Number 21

Corpus is surrounded by uranium mines and processing facilities. The Alta Mesa project in Brooks County, the Hobson uranium processing plant in Karnes County, the Palangana, Vasquez, Holiday and El Mesquite mines in Duval County, the Kingsville Dome plant in Kleberg County and the Rosita mine. These plants and mines tap into the South Texas Uranium trend that makes South Texas the third largest uranium producer in the US. Not exactly an accolade that brings in newlyweds and young families. The EPA issues warnings to residents in the surrounding areas that their water is unsafe. Residents have complained that the contamination is the result of mining and processing, but industry reps assert that the leaching is natural and unrelated to their extraction activities: "Mark Pelizza, U-R-I Vice President, "So it's not the exploration that causes any kind of contamination. It's mother nature who has put the uranium there and mother nature has cause it to occur naturally [KIII TV]." Families can't afford to leave their homes because no one wants to buy property that is poisoned by uranium facilities. The uranium in South Texas is extracted through a process called ISL (in situ leaching) by which a solution is washed through the uranium-containing material and collected. The process is allegedly safe, but one can only imagine that swishing nuclear mouthwash beneath the soil can't have a positive effect on our groundwater and soil.

Number 20

Whataburger leaves Corpus Christi. Yesterday, the fast food chain announced they were relocating their headquarters from Corpus to San Antonio. First, of course they're moving. San Antonio has far more resources for a large company and a much higher quality of life for their employees. HEB made the same move 23 years ago after headquartering in Corpus for 45 years. This shouldn't come as a shock that an organization with the means would pack up and high-tail it out of here, but it shouldn't be as big a concern either. The City Council and Economic Development board is concerned only with number of jobs and average salary, but never with the type of jobs and quality of life: "The types of jobs leaving the area are high-paying, technical jobs. These are the types of jobs the area is trying to attract, Mower said [caller times]." And that is why companies leave. Because we focus on the numbers instead of the substance behind them. What city would want to pin its reputation on petrochemicals and fast food anyway? Corpus' natural resources are bittersweet. On the one hand they offer obvious and plentiful economic opportunity, but on the other they blind our civic leaders to the creative energy and potential of our citizens. It's been said that businesses won't invest in the city of Corpus because the city won't invest in itself. Whataburger and HEB are proof of that. Our infrastructure is crumbling, we permit industry to exploit our neighbors, our city is dangerous and our citizens are poorly educated. A city is a place to live not just a resource for business, the Council would do well to remember that.

Number 19

The Transportation section of the Preliminary III Community Profile for the BoldFuture Initiative is troubling. Corpus Christi road conditions rank below the State average and will require $63 million more than projected State and Federal transportation dollars for the next four years. If supply of transportation dollars can't match our demand in terms of use, then why are we proposing new construction? If we don't have the funding now to maintain our automobile infrastructure and we won't have it in five years, surely we can expect further deterioration of our roads.

It seems reckless to propose new construction such as the Trans Texas Corridor and new Harbor Bridge. The new Harbor Bridge alone would equal more than 10 years of what it would cost to raise our roads to the State average. The new bridge represents stepping back a decade for Corpus Christi's roads. These Quixotic plans will be an exponentially increasing burden on our transportation infrastructure.

Additionally, the marginal attention given to pedestrian and cyclist access is a concern. Why would the city ask the question "How can we improve hike and bike trails?" when the MPO commissioned and the City Council in 2005 approved a Bicycle Pedestrian Plan? Not only has this plan been ignored, but recent work along Ocean drive is in direct conflict with the suggestions made in the plan.

If the City of Corpus Christi would invest more in public transportation and provide more for pedestrians and cyclists, we could reduce our impact on our roads. And if we focused on maintaining our current infrastructure instead of adding to it, we could hope to stretch our transportation dollars further and one day catch up to where we need to be.

Number 18

The SPID is part of what's wrong with Corpus Christi. The mistake our planners and traffic engineers make is evaluating traffic with a single metric: travel times. Their focus is to move people from A to B as fast as possible. There is no consideration for the integrity and livability of our neighborhoods. A sense of community is sacrificed for a faster commute. And as traffic and traffic engineers adapt to a developing cityscape, so does that development adapt to the new traffic patterns. The city makes roads wider and faster to get from the suburbs to the business centers and now, in order to take advantage of the easier transit, the suburbs expand. Fewer people live near where they work, our city separates into arbitrary zones and our roads, especially our major thoroughfares play an increasingly larger role in our lives.

