Editor’s note: Brownsville, Texas – “Element Fuels has received the necessary permitting to construct and operate a refinery capable of producing in excess of 160,000 barrels, or approximately 6.7 million gallons, per day of finished gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel,” said Founder and Co-CEO John Calce. “A permit for a greenfield refinery of this size, scope, and functionality has not been granted in the United States since the 1970’s. This speaks to the innovative approaches we are taking to address climate and sustainability concerns in cleaner, greener ways that are new to the refinery space.”
Though Marathon was built in 1976, it is considered the last significant oil refinery built in the United States.
That’s partly because of community opposition to new refineries, a position that people in Garyville understood well last month.
“It’s hard to explain the mixed emotions that come with living in the conditions that we have been forced to live in here,” said Robert Taylor, who lives in the vicinity of the plant, in the community of Reserve. “Why are we designated as a sacrifice zone?”
“Though Marathon was built in 1976, it is considered the last significant oil refinery built in the United States.
That’s partly because of community opposition to new refineries, a position that people in Garyville understood well last month.
“It’s hard to explain the mixed emotions that come with living in the conditions that we have been forced to live in here,” said Robert Taylor, who lives in the vicinity of the plant, in the community of Reserve. “Why are we designated as a sacrifice zone?”
Taylor grew up among the sugarcane fields of this part of St. John the Baptist Parish. The sugar mill where his parents worked once stood on the very spot where the Marathon Refinery was built.
During Taylor’s lifetime, the entire area switched focus, from cane to crude.
For decades now, he has fought the petrochemical plants here, in what’s become known as Cancer Alley. In 2015, Taylor founded the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish, after a National Air Toxics Assessment revealed that residents of the parish have the highest lifetime cancer risk in the nation because of emissions of chloroprene and ethylene oxide from nearby plants.
Before Marathon opened 47 years ago, Taylor said, a small community called Lions stood on that plot of land. Townspeople would gather on Sundays at Zion Travelers Baptist Church, which had its own tidy little cemetery.
But in the mid-1970s, after a whir of pounded beams and sky-high metal towers, tied together by a maze of pipes, Marathon took over the grounds and built what became the nation’s second-largest refinery.”
California losing another refinery, impacting AZ and NV; fuel shortages possible
Promotional material from the Husky Friends campaign. (Modest Proposals)
“We were wondering if Mayor Paine is available?” I asked. My words were muffled by the dog mascot costume I was wearing. Next to me was a canvasser and the two camera operators filming us. We were at City Hall in Superior, Wisconsin on April 25 to spread the word about Husky Friends — the name we’d given to a so-called community outreach initiative from Husky Energy, owner of the local refinery that exploded in 2018 and triggered an evacuation of much of the city. With the refinery possibly reopening, Husky Friends was there to “assuage residents’ concerns.”
“Oh sure! Let me see if he has a moment,” the receptionist responded.
Wait, what!? This wasn’t supposed to be happening. We thought it’d be interesting to get footage of a dog mascot trying to meet the mayor, but we never thought he’d actually come out and talk with us.
He stepped out of his office, and we haltingly introduced Husky Friends, explaining that we were there to “address some of the community concerns about the use of hydrogen fluoride,” or HF — a lethal chemical used in oil refining that was almost released during the 2018 explosion, putting the entire populations of both Superior and nearby Duluth, Minnesota at grave risk. Cenovus Energy, which recently acquired Husky Energy, is rebuilding the refinery and intends to continue using the chemical.
Mayor Paine took a pamphlet, thanked us for coming and went back into his office.
The footage of this meeting would later show up on evening news segments on the local CBS and NBC affiliates in Duluth. However, by this time, the truth about Husky Friends had been exposed. The news correctly reported that it was actually just an elaborate satire — concocted by my activist group, Modest Proposals, in collaboration with local residents in an attempt to draw attention to the danger of the Superior Refinery.
The day before our hoax was exposed, thousands of postcards were distributed to residents living close to the refinery. They advertised Husky Friends and directed them to a website where anyone in the “friend zone” could sign up to receive a text warning 15 minutes after any HF release (while noting the real danger was within 10 minutes of a leak). The website also described a “neighbor compassion kit” featuring a burn cream for a chemical that can more-or-less kill on contact and a “Kid’s Room Gas Detector” that would play nursery rhymes if it detected HF.
We announced Husky Friends in a press release the following day, the anniversary of the explosion, and stayed in character until inevitably being exposed. Local TV stations, Wisconsin Public Radio, and numerous smaller newspapers all ran stories. We then capitalized further by sending repeated rounds of postcards on subsequent days which finally goaded Cenovus into circulating their own mailer to Superior residents denouncing our “inappropriate tactics” and reassuring them that the refinery was safe — essentially re-broadcasting our message for us.
“Gibraltar Explosion” by Josh13770 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
A wider problem and opportunity
Husky Friends was a locally-targeted action that re-animated a pressing issue long since faded from local headlines — thereby giving residents against the re-opening an opportunity to take advantage of its publicity. Not every city needs a dog mascot to talk to their mayor, but dedicating resources to local organizing efforts aimed at closing down oil refineries is something the climate movement should prioritize. There are huge opportunities to address the poisonous injustice of refineries’ sacrifice zones, and to strike a critical blow against the oil industry in the midst of the climate emergency.
