Hawk Dunlap: El Paso, I’ll Fight for You if Given the Chance
This time, all El Pasoans -- Democrats included -- have a powerful reason to take part in the Republican primary.
by Hawk Dunlap
The era of our state government ignoring the needs of El Paso must end, urgently. The dangers are piling up. The city is suffering from earthquakes due to the Texas Railroad Commission’s incompetence. Now, its water supply is at risk.
I’m running to protect El Chuco, and all of Texas. I’m no politician. I’m a blue-collar guy with decades of experience cleaning up oil and gas disasters all over the world.
Here in Texas, that’s the responsibility of the Railroad Commission. That's right, the RRC has nothing to do with railroads. It’s supposed to regulate oil and gas. It’s failing miserably.
I’ll get the job done. Early voting is under way from Feb. 17 on. Election Day is March 3. Find voting locations here. We have open primaries, so even if you usually vote for Democratic candidates, please participate in the Republican primary this time. The Democratic slot for RRC is uncontested.
The ‘forgotten’ city
El Pasoans have heard lots of promises over the years, with no follow-through. Out here in West Texas, we know that the state government often just doesn’t care about us.
Former Mayor Dee Margo, a Republican, and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, discussed this in an event with Texas Standard last year. Margo “doesn’t think state lawmakers keep El Paso in mind — or really understand the city and its nuances,” the public radio show reported. “We’re still an unknown jewel,” Margo said. O’Rourke added, “Too often we are left overlooked or forgotten by those in power.”
So it makes sense that voters have little faith in Austin. The Texas Tribune explored why El Paso has especially low voter turnout. It found that some voters “expressed a feeling that has persisted for years in this border town nearly 600 miles from the state capital: El Paso is an afterthought for state officials in Austin.”
It won’t be for me. I live in West Texas, too and know how severe the problems are. So I’m asking for your vote. The current three-member Railroad Commission is openly corrupt. As the Houston Chronicle wrote in endorsing me for this race:
“Such is the state of affairs for one of Texas’ most important agencies, which, for years, has been reduced to a rubber stamp for the oil and gas industry.”
The impacts are felt across El Paso -- literally. You know those earthquakes Texas has been experiencing, with tremors here in the Sun City? They come from the oil and gas industry injecting massive sums of wastewater into the ground.
That's just one way the RRC’s failures hit home. All over the state, abandoned oil wells are leaking toxic poisons, killing land and crops. The commission is supposed to make the responsible parties clean up their messes. But it refuses to get the job done.
And things are about to get a hell of a lot worse.
El Paso’s water supply is on the line
Massive new data centers are being built in and around El Paso. These kinds of facilities notoriously soak up massive sums of water -- millions of gallons per day.
One of the facilities is for Meta, the company behind Facebook, which has apparently promised not to drink up too much of El Paso’s water. But those kinds of agreements only work if someone enforces them -- and down the road, water supplies could be on the line. It’s also not the only major data center in development. Meanwhile, El Paso’s water resources are already being “stretched thin,” as the Tribune put it.
The Railroad Commission should play a crucial role in protecting the region’s water supply. Right now, our oil and gas sector generates 30 million gallons of wastewater every day. We have the technology to clean it for use in data centers. We can stop injecting it into the ground and conserve the precious clean water supplies that belong to taxpayers.
The RRC is showing no leadership on this. Instead, it keeps up the disastrous injection process, which causes even more old infrastructure to leak or even explode. That's a big reason we get 100-foot geysers of liquid poison shooting up into the air, turning stretches of West Texas land into dangerous no-go zones.
For more details, you can see tours I’ve given major news agencies like Reuters, like the video below.
Texas is at a breaking point. We need new leadership in the RRC to fix this. And there's nothing partisan about it.
So whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or just not a political person, I encourage you to show up for this election. When you get to the polls, say you want to participate in the Republican primary this time around. Vote for me for Texas Railroad Commissioner. The El Paso Times shows you what the ballot will look like, here.
I don’t make empty promises. I’m running because someone’s got to end the RRC’s failure. I will.
El Paso has a long, proud history. Together, we can make sure it has the future it deserves.