Texas RioGrande Legal Aid Assisted in Historic Victory for Climate Advocates
“People don’t necessarily think of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid as an environmental justice firm.” Jennifer Richards has worked on environmental justice issues that very much affects her clients’ economic stability. People within TRLA service area are exposed to air pollution and polluted water. They deal with related health concerns and different expenses that make it difficult for them to get ahead.
Through its focus on low income clients, TRLA is uniquely positioned to pursue environmental justice work, helping them bear the brunt of environmental pollutants and climate catastrophe. This unique positioning helped TRLA and San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeepers win the largest ever settlement private citizens have secured under the Clean Water Act–a staggering 50 million dollars.
When Gulf Coast Bay shrimper and boat captain, Diane Wilson, began noticing plastic nurdles floating on the surface of Point Comfort, Texas’ Cox Creek in 2016, she organized former and current employees of Formosa Plastics Group (the world’s sixth largest chemical producer) to help her document the company’s pollution.
Over four years, not only had Wilson and her team collected 6,000 photos and videos of the plastics plant polluting the waterway, but also an estimated 46 million nurdle pellets were brought before a federal judge by the truckload once TRLA filed a suit on their behalf in 2019.
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The problems nurdles pose to the Texas gulf
Though primarily used for recreational fishing and kayaking, Cox Creek is a part of a larger water system that connects to the Gulf of Mexico. The problem posed by nurdles goes beyond being surrounded by trash while trying to enjoy a nice afternoon at the creek. Nurdles (which are pre-production pellets of plastic) are classified as highly persistent pollutants because they contain toxic chemicals which pose a health risk to people and because they are resistant to degradation–meaning they continue to be a pollutant without a decay process years after the original polluting incident.
Introduced into an ecosystem that is home to dolphins, bird species, fish, alligators and turtles like the one down the creek at Boggy Nature Park, these pellets become a danger to the wildlife who mistake them for food. These animals can choke on the pellets or may eventually die from consuming nurdles when their stomachs fill with the pellets and are unable to be digested. Nurdles also attract other chemicals and bacteria and as they float on water surfaces or are carried to other bodies of water by currents or animal activity, they spread those chemicals and bacteria. Particularly, as these nurdles are carried downstream toward the mercury-contaminated Matagorda Bay, they pose a risk of introducing dangerous amounts of mercury to the wider gulf.
And still, with all the danger nurdles pose to people and our ecosystems, an estimated 230,000 metric tons of nurdles enter our oceans annually through pollution processes. TRLA and SABE Waterkeepers hope their historic settlement, which in September of this year reached a contract for a nearly 29 million dollar clean up phase, can be a deterrent to other plastics producers and polluters.
When asked about the work that goes into bringing about such a successful settlement, Attorney Richards stated, “Diane [Wilson] never stopped fighting–she never lost and said, ‘Well I guess that’s it.’ She works with people on all kinds of issues, not just the environment–but on issues of worker safety, too. (In fact, in a separate lawsuit on behalf of Formosa Plastic Group’s workers, Diane helped garner the plaintiffs nearly 3 million dollars in penalties for fires and explosions that injured workers at the Point Comfort plant.)
She builds community and listens to others’ concerns.” Attorney Richards continued, “It takes a team–I was a first year attorney and this case was developed by other TRLA folks long before my involvement and I was just lucky to get pulled in. These can be long, slow processes” but, if TRLA is representing your case, “your fight becomes our fight.”