Lee County Shows up To Push Back on the Texas Gas Rush
By Kamil Cook
Last month, residents of Lee County told Sandow Lakes Energy executives that they don’t want a dirty gas plant in their backyard.
What happened in that rural county is sure to be repeated in other parts of Texas if state leaders insist on proceeding with expensive methane power plants as the savior of the Texas electric grid while bypassing cheaper, cleaner options.
It was April 24 when residents packed a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) hearing in Lexington, a town about a 1-hour drive from Austin, where community members with the grassroots advocacy group Move the Gas Plant expressed their worries about the proposed 1,200-megawatt SL Energy plant.
If built, the plant would sit next to Blue, a small town nestled in Lee County. This tight-knit community is mainly composed of people who, as they stated clearly in their testimony to the TCEQ, chose to live there to be far away from the hustle and bustle of city life. Over 100 people said they oppose this plant turning their picturesque Central Texas town into a sacrifice zone. Even with promised safety measures, the new plant would release hundreds of tons of air pollutants annually, including nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter that can damage lungs, throats and hearts.
This plant is part of a broader Sandow Lakes plan to develop a 33,000-acre property into a master-planned community like The Woodlands north of Houston. SL Energy representatives say the plant would go on the far west side of the property to minimize the pollution affecting the people they want to live there. The problem is that people already live where the power plant is being proposed.
Once the people of Blue and nearby Adina found out about these plans, they quickly organized a community group opposing this plant. They’ve hosted community meetings, sent out mailers, and got in touch with lawyers and environmental organizations all in the effort to mobilize and motivate their friends and neighbors.
And speak out they did at the TCEQ public meeting. Their questions and interactions with TCEQ staff revealed the Kafkaesque nature of industrial regulation in Texas. Who would be monitoring the emissions of this plant? The company itself? How is it possible that a plant emitting 250 tons of NOx per year within three miles of a community be considered safe for the general public? In issuing a permit, the TCEQ would be promising the public that the plant’s emissions are safe.
All of this makes sense if you remember that the TCEQ is not actually designed to protect the environment for regular Texans. It is designed to rubber stamp permits so that as much industry can be brought into the state as possible at the expense of regular Texans and their health. If we start with that, it makes sense that this was a public meeting, meant to provide information about the TCEQ permit the plant requires. Still, it’s unlikely anyone left feeling like they understood this plant or the “best available control technologies” that would be used to “clean” the burned methane that discharges onto their community’s homes. It is almost irreconcilable. And the community members intuitively understood that.
Ultimately, even though the TCEQ tried to provide answers, few were surprised to leave with little new information. It was also not helpful to see SL Energy representatives sit in silence throughout.
And although the people of Move the Gas Plant know that this is only the first step in a potentially long regulatory battle, by their showing at the public meeting and by the number of public comments that they sent in online, SL Energy should be worried.
Lawmakers in Austin should take note. Numerous issues – supply chains, industry factors – stand in the way of a quick build-out of new and costly methane-burning power plants. Add to that motivated and persistent opposition like what we’re seeing in Lee County that we expect to see in other communities in similar situations, and the result is a long wait for a new methane plant to start generating electricity, wasting time and taxpayer dollars that could have been spent on better, cheaper alternatives.
Kamil Cook is a climate and clean energy associate in Public Citizen’s Texas office.