We should ask ourselves what we want that role to be. How crucial do we want the SPID to be to our city? You can see from satellite maps that we've already answered that question. Businesses have been drawn to the frontage roads in response to the increasing number of trips that incorporate the SPID. The only way to get anywhere here is to drive and the only way to drive anywhere is on the SPID.

What does that mean for Corpus citizens? It means that our local neighborhood roads get less attention as the constant construction and deconstruction on 358 continues. It means our grocery stores will get bigger and farther away. It means you are increasingly less likely to work anywhere near where you live.

The SPID, though, isn't an isolated event. It's symptomatic of a larger culture of convenience and immediacy, a culture reactive to marketing, a culture without identity, ignorant of its future.

The Enduro Unit

It's funny to see overweight police officers struggling to control Suzuki dirt bikes. It's annoying that this is funded by our tax dollars. It's tragic, though, that this is our solution to "transients." Corpus Christi Police Captain Todd Green reportedly said the motorbike unit was established to address aggressive panhandlers, trespassing, alcohol- and drug-related crimes, tagging and auto burglaries [caller times]. Captain Wayne Tisdale amplified the purpose of the unit: to prevent the transient population from committing crimes. How we treat our fellow humans defines us. Whether they're sightly or economically productive, these "transients" are our fellow citizens and how we treat them is a statement of who we are. Empty citations are hardly the answer, nor is herding and chasing our poor and homeless on dirt bikes. Our impoverished and indigent are part of our city, we can't hide them or chase them away. Their suffering is our failure. The solution to our transient population is constant attention. They're not going anywhere and many will never incorporate. We can only tend to them as our consciences dictate, as our humanity requires.

Number 17

New toys present Corpus Cops a new opportunity to harass the homeless. Not content to simply sequester the poor and homeless in the most dangerous and polluted corners of the city, our cops now pursue them off-road on Power Ranger bikes.

In the below video you can watch Corpus Cops earning their motor bike merit badges and trying out to be clumsy-but-lovable superhero sidekicks.

Number 16

Our Police Chief is Corky St. Clair.

Number 15

UFO sightings given credence.  My favorite quotations from the report:

local federal officials: We couldn't get any local federal officials to really confirm that anything was spotted in the sky, but...

legally blind: He wasn't the only person to see the ufo, we got plenty of emails and phone calls from people like dennis limon...He suffered a stroke four years ago.  It left him unable to drive and legally blind.  But, he says, he could see the UFO well enough on Saturday night.

Number 14

Consistently higher than average crime rates, much higher than average according to citi-data.com.

Below are the breakdowns for assault, burglary, rape and murder.

Number 13

From the Caller Times last June:

A local judge's car hit a transportation department worker crouching near his truck about to fix a sign Thursday afternoon, sending the worker to the hospital in critical condition, police said...A Texas Department of Transportation heavy-duty pickup with a cherry-picker lift was parked near a ramp connecting Padre Island Drive to southbound Interstate 37 when J. Manuel Bañales, 105th District Court judge and presiding judge of the Fifth Judicial Administrative District, entered the ramp. His gold Cadillac Deville slid off the pavement and struck the truck parked a few feet away on the grass.

And in today's news:

It was an accident. That's what police officers said during a Thursday hearing: They found nothing criminal in the car wreck in which 105th District Judge J. Manuel Bañales critically injured a highway department worker.

Really? It was an accident. You mean the judge wasn't gunning for the TXDOT worker? Of course it was an accident, but he still sent the worker to the hospital "injured head to toe." And even though the judge was initially cited with a class C misdemeanor traffic offense, in court "Capt. Mike McKinney, one of two officers who testified, said there was no evidence that Bañales should face criminal charges." 

