Chet Edwards For Congress - Brazos County

Reserve Center may be replaced

Kat — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:04:30 -0700

Reserve Center may be replaced

By MATTHEW WATKINS | Bryan-College Station Eagle | Eagle Staff Writer | May 24, 2008

Edwards:"Members of the 420th Engineering Brigade need facilities that effectively train and equip them to carry out their national security responsibilities. This funding is an important first step that will pave the way for a new Army Reserve Center for the 420th Engineering Brigade."

A spending bill that's making its way through Congress is set to give area soldiers a long-awaited Memorial Day gift.

The National Defense Authorization Act for 2009 has been earmarked to include $920,000 to hire architects and planners to design a new Army Reserve Center in Brazos County, according to U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco.

It will replace a building that is home to the 420th Engineering Brigade, a reserve unit that "commands and controls assigned engineer assets," according to the brigade's Web site. The brigade has 22 subordinate units and more than 2,500 reserve soldiers.

Captains at the center did not return calls Friday.

The unit moved to Bryan in 1958 and has remained in the same building on West Carson Street since. Officers at the center have requested improvements for years.

According to Edwards, the building has foundation problems that have caused separation in the walls and cracked floors. The building also doesn't meet current military force protection requirements because it is too close to the street.

"Members of the 420th Engineering Brigade need facilities that effectively train and equip them to carry out their national security responsibilities," said Edwards in a statement announcing the appropriation. "This funding is an important first step that will pave the way for a new Army Reserve Center for the 420th Engineering Brigade."

Edwards chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs.

The bill, H.R. 5658, must be passed by the U.S. Senate and signed by President Bush before it becomes law. It was approved by the House, 384-23, on Thursday.

Edwards said that after completion of the design stage, he would include an additional $12 million for the center's construction in spending bills.

Local company develops Army devices

econnor — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:11:31 -0700

March 24, 2008

Local company develops Army devices

The Bryan College Station Eagle

By HOLLY HUFFMAN |Eagle Staff Writer

American soldiers may some day soon be able to immediately detect chemical and biological threats through the use of small portable hand-held devices that currently doesn't exist in the field.

And rather than lug around 80 pounds of disposable batteries, military troops may have rechargeable units to power their computers and night vision equipment.

Meanwhile, small spy planes that now fly less than two hours at a time may one day have batteries that are strong enough to keep the small aircraft in the air for half a day.

These technological breakthroughs in national defense and homeland security were unveiled Monday at Lynntech Inc, a College Station-based research and development company. The work is part of a $2.6 million congressional earmark secured last year by U.S. Congressman Chet Edwards. The funding was designated for fiscal year 2008.

"This is an important program because it is about protecting the lives of service men and women in harm's way who are protecting our country," the Democrat from Waco said Monday while visiting the Lynntech lab. "We have a moral obligation to do everything possible to protect our troops and bring them home safely."

Lynntech CEO John Clanton said the company has been working on the technologies involved with the projects for the past four years. In addition to the congressional funding, the company previously was awarded about $850,000 from the defense department, he said.

Oliver Murphy, Lynntech co-founder and chief technological officer, said all three projects are in similar stages of development. Each has about a year to go before being sent to the Army for testing, which he said could take another year.

The bulk of the congressional funding will go toward the development of the handheld threat detection system. The small, green prototype on display Monday is just a fraction of the size of its large, boxy predecessor.

In addition to saving soldiers lives, Murphy and Edwards said that the device also could be used as a tool for emergency responders called to plumes of strange smoke or unknown gases. Such a device, which could instantaneously determine the type of gas and its lethality, could have be used earlier this year when the toxic chemical ricin was found in a Las Vegas motel, the pair said.

"Maybe it's Baghdad today, but tomorrow it could be Las Vegas," Murphy said.

The funding also will be used for further development with fuel cells used to power military equipment in the field.

Lynntech scientists are working to lengthen the life of batteries used on spy planes, which would keep the aircraft aloft for longer periods of time. Currently, the planes, which have a 13-foot wing span, can only fly for about two hours, which means soldiers must carry them from place to place, scientists explained.

A 12-hour battery would allow the plane to fly in formation above the troops until coordinates were entered remotely. The plane then could fly over an area in question, automatically download its data and return to formation, scientists explained.

"We can save troops' lives," Murphy said. "This technology is probably the next major breakthrough in real time intelligence."

