Jackson Lee: 'We have to raise the environmental accountability stick'

A Houston-area congresswoman hopes the Inflation Reduction Act could help the City of Houston address its sanitation issues.

According to Houston CBS affiliate KHOU, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Houston) seeks to have millions of dollars earmarked for the nation’s fourth-largest city to use on its underserved neighborhoods. 

The legislation passed both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives and was awaiting President Joe Biden’s signature as of press time.

KHOU reported that Jackson Lee, whose district includes much of inner city Houston and the surrounding area, accompanied community members and residents on tours of the Trinity Gardens neighborhood, which was the focal point of an illegal dumping complaint against the city.

The legislator was shown an old K-Mart building where people dump their garbage and a contaminant-riddled retention pond.

"We have to raise the environmental accountability stick so that persons cannot do this and think they can get away with it," Jackson Lee said, per the station.

According to the report, the congresswoman said that the bill could help with that accountability.

"These millions of dollars out of $60 billion and $3 billion can come to Houston and have a metamorphic, a seismic change," Jackson Lee said, KHOU reported.

The lawmaker told the station that the funding could go toward an environmental community capacity center in Trinity Gardens, and she wants the project to become a reality “as soon as possible.”

Houston Daily reported in July that Houston is the subject of a federal investigation into whether black and Latino residents are being discriminated against in relation to garbage pickup.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) accuses the city of mishandling requests for municipal services and illegal dumping and will determine if it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Title VI forbids federal financial assistance recipients from practicing discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner insisted that the city received no advanced notice and called the investigation “absurd, baseless and without merit,” Houston Daily reported, citing KHOU.