By: Ryan Poppe, TPR News
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott explains his ruling on why the state should not disclose the exact location and type of substances stored at dangerous chemical plants like the one in the City of West.
Texas Public Radio’s Ryan Poppe reports.
In a legal opinion released this week, Abbott said the state should withhold the addresses and list of substances at chemical plants storing dangerous substances. While the state will not provide this information, Abbott said the public still has the ability to get the information themselves.
Greg Abbott: “You as a community-member can go to any chemical facility in the entire State of Texas and say identify for me all chemical you have on your facility and you are entitiled to get that information within 10-days”.
Under the Community Right to Know Act anyone can request this type of information through the Department of State Health Services, but since the release of Abbott’s opinion the agency has stopped providing that information.
Citing the possibility of terrorism, Abbott says in some cases the substances can be used as weapons.
Greg Abbott: “Information that is gathered by the State of Texas, if it contains information that falls in the category of Homeland Security, that type of information cannot be received by the public. There’s a clear reason why that law exists in Austin, Texas last week”.
Abbott was referencing the two Central Texas men arrested by federal officials on terrorism-related charges, the two men who both pled guilty were attempting to provide support for terrorist in the middle East and in Somalia and were not engaged in Domestic Terrorism. RP TPR News]
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