Before heavy industry moved in to the Coastal Bend, cotton was king and farm commodities were the predominate exports of the Port of Corpus Christi.
Beginning in the 1930s, the fossil fuel industry began moving into the area and it has grown dramatically since. Promising job and economic growth, it came with environmental consequences to the area with increasing emissions and discharges, impacting neighborhoods and ecosystems.
Current industries are embedded in our way of life now. We accept that, although we want them to pay their fare share of needed improvements to our communities and make significant efforts to reducing air emissions and ensuring they strive to improve the quality of the industrial discharges into our bays instead of just meeting the minimum standards.
But, in the last 5 years, a new massive build-out has begun with plastics and steel manufacturers locating in the area, and pipelines from the Permian Basin transporting crude to expanding tank farms and marine terminals; all with the blessings of local Economic Development Corporations, government, and the increasingly authoritarian Port of Corpus Christi Authority.
How much more can the Coastal Bend absorb? Is it destined to become a sacrifice zone for increasing corporate wealth and prestige?
And there is more being planned, high profile plastics manufacturing and other industries that require extremely high amounts of water to operate. Gulf Growth Ventures alone uses the same amount of water per day as 120,000 municipal users.
“The eyes of Texas are upon you and the coastal bend region”. Those were the opening remarks of Kathleen Jackson, a member of the Texas Water Development Board, and a former long time public affairs manager for ExxonMobil. She was in town to promote seawater desalination in the region. She made it clear that the oil and gas industry and “the people of Texas” are relying on the coastal bend.
We are expected to accept the next massive industrialization of the region, to accept the pipelines, to accept the new rail yards, to accept the storage tanks, to accept the flares, to accept the emissions, to accept the wastewater discharges, to accept the dredging, to accept the largest crude oil ships on the planet, and to accept that this will require us to increase our water supply to support it.
We must sacrifice our beaches, bays, estuaries, and our own health for corporate profits. We must sacrifice the region to support the proliferation of plastics throughout the world. We must sacrifice our ecosystem and quality of life so a few may prosper.
Well, the eyes of Texas are upon us; they will watch as we continue to take a stand to protect the region; we will open their eyes to this ecological disaster in the making.
Forced sacrifice by industry, foreign and domestic, supported by local and state government, is not a sacrifice. It is a transgression against us all; it is a transgression against our children; it is a transgression against Texas. Stay strong. Stay informed.