Maintaining a competitive and sound environmental climate in Texas - one that successfully balances the State's economic needs with its environmental needs - is critical to our members' overall success, particularly in the areas of air, water, waste, permitting, enforcement and cost of regulations.

Clean Air
TCC supports scientifically-bases, climate-efficient technology controls designed to help bring the State's non-attainment areas into attainment with the Federal Clean Air Act. TCC also supports efforts that recognize and balance the responsibility of all citizens to achieve further emissions reductions, particularly with regard to federally-preempted mobile sources.

Water
TCC supports water policies that ensure water is available to its members to meet their current and future water needs, while ensuring the protection of existing water rights and usage.

Waste
TCC supports efforts to ensure that waste is continued to be managed and disposed in a cost-efficient and environmentally-protective manner.

Permitting
TCC supports legislation to streamline the permitting process to ensure that businessess can make capital investments and maintain environmental empliance, while minimizing roadblocks that often times result in expensive procedural delays. TCC also supports efforts to expand operational flexibility options in environmental permits and compliance programs when greater environmental protection is provided. Designing such flexible programs, particularly by recognizing technological advancements in pollution detection and control and incentivizing use of such technology, can achieve significant cost savings for both the state and the regulated community while simultaneously protecting and enhancing the environment.

Enforcement
TCC supports a balanced enforcement approach by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) that compares industries to other similarly-situated industries and also takes into account the size and complexity of a facility when assessing the magnitude of a violation. While TCC also supports the appropriate and fair use of compliance history in permitting and enforcement actions at the TCEQ, it opposes any attempts by the TCEQ to use the same components used to determine compliance history to also determine penalty enhancements for violations.

Cost of Regulations
TCC opposes legislation that places additional requirements on the chemical industry without the appropriate cost-benefit analysis being conducted to weigh and justify the environmental benefit being sought.