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On Aug. 6, when a federal court canceled the permits for three methane gas export projects in South Texas, we celebrated the result of years of fighting a powerful fossil fuel industry that would pollute our community and desecrate sacred ancestral lands and pristine coastal habitats. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency charged with assessing the safety of proposed LNG facilities, had failed to conduct a thorough review. It must soon go back and consider the significant harms to the environment and people living near these projects.
Despite this monumental and necessary decision, construction at the Rio Grande LNG site continues unabated by Houston-based NextDecade. In fact, FERC is still issuing authorizations for onsite activity. It seems obvious that NextDecade intends to use the construction’s progress to argue for another permit approval by essentially saying, “We’re this far along, so we might as well finish.” We’ve seen fossil fuel developers do this before. That’s precisely why construction progress would throw into question the integrity of FERC’s next step of reconsidering a new permit.
The court said it would enforce its decision and stop construction on Sept. 27. But NextDecade just asked for and received an extension on its already-generous 45 daysto request a rehearing. During this time it is scrambling to figure out what it even wants to build: Last month NextDecade withdrew a major part of its plan to build carbon capture into the project. Meanwhile, the corporation is out there mentioning continuing construction in dozens of news articles and is even telling shareholders that it “expects to take all available legal and regulatory actions … to ensure that construction on Phase 1 will continueand that necessary regulatory approvals will be maintained.”
NextDecade’s attempt to make construction a regulatory force of its own places the region in an unjust and unsafe predicament, and it continues a dangerous pattern of the fossil fuel industry acting invincible no matter the harm to Gulf communities. As the corporation slows down the process, it pours concrete over sensitive wetland habitat that can help protect communities from hurricanes, damages and obstructs state Highway 48 to South Padre Island, throws plumes of construction dust into the community, destroys endangered ocelot habitat, uses taxpayer-funded county services and potentially wastes significant amounts of precious water while the Rio Grande Valley struggles to secure adequate water supplies.
Moreover, allowing construction to march on continues a long colonial history erasing the memory of native and original peoples from their own lands. The Rio Grande LNG site is on top of land long used by members of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, but the developer never consulted with tribal leaders. FERC must issue a stop-work order as soon as possible to protect its reputation and our families, history, ecosystems and water supplies from permanent harm. What we ask is not novel: FERC did this very thing with the Mountain Valley Pipeline in 2019, when it issued a stop-work order one week after a federal appeals court decision.
There should be absolutely no rush to build this facility: The U.S. is already the top methane gas exporter in the world, and the evidence shows that our European allies are significantly reducing their need for LNG. Meanwhile, the pollution from Rio Grande LNG — which will include harmful methane, benzene, and volatile organic compounds — would cause respiratory illnesses, harm developing fetuses, release cancer-causing pollutants and ultimately cause premature deaths in the region that has low access to health care. These impacts would hit low-income families of color the hardest.
Yet, as the court agreed, FERC did an inadequate environmental justice analysis, skipped essential steps in the permit review and denied our most-impacted families the opportunity to have their voices heard as part of the permitting process. Allowing construction to continue would confirm to us — and every Gulf neighborhood that industry has its eye on — that our EJ communities and our voices will never matter to FERC and that our lives are disposable. Unfortunately this sentiment toward the agency is already widespread after years of FERC rubberstamping polluting projects. The agency can and should start now to rebuild this public trust: FERC must stop the work if this process is to have any chance at redemption.
Bekah Hinojosa of Brownsville and Dr. Christopher Basaldú are co-founders of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network.
