PARKER'S SUPPORT FOR LNG PLANTS AT PORT SELF-SERVING

By Juan Montoya
Sensing a groundswell against the establishment of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plants on both side of the ship channel of the Port of Brownsville, local custom broker and forwarder Frank Parker Jr., (President of Parker and Co.) has contributed his two cents expressing outrage at the public opposition to the projects.
In his letter to the editor of the local daily, Parker takes the daily to task for not portraying "the pluses" for the operation of the LNG plants.
First he asserts that the taxes generated by the plants would contribute to the tax base which are "vitally" needed for the school districts in the area and lessen the burden on the tax payers.
Well, yes and no, Frank.
While it's Brownsville residents who put up with the traffic congestion created by port workers and freight (yours included), who must deal with the threat of hazardous cargoes rumbling past our schools and neighborhoods, and in the majority of cases educate the children of the majority of port workers, the bulk of the taxes go to the Port Isabel ISD.

In fact, the PI ISD has to pitch in some $17 million yearly to the Texas so-called Robin-Hood plan for distribution to property-poor school districts. Brownsville is one of those recipient school district.
Look at the PI and Brownsville Independent School District boundaries closely and you will see that except for a strip of land along the westernmost edge of the Port of Brownsville, nearly all the industry (including Amfels, Transmontaigne, the shipwreckers, the Shrimp Basin, etc.) pay taxes to the PI ISD, not Brownsville schools. The LNG plants would be the same.
Brownsville school would probably educate the students who came along with their parents to work there. too.
As far as we know, there are no petrochemical course being taught at the local community colleges. If the plants were to be built tomorrow, the bulk of those "high-paying" – as in the case of SpaceX, – would probably be taken by outside professionals coming from somewhere else.
You yearn for "the increased number of ships...(that) will help the Port of Brownsville with revenue to help maintain our ship channel depth, to increase our international trade position as a major port. This will contribute to bringing larger ships with more cargo for our local and northern Mexico port markets."
Being a customs broker and forwarder, we can see why you'd be in favor of that.
Some of spinoff jobs you mention would benefit people in your business, we're sure.
It's easy to blame the Sierra Club for "dominating" the taking of our county lands for non-development" and ask when is it enough. Given the denuding of our resacas, the stripping of the northern side of the river of the sabal palm forests described by Spanish explorer Alonso Alvarez de Pineda as stretching for miles alongside both sides of the river, it's doubtful we can ever reforest the area to its natural setting. The LNG plants sure aren;t going to help.
No, Frank, LNG plants are not like the tank farms at the port. They are not holding highly volatile compressed gases at unearthly temperatures. Their contents are liquid at air temperatures. LNG gases are not.
You say that you don;t see why people "choose to protest the opportunity to experience the economic opportunity afforded other communities along the Texas coast that already have LNG."
It's little wonder then that you were silent when Gulf Stream Marine was allowed to come into the port by your fiends on the commission and were allowed to set up shop at non-union wages that sent the wages of local Longshoremen plummeting. That's why today the workers at the port are the lowest paid workers along the Gulf of Mexico coast.
We haven't even touched on the environment and aesthetic disasters that may result from the LNG pants being allowed to locate here.
But if you don;t care about our schools and our local workers, why would we think you would care about something as trivial as that?