The researchers said they also are developing rechargeable batteries that can be used in the field. Currently, soldiers must carry with them between 60 and 80 pounds of disposable batteries, which are discarded once the power is drained.

Having rechargeable units would allow troops to carry just a couple sets of batteries, giving them more room for food and other basic necessities.

"That's amazing," Edwards said as he and Lynntech scientists walked around a large table displaying each of the three projects. "The bottom line is you end up saving lives. That's what it's all about."

Economic Impact of Texas Ag Hits Record $100 Billion

econnor — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:11:31 -0700

Texas A&M Ag News

Economic Impact of Texas Agriculture Hits Record $100 Billion

January 08, 2008
Writer(s): Blair Fannin

COLLEGE STATION – Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples touted the work ethic of Texas farmers and ranchers Tuesday discussing an economic milestone. For the first time in history, statewide agriculture production in 2007 contributed more than $100 billion to the Texas economy.

“All Texans should be proud of the dedicated men and women who live and breathe agriculture daily, providing food and fiber to feed and clothe their fellow Texans,” Staples said at the Texas A&M AgriLife Conference at Texas A&M University.

Texas leads the nation in the number of cattle, horses, goats, sheep and deer. The state also ranks first in production of cotton, wool, mohair and hay. The Texas agriculture industry employs nearly 2 million Texans, contributing approximately 9 percent of the gross state product.

“Folks, it’s an amazing story to tell,” Staples said. “We have to tell it everyday, and the key is to tell the story effectively and get people’s attention.”

One in seven individuals in Texas are employed “in some form of agriculture,” and everyone in the industry has to be involved in branding, marketing and selling, Staples said.

“Each of us have to energize our agricultural industry, excite the public and tell them how breakthroughs make their lives better,” he said.

Dr. Elsa Murano, president of Texas A&M University and former vice chancellor and dean of agriculture and life sciences, told attendees that “your work is life enhancing, and I certainly value the recognition you bring to Texas A&M University.”

Promoting partnerships and collaborative work among the colleges at Texas A&M is one of many goals Murano outlined. She touted Texas A&M’s bioenergy alliance, an ongoing research program investigating alternative fuels among both the agriculture and engineering programs, as a lead example.

U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, who received the Texas A&M AgriLife Outstanding Public Servant Award, also emphasized the importance of telling Americans how important agriculture is and how it plays a key role in daily life.

“It’s more important than ever to tell the positive impact of AgriLife,” he said. “Strong values come from rural life, and it may depend on how well we tell the story agriculture is life.”

The Texas A&M AgriLife Conference brings together two of the state’s premier agencies as part of the Texas A&M University System – Texas AgriLife Research and the Texas AgriLife Extension Service – in addition to faculty that serve the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M.

Brazos Valley tallies $41 million in earmarks

econnor — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:09:42 -0700

Saturday, December 29, 2007

BV tallies $41 million in earmarks

The Bryan College Station Eagle

By JANET PHELPS |Eagle Staff Writer

More than $41 million will be poured into Brazos Valley projects next year, thanks to earmarks by U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco.

President Bush criticized special project money as "wasteful government spending" when he signed the $555 billion bill Wednesday that funds the Iraq war into 2008 and keeps government agencies running through September.

The money will go to 16 projects in Brazos, Robertson, Madison and Grimes counties. The projects range from high-profile aerospace engineering and biofuel research at Texas A&M University to a small, church-based drug prevention program.

Edwards said Friday he was proud of the federal money he secured for local projects because it's an effective way to encourage local growth.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to make appropriations, he said, and earmarks allow local leaders to identify and receive funding for projects they see as important.

"I believe [locally initiated projects] make more sense than letting some bureaucrat in the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, D.C., make decisions about what projects to fund," he said. "I would challenge anyone to criticize agricultural research at A&M or emergency response training that help make our cities safer."

A majority of the $41.6 million will go to Texas A&M, including $985,000 for biofuels research and $705,000 for aerospace engineering projects that are used by NASA for lunar and Mars exploration.

Ken Peddicord, director of Texas A&M's Texas Engineering Experiment Station, said the funding is an important step in advancing research into new energy sources.

Texas A&M's BioEnergy Alliance -- a partnership between the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station and the Texas Engineering Experiment Station -- has developed groundbreaking research in alternative fuels such as sorghum that do not come from food sources, he said.

