Hello, and welcome back to Drilled.
I'm Amy Westervelt.
This week we're thrilled to be re publishing a series on our site from the Xylum, about a small town in Texas that happens to be the country's top boil export hub. It wasn't always that way. About ten years ago, residents bought houses next to a naval base. Maybe not ideal, but they could get a house near the ocean in an affluent, sleepy community. Then the naval base shut down, the export terminals took over, and this predominantly white, conservative,
affluent town became a fence line community. Alex Ip, who reported and wrote the series, is here to tell us more.
Hi. My name is alex Ipp. I'm the founder, publisher and editor of The Zilo.
I would love to hear, Alex how you first stumbled across this town, because it has so many standout, weird little facts about it, and I'm like, ho, have I never heard of this place?
Yes? So I have to thank the Society for Environmental Journalists, which I am a member, and also the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. They organized a post conference tour in SDJ twenty twenty two, which was in Houston at the time, and I was invited to participate in the strip along with a number of other journalists to go down to South Texas to the Texas Coastal Bend, which is where Corpus Christie is, and also to surrounding towns
and as villagists. So we wanted to understand what are some environmental challenges facing this part of the country where there's a lot of oil and gas activity. So this little town that we're talking about is Ingleside on the Bay in Texas. This town has around six hundred and fourteen people has the last census, and it is a reasonably wealthy town in South Texas.
It has the.
Second highest home prices within the Corpus Christi metro area. It has access to Corpus Christie Bay, which is one of the larger bays that connects to the Gulf of Mexico. It is also a town that's really white. Census data shows that roughly eighty five percent of their residents are white. It is also quite a conservative town. It voted for Trump for a margin of over fifty points in the
last three presidential elections. But what is also really interesting about Ingleside on the Bay is that it is located in close proximity to free crude oil export aminals. So when you know America drills oil, a lot of the oil it exports to various countries. So in order to have the oil get from the oil fields to other countries, you have to use pipelines to send them to where it meets the ocean, where it gets loads up into oil tankers and then they go their way to different countries.
Angleside On the Bay has two of the largest crude oil export terminals in the entire US.
It has the.
Single largest crude oil export terminal in the US. It has the second largest crude oil export terminal in the US. There used to be a third one, but it got purchased by the biggest one, so now there's only two left.
In effect, based on what we can estimate, half of US's crude oil export industry is found in this little town and residents live less than two miles and in certain places, maybe you know, half a mile away from crude oil export terminals where these oil tankers just come in and out, in and out, and they load oil and sometimes there are accidents. Sometimes there are incidents and residents have to deal with it on a daily basis.
I think the thing that struck me most about this story when you first were talking to me about it, is that this is not maybe the type of community we often think of or see when we're talking about frontline community. So this is a pretty affluent, pretty white town, and they are a fence line community. I'm curious what you found when you talk to people, like, how do they view themselves in comparison to other fence line communities.
Are some of these people folks who have maybe voted for policies that they're now being negatively impacted by.
Yeah, So I do want to add a caveat that I never asked directly any of the sources that I talk to, you know, what political party they identify?
Who did you vote for?
No?
I can ask them because this is not an issue that belongs to one political party or not. This transcends political boundaries because you can just observe the impact that they're facing on a day to day basis. It doesn't care whether you belong to a political party or another political party, or you don't believe in political parties at all. One thing I did notice was a lot of residents moved in about ten years ago. That's when the home
prices started increasing. A lot of them weren't really aware of what was happening because the place where all these crewed export terminals used to be was a naval station, but people just sort of live with it. There are drawbacks to being next to a naval station, but that people lived with it. There's a lot of people who used to be related to, you know, the military communities, and now this former naval base has in your life
as a crude or export terminal. And these residents were sort of just thinking about retiring, thinking about having a good time. Wanted to go fish, they wanted to go eat seafood, They want to just do hang out, do their thing, and now they're realizing that this is no longer something they can do on a day to day basis, and they are upset about this. There are shocked, I would say, they couldn't really figure out why this would happen to them, But this is also something that they
are determined to put a stop to. So they are organizing not just within their little town, but also organizing with various groups across the coastal band, across the Corpus Christi metro area that has different racial backgrounds, different ethnicities,
different income backgrounds, different political leanings. They realize that the best way to respond to these challenges is to work together with groups who might have, you know, different ideas of how to do it, but they have a same ultimate goal of making sure that there's good regulations on the crude altern criminals and also to maybe just stop them wherever they can.
That's super interesting for some of these people. This is maybe their first time organizing, right, what's their experience with having to organize and being in a situation where, you know, the local government, the state government, et cetera, is not necessarily on their side.
