The man pictured above, who appears to be in his fifties or sixties, gingerly scales a Brownsville dumpster in search of recyclable cardboard, something he and countless others do daily in this, the poorest city in the United States.
Scrappers, as they are called locally, comb every alley, every dumpster in the city nightly, in search of U.S. or Chinese cardboard, wooden pallets, aluminum cans, iron or anything the scrap yards will buy.
It is a living, albeit a hard one.
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Jimmy, now that Tony Martinez has been relected, he spoke about economic times changing. Let's wait and in six months, Tony Longoria, Rick Martinez, and Jessica Tretrau are going to change the dynamics of Brownsville.(And if anyone believes the bullshit I just wrote, I have land in the Island for $5.00 and acre, LOL).
ReplyDeleteDo you really think any more then a small percentage of recyclable materials are collected by this unofficial army? We should have residential collection of recyclable material, no question about it. I just don't understand why this is even an arguable issue. If you live in Brownsville and have children or grandchildren think of them if you aren't sure if taking care of the space they are going to live in matters. It is even more important now that we will be losing more wild space to LNG plants (wild spaces have natural processes that help clean the environment) and we will also have to deal with the airborne pollutions the LNG plants will produce. We can't afford to not do what we can and one of the things we can do is recycle. Yes, I know it takes a little effort to do it. All I can say about that is do it and don't be a dick. It is a lot easier to keep our space clean then it is to clean it up.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I think there is a 50-50 chance that the LPG plants will end up costing the area more money then they bring to the area. We won't get much of the pipeline money, that will be earned by existing pipeline crews that make a living traveling the country "pipelining". We may get some work for welders and pipefitter/plumbers but this work is going to require highly trained, skilled craftsmen - they may have to be certified - So if the pipeliners and the welders and pipefitters come from elsewhere that is where they are going to take their money..... elsewhere. We will no doubt get some jobs operating the plants once they get on line but it is not going to be anything like the projections the city/county is claiming. So now you have a significant amount of acreage along the ship channel paved over and several large chemical plants venting noxious chemicals into the air. All within a few miles of Port Isabel and SPI. There is valid concern that the vented chemicals will have a negative impact on the wetlands in the area that are nurseries for fish, shrimp, crabs and other important marine organisms and will thus impact the shrimp industry and the sport fishing industry as will any accidental chemical releases into the channel (and from there into the Laguna Madre). Those same wetlands are important feeding areas for many species of migrant and resident birds. So now we have impacted Island tourism because who wants to vacation within sight of petroleum complexes, especially when the sport fishing is on a decline because of the lose of nursery areas. We will have decreased the viability of the area as a birding area so we can expect a decline in those millions of dollars that birding brings to the area (birders generally have pretty good disposable income and are not afraid to spend it - check TPW numbers on this). So, who benefits from LPG? The petroleum companies will do real well by it. The people of China will benefit by less expensive natural gas and the county may get a little too. Of course what the county and city get will depend on how much we have to recoup from what we give away in deferred taxes and energy costs. Remember, these for-profit companies want to come here to make money and want you to support them while they do it. They don't want to pay taxes but they will want to use the roads, the ship channel, emergency services and all the rest of the infra-structure. These are all the things we have paid for and will continue to pay for. Even if they don't.
There are also new ways to recycle materials that no one is proposing. For example, old beer cans can have their tops and bottoms removed, then stacked in cylinders, painted black, and used to create solar powered heaters that would mean no one has to pay for heating during the winter. You just put them in the sun and the black paint heats up the air inside the can columns. Then a small fan blows the heated air into the house and pulls cold air back into the sun stacks. There are unlimited possibiliies of the things we throw away to have a new, even more useful purpose.
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