"This money allows the program to strike off in new directions, to move away from corn and ethanol," he said.

St. Joseph Health System also received money for repairs to its Madisonville hospital.

Gentry Woodard, director of legislative affairs and grants for the St. Joseph Health System, said employees at the 57-year-old hospital have volunteered on weekends to make repairs themselves.

Edwards said the staff dedication is one reason he allotted $117,000 to pay for repairs to the roof and emergency room upgrades.

"It was terribly important to that community," he said.

The earmarks come on top of the 2008 defense appropriations bill that was signed into law in November, in which Edwards secured $6.8 million for Texas A&M defense projects and $2.6 million for Lynntech Inc.

Other local earmarks include:

$392,000 to repave County Road 172 in northern Grimes County.

$196,000 to make improvements to Collard Street in Madisonville.

$376,000 to improve communication technology equipment at the Navasota Police Department.

$12.5 million to train emergency first responders at the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center at Texas A&M.

$2 million to fund research at the Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute at Texas A&M.

$21.9 million to 23 farming, forestry and animal health research programs at Texas A&M.

$1.39 million to provide anti-terrorism training to educators and local law enforcement through the Texas Engineering Extension Service's Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training program and Texas A&M's Project Protect.

$588,000 to Brazos Valley Transportation Management Center to study local traffic solutions and plan for future growth.

$150,000 to Project Focus, a drug- and alcohol-abuse prevention program at Shiloh Baptist Church in Bryan.

Working Hard for Brazos County

Kat — Tue, 30 May 2006 09:35:33 -0700

Working Hard for Brazos County

Economic Development through Better and Safer Roads

Chet Edwards believes it is important for Brazos County residents to see some of their hard-earned tax money come back home to help state and local government keep up with the explosive population growth in Brazos County.

These investments mean increased economic development and safer roads for Brazos County families.

Since 2004, Chet has secured over $18 million for transportation improvement projects in Brazos County:

$2 million to widen the Old Reliance Road Overpass at SH6 (Earl Rudder Freeway) to accommodate traffic from the new Bryan High School location on Old Reliance Road.
$2.4 million to construct an overpass at the Barron Rd. & SH 6 Interchange, which will provide congestion relief on Hwy. 6 and improve safety.
$3.4 million for the widening of FM 60 (University Drive) from SH6 to FM 158, significantly improving regional mobility.
$3 million for the Brazos Transit District/Bryan Inter-modal Transit Terminal and Parking Facility.
$2 million to make Highway 6 a four-lane freeway with frontage roads from north of Peach Creek to the Navasota River.

$1 million for system-wide upgrades in the Brazos Transit District, including bike racks, ADA ramps, sidewalks, improved lighting and other improvements that will encourage transit usage.
$900,000 to construct a parking garage and a passenger shelter facility at the Bryan Inter-modal Transit Terminal.
$625,000 for the Brazos Transit District to replace 12 buses.
$900,000 for a Brazos County transportation study in conjunction with Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), the Bryan District of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the City of College Station, the City of Bryan, Brazos County, and Texas A&M University.

Improving Easterwood Airport

Chet secured $2.7 million for Easterwood Airport Runway rehabilitation in order to preserve the integrity and structure of the runway and ensure safety for aircraft.
Chet inserted language in the Transportation Appropriations Bill that directs the Houston Area Air Traffic System to design and develop surveillance radar coverage for Easterwood Airport by 2009, enhancing safety and efficiency at Easterwood.

Working for Better Health Care for Our Families

Chet secured $50,000 for the Center of Excellence in Family Medicine and Rural Primary Care by Brazos Valley Family Medical Center, to support a new facility that will provide technological support for rural hospitals and clinicians.

Improving the Security of Brazos County's Citizens

Chet secured $146,000 for Project Focus at the Shiloh Economic Development Corporation to combat and contain alcohol/drug activities in our community through rehabilitation placement, education, and prevention programs.

Protecting Federal Jobs in Brazos County

Chet worked closely with the U.S. Postal Service to eliminate the possibility of the closure of the Bryan Postal Distribution Center, saving 20 jobs and ensuring timely mail delivery in the region.

Edwards Praises Ag Research at Texas A&M

Kat — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:00:10 -0700

U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards Praises Ag Research at Texas A&M, Tours Labs

Dave Mayes | Ag News | July 3, 2008

COLLEGE STATION – U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards of Waco on Wednesday praised the agricultural research accomplishments of the Texas A&M System, then toured some campus labs to get a first-hand look at efforts aimed at world solutions to food and energy needs.

