Toxic Waste & Environmental Justice Issues:

A Case Study of Houston & Dallas, Texas

Houston: the Energy Capital (and Environmental

Injustice Capital) of America?

Cancer Clusters in Houston Area:

Over the last decade, the Texas Department of State Health Services
has published more than 260 cancer cluster investigations.

In 2015, one particularly groundbreaking study found that East Harris

County and Houston had higher-than-average rates of cancer from 1995
to 2012. This came as no surprise to the towns’ residents, who had long
reported health problems due to the presence of petrochemical plants,
oil refineries, several Superfund sites, and other waste and industrial
businesses.
In certain census tracts, the report found much higher-than-expected
levels of childhood cancers of the brain, skin and eyes, and of some
kinds of adult cancers. In the entire study area, the report found
unexpectedly high rates of childhood lymphoma and melanoma, and of
brain cancer and cervical cancer for all ages.

One census tract had 16 times the statewide childhood rate for
retinoblastoma, a cancer of the eye, while another tract had 14 times the
statewide rate.

Census tract 2519 near Lake Houston had elevated levels of brain
cancer. The state found 23 cases, where it expected to see 13.5. Seven
cases involved children – around double the expected number.

Researchers found elevated childhood glioma — brain stem cancer —

in a census tract north of U.S. Route 90 and east of Texas 8. A nearby
census tract, 2323, had double the expected number of childhood
leukemia cases.
Map of East Harris County tracts in 2015 study showing which tracts
had the highest rates of which cancers.

Map of San Jacinto waste pits in relation to the greater East Houston
area and waterbodies.
San Jacinto Waste Pits (in Houston area):

One particularly problematic toxic waste site is the San Jacinto waste

pits, where a paper company had dumped tons of paper mill waste 50
years ago. For a half-century, the sludge was slowly seeping into the
soil and water of eastern Harris County. The sludge contaminated the
soil and rivers with dioxin, a deadly carcinogen. The pits used to sit on
the edge of the river, but became half submerged over the years. The
residents — mostly lower-income black families — had been
complaining about a spike in cancer rates for decades before any cancer
cluster reports were published.

In 2015, a cancer cluster study found elevated levels of kidney cancer,

cervical cancer and childhood eye cancer — retinoblastoma — in
census tract 2529, a town near the waste pits.

When the county and statewide commission on Environmental Quality

sued the paper company in 2014, the paper company was found not
liable to pay large penalties for the damage it caused.

After Hurricane Ike in 2008, storm surge was 12 feet at the waste pits.
Immediately after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the pits leaked toxic
substances into the river. Tests showed that dioxin levels had spiked
and were registering at more than 70,000 parts per trillion. (The EPA
mandates cleanups for 30 parts per trillion and up.)

Existing minority neighborhoods have commonly been targeted as

locations for toxic waste sites, bulk gasoline storage tank farms, sewage
treatment plants, municipal landfills and illegal dumps, incinerators,
concrete batch mix plants, animal rendering plants, metal fabrication &
die casting plants, chromium plating plants, and smelters. This has
resulted in these communities facing an unequal exposure to pollutants
and consequent adverse health impacts.
Environmental Injustice — Disproportionate Risks for Low-income
People of Color in Houston:

In 2016, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Texas Environmental

Justice Advocacy Services released Double Jeopardy in Houston, a
report finding that Houston-area communities with higher populations
of color and higher poverty levels face higher risks from chemical
accidents and everyday toxic exposure.

The report compared environmental risks and health impacts for two
East Houston communities (primarily consisting of low-income people
of color) to two more affluent, whiter West Houston communities.
The region most exposed to from toxic carcinogens was Houston’s
Manchester neighborhood, home to roughly 3,000 people. It is
surrounded by an oil refinery; a chemical plant; 21 Toxic Release
Inventory (TRI) reporting facilities, 11 large quantity generators of
hazardous waste; 4 facilities that treat, store or dispose of hazardous
waste; 9 major dischargers of air pollutants; and 8 major stormwater
discharging facilities. Approximately 90% of residents live within one
mile of a hazardous chemical facility. It is 83 percent Hispanic and
14% black, 90% low-income, and the poverty rate is 37%. Not
surprisingly, the cancer risk for people living in Manchester and
neighboring Harrisburg is 22 percent higher than that for the overall
Houston area. The neighborhood’s only public green space, Hartman
Park, is across the street from a chemical storage facility.

