Tell Congress: Help Clean Up Polluted Texas Communities!

For a few months now TCE has been hard at work out of our Houston office fighting to save and expand the federal Superfund program. This important policy was established in 1980 and was supposed to use money from polluting industry to clean up toxic waste sites. 

Now, in the wake of one of Texas’ worst ever natural disasters, it is more important than ever. Toxins from polluted sites have undoubtedly been released throughout neighborhoods and downstream.

Under the Superfund program companies are supposed to clean up their own messes where they can. In instances where no responsible party still exists, a fund generated by payments from polluting industries was supposed to cover the costs of removing the pollution threat.

Unfortunately it just doesn’t work like that. The polluter payments were suspended over 20 years ago and ever since then it’s been taxpayers footing the bill for Superfund. This has meant slower and many fewer cleanups for the more than 1300 Superfund sites around the country, and a lot of pressure to cut corners.

President Trump has proposed a budget that would slash the already underfunded program. The federal brownfield program--which uses grants and loans to help local and state governments remediate less intensely polluted sites—is also slated for deep cuts.

We need you to write to your members of Congress RIGHT NOW to let them know you want Superfund preserved, you want polluters to pay, and you support federal programs to help Texans clean up toxic messes before they threaten all our lives. Many Texas GOP members of Congress have already expressed support for Superfund projects, and Hurricane Harvey drives the message home--we need to clean our messes up BEFORE they become disasters.

Use our tool here to send that message to House and Senate members--it will provide talking points and all the info you need to make it easy to stick up for our communities.  Thank you!

Enter your information to take action now!

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Thank you for taking action for Texas' most threatened and vulnerable communities. Please take a moment now to share this message on social media--Facebook, Twitter, etc.--and help us spread the word and build the movement to protext Texas from this pollution!