"I feel like the water boy who is finally getting to meet the football players," Edwards told a crowd of 60 researchers and administrators. "You are the real stars … accomplishing great things."

People tend to think that if they aren't farmers or ranchers, that agricultural research has no relevance for them, he said, but that's not true.

On his tour, Edwards met with Dr. Keerti Rathore, an AgriLife Research plant biotechnologist, whose ground-breaking work on removing a toxic compound from cottonseed could make it a high-protein food available to an estimated 500 million people a year.

He also was shown 20-foot tall sorghum stalks that show great potential as high-tonnage biomass for the production of cellulosic ethanol. The sorghum stalks, which resemble bamboo canes, could be grown throughout much of the South and produce an estimated 20 dry tons per acre, according to AgriLife researcher Dr. John Mullet.

Such high yields, Mullet explained, mean that 2,000 gallons of ethanol, instead of 500 gallons, could be produced per acre.

Edwards said as he visits with constituents in his 17th Congressional district, which runs from Cleburne south through Waco and Navasota, the issues people are most concerned about – high food prices, high fuel prices and health care, for example – are the very issues that Texas AgriLife Research scientists are working on.

As high as food prices seem, Edwards said, the truth is that Americans pay less for food as a percentage of income than any other people in the world. Without the long history of agricultural research in partnership with farmers and ranchers, he said, he couldn't imagine how high food prices would be – "double, triple, who knows?

AgriLife researchers are also working on a wide array of alternative fuels, from algae to sorghum, he said, "to find new sources of renewable clean energy that in the long run can bring down the price of gasoline and energy."

Edwards also praised the work of the Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center at Texas A&M, which is working to develop more healthful foods that will help people fight diseases or prevent them altogether, thus lowering health care costs. Referring to his water boy analogy, the congressman said he felt privileged to play a small part in helping bring the "water" – some $23 million in federal funds for agriculture and energy research at the Texas A&M System in 2007.

But Edwards also pointed out that all of this funding came from "earmarked" legislation, which directs funding to a particular project in a Congressional district, a practice that has been criticized as wasteful. He said there's a positive side to a story that has been portrayed negatively nationally. "We shouldn't let the one bad (earmarked) project overshadow the 99 others that are making our quality of life better, our economy stronger and our nation safer."

"If we were to end all Congressional earmarks," he warned, "if that became the policy, it would devastate our AgriLife research here at Texas A&M, our engineering programs and some of our nation's defense programs that are so important to the military."

"So these are earmarks that I am very proud to be associated with," he continued, "and I didn't come up with these. Many of them came from here (at Texas A&M), from some of the world's finest researchers."

Editorial: Glad 17th District remains unchanged

Kat — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 06:47:43 -0700

June 29, 2006
Editorial: Glad 17th District remains unchanged

Bryan-College Station Eagle
Eagle Editorial |

No doubt most Texans greeted Wednesday's redistricting ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court with a sigh of relief. While we might question the ruling that Legislatures are free to redistrict any time they wish, at least most of us won't have to deal with the mess of changing district boundary lines this close to the Nov. 7 general election. Such changes required by the high court will be a nightmare for the counties that were ordered by the court to redistrict to reflect minority representation.

We are particularly glad because we like the 17th Congressional District we were put in by the Legislature two years ago. While it would be nice if Bryan and College Station were at the center of a district, we share much in common with the rest of the 17th District as drawn. The two population centers - Bryan-College Station and Waco - both are somewhat comparable in size and both have major universities and active junior colleges. We share a Central Texas common bond that was lacking for the two years we were in John Carter's 31st Congressional District based in the suburbs north of Austin.

In addition, we have been served well by U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, who is a frequent visitor to Brazos County and has championed everything from research at Texas A&M to badly needed highway improvements.

We hope that the Legislature doesn't take advantage of its new authority to redistrict the state as often as it desires. The chaos wrought by the redistricting two years ago is an example of what happens when lawmakers redistrict for political reasons. Repeated redistricting between the census required every 10 years would throw people into turmoil and would make it virtually impossible for representatives to get to know their constituents.

Of course, it is impossible to take politics out of the redistricting process, but we urge the politicians of both parties to show restraint when they are in the majority in the Legislature.