Standards For Safer Air To Breathe

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT the Harris County Democratic Party supports:

• Appropriate science-based air quality standards for the Houston Region that will result in safer indoor and outdoor air for all humans to breathe.
• Environmental assessments that include protection for human health based on appropriate health and life science peer reviewed studies.
• An environmental economic formula that includes an environmental assessment that will protect both public revenues and public health for publicly funded transportation and development
  

FACTS TO SUPPORT THE RESOLUTION:

• Harris County, Texas is the third largest populated county in the United States with about 2 million voters and 3 million residents;
• Harris County has 22% of the roll call in seven (7) of the 31 Senate Districts in Texas; the counties in these seven districts include Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Jefferson, Montgomery, and Orange. These counties politically define the "Houston Region".

• The City of Houston, Harris County, Texas is the 4th largest populated city in the United States; and is to home of the oil and gas industry, NASA and the largest medical complex in the world;
• Vehicles (44%) and industry (55%) are the leading sources of air pollution and toxic emissions in the Houston Region;
• General property tax revenue is the primary source of funds for public institutions and agencies, such as city and county pollution control and the regional offices of the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, Texas Department of Health, and Department of Transportation;
• Harris County and the Houston Region are consistently out of compliance with Ambient Air Quality Standards for major criteria air pollutants. These pollutants are acknowledged by both the scientific community and the city, county, and state Departments of Health and Texas Commission of Environmental Quality as exacerbating both respiratory and cardiovascular related disease in the human population.

ADOPTED 30 June 2005 by the Harris County Democratic