Yes, So one thing I would say for this town Ingleside on the Bay is residents do recognize some of the connections and privileges they have, and so they're able to, for example, apply for various philanthropic funding that could help support the work they've been doing. They realize that they need to show up in numbers. That's why they show up to various public meetings hearings, and they also try
to coordinate a message. They want to coordinate with a simple message that they can remember from the top of their head and they could just speak clearly about what their demands are and what they are not happy about.
What I also noticed is for a lot of these folks, some of their educational background helps, or some of their previous business background helps, and it's trying to figure out how in this stage of their lives they're trying to look out for their kids and their grandkids, and how can they use the remaining time that they're around the town or the energy that they have to put it to a purpose that they think that could benefit the people around them.
Right, that makes sense. What are the sorts of things that people are dealing with as a result of having these facilities nearby. What are some of the daily things that they are having to deal with. I know you mentioned accidents and incidents before, but what do those look like and what's the experience like for these people.
Yes, So, in a span of a year and a week, there were two oil spills that happened right next to Ingleside on the day. And this doesn't just affect go side on the Bay obviously, because when you have an oil spill, there are chemicals that are in the air, there are chemicals that are in the water, and it spreads. And so what residents have described through you know, the public social media posts or through conversations that I have with them or when they're testifying publicly, is that everything
from you know, they're feeling really nauseous. They can't you open the doors, open the windows. They notice that, you know, fish have been dying, crabs have been dying. They can't fish as much as they did anymore. Their pets are going insane because pets also can smell what's in the air, or they can feel that something's not right, and in
certain cases, certain residents report that they have asthma. Now, while I am not able to establish, you know, a cause a relationship between these facilities and their asthma, these residents do say that they have never had asthma or health issue before moving to Ingleside on the Bay. One thing that also is a big point of anger of these residents is that they bought these homes to be
by the bay. That's what Ingleside on the Bay is about, and they found that it is getting harder and harder for them to do recreational activities or fishing, simply because there's a lot of oil tankers going around there's a lot of dredging to deepen the channel, and they're concerned that this prevents them from physically accessing a lot of these spaces that they can do such activities. And finally, you know, residents are concerned of a future risk of their home prices getting lowered.
Okay, let's have you set up the TCEQ hearing.
So the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which residents commonly refer to as TCQ, they're supposed to have a regulatory process before they issue a state permit for Clean Air Acts or other federal laws. So in this case, in January twenty twenty four, they had a notice in comment hearing where representatives from Enbridge, the Canadian oil and gas company that's trying to get the permit renewed for five years, get to speak to residents and also with other concerned citizens, advocates,
elected officials, and collects public comments. TCQ did in February greenlit the permit renewal. So this was a view of the process of how it happened.
Thank you.
My name is Lynn Porter.
I live on Engle Side.
On the day, I am approximately a half a mile from your wonderful facility. You just talked about vapor relief. I know there's vapor release. I see it, I smell it. I have to stay inside.
I'd like to thank you.
And then now at sixty three, I have two inhalers that I have to have never had them before until three years ago when I lived on the bay and I am a runner, so luve should be pretty good. My main concern is CCQ.
There are five.
Hundred elementary children from three to six one point six miles from this and I know where those vapors, so the wind takes them. There is no monitor by that school. Why that should be in the permit. There is no monitor at any of our schools.
I was really struck by this woman who has been a runner of her whole life. You know, still wants to run every day, but she's now having health issues because the air quality is so bad. I'm just curious if you heard that from multiple people, and what kind of daily annoyances people are having just from being exposed to all these little organic compounds in the air too.
Yeah, so not just phototile organic compounds, but when the oil spills happen, right, there were just yellow clumps of stuff that's on the shore that's not being cleaned, and residents have sent me photos of those clumps of oil. So there are two layers to this. The one thing is that it's very annoying nauseous to inhale this on a daily basis, or to walk through the oil spills
whenever they happen. The other thing that residents are concerned about is they don't know what's really in the air, or they don't feel like they have the knowledge or don't know how to fully understand this. And that's a hard thing knowledge that they don't know what's really in there. The uncertainty of what am I inhaling on a daily basis, what is there in the world or what's on the shore.
They don't really know, and I think that adds to the stress that residents have living in Ingoside on the Bay.
Where do things stand right now for this community and what kinds of things are they hoping to get done? Where are they at now in their fight?
