Texas Remediation Standards and their Socioeconomic Effects
By: Grant Lee
Tags: Politics, Texas, Superfund, Environment, Economy

Texas Remediation Standards and their Socioeconomic Effects

Environmental remediation, the process of reducing or eliminating harmful pollutants from the environment, is an often overlooked subject by those not directly impacted by the externalities of contamination. Those that are forced to live in these contaminated communities, often known as Superfund sites, are not only subjected to living in a degraded environment, but they also face depreciated property values and greater health risks, placing greater financial burden on already underprivileged communities. Remediation costs money, though, and Texas is one of the most frugal states in the country when it comes to investing in environmental remediation, setting lax remediation standards that rarely warrant clean up action. For instance, “Texas will allow 31.7 times more arsenic in soil than the EPA” (3).

However, data shows that the cost savings that result from these lenient Texas standards don’t benefit the overall economy of Texas, and remediation efforts actually strengthen the economy by improving property value, reducing health risks and their associated healthcare costs, and increasing access to usable land for business formation which increases community employment and tax revenue. In essence, there is in fact a correlation between investment in environmental remediation and local economic improvement that makes up for the clean up cost.

In an aggregation of collected data from local sources, the United States Environmental Protection Agency reported that among fifteen remediated sites throughout Texas, there was a cumulative increase in property value of $277 million, with fourteen of these sites contributing $3 million annually in property taxes (4). In analyzing the effects of remediation on local property values, one can isolate the once federal Superfund site in Greenville, Texas (located in Hunt County) as an insightful case study as it is one of the most recent clean up actions to be completed in Texas. Toward the end of 2018, this region was deleted from the National Priorities List (NPL), a compilation of the most contaminated zones in the country. Comparing the property values of this city from the year of 2018 (local property data was recorded for this year prior to the site’s deletion from the NPL) to the following two years of data collected shows an immediate increase in property values. The market value of all single family residences alone increased by about 35% in a span of two years following the completion of remediation in this community (1). Some of this growth is indeed due to the increase in the amount of single family residences, with there being a total of 7,684 single family residences in 2018 and 8,037 in 2020 (1). However, this increase of 353 homes multiplied by the median listing home price in the city of Greenville, $195,200, gives a figure of $68,905,600, which does not account for the vast majority of the $275,553,308 in net growth of market value of single family homes from 2018 to 2020 (2). Thus, it can be concluded that the rapid growth in property value was not due to an increase in the amount of properties or even property value appreciation as this, too, does not account for the increase seen in Greenville. A reasonable explanation of this growth is the newfound attractiveness to homebuyers and investors of a community no longer plagued with dangerous levels of pollution and the associated health risks that deter property investment.

Source: Hunt County Appraisal District

In addition to growth in property value, remediation simply makes more land available for public and private use. In the same aggregation of data from the US EPA cited above, the EPA reported that in 2019 alone, between fourteen different remediated sites in Texas there was a combined $346 million in sales from the 121 businesses and organizations operating on those lands, providing almost 2,000 jobs and over $100 million in total annual employee income (4). Much of this revenue and business formation would not be possible without the initial investment from the state to revive these degraded lands. This boost to the local economy creates more taxable income which can be used to further fund public programs including environmental remediation efforts to continue this cycle.

Source: United States Environmental Protection Agency

While the data shows that investment in environmental remediation produces immediate returns in property value and facilitates business formation, there is also potential for long-term savings as high levels of contamination, if left untreated, can pose greater health risks and therefore higher medical costs to affected communities. In 2014, United States Senator Cory Booker remarked in a hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, “Researchers at Princeton, MIT and Berkeley, after reviewing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of birth records, found that babies born to mothers living within one mile of a Superfund site, prior to that site being cleaned up, had a 20 percent great[er] incident of being born with birth defects” (5). While the economic implications of increased rates of birth defects as well as greater risks for cancer are clear, it is also evident that even if there was zero net return from the savings of alleviating these medical externalities, the social benefits to society and families all throughout Texas are invaluable and should be taken into consideration by our representatives when creating our annual state budget.

So while not spending money may seem to be equivalent to saving money by definition, the data would suggest that investing in environmental remediation actually creates both short-term and long-term economic growth in communities throughout the state that more than justifies the initial cost.

Works Cited

Hunt County Appraisal District. 2018–2020 Mass Appraisal Report(s).

2. Realtor.com. Home values in Greenville, TX.

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Greenville_TX/overview

3. Texas Campaign for the Environment. Missing the Mark.

https://www.texasenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Missing-the-Mark-Revised-and-Updated-2019.pdf

4. United States Environmental Protection Agency. Putting Sites to Work: How Superfund Redevelopment in the South Central Region Is Making a Difference in Communities.

https://semspub.epa.gov/work/HQ/100002554.pdf

5. United States Senate Hearing Before the Subcommittee On Oversight of the Committee On Environment and Public Works. One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, Second Session.