The Reluctant Regulator’s Weak Enforcement
How the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's Enforcement Policies Are Failing Texans
By Kathryn Guerra and Adrian Shelley
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced that it selected Craig Pritzlaff as its next deputy assistant administrator of the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. Pritzlaff spent the last five years as the director of enforcement at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The appointment is the latest example of a trend identified by Public Citizen: placing polluter-friendly Texans in high-ranking environmental positions in the Trump Administration.
Under Pritzlaff’s leadership, the TCEQ underwent Sunset review and was described by other state officials as a “reluctant regulator” in a report that also found the agency’s policies lack transparency and generate public mistrust.
Public Citizen’s TCEQ Watchdog campaign has developed numerous critiques of the agency’s enforcement practices. While many of these practices have been in place for much longer than Pritzlaff’s tenure, we hope that new leadership in the agency’s enforcement division will consider how its weak enforcement policies fail to protect communities across Texas.
Allowing polluters to operate without required permits
A polluting facility needs air, water, and/or waste permits issued by the TCEQ or EPA. In Texas, the law requires that facilities obtain permits before construction begins, but it’s not uncommon for the agency to discover that a facility has opened without applying for the required permits.
TCEQ policy has long been to initiate enforcement against facilities that fail to obtain authorization, then draft a legal compliance agreement called an Agreed Order that allows the facility to keep operating, polluting, and profiting. In contrast, the enforcement process drags on, often for a year or more, because the facility must begin the permit application process, which can take up to a year.
In the spring of 2023, the agency responded to a complaint of a concrete batch plant polluting its neighbors in San Antonio. The TCEQ found the facility never applied for the required permits. They were fined $8,750, but two years later, the facility was still doing business without a permit. TCEQ staff had included an ordering provision in the facility’s Agreed Order that legally allowed them to do so. In February 2025, TCEQ leadership suggested that unless the company initiated a new permit application, they might force the company to shut down. As far as we know, that never happened. But the company finally obtained its permit on October 3.
In another recent case, a major petrochemical polluter southwest of Houston was found operating without a required federal air permit. TCEQ fined the company $17,600, but again, a legal agreement between the polluter and the state allowed it to continue operating for more than a year without the necessary permit.
If the average Texan drove a car without a license and got pulled over, they’d face severe penalties. Permits are required by law, and there should be no leniency for companies operating illegally without the required permits. The TCEQ must stop its policy of granting de facto authorization to emit unauthorized pollution, as this directly contradicts state and federal laws that require permits before breaking ground on construction.
Protracted enforcement deadlines that are not strictly enforced
Every Notice of Violation or Enforcement that the agency issues sets a compliance deadline. A polluter must demonstrate they’ve resolved the problem or face additional enforcement action or referral to the Office of the Attorney General for civil action. But most facilities will never face any further consequences for failing to meet compliance deadlines.
Despite the compliance dates incorporated into a legally-binding agreement that the TCEQ itself drafted, the agency often ignores or grants extensions of those deadlines in favor of industry, to the detriment of communities. The agency uses the Executive Director’s discretion to extend any deadline for what it considers “good cause”. The agency says that “the determination of what constitutes good cause rests solely with the Executive Director.”
Compliance deadlines are not immediately imposed once a more serious enforcement-level violation is found. Deadlines are set for 30 to 45 days after a year-long enforcement process, following a polluter’s agreement to the agency’s proposed legal terms to resolve the case, and after the agency’s commissioners vote to approve. TCEQ reported that during fiscal year 2024, the average number of days from the initiation of an enforcement action to its completion was 528 days.
For example, in a case in Bastrop County, a Darling Ingredients meat rendering facility was cited for producing foul odors that have been complained about by communities more than 15 miles away. The agency initiated enforcement action, and in July 2025, the agreed order was approved by the commission. The compliance terms give Darling until January 2026 to implement an odor control plan that would effectively address the odor violation they received in July 2024, while residents continue to suffer. The community has reported more than 350 additional complaints against the facility since the agreed order was approved. Those complaints resulted in five additional violations, but no additional enforcement action. The violations had a compliance deadline of October 15, but that deadline has passed, and the issues still show to be unresolved by the TCEQ. The agency has taken no additional or elevated enforcement action against the facility to date.