Husky Friends may have used humor, but its message about the danger refineries pose was deadly serious — and by no means exclusive to Superior and Duluth. Approximately a third of refineries in the United States currently use hydrogen fluoride, many of them near population centers. Several have even had near-miss accidents in the past few years. Refineries also spew carcinogens, neurotoxins and hazardous metals onto surrounding communities, leading to a litany of health problems, including cancer, chronic respiratory illness and birth defects. All this pollution creates sacrifice zones, with people living around them frequently being low income, BIPOC communities — many of whom lack the resources to move. The danger refineries pose has been exacerbated in recent years, as many of them are aging facilities with decaying equipment in dire need of expensive repairs that can take years. More accidents are “just a matter of time,” according to the U.S. chemical safety board.
Despite its urgent need, funding has been hard for the refining industry to come by since many investors don’t see a long-term market for fossil fuels. According to energy economist Ed Hirs from the University of Houston, “Just getting the equipment you need could take three years. Electric vehicles might already make up 20 percent of the car market by then. You could find yourself investing a bunch of cash to rebuild a refinery that may not be needed for long.” Investor hesitancy naturally translates into a lack of funding for building any new refineries. There has not been a new refinery with significant capacity built since 1977, and even the CEO of Chevron has stated that “I don’t think you are ever going to see a refinery built again in this country.”
In the midst of the climate emergency, we need to look for the most effective use of movement resources to end fossil fuels as quickly as possible. The wariness of investors to finance necessary repairs make refineries a critical strategic vulnerability. Every refinery closed will likely never reopen. Every refinery closed can be an end to part of the vast fossil fuel apparatus destroying our planet.
How we get there
Any successful campaign needs to be specific about how it achieves its goals. A mentor of mine has a useful metaphor to break down campaigning specifics: If a campaign is a war, it needs an air war, and a ground war. Air war is about seizing or changing the narrative — much like Husky Friends did. Ground war is building power through relational organizing and grassroots base building. Air war creates the initiative and the ground war utilizes it to build organizations capable of wielding power. Successful campaigning needs both.
The air war gets waged using society’s means of information distribution, and its mediums are the tools of any political campaign: postcards, lawn signs, PR and perhaps most importantly advertising. The fossil fuel industry understands the impact of these tools and uses these tactics to garner local support. Enbridge Energy ran a plethora of ads in local newspapers for years to shape the narrative toward supporting its Line 3 oil sands pipeline in Northern Minnesota. Looking at these ads, you’d think that the pipeline had the support of local Indigenous tribes and was a boon for local jobs and the economy — when in fact many tribes fiercely resisted the pipeline, most of the workers came from out of state, and the pipeline brought an influx of harassment, violence and sex trafficking.
Environmental groups who opposed the pipeline had trouble getting enough resources to counter with their own message, which had the result of allowing Enbridge to monopolize critical channels of information distribution and opportunities to shape public perception. Even in heavily Trump-supporting Northern Minnesota such messaging could have had an effect. Citizens of Park Rapids cared enough about their water to take their city council to task over selling Enbridge water for Line 3 construction in the middle of 2021’s historic drought. If information about the threat that Line 3 poses to their water, and Enbridge’s abysmal safety record was more widely disseminated, it’s not hard to imagine more local residents joining the struggle.
None of this, however, is to fault the Indigenous leadership and brave frontline activists who fought Line 3. Instead, it’s a call to consider what they might have accomplished if they had more resources at their disposal to use the same local channels of information distribution that their opponents effectively weaponized against them.
Building power
As anyone who has been part of a volunteer based organization can tell you, there is always too much to do, never enough time and never enough people to do it. That’s why we need to find a way to send help in the form of others who can devote their time and labor to these groups.
Such help could take shape in a variety of ways, depending on the status of local efforts. If local organizations are already well developed, sending people to do canvassing, phone calls and the endless clerical minutiae involved in advocacy can free up critical time resources for frontline activists. If they need more of a boost, experienced organizers can be sent in as well to advise and facilitate residents actualizing power with grassroots base building, identifying and developing leaders, and all the nuts and bolts of community organizing.
Organizing and directing community power is a skill — and like all skills, experience is the best teacher. Frontline communities should be able to benefit from and utilize the knowledge accumulated by other successful frontline organizers and activists. People living in sacrifice zones deserve a livable environment and deserve assistance in building the power necessary to create that livable environment.
However, when sending personnel to frontline communities, organizers must always understand that they are a facilitator for collective needs — not a leader — and therefore act accordingly. The climate movement has been historically staffed by people with privilege, but by dedicating financing and personnel to disadvantaged communities, they can bring more voices, especially the voices of people oppressed by the fossil fuel industry, into the larger struggle.
