Petrochemical Expansion in Texas Will Fall Heavily on Communities of Color, Study Finds 

Researchers at Texas Southern University in Houston have analyzed demographic data around the locations of almost 100 industrial facilities proposed statewide and found that about 90 percent are located in counties with higher concentrations of people of color and families in poverty than statewide averages. 

In a report released this month, the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern also found that nearly half of those proposed industrial sites—petrochemicals plants for manufacturing plastics, coastal export terminals, refineries and other facilities—were already above the 90th percentile for pollution exposure under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory, a measurement of harmful industrial emissions.

“Texas and other states must end decades-long industrial facility siting where economically disadvantaged fenceline communities serve as dumping grounds,” the report concluded.

Robert Bullard, the center’s director and lead author of the report, first came to prominence as a young sociologist at the university when he produced a 1979 study showing that all five of Houston’s city-owned landfills and six of eight city-owned incinerators were located in Black neighborhoods.  

“The process of the dumping, the siting, has not changed over these 45 years that I’ve been studying this,” Bullard said in an interview. “America is segregated and so is pollution.”

Planned projects reviewed in the Bullard Center’s latest work, “Green Light to Pollute in Texas,“ cluster primarily around the state’s existing refinery hubs on the Gulf Coast, such as Port Arthur, the Houston Ship Channel, Freeport and Corpus Christi. Nearly half are located near neighborhoods that already face among the highest levels of toxic air pollution in the country, the report said.

These petrochemical complexes have grown rapidly in the last decade, fueled by abundant oil and gas from the fracking boom in the oilfields of Texas and beyond. Plastics industries dominated that growth. Plastics producers in Texas last year sold $61.5 billion in materials and employed 54,000 people, more than any other state, according to a recent report by the American Chemistry Council, an industry group.

“Plastics are essential to modern life, powering our economy,” said Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers, in a statement on the report in September. “Plastics manufacturing means good jobs, strong wages, and sustained investment in America’s future.”

However, those good jobs and wages typically go to people who live farther from the petrochemical plants, not to adjacent communities, Bullard said. “Industries say they are providing jobs and increased tax base. But it’s just the opposite for the communities on the fencelines,” he said. “They have higher poverty rates, higher unemployment rates.”

Most plant workers commute in and out, leaving nearby neighborhoods to bear the impacts of toxic emissions without the economic benefits, said Bullard, 79, who has been called the father of environmental justice for his pioneering research. 

Airborne emissions associated with petrochemical production include known human carcinogens, such as  benzene, ethylene oxide, vinyl chloride and 1,3-butadiene, as well as soot and other harmful chemicals. Wastewater from petrochemical production often contains heavy metals or acids.

Making Plastic in Texas

The Bullard Center considered 114 projects related to oil and gas in Texas proposed at 89 different locations as of February 2024, including coastal export terminals, refineries and seawater desalination plants that would supply water for petrochemical production. 

Plastics projects dominated the list. Most are expansions of existing complexes. Companies in Texas have proposed five new ethylene “crackers,” units that break natural gas into the building blocks of plastics. 

Units to produce polyethylene—the most common type of plastic used in bottles and bags—are proposed by Dow and Chevron Phillips Chemical near Freeport, by Baystar near Houston, by Motiva Enterprises and Chevron Phillips Chemical near Port Arthur and by Equistar Chemicals near Corpus Christi. Formosa Plastics plans several new units at its sprawling complex in the town of Point Comfort, including a reactor to make PVC plastic, used in piping, plumbing and construction materials.

“The continued expansion of the petrochemical industry in Texas most heavily impacts low-income communities of color that are already overburdened by industrial pollution,” said Mike Belliveau, founder of a group called Bend the Curve, which advocates for reduced plastic consumption.

Since the Bullard Center sourced its data last year, petrochemical markets have cooled as the decade-long buildout that followed the fracking boom begins to slow. The world now faces an oversupply of plastics, Belliveau said, and several projects in Texas have been cancelled. 

Those include three units for polycarbonate plastics—rigid material used for automotive parts, electronic casings, food containers and windows—proposed near Freeport by PetroLogistics and near Houston by LyondellBassell and Covestro, which also cancelled a new plant to make polyurethane, used in car cushions and other foam. ExxonMobil paused plans for an ethylene cracker in Point Comfort this year. 

“Demand for plastics is still growing, but it’s slowing,” said Belliveau, a former research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s less than what the industry was banking on.” 

To evaluate project locations, the Bullard Center identified a three-mile radius around each proposed facility, then analyzed them according to several demographic indexes and indicators with the EPA’s EJScreen tool. (That tool has since been pulled down by the Trump administration amid a purge of federal efforts to address environmental disparities by race.)

While nearly half of the locations in Texas ranked above the 90th percentile for pollution exposure, three locations near Port Arthur and Beaumont—both cities where Black people make up the largest demographic—ranked in the 99th percentile for toxic emissions. Ten others were in the 98th.

According to permitting documents included in the report, one ethylene unit at the massive Chevron Phillips Chemical Complex in Port Arthur is authorized to emit 612 tons per year of volatile organic compounds, a category including scores of gases with varying health impacts, as well as 192 tons per year of airborne soot.  

The company is seeking to build an additional furnace that would add another 15 tons per year of VOCs and 8 tons per year of soot, plus other pollutants. 

“At what level of pollution will there be some threshold?” Bullard said. “This community has a toxic burden that needs to be addressed in a way that no other facility would be coming in to add to the pollution.”