Climate Change Exacerbates Environmental Injustice:

Climate change can exacerbate existing systemic environmental
injustice. When Hurricane Harvey dumped trillions of gallons of
water across Houston, it also damaged several petrochemical facilities
in low-income communities of color, sending millions of pounds of
pollution into the air. The hurricane also damaged a protective cap
placed on the San Jacinto waste pits, sending pounds of toxic sludge
into the surrounding area. One storm-damaged refinery in
Manchester released a plume of cancer-causing benzene into the
neighborhood.

After Hurricane Harvey, the EPA found that 13 of the 41 Superfund

sites in Texas hit by Harvey were flooded in the storm — many of
which contained hazardous toxic sludge.

A warming world can pose a fatal threat to human health by increasing

the number of “bad air” days and asthma attacks, which are particularly
common in cities polluted by industrial activity. In addition to
heightening the frequency of extreme heat events, climate change
enhances conditions that lead to the formation of ground-level ozone,
or smog, the lung-burning pollutant that can trigger asthma attacks.

Dallas: A Few Environmental Injustice Cases

Toxic Lead in Dallas Soil:

From the 1930s to 1984, a corporation operated a notorious lead car-

battery smelter in west Dallas, one of the few sections of the city where
black people could live in the segregated post-World War II era. Today,
west Dallas remains mainly inhabited by minorities. For decades, truck
drivers hauling waste away from the smelter offered cash to the low-
income people living nearby in exchange for letting the battery waste
be dumped in their yards. In the 1990s, after a congressional
investigation, the EPA declared the surrounding land a superfund site
and dug out contaminated soil from 431 homes. The EPA said the
clean-up was complete by 1995, but in the two decades that followed,
residents have continued to find substances resembling battery chips on
their property, a sign that the EPA didn’t dig deep enough when
cleaning out the soil.

Contamination from an Electroplating Facility in Dallas:

Since the 1950s, an electroplating facility called Lane Plating Works

had operated in Southern Dallas applying metal coatings to car
bumpers and the like, using toxic metals including arsenic, cadmium,
cyanide, chromium, lead and mercury — substances that cause cancer
and damage the brain, kidneys and liver, as well as digestive,
reproductive and nervous systems. In 2015, it declared bankruptcy,
after which many records of their toxic chemical production were
difficult to find. In 2018, it was declared a superfund site for
contamination of nearby soil, wetlands, and groundwater, and the EPA
held a meeting with local community members to discuss these risks.
The EPA declined the residents’ most urgent concern — health impacts
of the site’s toxins — claiming that they only test for contaminant
levels, not health effects. Much of the surrounding remains
contaminated, although little research has been released about health
impacts from this contamination.

Systemic Issues

Houston: Lack of Zoning

Houston is the largest city in the United States with no zoning laws of
any sort. The city codes do not address land use, and Houston voters
have rejected any efforts to pass zoning laws three different times in the
past century. Zoning laws create areas where you can only put up a
certain type of building or structure – for example, residential zones for
homes, commercial zones for businesses, or industrial zones for
manufacturing. They exist in almost every major city in the country.
Since Houston is the energy capital of America (and perhaps the
world), this proves problematic. It means single-family homes can end
up on the same street as petrochemical plants and oil refineries, and the
city has no legal obligation to remedy that. Houston’s lack of zoning
has breeded toxic environmental burdens in residential areas, which are
disproportionately inhabited by low-income people of color.

