurricane Dean preparedness meetings, but I'm not capable of giving him the benefit of the doubt based on things I heard about his lack of interest in advance of our conference.

Since neither the courts nor elected Democrats care to address these concerns, the emphasis on voting integrity by necessity now shifts to other areas of GOP voter suppression tactics.

Much more to write about this topic in the months to come.

Aldine teachers' union leader arrested in front of school

She made the mistake of talking to teachers:

The trouble began Monday (Aug. 13) when school district officials informed Aldine American Federation of Teachers staff that they could not hand out membership information on school property at Aldine High School, where the district held its new teacher orientation.

The next day, the Aldine superintendent circled the high school with police officers. Aldine AFT staff and member volunteers patiently waited for teachers to finish the event, and when they emerged, one teacher directly asked for some literature. When an Aldine AFT staff member stepped onto school property to hand her a brochure, district officers swarmed around her and threatened her with a citation. Mayorga drove up to the scene on public property and asked an officer what was happening. The officer asked for her identification, and when she questioned why he needed it, he manhandled her, cuffed her and arrested her.

Carmen Mayorga, president of AFT Local 6345, was arrested, handcuffed, and charged with "failure to identify." Her car was impounded and she was held in jail 14 hours before being released, the union said. All of the 800+ members of Local 6345 work for the Aldine ISD, near Houston. The union is considering legal action against the school district over the incident. Texas AFT President Linda Bridges:

Surely the Aldine school district’s police force has better things to do. The superintendent is using [the local police department] to intimidate and coerce employees and their representatives and impede their exercise of constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of association. What is [Aldine School] Superintendent Wanda Bamberg so afraid of that she feels the need to handcuff and rough up a 115-pound mother of three just for coming near a school?

This sounds like something out of the old union-busting days in the 1920s, or even worse, past attempts to stifle free speech on public school campuses.

What is the purpose of this thuggish action by school officials and local police? They're not protecting or serving anything with this brute display of intimidation.

Now the taxpayers of the Aldine ISD will see their tax dollars spent to defend an unnecessary lawsuit instead of educating their children.

Even the Chinese-made diabetes test strips I use are bogus

I don't suppose it ever occurred to any of our corporate millionaires that outsourcing our manufacturing to the cheapest labor source might mean we'd get crappy, dangerous, poisonous products back.

Or maybe they just didn't care.

Sunday Funnies (All Rove all the time edition)

I'm not worried about Dean. Yet. (and more assorted bloggerhea)

It's too early. Maybe by this time next week.

But the SciGuy defintely has the best information in order for me to decide whether to worry about him, or not.

Looking around elsewhere:

-- Lots in the blogosphere over the pending execution of Kenneth Foster, an essentially innocent man. I have wanted to write more about this, but the futility of being able to influence this miscarriage of justice is just too depressing. The Texas Moratorium Network has everything you need to know about this case. Here's an excerpt from Reuters on the phenomenon of the death penalty in Texas:

Texas will almost certainly hit the grim total of 400 executions this month, far ahead of any other state, testament to the influence of the state's conservative evangelical Christians and its cultural mix of Old South and Wild West.

"In Texas you have all the elements lined up. Public support, a governor that supports it and supportive courts," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

"If any of those things are hesitant then the process slows down," said Dieter. "With all cylinders working as in Texas it produces a lot of executions."

-- John Cornyn loves box turtles but hates poor children, and in a reality-based Texas that alone ought to be enough to cost him re-election.

-- More and louder chatter about Hillary being a drag on the Democratic down-ballot. To be clear: I think, like nearly everybody else at this point, that absent some uncharacteristic meltdown Hillary Clinton will be both the Democratic nominee and the next President of the United States. To the sneering chagrin of every Republican from sea to shining sea, and to my own not-insignificant queasiness.

But I still also believe she kills us down the ballot in Texas and across the South, threatening our legislative majorities in Washington, and snuffing out a fledgling uprising in the Texas Lege.

I want to be wrong about this.

