Midlothian cement pollution plan is moving forward, but residents are not stepping back
As letters from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality arrived at Midlothian homes in early November, Laura Hunt’s emotions ranged from anger and disappointment to denial and, finally, relief.
Hunt has spent more than a year fighting a permit request filed by cement manufacturer Holcim US Inc. as co-founder of Midlothian Breathe, a group of residents concerned about the impact of cement plant emissions on public health.
Holcim, whose Midlothian plant employs more than 130 people, is seeking to increase its maximum output of carbon monoxide from 4,300 tons to 7,100 tons per year. The facility also wants to burn more petroleum coke, a solid carbon material that resembles coal and can lead to particulate matter pollution, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Since its creation in September 2019, Midlothian Breathe has lobbied city council members, gathered hundreds of public comments on the permit and successfully pushed for an August public meeting with the TCEQ. But after reading the commission’s decision that the permit application “meets the requirements of applicable law,” Hunt felt it was time for her organization to move forward by joining statewide efforts to increase air pollution monitoring and strengthen regulations on companies like Holcim.
“I felt personally obligated to fight the good fight for my daughter and everyone else, but at least now I can say, we really gave it our all,” Hunt, a pediatrician whose daughter has experienced respiratory issues, said. “Now this has given us an opportunity to really shift gears to be more on the positive side. Rather than what can we stop from happening, what can we do as an organization?”
The TCEQ’s decision is not final, and commissioners still have to review requests for contested case hearings from residents like Hunt, said TCEQ spokesperson Brian McGovern. Members of the public have to be classified as “affected persons,” or live within 440 yards of a plant, to earn a hearing, which is similar to a civil trial in state district court.
Jocelyn Gerst, a spokesperson for Holcim US, said that the company was “pleased by this confirmation” that the permit request met all regulatory requirements and standards to protect health. In previous statements, Gerst told the Star-Telegram that while Holcim wants its emission limit raised, it does not plan to increase pollution and uses a variety of fuel sources at the Midlothian plant, including coal, natural gas and alternative fuels.
Hunt is not optimistic that the TCEQ will grant any contested case hearings, and even if commissioners did vote in favor of doing so, she and other Midlothian residents would bear the financial costs of hiring legal representation to prepare a case against Holcim.
Her focus has shifted to building partnerships with local air pollution monitoring initiatives, including one run by Lu Liang, a geospatial scientist at the University of North Texas. Liang is developing a way to calibrate PurpleAir monitors, a brand of low-cost air quality sensors that have become increasingly popular among environmental activists, with the intricate monitors used by the TCEQ and the Environmental Protection Agency, Hunt said.
“She’s going to help us with organizing our disbursement of the PurpleAir monitors and identifying good candidates for the monitors to make sure we have all the information we need from the people hosting the monitors,” Hunt said. “This would be a win-win, since she would be able to test the soundness of her formula for the calibration and we would be provided with additional monitors and more accurate data.”
Movement to regulate industry goes statewide
Midlothian Breathe has already received some outside assistance, including a pair of PurpleAir monitors, from Texans for Responsible Aggregate Mining, a coalition of 16 activist groups that launched in September. Consisting of former oil and gas engineers as well as concerned residents, TRAM is pressuring state legislators on both sides of the aisle to more heavily regulate the aggregates industry, which includes rock quarries, sand and gravel mines and cement, concrete and asphalt plants.
“The bad air quality doesn’t decide to go into your homes if you’re a Democrat or Republican, it’s going to go and damage your life without any political affiliation,” said Fermin Ortiz, a spokesman for TRAM who successfully fought a sand plant in Llano County. “As long as people move to Texas, we’re going to need more houses, we’re going to need better roads, so we can’t afford to stop the industry. What we can afford to do is regulate them and have them work with the communities to where the safest approach to business is good business.”
The movement to regulate the aggregates industry, particularly cement batch plants, has attracted attention from state representatives in Houston as well as Fort Worth, where Rep. Nicole Collier introduced a bill that would expand the list of people who can request a contested case hearing to include hospitals, schools and places of worship, according to The Texas Tribune. Other bills seek to increase the distance between concrete plants and homes and limit the amount of dust and noise that a plant can produce.
Part of TRAM’s argument, according to retired ExxonMobil engineer Mark Friesenhahn, is that most of the companies operating in Texas are international and are accustomed to following local regulations, including states and countries with more stringent air and water rules than Texas. Holcim, for instance, is based in Switzerland and operates in more than 70 countries.
“We know, from experience, that regulations cost money,” said Friesenhahn, who now runs a pecan farm in Comal County near New Braunfels. “But when it’s spread over the entire product that’s manufactured, like gravel or concrete, the incremental cost is small and we feel passed on to the consumer uneventfully. The person buying a home won’t see the several hundred to thousand dollar increase on a $300,000 home.”
Activists are also using low-cost air sensors, such as the PurpleAir monitors, to show where air pollution is most concentrated in manufacturing centers like Midlothian, known as the “cement capital of Texas.”
“In my view, these low-cost monitors are very reliable to give the general public an idea of what is happening at that particular site where it is located,” said Don Everingham, a retired engineer who lives in Comal County and serves on TRAM’s technical team. “It’s going to be hard for anybody to say we don’t have good data. The data may not be exact, but it’s going to be significant enough to prove that there is a problem.”
In an ideal world, Hunt said, she would like to see as many of the PurpleAir monitors in Midlothian as possible, with the goal of obtaining at least eight. She still views Midlothian Breathe as a watchdog organization in Ellis County, and hopes that her work will help influence the TCEQ permitting process as well as legislative efforts.
“I’m still glad we did this because if nothing else, maybe Holcim and the other plants will pause a bit before they make another request like that,” Hunt said. “I just see us as being surveillance, watching the landscape for air quality issues, and trying to stand guard and be ready to relay that to the general public.”
