Healthy Port Communities Coalition Letter to Port Houston Regarding Next Steps on Project 11 and Dredge Material Sites
Lori Brownell
Chief Channel Infrastructure Officer
Port Houston
2960 Riverby Road
Houston, Texas 77020
Re: Next Steps on Project 11 and Dredge Material Sites
Dear Ms. Brownell:
Thank you for meeting with members of the Healthy Port Communities Coalition (HPCC) on June 1, 2026, to talk about Project 11 Segments 5–6 and the Filterbed and Glendale dredge material placement areas in Pleasantville. We also thank Port Houston for your June 2, 2026, letter explaining the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to send the dredged material offshore to the Ocean Dredged Material Disposal Site (ODMDS) rather than to the Dredge Material Placement Sites (DMPAs) in the Pleasantville and Port Houston neighborhoods.
HPCC supports this decision and your request that the Corps retire the Glendale and Filterbed sites. We know this decision took time, hard work, and difficult discussions among Port Houston, the Corps, local officials, and community groups. We greatly appreciate the selection of the option that prioritizes the health and safety of residents in the Pleasantville and Port Houston/Harbor Place neighborhoods. Sending the dredged material offshore instead of dumping the dredge spoils at the Glendale and Filterbed sites ensures that families in Pleasantville and Port Houston/Harbor Place neighborhoods are not faced with greater health, flooding, and life-safety risks than already exist.
We understand that it is not cost-effective to dispose of the dredge spoils at the Glendale and Filterbed sites. In that same vein, we urge the Port and the Corps to consider whether it’s truly cost-effective to move forward with the placement of the dredge spoils of Segment 4 in the East and West Clinton DMPAs, which are located adjacent to the residents of Galena Park.
We appreciate your ongoing engagement on the Project 11 DMPAs, and HPCC wants to continue building this partnership so that this positive step at Glendale and Filterbed leads to broader, safer dredge-material practices across the Houston Ship Channel.
Below are the next steps we believe will help us move forward together.
A. Make the retirement of Glendale and Filterbed clear and public
Your June 2, 2026, letter to the USACE district commander for the Port area, Col. David Dake, states that Port Houston wants to work with the Corps to retire Glendale and Filterbed if the offshore plan is confirmed. HPCC supports this and recommends that Port Houston, in close collaboration with community groups:
- Share a publicly available estimated timeline showing when Glendale and Filterbed will be permanently retired for federal and Port use.
- Promise a public process to decide future uses of the Glendale and Filterbed properties.
- Clarify the definition of “retirement” of the placement areas and ensure that future use of these sites does not cause any safety, pollution, flood, or noise impacts for residents.
B. Evaluate the safety of the Galena Park dredge sites
In our December 16, 2025, letter to Col. Dake, HPCC also shared safety and pollution concerns about the House Tract, West Clinton, East Clinton, E2 Clinton, and Rosa Allen dredge spoils sites. An independent engineer and former Corps employee, WilliamEmpson, found that these sites may have serious life-safety risks and that the older studies used to support them do not meet current safety standards, including the Corps’ risk assessment requirements.
We are now asking that Port Houston and the Corps:
- Conduct a Safety Assurance Review (USACE Regulation 1165-2-217) of House Tract, West Clinton, East Clinton, E2 Clinton, and Rosa Allen, using the Corps’ risk assessment guidance. At the Port/HPCC June 1 Project 11 meeting, a Port official said you were planning to dump the Segment 4 dredge spoils in the Clinton and House Tract sites. We strongly request that this not occur before a Safety Assurance Review is completed.
- Develop and implement a public comprehensive safety, inspection, and monitoring program for the placement areas.
- Include HPCC and community groups in planning, conducting, and reviewing these safety studies, and share the results with the public.
- Conduct a study to evaluate how DMPAs impede natural drainage and how this affects local storm drains and neighborhood flooding.
C. Clean up pollution in areas where people walk and play
HPCC has tested dirt and standing water in public areas immediately adjacent to the Glendale and East and West Clinton dredge site berms and found very high levels of lead, mercury, arsenic, barium, PCBs, and dioxins — exceeding Texas safety standards. The results of this study have been shared with your staff. The Corps has also found these same pollutants present in sediments from the Houston Ship Channel itself. While we cannot say with certainty that all the pollution in the public right-of-way comes from the dredge sites, the correlation is disturbing, especially given that the toxic dredge spoils were used to build the berms with no containment at the site perimeter. It underscores the need for more testing of priority pollutants both at the perimeter and of the dredge spoils, and subsequent conversations about the health and safety implications of the findings.
We appreciate that Port Houston has posted signs in English and Spanish warning people not to trespass onto federal property, and we understand that some people are ignoring these warnings. Nevertheless, our testing showed high levels of pollution in the public areas, where there are no warning signs. Children and adults are walking and playing in these areas and are very likely being exposed to high levels of pollution and safety risks, as suggested by our public right-of-way testing.
HPCC recommends that Port Houston:
- Work with Harris County Pollution Control Services and Houston Public Health to test the public rights-of-way, berm surfaces, dredge placement areas, and groundwater, and share the results with the public.
- Once the pollution levels have been fully assessed, HPCC would like to work with the Port to identify practical fixes—such as covering or removing polluted soil, blocking unsafe paths and access points, and improving drainage—to reduce day- to-day exposure to polluted dirt and water.
D. Assess stormwater discharges from placement areas
HPCC and our technical advisors remain concerned that rainwater collecting in the placement area carries heavy metals and other contaminants from the dredge spoils. This contaminated stormwater exits the dredge sites through weirs and drain pipes, and subsequently enters the open stormwater drainage system of the City of Houston and Harris County. The same heavy metals and other contaminants that the Corps has documented in the ship channel sediments, which are then deposited in the placement areas, could be discharged into the culverts during active and heavy rainfall.
HPCC wants the Port and US Army Corps to help ensure that the placement area stormwater discharge complies with Houston’s NPDES and MS4 stormwater permit requirements and does not pose a health hazard to residents. The placement areas discharge stormwater directly into open channels next to residents’ homes, posing a significant risk to children who unknowingly play in the contaminated water.
We ask that Port Houston:
- Support more detailed pollution studies of the stormwater being discharged from the dredge sites.
- Share the findings with Houston Public Works, Harris County Flood Control District, and the public.
- Work with City and County officials to minimize the risk of polluted water entering the adjacent waterways.
Once again, thank you for meeting with HPCC at your headquarters, and for supporting the Corps’ decision to use the offshore disposal site and retire the Glendale and Filterbed dredge sites. We desire to continue working with you so that future dredging decisions protect public health, reduce flooding and pollution risks, and reflect the needs of nearby communities.
We would welcome a follow-up meeting to discuss these recommendations and begin drafting a joint Port–HPCC work plan for the coming year.
Sincerely,
Sarah Cinco
Organizer
Healthy Port Communities Coalition
On behalf of:
Achieving Community Tasks Successfully (ACTS)
Air Alliance Houston
Bayou City Waterkeeper
Coalition of Community Organizations (COCO)
East Harris County Empowerment Council
Environmental Community Advocates of Galena Park (ECAGP)
Healthy Gulf
Public Citizen