July 15, 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the Texas Special Legislative Session that created the agency we know today as the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). I was working in the Texas Senate in 1991 and helped analyze the organic bills that would eventually sprout one of the largest environmental agencies in the world.
It took the Texas Legislature a couple of tries. During the Regular Session (January-May 1991), Senator Carl Parker (D-Port Arthur) filed SB 35, which created a Texas Department of Natural Resources to be headed by a full-time, six-member board. Six? It is hard enough now to appoint one commissioner every two years because of the conflict-of-interest statutes–can you imagine the Governor having to make even more appointments?
Anyway, the bill also created a position of “executive director,” and a special department for agricultural pollution. The Texas Air Control Board, the Texas Water Commission, portions of the Texas Department of Health, and the Structural Pest Control Board would all have been consolidated into the new agency.
1991, however, was a difficult budget year for Texas, which was still reeling from the economic downturn in the late 1980s. A decision was made to put-off writing the state budget until a thorough fiscal review of all state agency operations was conducted. Consequently, any creation of a new environmental agency was also put-off until that review was completed.
Then-Comptroller John Sharp issued the Texas Performance Review that July, and the First Called Session of the Legislature convened on July 15, 1991. Since it was a Special Session, the Legislature had a maximum of 30 days to pass a full state budget, a tax bill (remember those?), and a number of government reform and consolidation bills, including one for the creation of a unified environmental agency, so they could realize the actual savings, and implement the smoke and mirrors, that made the budget foot.
So, the environmental bill was Senate Bill 2, authored by Senator Parker and sponsored in the House by Representative Robert Saunders (D-La Grange). The list of joint authors and sponsors featured a who’s-who of legendary members (two still serving): Barrientos, Truan, Brooks, Sims, Dickson, Ellis, Rossen, Johnson, Moncrief, Zaffirini, Lucio, Tejeda, and Lewis.
Rather than create a new board, SB 2 ultimately reconstituted the existing three-member Texas Water Commission as the new Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC). The old Air Control Board was abolished, and many of the waste-management responsibilities of the Texas Department of Health (including radioactive waste disposal jurisdiction) were moved to the new agency. The provisions related to water well drillers take up multiple pages of the bill. Funny enough, the Structural Pest Control Board was left out, I suspect at the behest of its regulated community. That agency was eventually abolished, and its functions moved to the Texas Department of Agriculture in 2007, thanks to its Sunset Review.
Astoundingly, SB 2 went from filing to being sent to the Governor in just over two weeks, and Governor Ann Richards signed it into law on August 12, 1991. Got to love Special Sessions!
Supposedly, the new agency’s unwieldy name was something of a compromise. The version of SB 2 that came out of the Senate dubbed the new agency the “Texas Department of the Environment.” The urban legend, though, is that there was some sensitivity to having “environment” in the name and being too strongly associated with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. No one could have foreseen (or maybe they did, and it was something of an inside joke) that “TNRCC” would fairly quickly be shortened into “train-wreck.” Whether any of this is true is an open debate.
The Legislature sensibly provided for a two-year transition period but still felt compelled to add a provision expressly requiring the officers and employees of the affected state agencies to “cooperate fully with the reorganization.” From what I have heard, however, that mandate was more often than not honored in the breach.
The TNRCC officially came into being on September 1, 1993. And the rest, they say, is history.
Looking back over time, one can see the evolution of the agency and its shifting priorities. The water well drillers were later moved elsewhere. For a period of time, the agency was both the regulator of, and potential licensee for, the disposal of low-level radioactive waste. Finally, TNRCC was in the rain-making business for several years before that program was moved.
The major tar babies have also changed over time. Once, it was the tire program. Later, it was the petroleum storage tank clean-up program. Remember CAFOs in the Bosque Watershed? Then it was “grandfathered facilities,” then the State Implementation Plan and whether the agency should regulate commercial lawn-mowing operations and speed limits (hello, Texas Emissions Reduction Plan in 2001). Today, the hot issues are dirt and rock (sorry, aggregates), emissions events, environmental justice, and the deterrent power of penalties.
The agency has also gone through two Sunset reviews. The first, in 2001, was a near-run thing, with the Sunset bill very nearly brought down at the 11th hour over, of all things, concrete batch plant permitting. But we got rid of “train-wreck,” anyway (hello, TCEQ).
The second, a short ten years later, was a good bit smoother, despite another depressingly difficult budget in 2011. Nonetheless, the agency emerged with a full 12-year extension, which was pretty darn good for so prominent an agency, and better than some other Article VI agencies.
What will the next Sunset Review be like? First, I reckon, we will have to see if there is still a Sunset Commission on September 1st. Stay tuned on that (fun fact—Senator Carl Parker, arguably a co-parent of TCEQ, was one the “Killer Bees”, a group of Senate Democrats who broke quorum in May 1979…over election bills). Ahem.
Anyway, assuming we work our way out of our present predicament, the TCEQ’s Sunset Self-evaluation is due September 1st. We should also know more around that time about the timing of TCEQ’s review. The next phase will include extensive research by Sunset staff, and the ability for interested persons to provide confidential input. For a refresher, here is the Sunset Commission’s broad overview of how they go about their business.
Thank you all for reading this little bit of history. If any of my friends (you know who you are) reading this who were present at the creation have anything to add, or corrections, please do so in the comments!
XXX
