Non-profit Offers Free, Easy-to-Use Tool to Keep Houston-Galveston Communities Clean
Trash and debris found on a local beach. These reports are sent to both regulatory officials as well as community coalitions who can organize trash cleanups.
Pollution such as oil and chemical spills, litter dumping of waste, and illegal discharge of boat sewage have the potential to harm our environment and threaten the health of people, plants, and animals. We must act against pollution to ensure our communities remains healthy for us and our kids to enjoy. By reporting any pollution you see in the Houston-Galveston region, you can help protect yourself, your family, your community, and the Bay.
Through the Galveston Bay Action Network, citizens can easily report any pollution within minutes. Reports are automatically sent to the proper authority, resulting in the quickest response to get the pollution cleaned up. The Galveston Bay Action Network can be accessed online, and the mobile app is free and can now be downloaded from the iTunes App Store and Google Play.
Sanitary Sewer overflow reported on the Galveston Bay Action Network. These reports are often responded to and repaired within 24 hours.
No one knows their community better than the people living there. It is the residents who are usually the first to notice a pollution problem, such as illegal discharge or dumping. The problem is that it’s not always clear to whom or where these incidents should be reported. Not just one agency is responsible for responding to all kinds of water and land pollution - a myriad of county, state, and local government entities in any given region each respond to different kinds of pollution. The agency in your community that cleans up sewer overflows may not be the same that cleans up chemical spills or storm drain clogs. And if you cross into another city, it may be a completely different set of agencies responsible than those in your own.
The Galveston Bay Action Network mobile app is innovative because it provides one place for people in all four counties surrounding the Bay (Galveston, Harris, Brazoria, Chambers) to report pollution with the push of a button. You don’t have to do the work of figuring out who to call or where to go.
The app also provides information on how to identify various types of pollution, from sanitary sewer overflows to discolored water. It also shows past reports, and highlights how some of them have been cleaned up. Particular success has been seen from sanitary sewer overflow reports, construction malpractice reports (lack of proper sediment fences and barriers), as well as trash and debris issues.
Download the Galveston Bay Action Network app today so you can report pollution tomorrow!
The Galveston Bay Action Network app is a tool for everyone in the Houston-Galveston area, and can be used as far north as Spring-Cypress and as far east as Anahuac. Ultimately, Galveston Bay Foundation hopes communities will use this resource to improve their quality of life.
Help keep our communities clean and download the app on Google Play and iTunes, or report pollution on a desktop at www.galvbay.org/gban.
The Galveston Bay Action Network was developed under the guidance of Galveston Bay Foundation, with funding from the Texas General Land Office (TGLO), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Gulf of Mexico Program. In order to ensure these reports were sent automatically to the proper authorities, GBF worked with the technology company Vertices to create the necessary code and software for the Galveston Bay Action Network.
