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Tone-Deaf: Trump’s Texas Visit to Include Environmental Protections Rollback, Week After Deadly Chemical Fire

April 10, 2019

Tone-Deaf: Trump’s Texas Visit to Include Environmental Protections Rollback, Week After Deadly Chemical Fire

Statement of Stephanie Thomas, Organizer, Public Citizen’s Texas Office

Note: Today, President Donald Trump will visit the International Union of Operating Engineers International Training and Education Center in Crosby, a town just northeast of Houston, Texas, where a deadly chemical fire at the KMCO plant last week killed one and injured 10 others. According to news reports, Trump is to announce dangerous executive orders to fast-track pipeline and other energy projects in a reckless attempt to expand dirty energy production, including expediting liquefied natural gas exports. In September 2018, Public Citizen’s Energy Program Director Tyson Slocum outlined the dangers of these exports before a U.S. Senate committee.

It’s inconceivable that the president would come to the very Texas town where a deadly chemical fire raged just one week ago to announce that his administration will do less – not more – to protect workers and their communities. Smoke from the fires has barely cleared, but President Donald Trump shows no shame in using Texas’ petrochemical corridor as a prop for his misguided and dangerous proposals.

Americans need stricter enforcement of rules designed to protect the environment and human health, not a strategy that lets dangerous polluters off the hook.