Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled.
Speaker 2: I'm Amy Westervelt.
Speaker 1: This week we're thrilled to be re publishing a series
Speaker 1: on our site from the Xylum, about a small town
Speaker 1: in Texas that happens to be the country's top boil
Speaker 1: export hub. It wasn't always that way. About ten years ago,
Speaker 1: residents bought houses next to a naval base. Maybe not ideal,
Speaker 1: but they could get a house near the ocean in
Speaker 1: an affluent, sleepy community. Then the naval base shut down,
Speaker 1: the export terminals took over, and this predominantly white, conservative,
Speaker 1: affluent town became a fence line community. Alex Ip, who
Speaker 1: reported and wrote the series, is here to tell us more.
Speaker 3: Hi. My name is alex Ipp. I'm the founder, publisher
Speaker 3: and editor of The Zilo.
Speaker 2: I would love to hear, Alex how you first stumbled
Speaker 2: across this town, because it has so many standout, weird
Speaker 2: little facts about it, and I'm like, ho, have I
Speaker 2: never heard of this place?
Speaker 3: Yes? So I have to thank the Society for Environmental Journalists,
Speaker 3: which I am a member, and also the Institute for
Speaker 3: Journalism and Natural Resources. They organized a post conference tour
Speaker 3: in SDJ twenty twenty two, which was in Houston at
Speaker 3: the time, and I was invited to participate in the
Speaker 3: strip along with a number of other journalists to go
Speaker 3: down to South Texas to the Texas Coastal Bend, which
Speaker 3: is where Corpus Christie is, and also to surrounding towns
Speaker 3: and as villagists. So we wanted to understand what are
Speaker 3: some environmental challenges facing this part of the country where
Speaker 3: there's a lot of oil and gas activity. So this
Speaker 3: little town that we're talking about is Ingleside on the
Speaker 3: Bay in Texas. This town has around six hundred and
Speaker 3: fourteen people has the last census, and it is a
Speaker 3: reasonably wealthy town in South Texas.
Speaker 2: It has the.
Speaker 3: Second highest home prices within the Corpus Christi metro area.
Speaker 3: It has access to Corpus Christie Bay, which is one
Speaker 3: of the larger bays that connects to the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 3: It is also a town that's really white. Census data
Speaker 3: shows that roughly eighty five percent of their residents are white.
Speaker 3: It is also quite a conservative town. It voted for
Speaker 3: Trump for a margin of over fifty points in the
Speaker 3: last three presidential elections. But what is also really interesting
Speaker 3: about Ingleside on the Bay is that it is located
Speaker 3: in close proximity to free crude oil export aminals. So
Speaker 3: when you know America drills oil, a lot of the
Speaker 3: oil it exports to various countries. So in order to
Speaker 3: have the oil get from the oil fields to other countries,
Speaker 3: you have to use pipelines to send them to where
Speaker 3: it meets the ocean, where it gets loads up into
Speaker 3: oil tankers and then they go their way to different countries.
Speaker 3: Angleside On the Bay has two of the largest crude
Speaker 3: oil export terminals in the entire US.
Speaker 2: It has the.
Speaker 3: Single largest crude oil export terminal in the US. It
Speaker 3: has the second largest crude oil export terminal in the US.
Speaker 3: There used to be a third one, but it got
Speaker 3: purchased by the biggest one, so now there's only two left.
Speaker 3: In effect, based on what we can estimate, half of
Speaker 3: US's crude oil export industry is found in this little
Speaker 3: town and residents live less than two miles and in
Speaker 3: certain places, maybe you know, half a mile away from
Speaker 3: crude oil export terminals where these oil tankers just come
Speaker 3: in and out, in and out, and they load oil
Speaker 3: and sometimes there are accidents. Sometimes there are incidents and
Speaker 3: residents have to deal with it on a daily basis.
Speaker 2: I think the thing that struck me most about this
Speaker 2: story when you first were talking to me about it,
Speaker 2: is that this is not maybe the type of community
Speaker 2: we often think of or see when we're talking about
Speaker 2: frontline community. So this is a pretty affluent, pretty white town,
Speaker 2: and they are a fence line community. I'm curious what
Speaker 2: you found when you talk to people, like, how do
Speaker 2: they view themselves in comparison to other fence line communities.
