Editor’s note: “President Donald Trump has been pushing the U.S. to barrel ahead on deep-sea mining. The country plans to permit mining in international waters under an obscure U.S. law from 1980 called the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act(DSHMRA), which predates the Law of the Sea treaty. Congress wrote the law to serve as an ‘interim legal regime’ — a temporary way to grant mining licenses until the United Nations-affiliated regime took shape.
A main point of contention is that, according to the U.N. treaty and the DSHMRA, the international seabed is designated the ‘common heritage of mankind.’ In other words, the nodules legally belong to all people living on Earth today as well as future generations. The treaty declares that any profits from exploiting that heritage be distributed across nations, not just reaped by one country, in a benefits-sharing agreement that treaty signatories are still hashing out
The French diplomat slammed the Trump administration’s executive order, issued on April 24, that directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) to fast-track seabed exploration and commercial mining permits in both U.S. waters and ocean areas beyond America’s jurisdiction — commonly called the high seas..”
Invoking national security to justify private sector economic development is a tired cliché. And yet, in a troubling twist, a Canadian company is invoking U.S. national security to obtain an exclusive license from the U.S. government for a deep-sea mining venture for critical minerals in international waters—and it appears to be working.
Companies leading the push to launch deep-sea mining under a U.S. license are foreign-incorporated entities with no operational footprint—and no meaningful supply chain commitments to it. The timeline for commercial production remains uncertain and subject to indefinite delays due to technical, financial, and regulatory hurdles.
Far from offering strategic value, this initiative is best understood as a speculative venture propped up by shifting political winds. Deep-sea mining is not the answer to a mineral security crisis—it’s a solution to a problem that does not exist.
At the very least, ask for a 60 day extension to the public comment period because of the crucial nature of the proposal. But also express that you strongly oppose consolidating the exploration license and commercial recovery permit process.
Mining in international waters without global consent carries enormous reputational, legal, and financial risks. It could trigger investor pullout, international condemnation, and logistical nightmares. We can make sure it’s simply not worth the cost.
Despite everything, I left Jamaica feeling positive. Progress might be slow, yet things are moving in the right direction. But we can’t afford complacency. This meeting made clear just how fragile international governance really is. Loopholes and silence are letting corporate interests push the system to its limits.
At the same time, I saw how much influence we still have. Scientists, youth, Indigenous leaders, and civil society are shifting the conversation. The pressure we’re building is working — we have to keep going.
Join us in protecting what should never be plundered in the first place:
“We’re too late to know what today’s ocean without oil and gas drilling, whaling and overfishing would look like. We can stop this next great threat before it starts, and save one of the planet’s final frontiers — and the amazing life that lives there. Tell the Interior Department: Don’t mine the deep sea.” https://environmentamerica.org/center/articles/is-the-u-s-going-to-start-deep-sea-mining/
Donald Trump has brought the world together against the U.S. with this dangerous unilateral action.
The deep sea, the planet’s most expansive and least understood ecosystem, remains largely unexplored. Yet while the deep sea may seem a dark and distant space, events underwater directly impact our lives, from essential services like climate regulation to fisheries and the marine food web. While scientific understanding of this realm is nascent, a new industry is rapidly emerging driven by the demand for rare metals essential for batteries, microchips and AI: deep-sea mining.
In the past three years, more than 38 nations have voiced support for a moratorium on deep-sea mining, a rapid pace by the standards of multilateral lawmaking, and the equivalent of one new country signing on per month. This progress marks a major shift from just a few years ago, when states were either supportive of mining, reluctant to take a position, or were simply uninformed.
The triggering of a treaty provision known as the “two-year rule” by the nation of Nauru in 2021, intended to accelerate deep-sea mining in areas beyond national jurisdiction, brought increased attention and scrutiny to the activity. Nevertheless, some private actors are pushing for the granting of applications for commercial deep-sea mining of minerals like copper, nickel and cobalt, despite significant concerns from global leaders, the scientific community and the public at large.
This divergence between scientific understanding and prevailing narratives came into sharp focus at the recent annual meeting of the International Seabed Authority (ISA). There, nations gathered to discuss matters profoundly consequential for the future of the deep ocean. However, there also seemed to be a broad understanding that a strong regulatory framework based on science, equity and precaution must be in place before an informed decision can be taken, and that no mining activities should commence in the meantime.
Moving forward, it’s imperative that we actively counter misinformation, significantly invest in scientific research, and, in the interim, take concrete measures to ensure that deep-sea mining activities do not commence in the absence of clear science, robust regulations, sufficient safeguards, and equity.
Here are the three main myths about deep-sea mining:
‘Deep-sea mining will provide an economic boom and promote global peace and security’
The primary justification for exploiting the seabed rests on a dubious economic premise: that mining’s financial gains will somehow outweigh its environmental costs. Yet, the economic case for deep-sea mining is tenuous at best, and expert indications suggest the burdens will far outstrip any tangible benefits. Deep-sea mining is an inherently capital-intensive endeavor, demanding massive amounts of upfront investment to take part in a high-risk, burgeoning industry. Developing and deploying specialized machinery capable of operating thousands of meters below the surface, under immense pressure and in corrosive conditions, presents unprecedented engineering challenges. The costs associated with exploration, environmental impact assessments, research and development, and then the actual extraction, processing and transport of minerals from such remote and hostile environments are projected to be staggering.
