TCEQ is Finally Doing Something About an East Texas Polluter

One day in late November, a cloud of white smoke swept through Woodville, a small East Texas town of 2,500 about 55 miles north of Beaumont. It was a moment that many in town had been dreading: a literal smoke signal that the German Pellets processing plant was reopening. For two years, the wood-pellet facility had been shuttered — a respite from the coughing and hacking that many attribute to pollution from the plant. Over the next few days, folks in Woodville heard clanging inside the plant, and hulking machines picking up logs and moving them across the property. But most of all they smelled the smoke.

“It went all the way through town,” said Jimmy Reed, a 63-year-old retired mechanic who has lived about a mile-and-a-half from the facility since 1994. After German Pellets, a German company that compresses trees into wood pellets for use as biofuel, opened in 2013, Reed began noticing a haze around his property and seeing “dark stuff in the sky all the time.” He said he soon developed breathing problems, and a doctor diagnosed him with bronchitis. His solution for avoiding the polluted air? “I’m doing good now because I stay in the house all the time,” Reed said.

In October 2014, German Pellets conducted an internal audit showing it had exceeded state pollution limits tenfold by emitting 580 tons of ozone-producing gases at its Woodville facility when it was only allowed to release 64 tons. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) began requiring German Pellets to send quarterly reports, but to the astonishment of Woodville residents, the agency didn’t fine the company a penny. According to a TCEQ spokesperson, that’s because the company had “immunity” under a state “audit privilege” law; by agreeing to investigate itself, German Pellets would face no punishment, no matter what it turned up. After years of doing little in the way of regulation, TCEQ appears to be working toward a solution for Woodville’s pollution problem: forcing the company to install new pollution controls, a measure that environmental groups and 17 of the town’s residents had asked for in formal pleadings.

That’s notable for TCEQ, which has a history of letting industrial polluters off with a slap on the wrist while taking a hardline on small-time rulebreakers. Lone Star Legal Aid attorneys say that pressure from locals helped motivate TCEQ to take action. Now German Pellets is seeking a permit that would limit its annual emissions to just 26 tons, a 95 percent reduction from current levels. For Woodville residents, that’s welcome news, even though it will take months for folks to see the benefits of new pollution control equipment.

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/pollution-wood-pellet-tceq-east-texas-german/