Federal Court: Regulator Failed to Study Climate, Environmental Justice Impacts of Brownsville LNG Terminals

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: AUGUST 3, 2021 

Contact:

Robert Elder, TRLA Communications Director | (512) 374-2764, relder@trla.org

Gabby Brown, Sierra Club | 914-261-4626, gabby.brown@sierraclub.org

WASHINGTON, DC — In a victory for Texas Gulf Coast communities, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Aug. 3 ruled that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) failed to adequately analyze the climate and environmental justice impacts of two fracked gas export terminals proposed for the lower Rio Grande Valley. 

The appeals court ruled on a challenge to the commission’s November approval of the Rio Grande LNG and Texas LNG facilities, as well as the now-canceled Annova LNG facility. The challenge was filed by the Sierra Club, the city of Port Isabel, and Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera, a community group in Laguna Heights. TRLA represents the Laguna Heights organization, whose members are predominantly low-income Hispanic families.

If built, the gas export facilities would threaten local tourism and fishing industries and put low-income Latinx residents in nearby neighborhoods at disproportionate risk of health impacts from dangerous air pollution.

D.C. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins, writing for a unanimous panel, said “the Commission failed to respond to significant opposing viewpoints concerning the adequacy of its analyses of the projects’ greenhouse gas emissions.” As a result, Wilkins wrote, the analyses were “deficient” under federal law.

TRLA attorney Jennifer Richards said the appellate ruling sends a strong message to regulators that they must consider the social and environmental costs of such developments. 

“Before the Commission can say these projects are in the public interest, it needs to evaluate their environmental justice impacts on communities like Laguna Heights where residents lack adequate access to healthcare and rely on local fishing and tourism economies for their livelihood,” Richards said. “The Court’s decision today will hopefully prompt FERC to do just that.” 

At the time of FERC’s approval, then-Commissioner Richard Glick argued in his dissent that the Commission is signaling to developers “that they can sidestep environmental justice concerns so long as they ensure that all, or substantially all, of a project’s adverse impacts fall on low-income or minority communities.” Glick, now the FERC Chairman, has committed to better incorporate environmental justice and equity concerns into the Commission’s decision-making process. 

“In approving these polluting facilities, FERC ignored concerns about how they would harm already-marginalized communities of color in the Rio Grande Valley. We are glad to see the court hold FERC accountable for this failure, and we hope that Chairman Glick’s commitment to better addressing environmental justice concerns will result in real change in FERC’s decision making, which has too long been a rubber stamp for the fossil fuel industry,” said Rebekah Hinojosa, Sierra Club Senior Gulf Coast Campaign Representative.

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