Tell TCEQ to Protect Our Water From Petra Nova
The Petra Nova Carbon Capture plant in Fort Bend County is applying to renew its water permit to the detriment of Texans’ water. After being offline for over three years, Petra Nova came back online and has yet to be visited by TCEQ for an inspection. With this permit renewal and the lack of regulatory oversight, Petra Nova will continue polluting the Brazos River Basin, the state’s second-largest basin and source of water.
We must demand regulatory oversight and protection from TCEQ on this permit.
Use this form to send your comments to the TCEQ by November 11 and demand it deny permit WQ0005142000 and adopt stronger pollution controls to protect our water. The suggested message below will help you start your message to TCEQ.
Step One of commenting online is to submit the TCEQ Permit Number you’d like to comment on. The permit number is as follows: WQ0005142000
Suggested message:
I write to ask you to deny permit WQ0005142000 for Petra Nova CCS I LLC and require the applicant to revise the permit to implement pollution control and monitoring. To protect the health and environment of Texans, we must hold polluters accountable – especially for polluters using inefficient, resource-intensive technology.
The permit requested by Petra Nova would allow it to discharge around 1,317,000 gallons of treated wastewater and stormwater daily. This discharge ultimately ends up in the Brazos River Basin, the second-largest river basin in Texas, which provides Texans with increasing amounts of water year-over-year. With Fort Bend County continuing to grow with new residential development, our natural resources need to be protected and reserved for worthy applications, not an unreliable carbon capture facility.
From 2010 to 2019, monitoring of wells showed that 61 out of 64 wells had pollutants exceeding allowable guidelines, including arsenic, mercury, and chromium. The local residents and fellow Texans should not bear the consequences of harmful emissions and pollutants from Petra Nova.
If the permit is not denied, at the very least, I ask you to consider the following recommendations:
- Ensure discharge from the Petra Nova Carbon Capture Plant will not have detrimental effects on downstream waters or threaten the uses or potential uses of those water bodies
- Provide evidence that the list of pollutants being monitored as part of the permit is comprehensive for all the processes undertaken at Petra Nova.
- Conduct an inspection before issuing the permit renewal (as one has not been performed in over two years or since the plant’s restart in 2023).
- Consider the expanding population of the Fort Bend region, the impact of the plant’s emissions, and the use of resources to enforce more protective measures.
With these improvements, Petra Nova can start acting to better protect Texans, our health, and our communities. As a concerned citizen, I also request a public meeting to allow questions and conversations with the applicant and community.
Thank you,