Formosa Plastics Corp. USA is expected to expand again in Texas despite multiple violations of an agreement to stop pollution from its Point Comfort plant.
On Feb. 23, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued a draft water-use permit for the Lavaca Navidad River Authority to build a reservoir on Formosa Plastics property in Point Comfort, Texas.
The 2,500-acre reservoir, two miles from FPC USA's facility, will divert 96,000 acre-feet of water per year to be used "for municipal, industrial and mining purposes," the permit said.
Local fishing communities and environmental groups are concerned that FPC USA plans to expand in Jackson County as a result of the facility's increased access to fresh water, Diane Wilson of the San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper and the International Monitor Formosa Plastics Alliance told Plastics News.
They're "concerned the Matagorda Bay system, which spans approximately 352 square miles, will be impacted by yet another destructive action" by the company, a Feb. 27 news release by Netherlands-based environmental group Friends of the Earth said.
The reservoir will mainly supply the city of Corpus Christi and FPC USA, Wilson said, leaving "very little" water for the city of Point Comfort and also increase salinity in the Matagorda Bay.
It would reduce "freshwater inflow from the river into the bay," she said. "This environmentally sensitive area is important not only as an ecological resource but also supports economically significant fisheries."
Formosa Plastics has had its eyes on the water from the Lavaca River for years, Wilson said, adding it initiated an inquiry to the LNRA about future water supply in 2010.
"The company wants to increase production, but that would require more water," an article by the Texas Monthly said at the time.
In 2019, FPC USA agreed to pay a $50 million fine to settle a Clean Water Act civil lawsuit over plastic pellet pollution from the Point Comfort facility, reportedly the largest settlement brought by private citizens under that federal environmental statute.
From the $50 million settlement, organizers used $20 million to build a fishery cooperative in areas affected by the contamination, Wilson said.
"Fishermen are trying to save their bays and their communities.
"The fisheries have already been impacted," she added. "If you wipe out fisheries, you wipe out the whole community."
As part of that settlement, the company agreed to a zero-discharge initiative of plastic pellets and powders from the facility. FPC USA asked its customers in an April 2022 letter to participate in "practices to assist in preventing plastic powders and pellets from being improperly spilled into the environment."
"A key part of Formosa's sustainability efforts is preventing pellet and powder loss in loading and unloading of rail cars," the letter said. "Formosa monitors rail cars that are returned by customers with open or missing hatches, gates or caps, which allow pellet or powder spills from rail cars during their return trip to Formosa facilities. In addition to negative impacts on the environment, rail cars returned with open or improperly sealed hatches, gates and outlet caps violate Formosa's general terms and conditions of sale."
Since June 2021, FPC USA has faced 579 violations of that agreement, resulting in fines of about $15 million, the release by Friends of the Earth said.
"We have a real problem with a company that is continually putting plastic into a bay system that is already endangered," Wilson said. "Should a plastics company that has one of the largest settlements against them … be rewarded?
"They are releasing plastic every time they're tested," she added.
New discharges were detected by a monitoring system, known as the wastewater sampling mechanism (WSM), which was designed and built as part of the federal court decree. The WSM started operating in early 2021.
In the 2019 ruling, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt wrote that Formosa is a "serial offender" of the Clean Water Act. "The evidence demonstrates that Formosa has been in violation of its permit concerning the discharge of floating solids ... since Jan. 31, 2016, and that the violations are enormous."
"The WSM shows just how right the judge was. Formosa is repeatedly discharging plastics into Lavaca Bay," Amy Johnson, an attorney for the San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper, said in a statement.
"Based on the overwhelming evidence, the TCEQ's findings and assessment … shows the difficulty or inability of the TCEQ to bring Formosa into compliance with its permit restrictions," Hoyt wrote.
"It's probably a little of both," Wilson added.
The reason Wilson was able to file a civil suit, she said, was because TCEQ so rarely fined Formosa, despite evidence of contamination from the Point Comfort facility.
Since TCEQ was called the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, Wilson said, inspectors leaked evidence to her and other activists because they couldn't "get attention on it. … It goes nowhere."
"They said, 'You do something with it,'" she added. "In Texas … the politics is very friendly to industry, and I think they're encouraged not to enforce."
FPC USA did not immediately respond to an inquiry for comment by PN. TCEQ officials did not respond to a separate inquiry by the deadline for this story.