Public Citizen Comments to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Regarding Enforcement Order Against INV
Good morning, Commissioners.
I’m Kathryn Guerra, with Public Citizen’s Texas office. Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power.
I want to begin by appreciating the commissioner’s comments at the last agenda meeting – especially Commissioner Janecka’s openness to the feedback we provide. We do so because it is the critique of the agency that we feel the public is entitled to. We recognize the limits of this forum, but welcome additional dialogue with TCEQ leadership, both on the staff side and with commissioners, and will reach out to invite folks to have additional conversations.
Today, we are speaking on this enforcement case against INV. According to the agreed order, INV continued to operate emission units after their Federal Operating Permit expired in November 2024. Nearly a year later, INV is still operating without proper authorization.
This case highlights a larger systemic problem that commissioners have the power to fix. A facility operating without a valid permit should be shut down until it obtains the required authorization. Yet TCEQ’s long-standing enforcement practice allows companies to continue operating, polluting, and profiting while enforcement drags on. In effect, the agency’s agreed orders grant de facto authority to emit unauthorized pollution – directly contradicting state and federal law requiring permits to construct and operate.
We’re seeing the consequences of TCEQ’s outdated enforcement policies today. Just last month, we discussed how leadership historically allowed enforcement cases to sit unresolved for nearly a decade, creating a complex backlog of cases the agency must now navigate through.
In March, Public Citizen filed a Public Information Request asking TCEQ how many agreed orders in the last three years have allowed companies to keep operating without a permit, and whether those facilities ever obtained the required authorization. We received no information, except for the link to search the database. Either the agency cannot quantify the scale of this issue, or it does not want to. Nevertheless, Public Citizen is working to quantify it.
Commissioners, you have the ability to examine and correct this policy in a public work session. Yet nearly every work session scheduled this year has been cancelled.
Texans deserve regulators who enforce the law, not bend it. We urge you to put this issue on the agenda, open it to discussion, and end the practice of granting unauthorized emissions through agreed orders. Thank you.
INV Agreed Order: https://www.tceq.texas.gov/downloads/agency/decisions/agendas/backup/2025/2025-0310-air-e.pdf