Austin Rec. Center -- 1301 Shoal Creek Blvd.
Downtown -- 617 Congress Ave.
Westgate Mall -- 4521 Westgate Blvd.
Northcross Mall -- 2525 W. Anderson Lane
U. of Texas West Mall -- Flawn Academic Ctr.
ACC District Administration Office -- 5930 Middle Fiskville
ACC Northridge Campus -- 11920 Stonehollow
ACC Pinnacle Campus -- 7748 W. Hwy 290
ACC Riverside Campus-- 1020 Grove Blvd.
Pan American Rec. Center -- 2100 E. 3rd St.
Rosewood Rec. Center -- 2300 Rosewood Ave.
South Austin Rec. Center -- 1100 Cumberland
Spicewood Springs Branch Library -- 8637 Spicewood Springs Rd.
University Hills Branch Library, 4721 Loyola Ln.
Speaking of the council race, radio talk-show junkies may have been surprised to hear Councilmember Eric Mitchell endorsing council candidates Jeff Hart in Place 1 and Rick Wheeler in Place 4 on KVET last week. The endorsements came two weeks after Mitchell requested a city legal opinion on whether councilmembers can endorse. Apparently, he thought departing colleague and journalist Brigid Shea wrongfully endorsed Hart's opponent, Daryl Slusher, and Wheeler's opponent, Beverly Griffith, when, during her election night interviews on Channel 6, she asked all of the runoff candidates whether they supported continuing funding abortion services for the poor. (Hart, Slusher, and Griffith said yes. Wheeler said no.) Shea claims that she never endorsed the candidates, and though she repeatedly questioned Mitchell after he raised the accusation at the May 9 council meeting, Mitchell never detailed the alleged wrongdoing. Despite the legal opinion, Shea says she'll leave the endorsement game to Mitchell. -- A.M.
But Sierra Club representatives insist that it has everything to do with the candidate's commitment to the environment. The client in question is Griffin Industries, which runs an animal rendering plant in Bastrop County. The plant takes the inedible parts of slaughtered animals and liquefies them for use in products ranging from engine lubricants to lipsticks. Since Hart's client bought the plant in 1988, at least 63 complaints from neighboring residents and 21 notices of violation from the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) have been logged against the company, most concerning alleged odors emanating from the plant.
Hart says that since he became Griffin's lawyer in 1992, the plant "has gotten cleaned up," adding that there have been no notices of violations issued since 1993. However, internal TNRCC documents show that the plant was cited for alleged violations five times since 1993, most recently less than a year ago. In fact, according to a TNRCC memo, in April of 1994, Hart and TNRCC staff attorney Walter Ehresman discussed at length a $2,500 penalty the TNRCC had assessed against Griffin for alleged violations that had occurred in 1993 and 1994.
In the summer of 1994, acting on his client's behalf, Hart rejected a settlement offer from the TNRCC which would have meant $20,500 in fines for Griffin Industries. Frustrated by what one TNRCC official characterized as "the unwillingness of the company to settle this matter through an agreed order, and because of the continuing repeat nature of violations detected at the facility," the agency referred the case to the Attorney General's Office, which subsequently filed suit against the company last August.
Hart insists that Griffin spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade the plant in 1992, which, he says, was determined by Texas Air Control Board inspectors to employ the best technology in the state in controlling noxious odors. However, the AG's complaint against Hart's client, which is still pending, ac-cuses the Bastrop plant of continuing to contaminate the air and violating the Texas Clean Air Act and the Texas Health and Safety Code.
"The complaints and violations prove that this company is a flagrant violator of state environmental laws," says Neil Carman, the clean air program director of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club, who was formerly an inspector for the Texas Air Control Board, predecessor to the TNRCC. "Hart's abusive tactics made it so the TNRCC had to seek help from the Attorney General's office."
Hart counters that so far, the complaints and violation notices against his client are merely "allegations," adding that "this is an effort to distract the voters from the real issues of this campaign." -- A.D.
Asked about the differences in settlement deals, attorney John Gooding with the City of Austin's Electric Utility Department replied that Austin "did the best it could under the circumstances," because of the possibility of a hung jury. (Again, the Statesman reporter wrote that the jury foreman thought the jury was ready to give Austin $20 million, and possibly more -- yet, in the editorial, the daily says the hung jury was a sure thing.) Gooding also explains that San Antonio was settling two lawsuits against HL&P at the same time -- the old one that had gone to arbitration over HL&P-managed construction of the nuclear facility, plus the new one over the shutdown.
When Austin won their 10-year-long construction lawsuit against HL&P, the city was awarded nothing, but the attorneys came out just fine. The legal costs came to a whopping $24 million. Out of Austin's $20 million settlement just negotiated, $12 million is going to legal fees -- much of it for Austin's outside lead attorney, Lee Godfrey of Susman & Godfrey in Dallas, who costs approximately $1,000 an hour. The $8 million remainder will go toward paying down the electric utility's debt. -- L.C.B.
The release has been front-page news in London. And on May 17, David Watts of The Times of London wrote: "The hostages' endorsement of their captors' accusation that Jakarta is destroying their ancient inheritance is what the Free Papua Movement (OPM) had hoped to achieve." Whether they achieved that has yet to be determined. The hostages held a press conference in London on Sunday, but their remarks were brief. Over the next few weeks, there will certainly be more articles regarding the time the hostages spent with the OPM and OPM leader Kelly Kwalik.
Watts added that "the Papuans have been forced out of their mountain homes through the activities of a larger-than-life American, Jim-Bob Moffett, chairman of the parent company, Freeport-McMoRan of New Orleans, part British-owned. It operates one of the world's largest copper and gold mines in the mountains of Irian Jaya on ancestral lands inhabited by the Papuans for thousands of years." -- R.B.
State Rep. Sherri Greenberg got hot when she learned the news. "This sounds like one of those catch-22 games," she said, demanding that TxDOT and federal officials find a solution. But the Austin delegation will have its work cut out for it in prying the funding loose. Approving the money would open TxDOT up to claims from ear-sore residents seeking noise barriers along dozens of freeways across the state.
More bad news for inner-city residents seeking traffic relief came when the ATS voted to delay for another year the funding of a left-turn median on Koenig Lane. About two-thirds of the $3.7 million that would have gone to Koenig Lane in Fiscal Year 1996 will now go to widen Manchaca Road and Dessau Road, while about $600,000 will be used for bicycle and pedestrian projects. Koenig's 1997 funding remains intact, subject to Austin approval of bonds for utility relocation and right-of-way purchase, currently estimated at $22-28 million.
Also at the meeting, a public hearing was held on a proposal to add three new members to the Policy Advisory Committee that governs the ATS. One would represent a group of surrounding suburban cities; the other two would represent Round Rock and Hays County. ATS staff prepared a chart showing that currently, each Austin delegate represents 36,715 constituents, while small cities in the area had ratios as low as 71 constituents per representative. For all but Austin, the ratio would get even better under the new plan. Round Rock, for example, would improve its ratio from 20,718 constituents per representative to 13,812. The ATS may vote on the new plan at its June 10 meeting. -- N.E.