Yeah, So two of the US's largest crude oil export terminals are located right next to Ingleside on the Bay. Not only that, there's been a plan for one of those companies, Enbridge, a Canadian oil and gas company to work with Yara, who's a Norwegian chemical company, to build a facility that creates ammonia, and this ammonia will be exported to support agricultural needs and that won't be sold in the US. So a lot of residents are trying
to fight the ammonia facility. They're also trying to intervene in this process were these facilities need to get their licenses renewed every five years, and so residents have been showing up to public readings, showing up, writing letters, writing public comment, and the public comment petition period is still active until May twenty eighth, and residents are hoping that the federal government would step in and hold not just the oil company accountable, but also the TCEQ, which is
the state level environmental regulatory agency, accountable, so they could make sure that these companies don't polude the environment and also not to admit various being hold gases or various pollutants that would harm the community. One thing I also wanted to know is how much data is important and
how when we don't have data, things fall apart. So one thing that's really struck me and I was doing this reporting process, which was also confirmed by the TCEQ, was that they did not have a single air quality monitor that the states set up in the entire county of where Ingleside on Debay is. So this is San Patricio County in South Texas. All the sensors are in Nuasis County, which is on the other side of Corpus Christie.
So the question is if there's no data that residents can access from the state government, then what they can do in this case, do they buy their own sensors and risk not having the data that they collected from these sensors accepted by various agencies. Do they just give the best shot at what the government can give them, or do they trust self reported data from all these oil and gas companies and try to make the best
out of it. That's a big thing, you know. If you don't have data, it's very hard to start a conversation. Or if you don't have the data, you can't see
the trends, you can't see the outliers. What we can know is that the risk of toxic chemicals in San Patricio County, which is where this little town is located, has increased seventeen times since twenty eighteen, which means that it is now more risky to live on the side where Ingleside on the Bay is compared to where Corpus Christie is and where all the oil and gas development
happened earlier last decade. The final thing that I've been noticing is that, you know, the Trump administration has deleted certain federal data and federal databases, and that has affected residents and has affected my reporting. When I was starting this investigation, it was laid into the Biden administration. At the time, there was data, but the data has been outdated because it takes, you know, up to a calendar year for the reporting to happen and for them to
be uploaded to public databases for people to see. Which also means the data that we're working with that we're citing in this reporting represent a snapshot in time. It's something in the past, and we're looking at the breakneck pace of how this oil and gas expansion has been. You know, we've been hearing that Enverage, for example, nearly doubled how much oil they export every day just in the past year. Then that's something that residents are essentially
playing a game of catchup. And now in the Trump administration, certain databases such as yjscreen or short for Environmental Justice Stream, which looks at various types of risk, that's certain neighborhood space that's been taken offline, which means that residents have fewer data to work with to compare their own situations, what's happening to nearby towns across the state, or compared to some environmental justice hotspot set as cancer Allity or Beaumont, Texas.
And when we have less and less data, our journalism work is harder. For one, and the second thing is resonent just feels like, you know, they're being hit in the dark, that they don't know what's happening to them.
And that is.
Something that you know, we have to grapple with as environmental journalists moving forward. How can we gather data that is accurate and authoritative, you know, without relying on what the federal government has given us in the past.
That's so huge right now. I don't think people really realize what we're losing as the government eliminates programs that collect this data, takes the data offline, makes it illegal to share the data, you know, the Environmental Defense Fund just had to sue the government to get the greenhouse gas inventory released, for example.
And I love Republica. They've been doing top notch work. I love you know, inside climbing News, they've been doing top notch work. I want to shout out the work that Lisa's song al saw, Lila Jones and also Dylan Bador has been working on in this region. And I've benefited a lot from their poor of reporting before I started my reporting, But what I realized was, you know,
they rely on data as well. And for example, when Republica published the most detailed map of cancer causing industrial air pollution in the United States, it published the story in twenty twenty one, but the data in the MAC covers emissions from twenty fourteen to twenty eighteen, which was three years ago the time that we had to spend to verify all the data, which also means that we are playing catch up as well, and we're not being able to show residents in real time what they're dealing
on a day to day basis and when we are sharing risk. Risk is also something that it's like playing Russian roulette. You have a more likely chance of getting cancer, but you know, some big incident can happen and the numbers change really quickly, or or some folks it's like when it happens, it happens. So how can we communicate this risk to residents and provide them with useful information
so they can act on it. That's also something that I think both journalists, residents, advocates, policymakers, lots of officials need to really sit down and think about in these uncertain times.
Completely completely agree. Thank you so much, Alex.
That is it for this time. You can check out the rest of Alex's three part series at the xylom dot com. That's th e x y l O M. Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. This episode was produced by Peter Duff, reported and hosted by me Amy Westervelt, fact checked by shild Legendia, and scored with the song A Bird in the Hand by Forenoon. Check out Drill dot Media for more and make sure you are subscribed to the podcast so you don't miss the first episode
of our new season coming next week. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.