Border sheep, beware.
The Socorro City Council has these docile creatures in its sights and may move within two weeks to limit them, as well as horses, cows and mules, to two per half-acre, citing concerns about animal odors, the El Paso Times and the local Fox TV station report.
The sheep in this El Paso-area town aren't the only ones getting the squeeze from local government. Witness the enactment today of a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants in San Antonio, a proposed ban on golf carts in Seabrook, and a bag manufacturer's threat to leave town after Brownsville banned disposable bags in January. The Kentucky-based manufacturer, Duro Bag Manufacturing Co., has a plant in Brownsville that employs 150, the San Antonio Express-News reports.
The oppressive heat of summer has failed to temper the legislative impulse to make us all safer, healthier and less wasteful. Restaurant owners, livestock farmers, and the local bag maker have protested.
At least two of the municipal measures, the smoking and disposable bag bans, follow national efforts.
San Antonio joins about 400 cities and towns who have banned smoking bars, restaurants and workplaces, according to a survey by the Berkeley, Calif.-based Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights. And Brownsville's choice to bag bags is similar to that of some California cities. The trade publication Plastics News reported that as of March there were "12 plastic bag bans in the U.S., four of them in the California cities of San Francisco, Fairfax, Palo Alto and Malibu. The District of Columbia also has a 5-cent tax on single-use plastic carryout bags." Since then, the state of California has moved closer to banning plastic bags.
Contact Lee Ann O'Neal at 713-980-9777 or leeann@texaswatchdog.org.
Photo of a sheep by flickr user Tambako the Jaguar, used via a Creative Commons license.
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