Texas Green Blotter

The DMN carries this wire story about air pollution in the Golden Triangle:

PORT ARTHUR, Texas – There is a quiet battle for the future of this industrial town, one of America’s most polluted places.

 On one side is ex-Mayor Oscar Ortiz, who in the waning days of his administration worried about one thing – losing petrochemical plants – not the toxic chemicals spewing from petrochemical plants, the town’s richest landowners.

“The only money here in the city of Port Arthur that amounts to anything comes from industry, from petrochemical companies,” Mr. Ortiz says.

“If industry goes away, people might as well go away, too, because there’ll be no money. That’s the continued salvation of this city.”

Hilton Kelley, like Mr. Ortiz born and raised in Port Arthur, is the opposition.

Mr. Kelley does worry about the toxic chemicals. As the city’s most visible environmental activist, he has campaigned for more restrictions on industrial construction and stricter monitoring of plant emissions.

“I grew up smelling the SO2 [sulfur dioxide] smell, the chemicals,” Mr. Kelley says. “We’re not trying to shut doors of industry. We’re just trying to push these guys to do what’s right.”

The DMN’s headline reminds me of the infamous “weighing scales” graphic used by Al Gore in both Earth in the Balance and in An Inconvenient Truth.