Targeting the right decision maker
Every refinery in the United States is operating under an air quality permit mandated by Title 5 of the Clean Air Act. These permits are required by the federal government, but are administered at the state or local level, and are supposed to come up for renewal every five years. There are two possible decision makers to pressure. One of them is state and local governments, who can be pressured not to renew, or to outright revoke the permits. The other is the EPA, which holds veto power over any Title 5 permit. The Biden administration has pledged to incorporate environmental justice into its policy decisions, and whatever its shortcomings on climate action may be, at the end of the day they are movable on environmental issues.
Whether the best pressure point is federal, state or local governments will depend on which is most effective for each campaign. For example, the people around the oil refinery in Tacoma, Washington may want to pressure Jay Inslee, their climate conscious governor. Residents living around Exxon’s Baytown Refinery in Baytown, Texas may want to pressure a more pliable federal government, rather than their conservative state government.
The financial vulnerability of oil refineries opens the door to another pressure point the environmental movement can exploit, and one in which national and larger organizations can take a larger role. Defunding and divestment campaigns have been previously directed at specific fossil fuel infrastructure projects, notably the Dakota Access Pipeline, Line 3 and the ongoing campaign against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. With so many refineries in need of expensive, time-consuming repairs — as well as banks being hesitant to fund them — campaigns can direct their attention toward pressuring financial institutions to withhold funding or drop their support.
Frontline communities with powerful and resilient community organizations will also be better equipped to take ownership of a hopefully fossil free future, rather than being left behind when the refineries inevitably close. The economic devastation left in the wake of coal’s decline is a telling example of what can happen to workers and communities who are dependent on a fading industry. With these organizations they will be better equipped to push for equitable and sustainable economic development, as well as public investment policies from the municipal, state or federal government. They will also be better positioned to receive grant money from nonprofits and foundations. By helping build these organizations, the environmental movement can facilitate a just transition from below — with empowered local communities taking ownership of a fossil free future.
Jim Haugen (pen name) got his start in activism campaigning against tech companies with Extinction Rebellion NYC. He then co-founded Modest Proposals, an activist collective that uses satire, humor and other creative tactics to create positive change.
As a private university expands its footprint and threatens the amphibian’s habitat, residents are voicing their opposition and searching for another way forward.
By Lee Hedgepeth
April 10, 2025
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.
HOMEWOOD, Ala.—Ellen McLaughlin said she wasn’t speaking for herself.
“I speak for the salamanders,” she told those gathered at a community meeting in late March.
McLaughlin, a retired Samford University biology professor, was one of dozens who showed up at the Homewood Senior Center to express their frustration over a proposed “town square” development that will threaten the habitat of spotted salamanders in the Birmingham suburb.
Flanked by oil paintings of wildflower fields and a waterfall, she made her views well known.
“They require a certain habitat, and to destroy that habitat is going to destroy that population of salamanders,” she told those in attendance, including representatives of Landmark Development, the company overseeing the project on behalf of the university. “So it’s imperative that we keep that.”
McLaughlin wasn’t alone in her concerns. Again and again, residents and other stakeholders present at the community meeting hosted by the development company brought up the plight of the amphibian that has, over time, become part of the character of Homewood, home of a salamander festival held annually for two decades.
Bob Dunn, CEO of Landmark Development, said in an interview that he understands residents’ concerns but that he can’t promise that there will be no impact to the spotted salamanders and the vernal pools where they lay their eggs each year.
“Could we encroach on portions of the habitat? As you look at the plan, there are areas where there’s some encroachment,” he said. “But we think the mitigating opportunities will more than compensate for the type of encroachment we’re talking about.”
Residents, biologists and members of the university community interviewed by Inside Climate News largely disagree. Currently proposed plans don’t leave room for changes that would protect the salamanders’ current habitat, they argue, putting at risk the survival of a population that’s called the city home for generations.
A Salamander’s Tale
The spotted salamander has long been a unique part of Homewood’s history.
Since at least the 1960s, and likely much longer, experts say, the amphibians have spent much of their time burrowing on the slopes of Shades Mountain, making their homes beneath the fallen leaves and limbs of the forest.
Once a year, as temperatures in Alabama begin to climb, the amphibians migrate from the mountain’s slopes across South Lakeshore Drive, a two-lane road, to the springtime, “vernal” pools located in a narrow patch of woods adjacent to existing sports fields that line Shades Creek.
The trek is not always simple. Most often, the salamanders embark on their journey at night, and typically in heavy rains—likely as a way to keep wet and avoid predators.
James Seay Brown Jr., a retired folklorist and natural historian who worked at Samford, wrote about Homewood’s relationship with the spotted salamander in his book, “Distracted by Alabama: Tangled Threads of Natural History, Local History and Folklore.”
When Brown arrived at Samford in 1971, the university’s environmental community was already tracking the salamanders and their annual migration. Brown quickly became obsessed with their yearly trek, and the fixation rubbed off on others over time.
Soon, Brown recruited his wife Michelle to serve as a sort of salamander Paul Revere—tasked with calling a list of interested locals when her husband had confirmed that the amphibians were on the move.
In 2002, Brown awoke to a heavy rain around three in the morning, traveled down to the migration site and confirmed the annual journey had begun. He alerted Michelle, who he said became nervous about calling one person in particular on the list—a Samford executive—so late at night. The executive’s wife answered, surprised by a woman’s voice on the other end of the line, but awkwardly agreed to share the news with her husband. The executive soon showed up for the crossing. So did his wife.
