Tow: City a little bit healthier thanks to Lubbock Compact effort

As individuals, we mature in heathy ways only if we are brave enough to see our personal history with open eyes. The same is true for a community. Lubbock is a little bit healthier thanks to the recent success of the community activist group Lubbock Compact.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded a $482,960 grant through its Enhanced Air Quality Monitoring for Communities competitive grant program to the Lubbock Environmental Action Project (LEAP). This award, and the three-year study it will fund, is a milestone for Lubbock’s future.

The plan is ambitious: Air quality monitors will be installed across the entire Lubbock metro area. In the first year, deployment of monitoring equipment, training, and collection of air quality data will begin. During the following two years, as “hot spots” are identified, targeted investigations will determine what specific airborne particulates are in the air. Data collection and review will be supervised by the Department of Geoscience at Texas Tech. Results of the investigation will be shared with communities, schools, local hospitals, businesses, local government leaders and other stakeholders.

LEAP is a project of Lubbock Compact, a community activist organization formed as a Facebook group in 2020 to focus attention on neglected “Old Lubbock” (essentially, all of Lubbock c. 1970). From its beginning, Lubbock Compact has aspired to serious engagement with government and business leaders, and has worked hard to embrace diversity of identity and opinion within its membership. This grant award is a rightful recognition that Lubbock Compact has circumvented the roadblocks that stagnate 95% of all community organizations, and is now an impactful part of Lubbock leadership.

Lubbock group awarded EPA grant to improve air quality, emphasis on east side

Among the principles that Lubbock Compact adopted at its inception was “the environmental purification of Old Lubbock.” To some this is a jarring phrase, but the historical truth is clear: Unmonitored industrial activity, began early in the city’s history and centered in Northeast Lubbock, and much of that activity continues today. The social cost of these industries has never been measured, and the community has never had means or the political will to hold those industries accountable.

A 2021 study of hospitalizations for severe asthma concluded that residents of Northeast Lubbock are significantly more likely to develop severe respiratory disease than residents of the city as a whole. The results of this study by the TTU Health Sciences Center and the Sam Houston State University College of Osteopathic Medicine were fully-adjusted for age, race, sex and lifestyle factors. There is a measurable disparity in health outcomes for residents of Northeast Lubbock. These findings square with an earlier report on respiratory disease in the Lubbock area conducted by the Center for Disease Control (2017).

Now, an air quality study will collect data necessary to understand and ameliorate that disparity.

Even though the results are years away, the celebratory news here is that local people have formed an organization and engaged the federal bureaucracy to secure these funds. The EPA awards hundreds of such grants around the country, but the competition for federal tax dollars is intense. If the money hadn’t come here. It would have gone elsewhere. It is refreshing to see this is a “Your Tax Dollars At Work” project for the benefit of our community. The birth of the Lubbock Environmental Action Project, cooperating with, but independent of local government and University interests, is a very healthy sign for the future of a growing Lubbock.

Yes, there are unanswered questions: Are there specific particulates in the air, and can they be tied to industrial plants? Isn’t all the asthma just the price we pay for living in a windy and dusty corridor of the Plains? This is the explanation we have fallen back on for generations. Soon, we will know the truth.

LEAP will finally provide the necessary data to bridge between the grim results of these statistical studies (and the painful anecdotal evidence seen in our hospitals and emergency rooms every day) and move us toward actionable plans from city, county and state leaders. Even before conclusions are gathered, we are healthier, because we are facing Lubbock’s past.

Everybody’s grandpa used to say: “We will cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Well, here we are, Lubbock! We have reached the bridge, and we must cross.

Progress will be painfully slow. But there cannot be progress until brave questions are asked, and solutions are pursued boldly. Lubbock Compact is asking the right questions, and has geared up to pursue those solutions in the interest of the entire community.

Doug Tow is a retired postmaster, and a community representative on the Avalanche-Journal Editorial Board.