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Senate Bill 1524 |
Senate Author: Wentworth |
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Effective: 9-1-07 |
House Sponsor: Hilderbran |
Senate Bill 1524 amends Natural Resources Code provisions relating to the protection of caves. The bill increases, from a Class A misdemeanor to a state jail felony, the penalty for vandalism against a cave, the cave surface, or any natural material in the cave without the express prior written permission of the owner. It also makes minor changes to the statutory language describing what constitutes vandalism. The bill increases, from a Class B to a Class A misdemeanor, the penalty for excavating, removing, destroying, injuring, altering, or defacing any part of a cave owned by the State of Texas without a General Land Office permit and makes a second or subsequent offense a state jail felony. The same penalty enhancements are applied to violations of the prohibition against selling or offering to sell speleothems (natural mineral formations or deposits occurring in a cave) in Texas, or exporting them for sale outside Texas, without written permission from the owner of the cave from which they were removed.