-- The goddamned Blue Dogs are Bush's best friends in Congress. We knew what we had with Chet Edwards and Henry Cuellar, and mostly with Nick Lampson, but I have to say that the biggest letdown is Ciro Rodriguez. He was a progressive when he was first elected, then he was defeated by the odious Cuellar, and now has turned to the Dark Side, apparently for political expediency.

I can't believe I fought so hard to get him re-elected. Besides blogging, I attended his fundraisers and gave him too much money myself. No more.

-- Lastly, this rather fascinating story in the Atlantic entitled The Rove Presidency contains an anecdote that speaks for itself:

Dick Armey, the House Republican majority leader when Bush took office (and no more a shrinking violet than DeLay), told me a story that captures the exquisite pettiness of most members of Congress and the arrogance that made Bush and Rove so inept at handling them. “For all the years he was president,” Armey told me, “Bill Clinton and I had a little thing we’d do where every time I went to the White House, I would take the little name tag they give you and pass it to the president, who, without saying a word, would sign and date it. Bill Clinton and I didn’t like each other. He said I was his least-favorite member of Congress. But he knew that when I left his office, the first schoolkid I came across would be given that card, and some kid who had come to Washington with his mama would go home with the president’s autograph. I think Clinton thought it was a nice thing to do for some kid, and he was happy to do it.” Armey said that when he went to his first meeting in the White House with President Bush, he explained the tradition with Clinton and asked the president if he would care to continue it. “Bush refused to sign the card. Rove, who was sitting across the table, said, ‘It would probably wind up on eBay,’” Armey continued. “Do I give a damn? No. But can you imagine refusing a simple request like that with an insult? It’s stupid. From the point of view of your own self-interest, it’s stupid. I was from Texas, and I was the majority leader. If my expectations of civility and collegiality were disappointed, what do you think it was like for the rest of the congressmen they dealt with? The Bush White House was tone-deaf to the normal courtesies of the office.”

Go away, Kay Bailey. Just go away.

I'm with Greg here: this fawning over the Texas Harridan is puke-worthy...

Vice president? Doesn't want it. A run for governor? Quite possibly. Leaving public service for a new career in the private sector? That's appealing, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said Thursday, in the midst of a three-day West Texas bus tour.

"Before I retire, I need to have financial stability," said Hutchison, 64, raising the option of leaving public service after being asked about the always-swirling speculation about her political plans. "I could certainly see another career in the private sector. ... I certainly would like to make money. I think I've given up a lot of earning potential being in public service."

Christ, as if we didn't already know that it's all about her all the time. So what's a politician who -- allegedly -- isn't running for anything except a huge payday after government work doing a on a bus tour of West Texas?

Is she actually out there selling wind turbines?

"Say it's Hillary and (Sen. Barack) Obama," said political scientist Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. "I doubt the Republicans would want to put forward two white males."

He said Hutchison is the only Republican woman in a high office who is well-positioned for the vice presidential spot.

GOP consultant Royal Masset said, "She's probably the most credible female we have in the nation."

It doesn't do for officeholders to look like they're campaigning to be vice president. But Hutchison sounds sincere about not wanting it.

"No. Nooooo," she said. "I do not want to be on the ticket for vice president ... I'm not interested in it. I don't want to be asked.

Since Kay also told us she would never run for a third Senate term, I'm having trouble believing this "nooooo".

Candidly, her best political option is to leave office, even though the appointment by Governor 39% MoFo to fill the unexpired five-and-a-half-year term would likely be a reactionary, fundamentalist conservative such as Lamar Smith. Or, God forbid, Henry Bonilla, who wanted the job in the first place way back when Kay was dithering over a run for the Austin mansion in 2005. My prediction is that she probably will "retire from public life" and go make a mountain of money, only to return in a few years to "accept the call from Texans for new leadership".

And we will all collectively vomit at that moment.

The logical fallacies of conservatives

Previously we brought you the quiz "Which Breed of Liberal Are You?" Today this excerpt, via Bill in Portland Maine:

In the "Advanced Battle Tactics" chapter of his new book, How to Win a Fight with a Conservative, Dan Kurtzman shows how Republicans lean heavily on "logical fallacies" to try and win arguments. He defines logical fallacies as "the three-legged stools of faulty reasoning that conservatives use to prop up many of their ridiculous ideas." See if these sound familiar...