Some argue that deep-sea mining could bolster supply chain security for critical sectors such as defense, transportation, construction and energy. Given the vital importance of these industries to national security, the seabed’s mineral resources become intrinsically linked to the economic futures of nations like the U.S., which view them as a means to diversify mineral access: the majority of such mineral extraction occurs in regions like Africa, South America, Indonesia and Australia, and the supply chains for many of these critical minerals are currently dominated by geopolitical rivals like China, further intensifying the scramble to mine the deep.
However, it is naïve to think that deep-sea mining would address or alleviate global geopolitical tensions. If anything, the pursuit of unilateral deep-sea mining seems more likely to exacerbate fraught international relations, with the consequences spilling over to the global legal order more broadly. Countries should instead consider investing in a more circular economy, responsible sourcing and refining, encouraging innovation to be less metal-dependent, and developing multilateral frameworks to promote responsible and equitable international cooperation for critical metals and minerals.
A glass octopus, a nearly transparent deep sea species whose only visible features are its optic nerve, eyeballs and digestive tract. Image by Schmidt Ocean Institute (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
‘Deep-sea mining will reduce or alleviate the environmental impact of terrestrial mining’
Another justification is that we will be able to move away from many of the environmental and social ills of terrestrial mining. While it is true that terrestrial mining has caused massive deforestation and led to severe human rights abuses in areas like the Democratic Republic of Congo, the idea that shifting mining activity to the sea will ease the pressure on land-based operations is misguided.
As deep-sea competitors arise to challenge the establishment of terrestrial mining, the increased competition will only serve to expand the global footprint of resource extraction and encourage operators to cut corners to stay competitive. When mining activity accelerates, the environmental and social harms produced are likely to follow, leading to an increasingly untenable situation where biodiversity is wiped out and the planet’s capacity to provide ecosystem services depleted. In this scenario, it is local communities and Indigenous groups in the Global South who will suffer most as they become dispossessed of the resources needed for survival, like forests for fuel and fish for food.
While the recovery and restoration of former terrestrial mining sites is possible, with governments increasingly mandating multiyear rejuvenation and rehabilitation projects, the situation in the deep sea is vastly different. Deep-sea recovery is limited and extremely slow on human timescales. Moreover, current scientific knowledge indicates that any restoration effort there would be difficult and cost-prohibitive, if not impossible.
Moreover, the environmental footprint of deep-sea mining activities, particularly for polymetallic nodule extraction — where a single mining project will involve extraction over a very large spatial area spanning thousands of square kilometers — will far exceed the footprint of terrestrial mining, which usually involves a very small and targeted area. If deep-sea mining were to alleviate or replace terrestrial mining, there would need to be multiple of such extraction projects — which would be disastrous for the marine environment and the planet.
The ISA is currently debating how to factor environmental externalities into contractor payments, as harm to these common heritage resources shouldn’t burden society. The requirement to compensate developing countries with large terrestrial mining industries for lost earnings, funded by ISA revenues, suggests the entire exercise could result in a net negative benefit.
A deposit of polymetallic nodules in the Pacific Ocean. Image by Philweb / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
‘Deep-sea mining is necessary for the energy transition’
The need for metals to power the energy transition is largely overstated by deep-sea mining advocates. Their arguments often cite expanding demand for electric vehicles and renewable energy, both cornerstones of the energy transition that currently require large supplies of rare-earth metals and minerals to craft the infrastructure needed to generate and store renewable power. For these advocates, deep-sea mining is presented as the sole means to access adequate supplies of crucial transition minerals.
However, these arguments are built on the false premise that demand for transition metals will continuously rise alongside our demand for energy. Advances in battery chemistry are already helping to reduce demand for cobalt, and circular solutions like recycling can further reduce our reliance on virgin metals obtained through mining, thereby challenging narratives that we are facing an unavoidable mineral deficit unless we turn to the deep seabed.
So, given the high costs and severe environmental risks, why then pursue deep-sea mining? This activity threatens unique deep-sea ecosystems and could irrevocably alter ocean health, impacting life on land. Scientists warn of irreversible damage from sediment plumes, habitat destruction and noise pollution to ecosystems formed over millions of years. Without sufficient baseline data, predicting or mitigating these risks is impossible, mandating caution under the precautionary principle.
Finally, the numbers also do not add up, which means financing deep-sea mining is akin to investing in a financial scam. If we are serious about tackling the unprecedented and existential threats that we are now facing, destructive activities like deep-sea mining surely cannot form part of the equation. It is therefore heartening to see many global leaders and governments voicing their concerns and calling for a pause or moratorium on deep-sea mining.
Pradeep Singh is an ocean governance expert at the Oceano Azul Foundation and holds degrees from the University of Malaya, the University of Edinburgh, and Harvard Law School.