Number 12

Grandfathered plants on refinery row. First of all, what kind of a city has "refinery row?" There's more than 16 refineries, hazardous waste and other petrochemical plants that directly abut neighborhoods in this part of town. All kinds of diseases are attributed to the psychotic cornucopia of pollutants (benzene and other cancer causing carcinogens, lead, cadmium and arsenic, and more) that spew from the Corpus refineries onto the city. In legal proceedings that make Erin Brokovich look like small claims court, Corpus residents complain, "I'm not supposed to hate Citgo, but I do, " Zamora testified. "They hurt my family and my property and they always thought we were dumb. They told us (emissions) never crossed the fence, the chain link fence. They didn't care."
















As if the awful presence of these refineries and plants weren't enough, they don't even have to meet modern emissions standards. According to Texas PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) the plants, built in the early part of last century, have been converted from "light industrial production to large polluting facilities" and hazardous waste management facilities. The facilities continue to expand and violate environmental regulations even in the face of sanctions.

Number 11

Corpus Christi shrimpers intentionally kill sea turtles in order to avoid inconveniences while harvesting shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico, according to studies by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). An undercover investigation by the HSUS revealed that "Of the 32 vessels our investigator examined, 13 had their TEDs tied shut. That's 41% of boat owners in flagrant violation of the law. Such blatant disregard for the use of the turtle protecing devices suggests to us that enforcement procedures are not effective and that the shrimpers ignore the regulations without fear of prosectution." The TEDs mentioned by Dr. John W. Grandy, Vice President of Wildlife and Habitat Protection for the HSUS, are Turtle Exclusion Devices, essentially an escape hatch that allows turtles to swim out of shrimp nets. These Corpus Christians are going out of their way to disable already-installed devices that save the lives of endangered species.

Number 10

Corpus Christi is home to the first refinery in US history to be criminally convicted of environmental crimes. I joke in much of this blog, but this is totally serious. The group CFEJ, Citizens for Environmental Justice, detail the crimes and the proceedings on their website. The indictment from the United States of America v. Citgo Petroleum Corporation Citgo Refining and Chemical Companies, L.P. can be found here. Terry Carter, the President and CEO of the Corpus Chamber of Commerce, under the awkward banner "It's better to see the glass as more than half full than to believe it's empty," immediately defended the Citgo refinery and added this admonishment of naive citizens, "If you rely on any newspaper to get the facts, then you only see an issue from the newspaper's perspective." May we assume Mr. Carter would prefer us to get our facts in the Federal case of Citgo poisoning our air, water and soil from the refinery itself? Indeed he does and later urges us to "never take such wonderful corporate citizenship for granite." (Mispelling his.)

Number 9

Corpus Christi's City Council just this Wednesday voted for their interim City Manager, Angel Escobar, as City Manager. Though this shouldn't be a big shocker to anyone, it came as one to the City Council. The Council expected him to turn down the post if he was voted in by only a 5-4 margin, because of a secret meeting they'd held, according to the Caller Times . Of course, the 62-year old 38-year city government veteran did not turn it down. The 5-4 vote mirrored the same 5-4 vote the City Council made to allow the former City Engineer to apply for the position well after the deadline and well after the city spent thousands for a recruiting firm to find applicants, and well after other applicants had already been flown to Corpus for interviews, vetted and screened and eliminated. So, after the Council wasted the City's time and money and applicants' time and money, disregarded protocol and voted for a unqualified candidate who couldn't even submit his application on time, they were surprised he accepted the nomination.

Number 8

Le Paris Cafe & Windy City Eatery, the only "restaurant" at the airport that isn't Hangtime or Game Time, features on its menu: "taquitos, warm cinnamon rolls, juicy hamburgers and hot dogs."  Where should we begin?  With calling the same food kiosk both Le Paris Cafe and also Windy City Eatery?  Or with calling Corpus Christi the Windy City seeing as how another city claims that title and Corpus Christi already has its own incredibly misleading moniker, the Shining City by the Sea?  Or with serving taquitos and hot dogs at a self-proclaimed Parisian cafe?  For reason number eight why Corpus Christi sucks, perhaps we can settle on the second featured passenger service heralded by the Corpus Christi International Airport, an ATM machine (pictured).

Number 7

"You are just as likely to catch a rat at Cole Park as a fish.  Yeah, it happened; you have to be careful with those cast nets."  This is reason #47 you know you're from Corpus Christi on local radio personality Joe Hilliard's blog.