“And here were highly placed administrators of [University of Alabama at Birmingham] and Samford, plus otherwise upstanding businesspeople, professionals, and good family folks, all willing to risk their reputations by such behavior—though I might note some brought children as an excuse,” Brown wrote. “My wife later remarked drily that the ranks of insanity were growing. This may also have been the reaction of Homewood’s mayor at that time, Barry McCulley, when he first heard about it from some police report about flashlights in the woods near the high school at eleven o’clock at night and suspicious answers to straightforward police questions.”
By 2003, the excitement and intrigue over the annual salamander crossing had reached its peak, and city officials in April of that year officially designated a nearly half-mile stretch of South Lakeshore Drive as a salamander crossing—painted crosswalks and street signs included.
By the next year, the city hosted the first Salamander Festival, a tradition that’s continued to this day. In 2024, more than 900 attendees flocked to Homewood for the event, according to organizers.
In 2008, the city of Homewood took another step that aided the salamander—designating around 65 acres of land along South Lakeshore Drive, opposite the breeding pools, as a protected natural area: Homewood Nature Preserve.
Now, though, residents of Homewood fear the worst—that the desire for development will outweigh the need for environmental stewardship of the amphibians’ habitat. That’s why residents like Ellen McLaughlin say they will speak for the salamander.
A Creekside Development
March’s community meeting at the Homewood Senior Center was partly a result of the city’s planning commission encouraging Landmark Development to more deeply engage with citizens over their concerns, according to city officials.
The development, called Creekside, is billed by the developer as a “dynamic, walkable, livable town square environment” that will feature everything from “trendy shops to delightful eateries.”
The project is part of Samford University’s “Samford Horizons” initiative, which the university touts as “a visionary master plan to ensure Samford remains among the world’s most respected Christ-centered universities.”
Samford, founded by the Alabama Baptist State Convention in 1841 as Howard College, has increased enrollment for the past 16 years in a row. University officials have said the proposed Creekside development will help to accommodate that growth, providing additional housing, retail options and sport facilities.
At the March meeting, members of the public were vocal about their opposition to the project. No one expressed support for the developer’s proposal.
Of particular concern to residents is a proposed 10-story hotel—which would be the tallest building in the city—and the implications for traffic, stormwater management and environmental stewardship as it relates to the spotted salamander.
Historically, the university has often found itself in tension with city officials and residents over development. Echoes of that tension surfaced in the community meeting.
“Samford wants to do this to us,” Becky Smith, a Homewood resident, said in a deep Southern drawl. “We don’t want you coming down here to tell us what you’re going to do to us.”
The framing of the new development as providing a new “town square” for Homewood belies Samford’s claims that it wants to develop a closer relationship with the city, she argued.
“Samford has said they want to be more a part of Homewood,” Smith said. “This is trying to make Homewood more a part of Samford.”
After those comments, Colin Coyne, Samford’s vice president for finance, business affairs and strategy, spoke up, telling community members that the university’s past friction with the community that surrounds it is not lost on him.
“I acknowledge the fact that we’ve not always been the best neighbors,” Coyne said. “But we have to start somewhere. This is our best attempt.”
Dunn, who spoke on behalf of Landmark at the meeting, said that the developer would do its best to mitigate the impact of the Creekside project on the spotted salamander’s springtime habitat. Landmark would certainly not be able to guarantee, however, that its engineering fixes would solve every problem, he said.
“It’s about really elevating issues that we have to stay focused on to continue to work to find good solutions that balance out all of the issues that go into a development,” he said. “We solve over here for the salamanders, and it creates an issue somewhere else. You’ve just got to find a balance.”
A Threat to the Salamander
The day after the meeting, Megan Gibbons put on her boots and waded into a place she feels at home, and where the salamanders do, too: the vernal pools just north of South Lakeshore Drive. There, she carefully reached into the water again and again, searching for the salamander egg masses she’s fighting to protect.
It’s here, in the shadow of Shades Mountain, near the shores of Shades Creek, where Gibbons, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has done some of her best teaching. It’s here, in the stagnant springtime pools, shaded by the trees overhead, where she’s sparked the passions of students from across the country. And it’s not just for their benefit that she wants these salamanders to survive. It’s for the next generation of salamanders, too.
It doesn’t take Gibbons long to find an egg mass. She smiles as she holds out the jelly-like blob that can contain between 10 and 100 eggs. Through the translucent membranes, you can see the tiny salamanders beginning to take shape— amphibians that will soon hatch and make their first journey over to the slopes of Shades Mountain.
“This one’s pretty far along,” she says of the egg mass, pointing out the various points of interest. “You can see its little body, and you can see its little fluffy gills coming out the side of its head.”
In this environment, Gibbons is doing what she loves best—teaching. It had been the same the evening before, when Gibbons—not then in her wading boots—had stood studiously along one wall of the meeting room, an educational poster about the salamander habitat at her side. One by one, she spoke to residents who approached her, explaining the risks posed by the impending development.