Banner Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2019 Southeastern U.S. Deep-sea Exploration. Public Domain
Editor’s note: The folly of controlling the rivers. “What will those who come after us think of us? Will they envy us that we saw butterflies and mockingbirds, penguins and little brown bats?” – Derrick Jensen Or will they despise us because we built dams which kill butterflies and mockingbirds, penguins and little brown bats?
China’s already vast infrastructure programme has entered a new phase as building work starts on the Motuo hydropower project.
The dam will consist of five cascade hydropower stations arranged from upstream to downstream and, once completed, will be the world’s largest source of hydroelectric power. It will be four times larger than China’s previous signature hydropower project, the Three Gorges Dam, which spans the Yangtse river in central China.
The Chinese premier, Li Qiang, has described the proposed mega dam as the “project of the century”. In several ways, Li’s description is apt. The vast scale of the project is a reflection of China’s geopolitical status and ambitions.
Possibly the most controversial aspect of the dam is its location. The site is on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo river on the eastern rim of the Tibetan plateau. This is connected to the Brahmaputra river which flows into the Indian border state of Arunachal Pradesh as well as Bangladesh. It is an important source of water for Bangladesh and India.
Both nations have voiced concerns over the dam, particularly since it can potentially affect their water supplies. The tension with India over the dam is compounded by the fact that Arunachal Pradesh has been a focal point of Sino-Indian tensions. China claims the region, which it refers to as Zangnan, saying it is part of what it calls South Tibet.
At the same time, the dam presents Beijing with a potentially formidable geopolitical tool in its dealings with the Indian government. The location of the dam means that it is possible for Beijing to restrict India’s water supply.
This potential to control downstream water supply to another country has been demonstrated by the effects that earlier dam projects in the region have had on the nations of the Mekong river delta in 2019. As a result, this gives Beijing a significant degree of leverage over its neighbours.
One country restricting water supply to put pressure on another is by no means unprecedented. In fact in April 2025, following a terror attack by Pakistan-based The Resistance Front in Kashmir, which killed 26 people (mainly tourists), India suspended the Indus waters treaty, restricting water supplies to Pakistani farmers in the region. So the potential for China’s dam to disrupt water flows will further compound the already tense geopolitics of southern Asia.
Background layer attributed to DEMIS Mapserver, map created by Shannon1, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Concrete titans
The Motuo mega dam is an advertisement of China’s prowess when it comes to large-scale infrastructure projects. China’s expertise with massive infrastructure projects is a big part of modern Chinese diplomacy through its massive belt and road initiative.
This involves joint ventures with many developing nations to build large-scale infrastructure, such as ports, rail systems and the like. It has caused much consternation in Washington and Brussels, which view these initiatives as a wider effort to build Chinese influence at their expense.
The completion of the dam will will bring Beijing significant symbolic capital as a demonstration of China’s power and prosperity – an integral feature of the image of China that Beijing is very keen to promote. It can also be seen as a manifestation of both China’s aspiration and its longstanding fears.
Harnessing the rivers
The Motuo hydropower project also represents the latest chapter of China’s long battle for control of its rivers, a key story in the development of Chinese civilisation.
France 24 report on the construction of the mega dam project.
Such struggles have been embodied in Chinese mythology in the form of the Gun-Yu myth. This tells the story of the way floods displaced the population of ancient China, probably based on an actual flooding at Jishi Gorge on the Yellow River in what is now Qinghai province in 1920BC.
This has led to the common motif of rivers needing human control to abate natural disaster, a theme present in much classical Chinese culture and poetry.
The pursuit of controlling China’s rivers has also been one of the primary influences on the formation of the Chinese state, as characterised by the concept of zhishui 治水 (controlling the rivers). Efforts to control the Yangtze have shaped the centralised system of governance that has characterised China throughout its history. In this sense, the Motuo hydropower project represents the latest chapter in China’s quest to harness the power of its rivers.
Such a quest remains imperative for China and its importance has been further underlined by the challenges of climate change, which has seen natural resources such as water becoming increasingly limited. The Ganges river has already been identified as one of the world’s water scarcity hotspots.
As well as sustaining China’s population, the hydropower provided by the dam is another part of China’s wider push towards self-sufficiency. It’s estimated that the dam could generate 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year – about the same about produced by the whole UK. While this will meet the needs of the local population, it also further entrenches China’s ability to produce cheap electricity – something that has enabled China to become and remain a manufacturing superpower.
Construction has only just begun, but Motuo hydropower project has already become a microcosm of China’s wider push towards development. It’s also a gamechanger in the geopolitics of Asia, giving China the potential to exert greater control in shaping the region’s water supplies. This in turn will give it greater power to shape the geopolitics of the region.
At the same time, it is also the latest chapter of China’s longstanding quest to harness its waterways, which now has regional implications beyond anything China’s previous dynasties could imagine.