Some have argued that Houston’s lack of zoning exacerbates impacts

felt by climate-induced extreme weather events. Many environmental
have argued that Houston’s hands-off approach to urban planning
contributed to its catastrophic flooding in the wake of Hurricane
Harvey. As one Washington Post article put it: “Growth that is virtually
unchecked, including in flood-prone areas, has diminished the land’s
already-limited natural ability to absorb water.”

Dallas: Complex (and historically discriminatory) zoning

Dallas, on the other hand, has a much more parliamentary and

democratic system. It has one of the most sophisticated and complex
zoning ordinances in the country, with 29 different classifications for
property within the city limits, a zoning board, and a city council to
interpret and modify zoning laws.

However, zoning codes in Dallas and surrounding cities have come

under fire for discriminating against low-income people, who
disproportionately tend to be people of color. One suburb, Sunnyvale,
was known as the “whitest town in North Texas” for decades until a
lawsuit found that its zoning codes — which only allowed for single-
family homes on one-acre lots — were inherently geared toward
keeping low-income people out. Demographic data proved this to be
true — in 1990, the town had only 16 black people among its 2,228
residents.

The Corruptive Power of the Texas Oil Industry

Texas is the only state that has its own electrical grid. There are three
grids in the Lower 48 states: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western
Interconnection — and Texas. It is operated by the Electric Reliability
Council of Texas, and was created to avoid federal regulations.
Because of the intense energy needs of the oil-and-gas business, Texas
uses more electricity than any other state. Its oil and gas revenues
surpass every other U.S. state by a landslide; in fact, if Texas were its
own country, it would be the sixth largest producer in the world.

However, with great power comes great responsibility, and this

responsibility can often be corrupted. Upon looking at the oil and gas
industry’s contributions to U.S. political campaigns, I was not surprised
to learn that the senator accepting the most money from Big Oil hailed
from Texas in the 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 election cycles. In
2016, Ted Cruz received 1.6 million dollars from the oil and gas
industries, more than twice as much as the runner-up in contributions.
In 2018, 6 of the 15 U.S. Congressional candidates receiving the most
oil money were from Texas.

Because of the oil industry’s strength, Texas government officials are

widely considered beholden to energy superpowers. A number of
corruption scandals have revealed the heavily deregulated state
government’s tendency to turn a blind eye to the oil industry’s
malpractice.

Houston-Based Corruption: the Enron Scandal

Perhaps the most famous example is the Enron scandal, when a

Houston-based natural gas company (and global superpower, at the
time) was found liable for billions of dollars in accounting fraud in
2001. Prior to that, it was the single largest donor to Texan George W.
Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns in 1994 and 1998. A good friend of
Enron’s then-CEO, Bush was widely regarded as beholden to company
interests during his governorship. He supported aggressive deregulation
policies, including legislation that exempted important elements of
Enron’s energy business from oversight by the federal government. The
corruption extended to a national level. While Bush’s deregulation
enabled Enron to obtain a monopoly on energy utilities, the federal
government deregulated energy subsidiary trading. At the time, the
federal government — under the presidency of none other than Bush’s
father — had a commission on energy trading subsidiaries, which was
chaired by Wendy Gramm, a close friend of the Bush family who had
received nearly $100,000 in Enron campaign contributions. After
working to pass an exemption in trading energy subsidiaries that would
enable the Enron scandal to occur, she subsequently resigned to join the
Enron board.

Corruption around Dallas: the Denton Anti-Fracking Campaign

In 2014, residents of a town in the Dallas-Forth Worth Metro Area

called Denton voted to ban fracking, a natural gas and oil extraction
process that was spreading toxic chemicals in residents’ backyards. The
ban–a ballot initiative– won by 59 percent.

However, following that vote, then-governor Greg Abbott — who had

received $9 million from the oil and gas industry, and run his campaign
on a promise of returning control to localities — signed a bill that
barred all Texas cities from making their own decisions on oil and gas
drilling. This law put oil and gas decisions in the hands of the Texas
Railroad Commission — which receives 80 percent of its money from
the oil and gas industry, the industry it is supposed to regulate.