Statewide landowner led coalition, Texans for Responsible Aggregate Mining (TRAM), forms to partner with lawmakers and industry to align Texas’s aggregates industry with the needs of communities across the state.
Landowner and resident groups from around the state have formed a coalition, Texans for Responsible Aggregate Mining (TRAM), to work with policy makers, state agencies, and aggregates companies to address the undesirable impacts of Texas’s growing aggregates industry. Fermín Ortiz, a Llano County rancher states “TRAM is fully cognizant of the need for a successful aggregate industry in Texas. Our goal is to work with the responsible leaders of Texas and industry to better protect the communities in which they operate and what they ultimately leave behind.”
Texas needs aggregate production operations (APOs)—rock quarries, gravel mines and sand mines—as well as cement, concrete, and asphalt plants, to provide construction materials for the state’s rapid growth and development. “We recognize the need for aggregate and related materials,” said Jana Colgate, a retired teacher in Center Point, TX, “ but we want the industry to operate in Texas as they do in other states by following Best Management Practices (BMPs) and respecting their neighbors here as they do elsewhere.”
Unlike other states, Texas does not have comprehensive regulations that apply to aggregate production operations (APOs), nor does Texas require the use of industry BMPs. As a result, APO companies in Texas frequently operate amidst residential neighborhoods, next to schools, and in, along, and above sensitive streams, rivers, and aquifers.
The environmental and public health impacts of these operations on their neighbors include impaired air quality, depletion and contamination of water resources, dangerous driving conditions on roads not designed for high volumes of heavy commercial truck traffic, and disturbances from blasts, lights, odors, and noise. Finally, after a site has been completely mined, current law in Texas allows APO companies to walk away without restoring the property to a useful or safe condition.
For its part, the Texas House of Representatives has recognized that there is a problem. At the end of 2019, Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen established an Interim House Committee on Aggregate Production Operations to study the issue. That committee, chaired by Representative Terry Wilson, was scheduled to convene this spring and produce a report to advise the legislature preceding the 2021 session. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the committee’s schedule and scope for the hearings and witness testimony has been condensed. TRAM is awaiting a “Request for Information” (RFI) from the committee that will specify how and when the hearings will continue. In the meantime, aggregate operations in Texas continue unabated despite COVID-19.
“We are encouraged by the creation of the Interim House Committee and we look forward to working with legislators and the APO industry through the committee’s process as soon as it is safe and practical to do so” said Bill McCabe in Kingwood, TX, another landowner involved in the coalition. “This isn’t just about our health or our quality of life. This is about the Texas we will pass on to our grandchildren.”
Stay informed by visiting www.TRAMTexas.org and following our Facebook and Twitter pages for news updates.