Editor’s note: “The 2025 Queensland floods refer to significant flooding that impacted the northeast Australian state of Queensland in late January, early February, into March and April 2025. The disaster resulted in at least two fatalities from flooding, 31 fatalities from a disease outbreak and prompted mass evacuation orders in Queensland’s coastal regions.”
According to flood gauges, the enormous body of water has surpassed the 1974 event, widely considered the largest flood in Queensland history. But it was still sitting within the floodplain, Sheldon says, just “reaching the edges” of where people thought it would go.
This was a natural phenomenon, Sheldon says, even though the devastation experienced by towns and communities was awful.
“The beauty of these river systems is that they are some of the last unregulated rivers in the world. What we’re witnessing is just rivers being rivers. There are no big dams on these systems. There’s no massive irrigation industry. So this is just what big rivers do.”
“But amid the challenges and the loss, Rowlands said the normally dusty flood plains around his home town were already lush and green and “pretty magic”.
And when the waters do recede, he expects these landscapes, normally among the harshest in the world, to explode with life.”
The unforgiving red earth of the Australian outback has undergone a jaw-dropping transformation — and locals are calling it a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to witness Mother Nature at her finest.
Intense flooding submerged usually dry areas of Queensland state in eastern Australia during the last week of March, forcing many people to evacuate and leave their livestock behind.
David Crisafulli, the Queensland premier, called the floods “unprecedented” as several places in western Queensland recorded the worst floods in the last 50 years, CNN reported. Some of the affected areas are normally very dry, including the Munga-Thirri-Simpson Desert, a vast arid region known for its sand dunes.
The rains started on March 23 as an inland low pressure area pulled monsoon rain from the tropical north of Australia into the arid landscape of southern Queensland, The Guardian reported. Cyclone Dianne, which reached Queensland from the west a few days later, further intensified the rains.
With rainfall reaching 600 millimeters (24 inches) over the last week of March, almost double the yearly average of some towns, record-breaking flood levels were reported in central Queensland’s Stonehenge, Jundah and Windorah areas. ABC news called it “the biggest flood in living memory for many people across outback Queensland,” exceeding the infamous 1974 flooding in the region.
In many towns, people were rescued using helicopters.
“We flew over a lot of water. We were just amazed how much water is around our place where we have never seen water before,” resident Ann-Maree Lloyd, evacuated by air from their home in the town of Yaraka, told ABC.
The agriculture industry is also facing significant losses. Crisafulli said more than 140,000 livestock, including cattle, sheep, goats and horses, were reported missing or dead, The Guardianreported on April 2. “This number will continue to rise,” he added. Images online show animals stuck in floods or mud.
Crisafulli said recovery may take years. For the agricultural industry, it means rebuilding some 4,700 kilometers (2,900 miles) of private roads and 3,500 km (2,200 mi) of fencing.
“Not only economically, but psychosocially — we’re already getting reports of landholders that are struggling mentally with the prospect of what they know is to come,” Tony Rayner, mayor of the affected Longreach region, told The Guardian.
Environmental geography professor Steve Turton wrote in The Conversation that some meteorologists have dubbed the recent rains a pseudo-monsoon, “because the normal Australian monsoon doesn’t reach this far south — the torrential rains of the monsoonal wet season tend to fall closer to the northern coasts.”
He added most of the rainwater dumped in the dry areas will now flow slowly through channels on the ground until it fills up Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre, usually a massive, salty, dry depression in the northern region of South Australia state, covering an area of more than 9,000 km2 (3,500 mi2).
“When Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre fills, it creates an extraordinary spectacle,” Turton wrote. Millions of brine shrimp hatch from eggs in the waters, which draw fish carried in the floodwaters, which in turn attract many waterbirds, he added.
Save Right Whales Coalition Files Supreme Court Brief Challenging BOEM’s Unlawful Offshore Wind Approvals
NEW HAMPSHIRE (April 14) — The Save Right Whales Coalition (SRWC) has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the Court to review two cases challenging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) approval of the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project. The brief argues that BOEM unlawfully reinterpreted the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) to expand its discretionary authority and bypass statutory protections for ocean users and marine ecosystems.
“Congress imposed clear, enforceable limits on BOEM’s authority,” said Lisa Linowes a spokesperson for SRWC. “Rather than following the law, BOEM reshaped it to serve policy objectives — without public input or congressional approval.”
Key Points from the Amicus Brief:
Improper Balancing of Mandatory Protections: BOEM reinterpreted OCSLA § 8(p)(4), which requires the agency to “ensure” compliance with twelve independent statutory safeguards — including protections for navigation, fishing, and the environment — by introducing a balancing framework that treats these protections as negotiable.
Textual Revision to Expand Authority: To support this reinterpretation, BOEM also modified a key provision of OCSLA (§ 8(p)(4)(I)) by repositioning a parenthetical phrase (“as determined by the Secretary”) in a way that artificially broadened the agency’s discretion over what qualifies as “reasonable uses” of the outer continental shelf and what level of interference is permissible — a subtle but powerful change that had the effect of rewriting the statute through guidance rather than legislation.