Speaker 2: Are some of these people folks who have maybe voted
Speaker 2: for policies that they're now being negatively impacted by.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I do want to add a caveat that
Speaker 3: I never asked directly any of the sources that I
Speaker 3: talk to, you know, what political party they identify?
Speaker 2: Who did you vote for?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: I can ask them because this is not an issue
Speaker 3: that belongs to one political party or not. This transcends
Speaker 3: political boundaries because you can just observe the impact that
Speaker 3: they're facing on a day to day basis. It doesn't
Speaker 3: care whether you belong to a political party or another
Speaker 3: political party, or you don't believe in political parties at all.
Speaker 3: One thing I did notice was a lot of residents
Speaker 3: moved in about ten years ago. That's when the home
Speaker 3: prices started increasing. A lot of them weren't really aware
Speaker 3: of what was happening because the place where all these
Speaker 3: crewed export terminals used to be was a naval station,
Speaker 3: but people just sort of live with it. There are
Speaker 3: drawbacks to being next to a naval station, but that
Speaker 3: people lived with it. There's a lot of people who
Speaker 3: used to be related to, you know, the military communities,
Speaker 3: and now this former naval base has in your life
Speaker 3: as a crude or export terminal. And these residents were
Speaker 3: sort of just thinking about retiring, thinking about having a
Speaker 3: good time. Wanted to go fish, they wanted to go
Speaker 3: eat seafood, They want to just do hang out, do
Speaker 3: their thing, and now they're realizing that this is no
Speaker 3: longer something they can do on a day to day basis,
Speaker 3: and they are upset about this. There are shocked, I
Speaker 3: would say, they couldn't really figure out why this would
Speaker 3: happen to them, But this is also something that they
Speaker 3: are determined to put a stop to. So they are
Speaker 3: organizing not just within their little town, but also organizing
Speaker 3: with various groups across the coastal band, across the Corpus
Speaker 3: Christi metro area that has different racial backgrounds, different ethnicities,
Speaker 3: different income backgrounds, different political leanings. They realize that the
Speaker 3: best way to respond to these challenges is to work
Speaker 3: together with groups who might have, you know, different ideas
Speaker 3: of how to do it, but they have a same
Speaker 3: ultimate goal of making sure that there's good regulations on
Speaker 3: the crude altern criminals and also to maybe just stop
Speaker 3: them wherever they can.
Speaker 2: That's super interesting for some of these people. This is
Speaker 2: maybe their first time organizing, right, what's their experience with
Speaker 2: having to organize and being in a situation where, you know,
Speaker 2: the local government, the state government, et cetera, is not
Speaker 2: necessarily on their side.
Speaker 3: Yes, So one thing I would say for this town
Speaker 3: Ingleside on the Bay is residents do recognize some of
Speaker 3: the connections and privileges they have, and so they're able to,
Speaker 3: for example, apply for various philanthropic funding that could help
Speaker 3: support the work they've been doing. They realize that they
Speaker 3: need to show up in numbers. That's why they show
Speaker 3: up to various public meetings hearings, and they also try
Speaker 3: to coordinate a message. They want to coordinate with a
Speaker 3: simple message that they can remember from the top of
Speaker 3: their head and they could just speak clearly about what
Speaker 3: their demands are and what they are not happy about.
Speaker 3: What I also noticed is for a lot of these folks,
Speaker 3: some of their educational background helps, or some of their
Speaker 3: previous business background helps, and it's trying to figure out
Speaker 3: how in this stage of their lives they're trying to
Speaker 3: look out for their kids and their grandkids, and how
Speaker 3: can they use the remaining time that they're around the
Speaker 3: town or the energy that they have to put it
Speaker 3: to a purpose that they think that could benefit the
Speaker 3: people around them.
Speaker 2: Right, that makes sense. What are the sorts of things
Speaker 2: that people are dealing with as a result of having
Speaker 2: these facilities nearby. What are some of the daily things
Speaker 2: that they are having to deal with. I know you
Speaker 2: mentioned accidents and incidents before, but what do those look
Speaker 2: like and what's the experience like for these people.
