The Houston Ship Channel--An Ode to Irony
By Chad A. B. Wilson
Published January 19, 2007, 4:51 pm in Economic Issues, Environmental Issues.
The Irony of Houston
One of my favorite things in Houston is driving over the Houston Ship Channel. There's a huge bridge, and you can see the ships way down below, not to mention the land of VWs right there. Yep, that's where all of the Volkswagens for the Gulf states arrive. It's quite an amazing site. I love the ship channel so much that I actually went on a tour of it. My wife and some friends and I boarded a small tour boat that took us around the channel to see all of the huge tanker ships and whatnot.
The ship channel truly is one of the great things about Houston. It encompasse everything about Houston that we love--the dirtiness, the pollutants, the big business, the booming economy. Forget the Menil or Goode Company or the Galleria. If you want to show someone the real Houston, take them for a tour of the Houston Ship Channel. Then they will get a taste of what it's really like. And if you take I-10 to get there, you might get stuck in a traffic jam. Then they'll really know what Houston's like. And maybe they will love it as much as we Houstonians do.
We embrace our city, you see. Check out Houston. It's Worth It. to know more about why we think our city is great. We have more things to offer here at fairer prices than any other place in the U.S.
So don't complain like some people do. It's articles like this one that really irk me: "Study cites possible link between Ship Channel air, cancer risks." What's the point, Houston Chronicle? Are you trying to make my city look bad? Yeah, we know there are some things about it that aren't quite right. Yeah, we know we have a reputation for being a Republican country club big business haven.
And we love it.
Here is an example from the article: "The 18-month study by the University of Texas School of Public Health identified for the first time a possible link between cancer risks and hazardous air pollutants being emitted in Harris County."
Like I believe that. First of all, I don't anyone at UT. Those kids only want to grow up to be politicians and lawyers. And what is a "School of Public Health"? They're not even real MDs; they're doctors who can't cut it is what they are.
And what about this: "The study said children living within two miles of the Ship Channel had a 56 percent higher risk of contracting acute lymphocytic leukemia than children living more than 10 miles from the channel."
Well, I think I just have to ignore that one. I got nothing there.
But the government is listening to this crap?
"Mayor Bill White said the report will be a motivating force: 'In the past, sometimes we've tolerated unacceptable levels of stuff dumped into our air that could be hazardous to our health.' But now he said the city is fighting for cleaner air."
Bill White, huh? This guy's a Democrat. That's why we need Republicans in office to keep this kind of stuff from happening. Besides, the air in Houston never killed anyone. My grandma worked for years in an industrial plant and she lived a good long 65 years.
And the mother of the sick child says this: "Now she is afraid whenever he plays outside. She bought him a PlayStation to make up for keeping him indoors so much. 'He was always outside playing. He loved being out there,' she said, but now she just worries that it might not be safe."
That's right. Keep the kid inside. Develop his hand-eye coordination with video games. Don't worry: the air in your house is just recirculated, so it stays pure. Keep him inside and he'll be fine.
The End of Irony
I'm a cruel person, I know. I can't even keep this up any longer. I applaud the people who did this study. I applaud Bill White for saying things like "Our image will improve if we improve our air quality." You bet it will. People who don't know this city think of it as a backwards bunch of corrupt polluting industrial plants. And in some ways it is. I hope people are fighting to change that, for Houston really is a great city. The problem is that things like this have been allowed for far too long.
Several professors at the University of Houston have been studying water quality in the Houston Ship Channel, and they haven't released their findings yet. But it's bound to be bad news. In the past, industry has had "voluntary" regulations. We need things stronger than that.
But it will send these companies to places where it's cheaper to manufacture.
So be it. One child whose sickness or death is caused from a pollutant emitted from a factory is enough to cause the plant to change its entire operation. This isn't some convoluted form of risk analysis, either. What's we're talking about are real people who get sick because of pollutants, and that needs to end. Right now. We'll give you two weeks. Maybe a month. And then you either stop it, or you're shut down.
Comments & Trackbacks
By University Update [Visitor] January 19, 2007, 8:16 pm. PermaLink
The Houston Ship Channel--An Ode to Irony
By Chara
· http://www.UrbanChefHouston.com February 13, 2007, 10:57 pm. PermaLink
The simplistic solution to this problem is to impose zoning. This way we would be able to keep the ship channel and all that it brings to Houston's character and economy while ensuring that developers can't build affordable housing where our health can't afford to risk it.
The trouble with zoning is that Houston's lack of zoning is one of the many things that I have come to appreciate about the city. Not to mention, it's been attempted many times over the last eighty years or so and never gets passed.
White is right to suggest that we need tougher standards. Another thing we can be doing is making more personal efforts to help people move from that region to the West side. A lot of those highly poluted neighborhoods are looked at as though they suffer only from poverty (which is bad enough); perhaps calling attention to the very real health risks might motivate us to do more to help people in these neighborhoods move.
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