Avoidance of Formal Rulemaking: In April 2021, BOEM issued a memorandum setting forth its new interpretation of the statute, which it then applied to approve Vineyard Wind 1 and ten other offshore wind projects. Despite immediately implementing this revised framework, BOEM waited three years to begin the formal rulemaking process required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), thereby denying stakeholders the opportunity for notice-and-comment participation.
Unlawful Substitution of Compensation for Prevention: Rather than ensuring that offshore development avoids interfering with reasonable ocean uses — as the statute demands — BOEM relied on compensatory mitigation such as developer-funded payments or offsets. The brief argues that this approach replaces legal compliance with after-the-fact financial remedies, in direct conflict with Congress’s mandate to prevent interference. In a January 2025 planning document, BOEM conceded “There are no existing Federal regulations that require compensation for economic loss from displacement attributed to offshore wind energy installations.”
“This is a revealing admission,” said Linowes. “BOEM is approving projects it knows will harm fishermen and other ocean users, while relying on voluntary, developer-funded payments that have no basis in law. Compensation is not prevention — and it’s not a substitute for statutory compliance.”
Why This Case Matters
OCSLA § 8(p)(4) requires BOEM to ensure offshore wind projects comply with multiple statutory safeguards, including protecting existing ocean uses. The APA prohibits agencies from adopting binding rules or new interpretations without public rulemaking. The SRWC brief contends that BOEM’s failure to follow these legal obligations reflects a pattern of administrative overreach, enabled by improper judicial deference.
“If left unchecked BOEM’s conduct would allow agencies to bypass Congress by issuing internal memos and shifting statutory meaning without transparency or accountability,” Linowes said.
The Save Right Whales Coalition (https://saverightwhales.org/) is a broad alliance of scientists, fishermen, environmental advocates, and community groups committed to protecting endangered marine species and defending the lawful use of ocean resources.
Editor’s note: “Most people don’t realize that part of gas extraction is a liquid condensate, the origin of plastics, which is being pumped, defying Climate Chaos, via the maze of fracking pipelines to the Gulf Coast, where the US is set on cornering the world plastics market, as well as shipping the LNG gas it has forced on its European vassals.” In a bid to become a world plastics monopoly, Exxon quietly plans to erect a new $8.6 billion plastics plant. The proposal calls for a steam cracker, a facility that uses oil and natural gas to make ethylene and propylene — the chemical building blocks of plastic. “Besides ethylene and propylene, steam crackers produce climate pollution and hazardous chemicals like ammonia, benzene, toluene, and methanol.”
“Where Exxon is going to put their bloody plant is smack-dab in front of [what will be] one of the largest oyster farms in Texas,” said Wilson, who is not convinced that any plastics factory can operate without polluting. She noted that Formosa has already violated its settlement agreement nearly 800 times, racking up over $25 million in fines. “Exxon is going to be exactly like Formosa.”
“We have been cleaning the piss out of [Cox Creek], and this is the very place where Exxon is going to try to put its plastics plant,” Wilson, who lives in nearby Seadrift, said of the facility’s potential location. “You see this nightmare of another plant, trying to do the very same thing.”
A Shrimper’s Crusade Pays Big Dividends on a Remote Stretch of Texas Coastline
Five years after Diane Wilson’s landmark settlement with Formosa Plastics, money flows to “the bay and the fishermen.”
By Dylan Baddour
December 24, 2024
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
PORT LAVACA, Texas—Few men still fish for a living on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The work is hard and pay is meager. In the hearts of rundown seaside towns, dilapidated harbors barely recall the communities that thrived here generations ago.
But at the docks of Port Lavaca, one group of humble fishermen just got a staggering $20 million to bring back their timeless way of life. They’re buying out the buyer of their catch, starting the largest oyster farm in Texas and dreaming big for the first time in a long time.
“We have a lot of hope,” said Jose Lozano, 46, who docks his oyster boats in Port Lavaca. “Things will get better.”
It’s all thanks to one elder fisherwoman’s longshot crusade against the petrochemical behemoth across the bay, and her historic settlement in 2019. Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper from the tiny town of Seadrift, took on a $250 billion Taiwanese chemical company, Formosa Plastics Corp., and won a $50 million trust fund, the largest sum ever awarded in a civil suit under the Clean Water Act.
Now, five years later, that money is beginning to flow into some major development projects on this mostly rural and generally overlooked stretch of Texas coastline. Through the largest of them, the Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative, formed in February this year, Wilson dreams of rebuilding this community’s relationship with the sea and reviving a lifestyle that flourished here before global markets cratered the seafood industry and local economies shifted to giant chemical plants.
“I refuse to believe it’s a thing of the past,” said Wilson, 76, who lives in a converted barn, down a dirt road, amid a scraggle of mossy oak trees. “We’re going to put money for the fishermen. They’re not going to be destroyed.”
The fishing cooperative has only just begun to spend its $20 million, Wilson said. It’s the largest of dozens of projects funded by her settlement agreement. Others include a marine science summer camp at the Port Lavaca YMCA, a global campaign to document plastic pollution from chemical plants, a $500,000 study of mercury pollution in Lavaca Bay and the $10 million development of a local freshwater lake for public access.
