GALVESTON – A Rice University professor is accusing Texas' environmental agency of systematically deleting all references to climate change and sea-level rise from an article he wrote about changes in Galveston Bay.

The deletions by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality are ideological and political, said John Anderson, the Maurice Ewing professor of oceanography at Rice. "I don't think there is any question but that their motive is to tone this thing down as it relates to global change," Anderson said. "...It's not about the science. It's all politics."

A TCEQ spokeswoman said she was seeking a response to a Houston Chronicle request for comment.

Anderson said the TCEQ won't allow the article - written for a report by the TCEQ's Galveston Bay Estuary Program - to be published without the deletions. That, and Anderson's refusal to accept the changes, are holding up publication of The State of the Bay, a periodic report published by the program.

The TECQ contracted with the Houston Advanced Research Center to produce the report about two years ago and the research council asked Anderson to submit an article on sea level rise in Galveston Bay. The Houston Advanced Research Center received the final edited version of his article about three months ago, Anderson said.

Anderson wrote a letter Aug. 30 to TCEQ Commissioner Buddy Garcia complaining about the censorship, giving as an example the deletion of a section saying that the ocean level in Galveston Bay is rising at 3 millimeters a year, compared with the long-term average of 0.5 millimeters. Anderson said the information showed that "this accelerating rate places considerable stress on the bay and its ecosystems."

He wrote Garcia that, "The sea level rates presented in this chapter are scientific fact, not speculation."

harvey.rice@chron.com