FERC Decision on Brownsville LNG Facility Upends Environmental Justice

BROWNSVILLE, Texas – The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) today rejected the request from low-income residents, shrimpers, environmental groups, local cities and landowners to reverse its approval of the Rio Grande LNG fracked gas facility proposed for a site along the Gulf Coast near Brownsville. The move by FERC demonstrates that the agency has dismissed the groups’ justifiable concerns about elevated pollution and potentially devastating damage to the local tourism and fishing industries.

“For years, South Texans have made it clear that we oppose Rio Grande LNG, the Rio Bravo Pipeline, and the other dangerous, unnecessary fracked gas projects proposed in our community, and once again, FERC has failed to listen to us,” said Sierra Club Brownsville organizer Rebekah Hinojosa. “These projects would disproportionately impact our already-marginalized Latino community, subject us to increased air pollution, and threaten our local tourism economy. With this decision, FERC has completely dismissed those concerns and signaled that we do not have the same environmental rights as other people. We will not stop fighting to ensure that these dangerous facilities are never built.”

“FERC is legally required to evaluate the impacts of this proposed facility and the other two nearby facilities on low-income and minority communities,” said Erin Gaines, attorney for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA), which represents members of the grassroots Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera. “With this decision, they have failed to live up to that responsibility.”

Rio Grande LNG is the largest of three LNG fracked gas export facilities proposed by three fossil fuel companies for construction on adjacent sites along a stretch of the Gulf Coast near Brownsville. Building the facilities will require destroying thousands of acres of wetlands and irreplaceable habitat for wildlife, including fisheries and the endangered ocelot. The vast majority of the wetlands in the Rio Grande Valley have already been lost, and the sites for the proposed facilities make up a sizeable share of what’s left.

The facilities will increase levels of dangerous pollutants, including nitrogen oxide, which triggers asthma, small particulate matter, which lodges in the lungs, the carcinogens benzene and ethylbenzene, carbon monoxide as well as Co2, which causes global warming. The Rio Grande LNG terminal and Rio Bravo pipeline, which will instantly become the Valley’s largest polluters by far if they are built, would directly emit more than 9 million tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent annually.

Low-income residents, shrimpers, the cities of Port Isabel, South Padre Island, and Laguna Vista, Sierra Club, and TRLA, on behalf of its clients, have fought to challenge permits and federal environmental reviews for the plants by FERC and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). On Dec. 23, FERC authorized construction of all three plants, despite deficiencies raised in hundreds of pages of comments by opponents of the facilities. The opponents responded by requesting a “re-hearing” of the proposed Rio Grande LNG facility. Today, FERC rejected that request.

“The massive amount of air pollution that the Rio Grande LNG facility will generate is a very serious health concern for residents, especially those who already have respiratory problems like asthma,” said TRLA attorney Kathryn Youker, who also represents members of Vecinos. “In addition, people in Laguna Heights, which would be in the path of air pollution from Rio Grande LNG, are disproportionately burdened because they do not have access to nearby health care. They have to travel far to get to clinics and hospitals.”

FERC Commissioner Richard Glick, who dissented from the majority on the Dec. 23 decision to authorize construction of all three plants, wrote: “The upshot of the Commission’s approach is to signal to developers that they can sidestep environmental justice concerns so long as they ensure that all, or substantially all, of a project’s adverse impacts fall on low-income or minority communities.”