Not so fast on LNG
I recently read a letter touting the economic benefits of Rio Grande LNG due to high-paying jobs that would lift our entire economy to the levels of yet another fossil-fuel-heavy, industrial-refining export terminal along the Gulf coast — but this time on our own Brownsville Ship Channel.
Rio Grande LNG will be an export terminal, which means that the profit goes to the company and not to the benefit of the entire local community. The location of Rio Grande LNG export terminal with multiple trains will damage the local air, water, land and resident population. The local towns of Laguna Vista, Port Isabel and South Padre Island closest to the potential LNG terminals have all voiced dissent against the LNG plants because the pollutants’ emissions will blow directly over them. But as the wind mostly blows south-easterly, the rest of the RGV will be polluted also.
As of yet, no air permits have been approved for Rio Grande LNG from TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality). So, don’t be fooled that the LNGs are a done deal. Our area’s ecology is under assault by heavy industrial petrochemical plants as well as the government. The U.S. government will take the local land through eminent domain for border walls, which will decimate the refuges and parks in the western part of the RGV while the LNG export industrialists pollute the neighborhoods, parks and refuges on the coast near SPI.
The environment of our coast, our frontier and our parks and refuges is under attack, and our local and Texas leaders must remember the long term need for clean air, water and a healthy population.
Diane Teter,
Edinburg
Registering to vote should be a mandate
Well, it’s getting close to Election Day and I can see the various voter organizations getting to work trying to get more people registered to vote.
From my years of contact with city and county officials and their employees, all whose salaries come from citizens’ taxes, there are quite a few who don’t vote, as some have bald-facedly told me.
Would it be too much to ask our city and county commissioners and other elected officials to mandate that anyone who works for the city, county or state be registered to vote?
Ferdinando Garcia,
Edinburg
Hablando español es un tema de debate
Jaime González says he often uses Spanish with Anglos, translating for them if necessary. Bravo, Jaime!
It would be good if more bilingual South Texans were like that — proudly standing up for their right to be Hispanic and speak the predominant language of this region. Many seem to have swallowed the myth that English is the “better” language, and that Spanish speakers are somehow second class.
Ted Cruz, for example. Though Hispanic and raised from the age of 4 in South Texas, he early on opted for an English-only lifestyle, never bothering to learn more than the survival Spanish Anglos use to talk to their servants. He can’t debate with Beto O’Rourke in Spanish, and doesn’t seem to think the matter is all that important.
Not surprisingly, of the two candidates, it is Beto, rather than Ted, whose platform speaks to the concerns of the Hispanic community.
Terry Church,
McAllen