Speaker 3: Yes, So, in a span of a year and a week,
Speaker 3: there were two oil spills that happened right next to
Speaker 3: Ingleside on the day. And this doesn't just affect go
Speaker 3: side on the Bay obviously, because when you have an
Speaker 3: oil spill, there are chemicals that are in the air,
Speaker 3: there are chemicals that are in the water, and it spreads.
Speaker 3: And so what residents have described through you know, the
Speaker 3: public social media posts or through conversations that I have
Speaker 3: with them or when they're testifying publicly, is that everything
Speaker 3: from you know, they're feeling really nauseous. They can't you
Speaker 3: open the doors, open the windows. They notice that, you know,
Speaker 3: fish have been dying, crabs have been dying. They can't
Speaker 3: fish as much as they did anymore. Their pets are
Speaker 3: going insane because pets also can smell what's in the air,
Speaker 3: or they can feel that something's not right, and in
Speaker 3: certain cases, certain residents report that they have asthma. Now,
Speaker 3: while I am not able to establish, you know, a
Speaker 3: cause a relationship between these facilities and their asthma, these
Speaker 3: residents do say that they have never had asthma or
Speaker 3: health issue before moving to Ingleside on the Bay. One
Speaker 3: thing that also is a big point of anger of
Speaker 3: these residents is that they bought these homes to be
Speaker 3: by the bay. That's what Ingleside on the Bay is about,
Speaker 3: and they found that it is getting harder and harder
Speaker 3: for them to do recreational activities or fishing, simply because
Speaker 3: there's a lot of oil tankers going around there's a
Speaker 3: lot of dredging to deepen the channel, and they're concerned
Speaker 3: that this prevents them from physically accessing a lot of
Speaker 3: these spaces that they can do such activities. And finally,
Speaker 3: you know, residents are concerned of a future risk of
Speaker 3: their home prices getting lowered.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's have you set up the TCEQ hearing.
Speaker 3: So the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which residents commonly
Speaker 3: refer to as TCQ, they're supposed to have a regulatory
Speaker 3: process before they issue a state permit for Clean Air
Speaker 3: Acts or other federal laws. So in this case, in
Speaker 3: January twenty twenty four, they had a notice in comment
Speaker 3: hearing where representatives from Enbridge, the Canadian oil and gas
Speaker 3: company that's trying to get the permit renewed for five years,
Speaker 3: get to speak to residents and also with other concerned citizens, advocates,
Speaker 3: elected officials, and collects public comments. TCQ did in February
Speaker 3: greenlit the permit renewal. So this was a view of
Speaker 3: the process of how it happened.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: My name is Lynn Porter.
Speaker 3: I live on Engle Side.
Speaker 4: On the day, I am approximately a half a mile
Speaker 4: from your wonderful facility. You just talked about vapor relief.
Speaker 4: I know there's vapor release. I see it, I smell it.
Speaker 4: I have to stay inside.
Speaker 3: I'd like to thank you.
Speaker 4: And then now at sixty three, I have two inhalers
Speaker 4: that I have to have never had them before until
Speaker 4: three years ago when I lived on the bay and
Speaker 4: I am a runner, so luve should be pretty good.
Speaker 4: My main concern is CCQ.
Speaker 3: There are five.
Speaker 4: Hundred elementary children from three to six one point six
Speaker 4: miles from this and I know where those vapors, so
Speaker 4: the wind takes them. There is no monitor by that school.
Speaker 4: Why that should be in the permit. There is no
Speaker 4: monitor at any of our schools.
Speaker 2: I was really struck by this woman who has been
Speaker 2: a runner of her whole life. You know, still wants
Speaker 2: to run every day, but she's now having health issues
Speaker 2: because the air quality is so bad. I'm just curious
Speaker 2: if you heard that from multiple people, and what kind
Speaker 2: of daily annoyances people are having just from being exposed
Speaker 2: to all these little organic compounds in the air too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so not just phototile organic compounds, but when the
Speaker 3: oil spills happen, right, there were just yellow clumps of
Speaker 3: stuff that's on the shore that's not being cleaned, and
Speaker 3: residents have sent me photos of those clumps of oil.
