Letters▼ Texas act treads on environmental scientists Environmental scientists and chemists engaged in environmental investigation work in Texas have fallen victim to an active, well-organized, and well-funded lobby effort by geologists that has essentially cornered all environmental assessment work in Texas for those from a geology, geophysics, or soil science academic background. The 2003 Texas Geoscience Practice Act (Texas Occupations Code, Title 6, Chapter 1002; Texas Annotated Code 22, Part 39, Chapters 850–851) is significantly affecting environmental assessment work in Texas because of its broad definition of “geoscience”, which includes “investigation of the earth’s environment”. Since the inception of the environmental services industry, environmental investigations have used professionals from various scientific backgrounds who adapted their academic training to the needs of the job. When it comes to the interpretation of environmental data, significant overlap exists in skills among academic disciplines. It would be impossible to regulate which academic backgrounds are qualified to engage in, for example, estimation of the potential for chemicals in soil to leach to groundwater. This pathway is governed by both soil and chemical properties. Is a chemist not equally trained and qualified to assess this—with proper experience and so on—as a geologist? What about those who graduated from multidisciplinary environmental science academic programs that included both chemistry and hydrogeology? If equal qualifications are assumed, would those people be less academically qualified to assess this pathway than geologists? Environmental professionals originating from various academic
backgrounds have developed the important ability to assimilate information from their scientific disciplines in order to evaluate environmental conditions at a site. But in Texas, we are no longer legally allowed to do this without the oversight and certification of a professional geoscientist. For anyone working in a large firm, this might amount to a minor inconvenience. However, someone engaged in a private consulting practice is out of luck if they want to do environmental assessment work involving the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Since passage of the act, I have seen numerous instances of professional geoscientists engaged in the evaluation of chemical data while professionals from other academic disciplines are restricted by law from even the simple interpretation of groundwater concentration data. This is not to downplay the importance of geologists in environmental assessment; the point is that “investigation of the earth’s environment” is not exclusively a geologic issue, as the Texas Geoscience Practice Act has made it. The U.S. EPA has done a much better job of defining who is qualified to perform environmental assessments in its All Appropriate Inquiries (AAI) rule making (Fed. Regist. 2005, 70 [210], 66,070–66,113). EPA acknowledges in the AAI rule that environmental professionals originate from a wide variety of academic backgrounds, but with adequate experience in addition to education, they can become qualified to perform environmental assessments for the purpose of establishing liability protection. The broad definition of “geoscience” in the Texas law complicates implementation when the Texas Board of Professional Geoscientists (TBPG) considers what additional
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academic disciplines are eligible for licensing as geoscientists. The multidimensional nature of the environmental field makes it impractical to list specific academic disciplines entitled to engage in “investigation of the earth’s environment”, but environmental scientists and chemists are certainly among them. The Texas legislature needs to revisit the Geoscience Practice Act and consider its detrimental impacts on qualified environmental professionals from academic backgrounds other than geology. The scope of the act and the authority of the TBPG need to be reined in, and the TCEQ should use EPA’s AAI definition of “environmental professional”, rather than the professional geoscientist credential, in establishing accountability for submittals of site investigation reports. The Texas legislation was not well thought through, except by the geologists’ lobby, and the consequences to practitioners from other academic backgrounds were not recognized at the time of its passage. Those adversely affected are from disparate backgrounds, not bound together under any one particular unifying trade organization or society, and therefore do not have many resources to address the law. Perhaps this situation may serve as a notice to environmental scientists and chemists elsewhere that cohesive trade groups are actively seeking to legislatively secure the “sovereignty” of their disciplines (Texas Association of Professional Geoscientists, www. tapg.org/membership2.htm); we all should take notice and action before we are regulated right out of our professions. KEITH E. LINTON Senior Scientist URS Corp. Houston, Texas
[email protected] © 2006 American Chemical Society