“They are doing some wonderful things,” said Gary Reese, a Calhoun County commissioner. He also received grants from the fund to build a pier and a playground pavilion at other county parks.
The fund resulted from a lawsuit Wilson filed in 2017 under the Clean Water Act, which enables citizens to petition for enforcement of environmental law where state regulators have failed to act. By gathering evidence from her kayak over years, Wilson demonstrated that Formosa had routinely discharged large amounts of plastic pellets into local waterways for decades, violating language in its permits.
These sorts of lawsuits typically result in settlements with companies that fund development projects, said Josh Kratka, managing attorney at the National Environmental Law Center in Boston. But seldom do they come anywhere close to the dollar amount involved in Wilson’s $50 million settlement with Formosa.
“It’s a real outlier in that aspect,” Kratka said.
For example, he said, environmental organizations in Texas sued a Shell oil refinery in Deer Park and won a $5.8 million settlement in 2008 that funded an upgrade of a local district’s school bus fleet and solar panels on local government buildings. In 2009 groups sued a Chevron Phillips chemical plant in Baytown and won a $2 million settlement in 2009 that funded an environmental health clinic for underserved communities.
One reason for the scale of Wilson’s winning, Kratka said, was an unprecedented citizen effort to gather plastic pollution from the bays as evidence in court. While violations of permit limits are typically proven through company self-reporting, Wilson mobilized a small team of volunteers.
“This was done by everyday people in this community, that’s what built the case,” said Erin Gaines, an attorney who previously worked on the case for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. “This had never been done before, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”
Wilson’s settlement included much more than the initial $50 million payment. Formosa also agreed to clean up its own legacy plastic pollution and has so far spent $32 million doing so, according to case records. And the company committed to discharge no more plastic material from its Point Comfort complex—a standard which had never been applied to any plastics plants across the nation.
“They cannot believe I would do this for the bay and the fishermen. It’s my home and I completely refuse to give it to that company to ruin.”
Formosa consented to regular wastewater testing to verify compliance, and to penalties for violations. Now, three times a week, a specially engineered contraption analyzes the outflows at Formosa. Three times a week, it finds they are full of plastic. And three times a week, Formosa pays a $65,000 penalty into Wilson’s trust fund.
It’s small change for a company that makes about a billion dollars per year at its Point Comfort complex, or $2.7 million per day. To date, those penalty payments have totaled more than $24 million, in addition to the $50 million awarded in 2019.
The money doesn’t belong to Wilson, who has never been rich, and she never touches it. It goes into a fund called the Matagorda Bay Mitigation Trust, which is independently managed.
For the first $50 million, Wilson evaluated grant applications and allocated the money to government entities, registered nonprofits and public universities. Now an independent panel administers the fund.
Many locals who know her story assume that Wilson is rich now, she said. But she never got a penny of the settlement. She was never doing this for the money.
“They cannot believe I would do this for the bay and the fishermen,” she said. “It’s my home and I completely refuse to give it to that company to ruin.”
Formosa also writes grants for community development programs, although none of them approach the size of the Matagorda Bay Mitigation Trust.
In response to a query from Inside Climate News, the company provided a summary of its community spending over 30 years, including $2.4 million on local and regional environmental projects, $2 million for a new Memorial Medical clinic, $2 million to upgrade local water treatment systems, $2 million to an area food bank, $1.3 million for local religious organizations and $1.2 million on scholarships for high school seniors.
The company has contributed $6.3 million for regional roadway improvements, donated 19 houses to the Calhoun County Independent School District and built a classroom in restored wetlands. Its annual employee golf tournament raises $500,000 for United Way charities, and its national headquarters in New Jersey gives $1 million each year to local charities. In Point Comfort it has programs to plant trees, protect bees and restore monarch butterfly habitat.
“Formosa Plastics has always believed in giving back to the community and approximately 30 years ago established education, environmental, medical, religious and scholarship trusts,” the company said in a five-page statement.
Since the 2019 settlement, Formosa has taken steps to address environmental challenges and reduce the environmental impact at its Point Comfort complex, the company said.
Formosa has installed pollution control systems to reduce the release of plastic particles, has partnered with industry experts to develop better filtration methods and is monitoring emerging technologies for opportunities to improve environmental stewardship, it said. The Point Comfort complex has also improved stormwater drainage to reduce plastics in runoff, and is engaging with community advocates to identify sustainable solutions.
“We understand the importance of protecting the environment and the communities where we operate, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement,” the statement said.
The Fishing Way of Life
Wilson fondly recalls the bustling fishing community of her youth in Seadrift, more than 60 years ago. There were hundreds of boats at the docks, surrounded by a town full of mechanics, welders, netmakers and fish houses.
They weren’t rich, Wilson said, but they were free. They answered to no one, except maybe game wardens. They had twilight every morning, the silence of the water, the adventure of the search, the thrill of the catch and a regular intimacy with spirits of the sea, sun, wind and sky.
