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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Turkey or Crow
Whoops, somebody misplaced the Turkey right before Thanksgiving! The Star-Snore-A-Gram printed a Nov. 21 article that lamented the geographic illiteracy of American youngsters, who have a better chance of scarfing barbecued pork-kabobs at an al Qaeda soiree than they do of finding Afghanistan or Turkey on a map.
Unfortunately, the Star-T couldn’t find Turkey either. Accompanying the story was a locator map (only The Dallas Morning News loves those little maps more) that showed the country in the wrong place, bordering Afghanistan. Back to school, boys and girls. (That’s why they don’t let journalists fire the ICBMs.) The S-T had the good grace to poke a little fun at itself on its own editorial page for the gaffe and ran another map. But — oops again —readers found yet another error in that version.
Cheap Spills
Who said tree-huggers have no sense of humor? Take “Train Wreck,” for instance. That nickname for the state environmental agency was based on a comic pronunciation of its initials — TNRCC, for Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. Now the agency has a new name — Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ. Environmentalists already have a new pronunciation for that acronym: T-sick, as in “makes you sick.”
The poor folks who live around Five Star Custom Foods in Fort Worth may find the new name appropriate. Smells from that plant on East First Street routinely drive neighbors indoors with eyes watering and throats gagging. In the mid-1990s, ever-changing plant owners paid a grand total of $580 in city fines. This year, new owners paid $2,690 for two municipal citations. The state also assessed the plant one $6,000 fine in the mid-1990s. Now, TCEQ has concluded a new investigation. Recommendation: a $1,100 fine, for a company whose most recent problem produced potentially lethal conditions in city sewers.
If all fines are paid in full, that’s a grand total of $10,370 over 10 years — chump change. Plant owners give less financial information than their factory gives out pollution. But a little over a decade ago, when the meat processing plant was one of three facilities it operated, Design Foods reported $275 million in annual sales.
State Rep. Lon Burnam plans a sit-down with TCEQ officials on this matter soon. If Burnam has trouble getting this resolved, Static suggests he introduce legislation relocating city and state environmental offices. We hear the real estate along the 3700 block of East First can be had cheap.
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