Homes, plants uneasy neighbors
Houston’s lack of zoning rules puts residential areas at risk
HOUSTON — Houston’s lack of zoning restrictions has left many residents with neighbors they don’t want, namely petrochemical facilities and businesses that handle hazardous materials.
That unease was evident again last month when an explosion leveled a metal fabricating and manufacturing business in the northwest of the city, killing two workers and damaging hundreds of nearby buildings and homes.
Quan Nguyen, a 49-yearold plumbing, heating and air conditioning technician whose house is a few hundred yards from Watson Grinding and Manufacturing, said the Jan. 24 blast knocked him out of bed and caused his wife to fall and hit her head while she was getting a drink of water. Some of their ceilings collapsed, and the explosion shattered the windows in their sleeping son’s bedroom, but thankfully none of them were seriously injured.
“I feel like it needs to be separated, businesses from residential areas. If they [have] businesses around here with chemicals, probably they have to be maintained more often, more inspections for them,” said Nguyen, who lives in a city and region that has had six major industrial accidents in the past year that have killed three people, injured dozens of others and forced temporary evacuations and school closures.
Instead of zoning measures, city leaders have begun discussing requiring such businesses to submit to more frequent inspections and to disclose more information about the types of hazardous materials they are handling.
“We just can’t have these incidents occur without us looking for ways to mitigate future risk,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said recently.
It’s unclear why Houston never adopted zoning, making it the largest U.S. city without it. There have been five attempts to do so in the self-proclaimed energy capital of the world since 1929, most recently in 1993, when voters declined to embrace zoning.
Lars Lerup, a retired Rice University architecture professor who studied Houston, suggested that the lack of zoning could have come about as a reflection of the state’s independent spirit, and the self-reliance and drive that many in the oil industry had. The lack of zoning has created a city with a “highly unique” urban environment, he said.
Although Houston has rejected zoning over the years, it does have various land use rules and other kinds of restrictions that amount to “quasi zoning,” said Matthew Festa, a professor who teaches property law and land use at South Texas College of Law Houston. For example, there are rules that regulate construction around the city’s airports, restrict where sexually oriented businesses can open, and set minimum lot sizes, which help restrict density.
Supporters of no zoning say it has helped boost Houston’s development and economic growth. But others, including community groups and researchers, say neighborhoods that are poorer or home to more racial minorities are disproportionately negatively affected by the lack of zoning.
In the southeastern Houston neighborhood of Manchester, Guadalupe Ortiz has lived more than 32 years across the street from a refinery. The 68-year-old widow who lives off her monthly Social Security check said her dream of moving is unaffordable.
“I want to sell. But people will continue living here. Where will they go? We are poor,” Ortiz said.
The explosion at Watson Grinding and Manufacturing seemed to be a tipping point for many.
“It just raises questions about how safe are we in our neighborhoods,” Houston City Council member Karla Cisneros said during a recent meeting of a committee that’s discussing new regulations on businesses that handle hazardous materials.
Festa, the law professor, said he doesn’t think adopting formal zoning regulations is the answer because Houston is “pretty well-built” and it would be economically and politically impossible to reconfigure neighborhoods.
Nguyen said that although he wants more protections for people like him, he also wouldn’t want to drive away industry or jobs.
Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena, meanwhile, said he is hopeful that the city can come up with changes that will improve safety, adding it will take “being able to sit down and have a conversation as far as what do we want as a community in order to better protect our citizens.”