“You are out there on that bay, facing the elements, making decisions,” Wilson said. “That is as close to nature as you can get.”
Over her life, she watched it all fall apart. There are no fish houses in Seadrift today. Almost all the old businesses were bulldozed or boarded up. Wilson’s own brothers took jobs at the giant petrochemical plants growing onshore. But every day off they spent back on the water.
Most people called her crazy, 30 years ago, when she started complaining about water pollution from Formosa. Powerful interests denounced her and no one defended her.
But Wilson never gave up speaking out against pollution in the bay.
“That bay is alive. She is family and I will fight for her,” Wilson said. “I think everyone else would let her be destroyed.”
Over years of persistent, rambunctious protests targeting Formosa, Wilson began to get calls from employees at the plant, asking to meet secretly in fields, pastures and beer joints to talk about what they’d seen. They told her about vast amounts of plastic dust and pellets washed down drains, and about the wastewater outfalls where it all ended up.
When Wilson started visiting those places, often only accessible by kayak, she began to find the substance for her landmark lawsuit, millions and millions of plastic pellets that filled waterways and marshes.
“Felt like Huck Finn out there, all that exploring,” she said.
In 2017, Wislon filed her petition in federal court, then continued collecting evidence for years before trial. It was the first case over plastic pellet pollution brought under the Clean Water Act, according to Amy Johnson, then a contract attorney with the nonprofit RioGrande Legal Aid and lead attorney for Wilson’s case.
Gathering Nurdles
Down the coast in Port Aransas, a researcher at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute named Jace Tunnell had just launched a project in 2018 to study water pollution from plastics manufacturing plants. At that time, little was known about the scale of releases of plastic pellets, also called nurdles, into the oceans from those industrial facilities.
The Nurdle Patrol, as Tunnell called it, was beginning on a shoestring budget to methodically collect and catalog the nurdles in hopes of getting a better picture of the problem. That’s when Tunnel, a fourth generation Gulf Coast native and a second generation marine scientist, heard about a fisherwoman who was also collecting nurdles up the coast.
He contacted Wilson, who shared her data. But Tunnell didn’t believe it. Wilson claimed to have gathered 30,000 nurdles in 10 minutes. Tunnell would typically collect up to 200 in that time. He drove out to see for himself and found, to his shock, that it was true.
“The nurdles were just pluming up back there,” Tunnell said. “It really was an eye opener for me of how bad Formosa was.”
At that time, Wilson and her small team of volunteers were pulling up huge amounts of plastic from the bay system and logging it as evidence.
In 2019, the case went to trial. At one point, she parked a pickup truck full of damp, stinky plastic outside the federal courthouse and brought the judge out to see. She also cited Nurdle Patrol’s scientific method for gathering pellets as a means to estimate overall discharges in the bay.
“Diane was able to use Nurdle Patrol data in the lawsuit to seal the deal,” Tunnell said.
Later that year, the judge ruled in Wilson’s favor, finding Formosa had violated its permit limits to discharge “trace amounts” of plastics thousands of times over decades.
Formosa opted to negotiate a settlement with Wilson rather than seek a court-ordered penalty. In December 2019, the two parties signed a consent decree outlining their agreement and creating the $50 million Matagorda Bay Mitigation Trust.
Funding Community Projects
Right away, Wilson signed over $1 million to the Nurdle Patrol, which Tunnell used over five years to build an international network with 23,000 volunteers and an online portal with the best data available on plastic nurdles in the oceans. They’ve also provided elementary and high schools with thousands of teaching kits about plastics production and water pollution.
“There’s no accountability for the industries that release this,” Tunnell said as he picked plastic pellets from the sand near his home on North Padre Island in early December. “Of course, Diane kind of changed that.”
The trust’s largest grant programs are still yet to take effect. Wilson allocated $10 million to Calhoun County to develop a 6,400 acre park around Green Lake, the second largest natural lake in Texas, currently inaccessible to the public.
The county will begin taking bids this month to build phase one of the project, which will include walking trails and birding stands, according to county commissioner Reese. Later they’ll build a parking lot and boat ramp.
The county brought this property in 2012 with hopes of making a park, but never had the money. Initially, county officials planned to build an RV park with plenty of pavement. But funding from Wilson’s trust forbade RVs and required a lighter footprint to respect the significant Native American and Civil War campsites identified on the property.
“It’ll be more of a back-to-nature thing,” Reese said. “It’s been a long time coming, we hope to be able to provide a quality facility for the public thanks to Matagorda Mitigation Trust.”
By far, the largest grant from the trust has gone to the fishermen. Wilson allocated $20 million to form a cooperative at the docks of Port Lavaca—an unlikely sum of money for seamen who struggle to feed their families well. Wilson dreamed that this money could help bring back the vanishing lifestyle that she loved.
The Fishermen
Today, most of the remaining commercial fishermen on this Gulf coast come from Mexico and have fished here for decades. It’s hard work without health insurance, retirement plans or guaranteed daily income. But it’s an ancient occupation that has always been available to enterprising people by the sea.