A day later, as she stood holding the egg mass, she weighed again what was at risk. It’s about balance, Dunn had said at the meeting. Balance in favor of what, Gibbons wondered.
“They’re going to make a lot of money from this,” Gibbons said of the developer. “What do we get out of this? What do the salamanders get out of this? I get to see the animal I love destroyed. That’s what I get.”
Soon, Gibbons had carefully replaced the egg mass into the vernal pool and climbed back to the adjacent roadway. A passerby, a retiree named Barbara Koehler, stopped to ask if Gibbons was looking for salamanders. She’d been at the meeting with the developer, too, she said, and didn’t like much of what she heard.
“I think the guy from Landmark was smooth,” she said. “He was good at glossing over the issue. He knows exactly what he should say to get people to think he’s not going to do exactly what he knows he’s going to do.”
“What do we get out of this? What do the salamanders get out of this? I get to see the animal I love destroyed. That’s what I get.”
— Megan Gibbons, University of Alabama at Birmingham biologist
Throughout the meeting, Dunn had emphasized that direct community engagement was not technically a required part of development in Homewood, Koehler recalled. Any construction could move forward simply with the necessary approvals from the Homewood City Council. Engagement would be ideal, Dunn said, but was not a mandate. To Koehler and Gibbons, that felt like a threat—an insinuation that meaningful community engagement could stop at any time if it suited the developer.
Koehler, a self-described birder and naturalist, said she’s opposed to the development.
“It’s just not a good idea,” she said. Her gaze soon pointed to the skyline, darting from tree to tree as birds chirped eagerly in the daylight sun. “This is worth protecting.”
Finding a Way Forward
What Dunn said about a lack of required input from residents is largely true.
On April 1, Dunn attended a meeting of the planning commission, a body required to recommend either approval or denial of the development plan by the Homewood City Council. Only Dunn—no residents or other stakeholders—was allowed to speak, according to a Homewood recording of the session. The CEO characterized the feedback he’d received from residents as “overwhelmingly positive.”
During the presentation, however, Dunn announced the publication of a report containing potential adjustments to the original development plan based on comments from residents. Ninety-two percent of written comments were about environmental stewardship, according to the developer’s own numbers.
The adjustments in the updated document include potential consideration of a “repositioning” of proposed sports fields that were slated to cover nearly the entire area from Shades Creek to South Lakeshore Drive, though representatives at the March meeting had noted that reducing the fields’ size wouldn’t be feasible given NCAA requirements for field dimensions. Plans for at least two salamander tunnels under South Lakeshore are also outlined in the updated plan—a potential pathway for the amphibians to cross the road without the risk of crossing traffic above ground.
Gibbons said in an interview that she’s not convinced that such slight adjustments will protect a species that has continually been left behind by commercial and residential development, not just in Homewood, but across the state and country. The risk of harming the species outweighs what’s to be gained by more and more development, she said.
Winslow Armstead, a member of the planning commission, pushed Dunn on providing more complete responses to residents’ questions and concerns, particularly when construction on the project could begin as early as this fall.
“I’m still sort of at a loss for the answers on some of those questions,” he told Dunn.
But ultimately, the planning commission recommended approval of the developer’s plan. It is set to be considered by the Homewood City Council in the coming weeks.
Continued engagement with Landmark Development is the best option for influencing what happens beside Shades Creek and Shades Mountain, particularly in today’s political climate, said David Butler, executive director of Cahaba Riverkeeper.
“There’s been a lot of hope that some federal or state agency would come in to help, but all of our environmental protections have been eroded,” he said. “All of the regulatory frameworks we’ve relied on have been broken down, and so we’re really going to have to go through and do a lot of that protection work on our own.”
That work, Butler said, can include direct discussions with developers—emphasizing to those proposing new growth that environmental stewardship must be a firm commitment from the beginning.
When it comes to Landmark and the Homewood project, Butler said he’s optimistic. Landmark reached out to Cahaba Riverkeeper, an environmental nonprofit, even before the first planning meeting, he said.
“I’m encouraged,” Butler said. “We would prefer no development, but that’s not a realistic position to take here. Development is going to happen. But at least we’re at the table. At least we have input.”
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 notes: “A Washington state city has granted part of the Snohomish River watershed legal rights that can be enforced in court. In nearly all cases, state legislatures heavily lobbied by commercial industries have preempted the laws, rendering them unenforceable. But the Everett initiative could be the first to withstand such a challenge. Democrats, typically more open to stronger environmental protections than Republicans, currently control Washington’s Legislature and governorship.”
Efforts to apply the rights of nature in Ecuador have often failed. Legal challenges can become highly politicised and there is little legal infrastructure beyond general constitutional principles.
For example, in a case brought after road builders had dumped material into the Vilcabamba River, plaintiffs claimed to represent nature in court. However, they were not genuinely advocating for the river’s rights – their main concern was protecting their downstream property.
Ultimately, defending the rights of nature in court will be a struggle if the nature in question – the river, forest or lake – is not represented by someone with an ecocentric perspective. That means prioritising the intrinsic value of nature itself, rather than focusing on how it can serve human interests.