Intentionally aggregating violations for months or years
Last month, we began asking questions about an enforcement action set for commissioners’ approval, which spanned ten years and covered nearly 100 violations at an INEOS chemical facility near Houston. Why had TCEQ waited so long to remedy illegal acts? Agency leadership told us that a recently abandoned enforcement policy deliberately allowed violations to accumulate over the years, claiming it was more efficient to handle multiple issues in a single enforcement action. But that proved to be untrue, instead creating a complex backlog of cases that the agency is still struggling to resolve. That’s not efficiency, it’s failure.
More than 20 investigations of the INEOS facility over ten years found illegal acts that the polluter was not legally required to remedy until the passage of the agreed order this year. The delayed action also delayed the required payment of financial penalties. Granted, the fine that was finally issued was quite hefty at nearly $2.25 million, but this amounts to little for a company with $55 billion in annual revenues.
Offering discounts on almost every fine it issues
In the INEOS case, the company was granted a penalty deferral – a discount of nearly $450,000 for what the agency considered an “expedited settlement” of an action that was a decade in the making. The TCEQ’s enforcement policy on penalty calculations also allows polluters to receive discounts for their Compliance History ranking and submitting a letter of intent to conduct an environmental audit.
Along with discounts, TCEQ never issues the most significant fines it can impose. The agency has the authority to fine polluters $25,000 per violation per day, and $40,000 per violation per day in the worst cases. We’re not aware of a maximum fine having ever been issued, even when the facility is cited for the same violation repeatedly. Instead, the agency regularly offers discounts on the paltry fines it does issue. Global corporations worth billions consider these fines the cost of doing business.
The TCEQ’s Compliance History Rating system is a score assigned to come facilities based on their record of past compliance with the law. It is used to justify discounts on fines. To be ranked, the entity must have at least one interaction with the agency. But the agency lacks the staffing resources to investigate the vast majority of facilities in Texas, leaving most facilities with an “unclassified” designation. An “unclassified” ranking is rewarded in the same way as a “satisfactory” ranking facility. 90% of facilities are unclassified, meaning the vast majority of polluters enjoy a perception of fully compliant operation, which is often undeserved. The agency is currently updating its Compliance History rules, but fine discounts are still part of the program.
Companies also have the option of paying up to 50% of a penalty into a supplemental environmental project (SEP). This activity benefits the community by reducing pollution and offering additional advantages.
Supplemental Environmental Projects get approved in communities that didn’t suffer harm.
SEPs are great when they benefit the community that suffered environmental harm. But we’ve found cases of TCEQ approving SEPs in entirely different communities. This summer, the Lyondell Chemical company in Channelview, East Harris County, was allowed to fund a SEP in the whiter, wealthier neighboring community of Barbers Hill. When we asked why this was permitted, we were told it was because there wasn’t a pre-approved SEP in Channelview.
Pre-approved SEPs aren’t the only option. Lyondell Chemical polluted the people of Channelview, and TCEQ regulations allow it to develop a SEP that would benefit them.
That’s just wrong, and it isn’t in the spirit of the SEP program to invest in a different community than the one harmed. TCEQ should enforce this requirement of the SEP program.
Refusing to bring new enforcement actions while others are pending.
Finally, delaying enforcement actions has another consequence: TCEQ won’t bring a new enforcement action for the same illegal activity that is the subject of a pending action during what it considers the “compliance period,” even if the deadline has been arbitrarily extended by agency staff. This means companies are essentially shielded from consequences throughout TCEQ’s protracted enforcement process.
We recently encountered this issue while working with the community in Bastrop County, who are suffering from foul odors from Darling Ingredients. Although the TCEQ was recording the 350 complaints, the agency would not initiate a new enforcement action for nuisance odor because an existing enforcement case remains pending..
Conclusion
The TCEQ has the authority and duty to uphold environmental laws and protect the health of residents in Texas. Communities aren’t unreasonable to ask that the TCEQ’s internal policies reflect a robust enthusiasm to enforce those laws and support the expeditious resolution of violations. But agency leadership has adopted long-standing enforcement policies like these in what community advocates call an effort to shield industry from strict regulation and put profit over people. This practice might explain why Texas regulators are so popular in the current federal administration’s polluter-friendly approach to regulation.
The agency now has an opportunity to bring in fresh leadership that isn’t interested in doing business as usual, but in serving the best interests of Texans and the environment.