“It’s what we’ve done our whole life,” said Homero Muñoz, 48, a board member of the fishermen’s cooperative, who has worked the Texas coast since he was 19. “This is what we like to do.”
Lately it’s been more difficult than ever, he said. Declining vitality in the bays, widespread reef closures by Texas authorities and opposition from wealthy sportfishing organizations force the commercial fishermen to compete for shrinking oyster populations in small and distant areas. Then, the fishermen have little power to negotiate on low prices for their catch set by a few big regional buyers, who also own most of the dock space. The buyers distribute it at a markup to restaurants and markets across the county.
“There isn’t anyone who helps us,” said Cecilio Ruiz, a 58-year-old father of three who has fished the Texas coast since 1982.
To help the fishermen build a sustainable business, Wilson tapped the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, an organization based in Atlanta originally founded to help Black farmers and landowners form cooperatives in the newly de-segregated South. For FSC, it was an unprecedented offer.
“This is an amazing project, very historic,” said Terence Courtney, director of cooperative development and strategic initiatives at FSC.
Usually, money is the biggest obstacle for producers wanting to form a collectively owned business, Courtney said. He’d never seen a case where a donor put up millions of dollars to make it happen.
“Opportunities like this don’t come around often. I can’t think of another example,” Courtney said. “We saw this as something that history was compelling us to do.”
The Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative
In 2020 Courtney started traveling regularly to Port Lavaca, meeting groups of fishermen, assessing their needs, discussing the concept of a cooperative and studying feasibility.
The men, who speak primarily Spanish, had trouble understanding Courtney’s English at first. But they knew someone who could help: Veronica Briceño, the daughter of a late local fisherman known as Captain Ralph. As a child, she translated between English and Spanish around her father’s business and the local docks and harbors.
Briceño, a 40-year-old worker at the county tax appraisal office, was excited to hear about the effort. She’d learned to fish on her grandfather’s boat. Her father left her four boats and she couldn’t bring herself to sell them. She joined FSC as a volunteer translator for the project.
“These men, all they know how to do is really just work,” she said. “They were needing support from someone.”
A year later, FSC hired Briceño as project coordinator. They leased an old bait shop with dock space at the harbor in Port Lavaca and renovated it as an office. Then in February 2024 they officially formed the Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative, composed of 37 boat owners with 77 boats that employ up to 230 people.
Now Briceño has a desk at the office where she helps the fishermen with paperwork, permitting and legal questions while coordinating a growing list of contracts as the cooperative begins to spend big money.
Negotiations are underway for the cooperative to purchase a major local seafood buyer, Miller’s Seafood, along with its boats, dock space, processing operations and supply contracts for about $2 million.
“I hope they help carry it on,” said Curtis Miller, 63, the owner of Miller’s Seafood, which was founded by his uncle in the 1960s. “I would like to see them be able to succeed.”
Many of the cooperative members have worked for Miller’s Seafood during the last 40 years, he said. The company handles almost entirely oysters now and provides them wholesale to restaurants on the East Coast, Florida and in Texas.
The cooperative has also leased 60 acres of bay water from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to start the largest oyster farm in Texas, a relatively new practice here. FSC is now permitting the project with the Texas General Land Office and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“That might be the future of the industry,” said Miller. “It might be the next big thing.”
“It Can Be Revived”
At a recent meeting of the cooperative, the members discussed options for a $2.5 million purchase of more than 7,000 oyster cages to install on the new farm. They talked about plans to visit and study a working oyster farm. The cooperative is finalizing a marketing and distribution plan for the farmed oysters.
The project would give two acres to each oysterman to farm, and would finally do away with the frantic race to harvest the few available oyster areas before other boats do. Now, they’ll have a place of their own.
“To have our own farms, liberty to go to our own piece of water,” said Miguel Fierros, 44, a bearded, third-generation fisherman and father of three. “It’s a unique opportunity I don’t think we’ll ever get again.”
Briceño, the project coordinator, hopes that the practice of oyster farming will bring a new generation into the seafood industry here. Neither of her kids plan to make a living on the water like her father or grandfather, who always encouraged the family to find jobs with health insurance and retirement. Now her 21-year-old son works at Formosa, like many of his peers, as a crane operator.
Perhaps this cooperative, with its miraculous $20 million endowment, can realize the dream of a local fishing industry with dignified pay and benefits. If it goes well, Briceño said, maybe her grandkids will be fishermen someday.
“We’re going to get a younger crowd actually interested,” she said.
This project is just getting started. Most of their money still remains to be spent, and the fishermen have many ideas. They would like to buy a boat repair business to service their fleet, as well as a net workshop, and to open more oyster farms.
For Wilson, now an internationally recognized environmental advocate, this all just proves how much can be accomplished by a stubborn country woman with volunteer helpers and non-profit lawyers. Ultimately, she hopes these projects will help rebuild a fishing community and bring back the fishermen’s way of life.
For now, the program is only getting started.
“It can be revived,” Wilson said. “There is a lot of money left.”