“According to the third Kawa, the people and the river are intrinsically linked, so Te Awa Tupua isn’t merely the river but also includes the surrounding communities — which challenges Western notions of property and human-made law. The relationship between the Iwi and the river goes beyond mere geographical proximity and includes spiritual and affective care for each other.”
Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing.
Many Indigenous peoples have long emphasised the intrinsic value of nature. In 1972, the late University of Southern California law professor Christopher Stone proposed what then seemed like a whimsical idea: to vest legal rights in natural objects to allow a shift from an anthropocentric to an intrinsic worldview.
Here’s what you need to know about one of the fastest-growing environmental and social movements worldwide—to secure legal rights for ecosystems and other parts of the natural world.
By Katie Surma
April 2, 2025
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.
“Rights of nature” is a movement aimed at advancing the understanding that ecosystems, wildlife and the Earth are living beings with inherent rights to exist, evolve and regenerate.
Legal rights are the highest form of protection in most governance systems. In the United States, humans and non-humans have enforceable legal rights, like corporations’ right to freedom of speech.
At the same time, most legal systems treat nature as rightless property that humans can own, use and destroy. That means the law views sentient species like elephants and bald eagles, as well as life-supporting ecosystems like forests and coral reefs, no differently than objects like microwaves or cars.
For the people behind the rights of nature movement, that way of thinking is deeply flawed. It’s also scientifically inaccurate.
Humans are part of nature and depend on ecosystems for survival—from the food we eat to the water we drink and air we breathe. Evolutionary biology shows that humans share a common ancestor with all other life on Earth. Forests, rivers and other biomes provide conditions for human life to thrive. And humans have always shaped the environment and have been shaped by it.
Understanding this interconnectedness is key to understanding that human flourishing ultimately depends on a healthy Earth. Rights of nature activists say most societies have forgotten that basic truth, harming their own wellbeing—and threatening their very survival—as a result.
When did this forgetting happen? Academics have traced the notion that humans are separate from, and superior to, nature back to Renaissance-era thinkers like René Descartes, who compared animals to machines. The idea is also woven into the Bible’s book of Genesis, with God giving man “dominion” over the Earth. Others point to the advent of cities, when masses of people lost regular contact with nature.
Modern legal systems have been shaped by these developments and ideas, thus institutionalizing the belief that nature is an object, or thing, beneath humans.
“Until the rightless thing receives its rights, we cannot see it as anything but a thing for the use of ‘us’—those who are holding rights at the time,” law professor Christopher Stone wrote in the seminal 1972 law review article, “Should Trees Have Standing?” Stone noted that the law has always evolved to extend rights to new groups: moving from white, property-owning men to include women, people of color and children.
In 2006, a rural, conservative Pennsylvania town plagued by industrial pollution enacted the world’s first rights of nature resolution. Since then, scores of countries—including Ecuador, Spain, Bolivia, Colombia, Panama, India, the United States and Uganda—have had court rulings or enacted laws at the national or subnational level recognizing nature’s rights.
The advocates behind these laws argue that if nature’s rights are respected, humans will benefit.
How Do Rights of Nature Laws Differ From Environmental Regulations?
In the course of human history, environmental law is a relatively young field. In the United States, it largely developed in the late 1960s in response to mass pollution wrought by industrialization. Rivers caught fire, pervasive smog blanketed cities and chemicals like DDT were sprayed indiscriminately.
Policymakers enacted legislation like the Clean Water Act and Toxic Substances Control Act to regulate human activity and limit impacts of industry on human health. Those laws did curtail pollution. But rights of nature advocates argue that those conventional laws haven’t stopped the severe environmental problems we face today, like climate change, biodiversity loss and mass pollution.
Advocates say conventional environmental laws have a central flaw: They’re designed to permit pollution. They only control how much.
Rights of nature laws start from an entirely different place. Ecosystems, wildlife and Earth itself are treated as living beings with inherent rights deserving of the highest form of legal protection. The central concern of rights of nature laws is to maintain and preserve the integrity of ecosystems, requiring governments to take a preventative, rather than a reactionary, approach.
Ecuador’s Constitutional Court has said this mandates government officials to respect what is known as the “precautionary principle,” or the idea that, absent adequate scientific evidence, it is better to avoid certain risks that could lead to irreversible damage of ecosystems.
How Do These Laws Work in Practice?
The laws do not give nature’s rights absolute primacy over all other rights and interests.
No legal right is absolute. A right to free speech ends when that speech is defamatory or incites violence. Judges balance competing rights in the decisions they make every day. Nature’s rights are no different.
Rights of nature jurisprudence is still a young field. Most countries with such laws on the books haven’t had lawsuits attempting to enforce them. It’s also important to note that not all rights of nature laws are the same—there is wide variation in how the laws are written and what rights are recognized.
But Ecuador, which constitutionalized nature’s rights in 2008, has seen dozens of cases. There, Mother Earth, or Pachamama, has a right to “integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes.”
The Ecuadorian Constitution also requires the government to prevent the “extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems, and the permanent alteration of natural cycles.”
Not all cases have been favorable for ecosystems. Ecuador’s economy is still largely dependent on oil revenues and other extractive industries.
