"The City of Houston Health Department's finding of dioxin, a persistent, cancer-causing chemical in Kashmere Gardens, on top of the Texas Department of State Health Services' 2019 finding of a confirmed cancer cluster surrounding the Union Pacific (UP) creosote site, is alarming. This discovery is further proof that the UP permit application submitted to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) requires additional scrutiny. The current plan does not go far enough to clean up the cancer-causing chemicals that have permeated the ground and water and negatively impacted these communities for decades.

"I am calling on TCEQ to reject UP's current clean-up plan and make UP go back to the drawing board and create a plan that actually removes these dangerous chemicals from the site and surrounding neighborhoods. The Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens communities have been waiting far too long and lost too many family and friends for us not to act."