False Choice: Offering only two options for consideration when there are clearly other valid choices.

Example: "If we give up the fight in the streets of Baghdad, we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities." ---George W. Bush

Strawman: Oversimplifying, exaggerating, caricaturing or otherwise misrepresenting your position without regard to fact. In doing this, your opponent sets up a figurative straw man that he can easily knock down to prove his point.

Example: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." ---Karl Rove

Shifting The Burden of Proof: Presenting an argument as commonly accepted truth, failing to support it with any evidence, and then forcing you to prove otherwise. This tactic is employed out of laziness or to mask the reality that the facts are not on your side.

Example: "I think the burden is on those people who think he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are." ---[Former White House press secretary] Ari Fleischer, on Saddam Hussein's alleged WMDs

Slippery Slope: Leaping to wild, sometimes inexplicable conclusions---going, say, from Step One to Step Two and then all the way to Step Ten without establishing any discernible connection. By using this kind of leapfrog logic, a person can come to any conclusion he damn well pleases.

Example: "All of a sudden, we see riots, we see protests, we see people clashing. The next thing we know, there is injured or there is dead people. We don’t want to get to that extent." ---Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the dangers posed by gay marriage

e-voting woes: Hart InterCivic's e-Slates

Kristen Mack, from earlier this month:

A recent study of the electronic voting machine used in Harris County found that attacks on the system could compromise the accuracy, secrecy and availability of the machine.

The California secretary of state's office conducted a "top-to-bottom review" of the voting machines certified for use in California, including the Hart InterCivic system used here.

The tests, administered by the University of California at Davis, found that absent tighter procedures, hackers could alter vote totals, violate the privacy of individual voters and delete audit trails.

Debra Bowen, the CA SOS, decertified the Hart machines (.pdf) for use in her state. She tentatively will re-approve them if they use an updated, more secure version of their (still-proprietary) software.

The Harris County Democratic Party's Elections Integrity Working Group, an offshoot of the Progressive Populist Caucus' efforts to thwart the assortment of voter suppression tactics throughout the largest county in Texas, will meet today with Houston mayor Bill White, Harris County clerk Beverley Kaufman and others to discuss the issues swirling around Hart's e-Slates.

Kaufman's office doesn't think the California hackfest is anything to worry about:

"The laboratory experiment, as conducted by the UC-Davis researchers, seems almost impossible to replicate outside that laboratory environment. Thus, voters in Harris County should be aware, but not be concerned by the results," said Hector DeLeon, a spokesman for Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman, whose office administers elections.

DeLeon called the test unrealistic because it is "premised on providing unfettered access to the voting equipment to a malicious individual with the technological savvy and ingenuity to violate the system."

Excuse me, Hector?

"Relying on security through obscurity is a terrible thing to do," UC-Davis computer science professor Matt) Bishop said. "(Hackers) can get the info, the only question is how hard do they have to work to get it. Any defense that relies on ignorance underestimates how ingenious attackers can be and overestimates how fallible people are."

The county, under contract, conducts all of the city of Houston's municipal elections. Harris County officials from top to bottom are Republicans; Houston's mayor and a predominant majority of city council members are Democratic.

The possibility of having paper trails -- much less a paper ballot -- in time for the November 2008 election is slim and none, and Slim just rode out of town. The city is disinclined from a cost aspect to add printers to the e-Slates; the county genuinely unconcerned by the risk assessment to do so. Today's meeting likely won't move those positions much.

Still, the recommendations of the task force will include following the guidelines set forth in the Texas Secretary of State's Election Advisory #2006-16, along with the 'best practices' suggestions of Travis County clerk Dana DeBeauvoir in her "Method for Developing Security Procedures in a DRE Environment" (.pdf) which include logic and accuracy tests, parallel and hash code testing and post-election and audit protocols to prevent -- or failing that, detect -- electronic vote tampering.

That's not too much to ask, is it?