But Ecuadorian courts have ruled in favor of mangroves, cloud forests, rivers, endangered frogs and coastal marine ecosystems, thwarting mining operations, industrial fishing and other nature-damaging activities. In some cases, courts have ordered the government to restore damaged ecosystems. Cases decided in favor of nature usually have a compelling reason for why nature’s rights ought to prevail over competing interests, like a high risk of extinction for certain species.
In the cloud forest case, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court explained the importance of protecting a sensitive ecosystem from mining impacts, saying: “[T]he risk in this case is not necessarily related to human beings … but to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems or the permanent alteration of natural cycles.”
In deciding these cases, Ecuadorian courts have depended heavily on scientific experts and evidence. Judges have also looked holistically at the health of ecosystems, rather than at piecemeal levels of pollution—a departure from the way courts tend to evaluate conventional environmental laws.
Scientists have come to the forefront of the movement in other ways. In Panama, for instance, marine biologists were instrumental in the passage of that country’s national rights of nature law.
How Are Rights of Nature Laws Enforced?
Trees and wild animals can’t walk into a courtroom and make their case. But rights of nature laws give ecosystems and species the ability to act in their own capacity under the law with help from people, similar to other non-human entities like corporations, business partnerships, ships and nonprofits.
This is done through a longstanding concept called legal personhood. That legal construct is most commonly used to allow businesses to enter into contracts, sue, be sued, own property and, in the case of corporations, limit the liability of its shareholders.
Each of those nonhuman entities is represented by a human guardian. Similar arrangements are used for minors and incapacitated people in court proceedings.
Who Is Behind This Movement?
Indigenous peoples have been at the forefront of the movement in several ways.
The worldviews of many Indigenous cultures—that humans are part of nature and owe responsibilities to other living beings—are foundational for the movement.
Honoring and preserving those worldviews and related knowledge for centuries has been no small thing. Indigenous communities have faced a long, dark history of colonization and other attempts aimed at eradicating their culture and separating them from their territories. Today, people in many Indigenous communities are still harassed, attacked and sometimes killed for defending water and land.
Indigenous peoples have also been behind many of the laws and court rulings advancing the movement. In New Zealand, Māori people fought for a settlement with the national government, resulting in legal personhood for a river, national park and mountains.
It was Ecuador’s strong Indigenous movements that led to the country becoming the first in the world in 2008 to constitutionally recognize Mother Earth’s rights. Ecuador’s Constitutional Court has also drawn on Indigenous knowledge in deciding rights of nature cases.
Bolivia’s Indigenous movements were behind that country’s 2010 and 2012 laws recognizing the rights of Mother Earth. Enforcement of nature’s rights in Bolivia has proved difficult, however.
Across North America, many Indigenous nations have passed rights of nature laws.
And in Peru, a coalition of Indigenous women won rights for the Marañón River ecosystem, a place the oil industry has heavily polluted for decades. The fight for the Marañón River came at great personal cost for Mariluz Canaquiri Murayari, president of Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana, and other women in the organization, who were harassed and threatened for their advocacy.
What Are the Criticisms of Rights of Nature Laws?
The biggest opposition to the movement has come from industry groups—developers, the industrial agricultural sector and other polluting industries—and politicians aligned with those interests.
Those opponents argue that giving nature a higher level of protection will impede development and lead to an explosion of litigation. In practice, that hasn’t happened. Barriers to pursuing lawsuits, like the high cost of attorney fees, are substantial.
But the laws do threaten the interests of industries and businesses that have made money off extracting from and monetizing the natural world in unsustainable ways.
Some critics of the movement have questioned whether, if nature has rights, it also has duties: Can a river be sued if it floods and harms humans? Rights of nature advocates respond to this by saying that legal rights, duties and liability are always tailored to the entity they are assigned to.
Corporations, for instance, don’t have a right to family. Nature doesn’t have the capacity to act with intent and therefore should not have legal liability for harm it causes, advocates argue.
Another prevalent charge is that the rights of nature movement is an attempt to force human societies to surrender modern comforts and technology. In practice, though, advocates have sought to rebalance human interests with the health of ecosystems by placing better guardrails around human activity, ensuring the integrity and sustainability of Earth is maintained now and into the future. Advocates argue that humanity isn’t harmed by that but benefits instead.
They also say nothing so quickly forces people to surrender modern comforts as a disaster that destroys their homes and communities, and megadisasters are far more common in a warming world.
Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’, and papal exhortation Laudate Deum, said humans have a moral duty to protect the Earth.
“For ‘we are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it,’” Francis wrote in Laudate Deum.
Ecuadorian activists say the country’s constitutional recognition of nature’s rights has made their country more pluralistic by incorporating the worldviews of Indigenous peoples and is changing the way everyday people think about the Earth, their home.
“We now have a whole generation of young people who have grown up only knowing that nature has rights,” Ecuadorian political scientist Natalia Greene told Inside Climate News. “The law has influenced peoples’ understanding of nature and that is very powerful.”
Learn More
Follow our reporting at Inside Climate News. We’re the only newsroom we know of that has a dedicated rights of nature beat. Start here and here.
