Texas is one of 20 states in the nation with no policy of any kind that restricts building schools on or near contaminated sites. See the 50 State Survey for details on Texas’s current school siting laws and regulations.
Flare burns from the Texas Petrochemical factory provide onlookers with an ominous backdrop at a Cesar E. Chavez High School football practice. The facility’s flames, in plain sight from the school’s practice field, serve as a constant reminder to nearby residents of the hazardous chemicals they are exposed to on a daily basis. Cesar E. Chavez High School is in Houston’s Harris County: The national leader in benzene and butadiene releases. Some neighborhoods in the county have registered high concentrations of the carcinogen 1,3-butadiene.
Cesar E. Chavez High School sits approximately ¼-mile from three industrial facilities, with a fourth just over a mile away. The school site was previously used as an auto repair facility, auto salvage yard, dry cleaners, service station, and lavatory chemical factory. Underground industry pipelines still traverse the school property. Suspicion of residual contamination and concern over the school’s proximity to industry brought the community together to fight for justice.
The community group Unidos Contra Environmental Racism (UCER), and many other concerned citizens, believe that their primarily Hispanic community (83% of the students at Cesar E. Chavez High School are of Hispanic origin) suffered an environmental injustice with the siting of Cesar E. Chavez High School. Community members argue that the school district took advantage of the fact that the predominantly low-income community lacked the resources and political clout to stop the project, and that school construction in such close proximity to environmental hazards would never have been permitted in a more affluent neighborhood.
However, the new high school was to be a state of the art facility with the latest technological advances and many community members viewed the school as a dream come true, despite the risk posed by environmental hazards.
In their initial efforts to halt construction in 1998, UCER sought the help of local officials and elected representatives, citing the surrounding plants and site history as obvious, categorical deterrents, and pointing to other available sites that would not pose health risks to current and future students and staff. They voiced their concern about long-term exposures of students to high levels of toxins, as well as the imposing risk of an industrial accident at one of the surrounding plants. When City Council and School Board members did nothing to assist the group, UCER gathered 650 signatures petitioning the EPA to intercede on their complaint of environmental injustice. The EPA took some initial action, but their involvement fizzled for reasons unknown to the community. UCER continues to fight for environmental justice and has sought the assistance of organizations such as CHEJ and the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation for help in educating the community about health hazards and environmental toxins.
Students at Cesar E. Chavez High School are starting to voice their own concerns over the school’s air quality issues. Recently, at a summer youth program sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation, students worked on a project they titled “The Right to Breathe.” The project documented the struggles students face at the hands of industrial pollution (Cappiello, 2005; Parras, 2005; Auliff, 2000).