Hazardous waste a way of life in Harris County, should it be?
Hidalgo raises valid concerns about deals made that could affect communities near ‘sacrifice zones’
As far back as Spindletop, oil has been part of the Houston region’s origin story, credited with transforming the fledgling commercial center into the petrochemical capital of the nation.
And at least as far back as that, the region made a deal that continues to define the area: we will welcome industry and its jobs and its economic benefit in exchange for its pollution and environmental risks.
That deal is constantly renegotiated and remade, often without the knowledge or input of the broader community.
When County Judge Lina Hidalgo raised concerns last month about the firefighting wastewater coming from the train derailment site in East Palestine, Ohio, she brought needed attention to the dynamics of this dealmaking.
Last year, the state accepted more than 105,000 tons of toxic waste from across the country, disposed of in permitted facilities like the one in Deer Park that received some of the wastewater from Ohio.
Everyone could see the damage caused in Ohio earlier: big clouds of black smoke billowing above the skyline. It was decidedly less obvious when the waste created by the cleanup effort there made its way into Harris County where it would be injected deep in the ground in storage wells by a private company, Texas Molecular.
Local leaders initially raised concerns, prompting federal regulators to pause the shipments, before ultimately reassuring residents that the process was safe and that Harris County was the right place for it given our expertise in waste disposal.
“We sometimes are challenged by having industry here in Harris County, but in this case, we’re fortunate because we do have the most experienced people to handle such situations,” Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia told Houston Public Media.
“We produce a lot of stuff that needs to be treated and we’ve developed industries to do it,” explained Janet Kohlhase, an economics professor at the University of Houston who studies Superfund sites.
Indeed, there are only a handful of facilities across the country that provide this particular type of waste disposal service, said George Guillen, the executive director of the Environmental Institute of Houston and environmental science professor at University of Houston-Clear Lake. Here in Texas, we’ve got multiple.
“We have a lot of them because we have a lot of industry,” he said.
For some, that’s reassuring. These are permitted facilities that require special training.
But for others, that only underscores an uneven geography of hazardous waste disposal — and of the risk of hazardous waste disposal gone wrong — in places such as Houston, where the burden is inevitably borne disproportionately by communities of color.
In environmental justice circles, these over-burdened areas are called “sacrifice zones” or sometimes “waste havens.” Fenceline communities living next door to industry, including along the Houston Ship Channel, live these experiences every day.
“Nobody cares what happens in our neighborhood unless it affects more affluent communities,” Sema Hernandez, a Pasadena mother and environmental organizer told Inside Climate News of the waste headed next door to her.
Some have asked whether Hidalgo overreacted. It’s just some wastewater with a little vinyl chloride, a fairly common chemical. And the disposal technology seems safe enough. Like Garcia, our reporting left us persuaded that the material would be handled responsibly here. But we're not convinced that if something goes wrong, the communities most exposed would be adequately protected or cared for.
If you don't share our skepticism, just consider how long Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens residents have had to fight for real progress on a potential clean-up at the Union Pacific railyard contaminated with toxic creosote before the Environmental Protection Agency stepped in this week: the wood treatment facility stopped using creosote there in 1984. Residents are still fighting for a cleanup.
Regarding her initial reaction, Hidalgo was a bit sheepish in a recent interview, saying she didn't expect to be notified of every shipment of hazardous material heading to Harris County but that high-profile cases should come to her attention. She raised a valid concern about only learning of the wastewater through the media and that the county informed federal agencies of what was happening here. That lack of transparency isn’t acceptable.
Here in Harris County, we know all too well that things can go wrong, very wrong. And when they do, we don’t want our leaders to be in the dark — or our communities.