Books by Indigenous authors and ecocentric thinkers:
Our system of law and government was founded in racial-divisiveness and colonization and is dominated by corporations. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) fights to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to a local self-government system and the Rights of Nature. Fight for a more just, Earth-centered tomorrow, today.
The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature(GARN) is a global network of organizations and individuals committed to the universal adoption and implementation of legal systems that recognize, respect and enforce “Rights of Nature”
Banner: To protect it from mining and deforestation, Los Cedros cloud forest was awarded the same rights as people.
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.”
Editor’s note: “MMA is methyl methacrylate, a chemical compound that was banned by the FDA in the 1970s for use in nail enhancements due to its potential health hazards,” Hanna says. Celebrity manicurist Julie Kandalec adds, “It’s an ingredient commonly found in acrylic liquids, called monomer.”
One of the easiest ways to check if there is MMA in your acrylic or nail supplies is to check the ingredient list of your products. It should not be listed as an ingredient in any reputable acrylic nail product. A few additional tips include: Smelling a very harsh odor when applying and filing your acrylic nails – some people say it smells like cat urine.
“Mitsubishi Chemical Group (MCG) has concluded a license agreement with SNF Group regarding MCG’s N-vinylformamide (NVF) manufacturing technology. NVF is a raw material of functional polymers. Using the manufacturing technology licensed under this agreement, SNF will start the commercial production of NVF at its new plant in Dunkirk, France as of this June. NVF is a monomer used as a material for papermaking chemicals, water treatment agents, and oil field chemicals.”
Environmental activists claim victory as Mitsubishi scraps $1.3 billion chemical plant in ‘Cancer Alley’
by Tristan Baurick, Verite News New Orleans
Environmental groups are claiming victory after Mitsubishi Chemical Group dropped plans for a $1.3 billion plant in the heart of Louisiana’s industrial corridor.
In the works for more than a decade, the chemical manufacturing complex would have been the largest of its kind in the world, stretching across 77 acres in Geismar, a small Ascension Parish community about 60 miles west of New Orleans. Tokyo-based Mitsubishi cited only economic factors when announcing the cancellation last week, but a recent report on the plant’s feasibility noted that growing community concern about air pollution could also hamper the project’s success.
“The frontline communities are fighting back, causing delays, and that amounts to money being lost,” said Gail LeBoeuf with Inclusive Louisiana, an environmental group focused on the industrial corridor along the Mississippi River known as Cancer Alley.
The nonprofit group Beyond Petrochemical declared the project’s failure a “major victory for the health and safety of Louisianans.”
According to Mitsubishi, the plant could have produced up to 350,000 tons per year of methyl methacrylate, or MMA, a colorless liquid used in the manufacture of plastics and a host of consumer products, including TVs, paint and nail polish.
The plant was expected to be a major polluter, releasing hundreds of tons per year of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and other harmful chemicals, according to its permit information.
Mitsubishi cited rising costs and waning demand for MMA as the reasons for dropping the project. In a statement, the company indicated the plant likely wouldn’t have enough MMA customers to cover “increases in capital investment stemming from inflation and other factors.”
In July, a report on the plant’s viability warned that a global oversupply of MMA and fierce local opposition made the project a “bad bet.”
Conducted by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, the report said that credit agencies are paying more attention to “community sentiment” about petrochemical projects, particularly in Louisiana. In Geismar and other parts of Cancer Alley, there’s a “disproportionately heavy concentration of polluting industrial facilities” and Mitsubishi could become “entangled in a decades-long dispute involving issues of racial inequality and environmental justice,” the IEEFA report said.
Geismar residents are surrounded by about a half-dozen large chemical facilities that emit harmful levels of air pollution. Of the more than 6,000 people who live within the three miles of the planned project site, about 40% are Black or Hispanic, and 20% are considered low-income, according to federal data.
“The air here is already so dirty that the kids can’t play outside anymore,” said Pamela Ambeau, Ascension Parish resident and member of the group Rural Roots Louisiana.
The proposed plant is the latest in a string of failed industrial projects in Cancer Alley. Since 2019, local activism was instrumental in halting the development of two large plastics complexes in St. James Parish and a grain export terminal in St. John the Baptist Parish. All three projects would have been built in historically Black and rural communities.
Mitsubishi’s project had the strong backing of Louisiana political leaders. In 2020, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, praised the project as a “world-scale” chemical manufacturing facility that would create “quality jobs.”
Louisiana Economic Development predicted the plant would create 125 jobs with an average salary of $100,000 and another 669 “indirect jobs” in the region.
The state agency began courting Mitsubishi in 2016, offering the company worker recruitment and training assistance and a $4 million grant to offset construction costs.
In 2021, Mitsubishi applied for property tax abatement via the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program, or ITEP. The tax relief, which Louisiana has granted to several similar projects, was pending the plant’s construction and would have saved the company an estimated $17 million in its first year, according to LED.
The first of a series of project delays began in 2022 due to what Mitsubishi called “market volatilities.”
Mitsubishi appeared to be betting on generous state subsidies “while ignoring the larger financial landscape,” said Tom Sanzillo, author of the IEEFA report.
The combination of sustained market weakness and strong public opposition “erased the potential benefits they are counting on,” he said.