Speaker 3: So there are two layers to this. The one thing
Speaker 3: is that it's very annoying nauseous to inhale this on
Speaker 3: a daily basis, or to walk through the oil spills
Speaker 3: whenever they happen. The other thing that residents are concerned
Speaker 3: about is they don't know what's really in the air,
Speaker 3: or they don't feel like they have the knowledge or
Speaker 3: don't know how to fully understand this. And that's a
Speaker 3: hard thing knowledge that they don't know what's really in there.
Speaker 3: The uncertainty of what am I inhaling on a daily basis,
Speaker 3: what is there in the world or what's on the shore.
Speaker 3: They don't really know, and I think that adds to
Speaker 3: the stress that residents have living in Ingoside on the Bay.
Speaker 2: Where do things stand right now for this community and
Speaker 2: what kinds of things are they hoping to get done?
Speaker 2: Where are they at now in their fight?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So two of the US's largest crude oil export
Speaker 3: terminals are located right next to Ingleside on the Bay.
Speaker 3: Not only that, there's been a plan for one of
Speaker 3: those companies, Enbridge, a Canadian oil and gas company to
Speaker 3: work with Yara, who's a Norwegian chemical company, to build
Speaker 3: a facility that creates ammonia, and this ammonia will be
Speaker 3: exported to support agricultural needs and that won't be sold
Speaker 3: in the US. So a lot of residents are trying
Speaker 3: to fight the ammonia facility. They're also trying to intervene
Speaker 3: in this process were these facilities need to get their
Speaker 3: licenses renewed every five years, and so residents have been
Speaker 3: showing up to public readings, showing up, writing letters, writing
Speaker 3: public comment, and the public comment petition period is still
Speaker 3: active until May twenty eighth, and residents are hoping that
Speaker 3: the federal government would step in and hold not just
Speaker 3: the oil company accountable, but also the TCEQ, which is
Speaker 3: the state level environmental regulatory agency, accountable, so they could
Speaker 3: make sure that these companies don't polude the environment and
Speaker 3: also not to admit various being hold gases or various
Speaker 3: pollutants that would harm the community. One thing I also
Speaker 3: wanted to know is how much data is important and
Speaker 3: how when we don't have data, things fall apart. So
Speaker 3: one thing that's really struck me and I was doing
Speaker 3: this reporting process, which was also confirmed by the TCEQ,
Speaker 3: was that they did not have a single air quality
Speaker 3: monitor that the states set up in the entire county
Speaker 3: of where Ingleside on Debay is. So this is San
Speaker 3: Patricio County in South Texas. All the sensors are in
Speaker 3: Nuasis County, which is on the other side of Corpus Christie.
Speaker 3: So the question is if there's no data that residents
Speaker 3: can access from the state government, then what they can
Speaker 3: do in this case, do they buy their own sensors
Speaker 3: and risk not having the data that they collected from
Speaker 3: these sensors accepted by various agencies. Do they just give
Speaker 3: the best shot at what the government can give them,
Speaker 3: or do they trust self reported data from all these
Speaker 3: oil and gas companies and try to make the best
Speaker 3: out of it. That's a big thing, you know. If
Speaker 3: you don't have data, it's very hard to start a conversation.
Speaker 3: Or if you don't have the data, you can't see
Speaker 3: the trends, you can't see the outliers. What we can
Speaker 3: know is that the risk of toxic chemicals in San
Speaker 3: Patricio County, which is where this little town is located,
Speaker 3: has increased seventeen times since twenty eighteen, which means that
Speaker 3: it is now more risky to live on the side
Speaker 3: where Ingleside on the Bay is compared to where Corpus
Speaker 3: Christie is and where all the oil and gas development
Speaker 3: happened earlier last decade. The final thing that I've been
Speaker 3: noticing is that, you know, the Trump administration has deleted
Speaker 3: certain federal data and federal databases, and that has affected
Speaker 3: residents and has affected my reporting. When I was starting
Speaker 3: this investigation, it was laid into the Biden administration. At
Speaker 3: the time, there was data, but the data has been
Speaker 3: outdated because it takes, you know, up to a calendar
Speaker 3: year for the reporting to happen and for them to
Speaker 3: be uploaded to public databases for people to see. Which
Speaker 3: also means the data that we're working with that we're
Speaker 3: citing in this reporting represent a snapshot in time. It's
Speaker 3: something in the past, and we're looking at the breakneck
Speaker 3: pace of how this oil and gas expansion has been.
