Local community organizers and religious leaders are calling for Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Commission On Environmental Quality to reverse a permit allowing a concrete-crushing plant to be built across from the Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital. The TCEQ approved the permit for Texas Coastal Materials LLC., despite backlash from...
State Senator Borris Miles speaks out against a concrete-crushing facility that would be built across the street from LBJ Hospital.Local community organizers and religious leaders are calling for Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Commission On Environmental Quality to reverse a permit allowing a concrete-crushing plant to be built across from the Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital.
Those against the plant's construction are concerned about residents' exposure, particularly patients and staff in the hospital, to fine particulate matter — a mixture of solid and liquid particles in the air. State Senator Borris Miles referred to the TCEQ’s decision to approve the permit as an act of “environmental racism." He pointed to the continuing trend of similar facilities bringing pollutants to communities of color and causing deaths in areas such as Fifth Ward and Acre Homes for decades.
Pastor Reverend Father Martin Eke of St. Francis of the Assisi Catholic Church said it was a “slap in the face" for a company to build the plant where so many of the poorest and sickest people seek medical attention.