Speaker 3: You know, we've been hearing that Enverage, for example, nearly
Speaker 3: doubled how much oil they export every day just in
Speaker 3: the past year. Then that's something that residents are essentially
Speaker 3: playing a game of catchup. And now in the Trump administration,
Speaker 3: certain databases such as yjscreen or short for Environmental Justice Stream,
Speaker 3: which looks at various types of risk, that's certain neighborhood
Speaker 3: space that's been taken offline, which means that residents have
Speaker 3: fewer data to work with to compare their own situations,
Speaker 3: what's happening to nearby towns across the state, or compared
Speaker 3: to some environmental justice hotspot set as cancer Allity or Beaumont, Texas.
Speaker 3: And when we have less and less data, our journalism
Speaker 3: work is harder. For one, and the second thing is
Speaker 3: resonent just feels like, you know, they're being hit in
Speaker 3: the dark, that they don't know what's happening to them.
Speaker 2: And that is.
Speaker 3: Something that you know, we have to grapple with as
Speaker 3: environmental journalists moving forward. How can we gather data that
Speaker 3: is accurate and authoritative, you know, without relying on what
Speaker 3: the federal government has given us in the past.
Speaker 2: That's so huge right now. I don't think people really
Speaker 2: realize what we're losing as the government eliminates programs that
Speaker 2: collect this data, takes the data offline, makes it illegal
Speaker 2: to share the data, you know, the Environmental Defense Fund
Speaker 2: just had to sue the government to get the greenhouse
Speaker 2: gas inventory released, for example.
Speaker 3: And I love Republica. They've been doing top notch work.
Speaker 3: I love you know, inside climbing News, they've been doing
Speaker 3: top notch work. I want to shout out the work
Speaker 3: that Lisa's song al saw, Lila Jones and also Dylan
Speaker 3: Bador has been working on in this region. And I've
Speaker 3: benefited a lot from their poor of reporting before I
Speaker 3: started my reporting, But what I realized was, you know,
Speaker 3: they rely on data as well. And for example, when
Speaker 3: Republica published the most detailed map of cancer causing industrial
Speaker 3: air pollution in the United States, it published the story
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one, but the data in the MAC
Speaker 3: covers emissions from twenty fourteen to twenty eighteen, which was
Speaker 3: three years ago the time that we had to spend
Speaker 3: to verify all the data, which also means that we
Speaker 3: are playing catch up as well, and we're not being
Speaker 3: able to show residents in real time what they're dealing
Speaker 3: on a day to day basis and when we are
Speaker 3: sharing risk. Risk is also something that it's like playing
Speaker 3: Russian roulette. You have a more likely chance of getting cancer,
Speaker 3: but you know, some big incident can happen and the
Speaker 3: numbers change really quickly, or or some folks it's like
Speaker 3: when it happens, it happens. So how can we communicate
Speaker 3: this risk to residents and provide them with useful information
Speaker 3: so they can act on it. That's also something that
Speaker 3: I think both journalists, residents, advocates, policymakers, lots of officials
Speaker 3: need to really sit down and think about in these
Speaker 3: uncertain times.
Speaker 2: Completely completely agree. Thank you so much, Alex.
Speaker 1: That is it for this time. You can check out
Speaker 1: the rest of Alex's three part series at the xylom
Speaker 1: dot com. That's th e x y l O M.
Speaker 1: Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Peter Duff, reported and hosted by me Amy Westervelt,
Speaker 1: fact checked by shild Legendia, and scored with the song
Speaker 1: A Bird in the Hand by Forenoon. Check out Drill
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Speaker 1: of our new season coming next week. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next time.