1. What is the setting of this case? What are its assets?
Calhoun County is a rural yet highly industrialized county on the Gulf Coast of Texas, 150 miles south of Houston, 240 miles north of the Mexican border. It is the ancestral lands of the Karankawa, Esto’k Gna (Carrizo/Comecrudo), and Coahuiltecan (Native Land 2021)....
Today, somewhat paradoxically, Calhoun County largely leans far right politically, with over 66% voting for President Donald Trump in 2016 (DataUSA 2021). Conservative churches are leading voices in local politics.
Diane Wilson is also an important voice: a mother of five and fourth-generation shrimp boat captain that became an environmental activist following the publication of toxic release inventory data in 1989 (Fortun 2009).
Commercial fishing once sustained many residents of Calhoun County. Today, few people make a living fishing though there are high hopes of revival. In 2017, environmental activists for Calhoun County -- organized as the Calhoun County Waterkeppers-- settled a landmark citizens lawsuit against Formosa, winning $50 million USD to support environmental monitoring, research and education programs, and to rebuild the local fishing community. Plaintiffs brought literally buckets of evidence forward, supporting allegations of rampant and illegal discharge of plastic pellets and other pollutants into Lavaca Bay and nearby waterways from a Formosa plant in Point Comfort, directly on Lavaca Bay. The judge described Formosa as a “serial offender.”
The case was led by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which describes the outcome as the largest settlement of a Clean Water Act suit filed by private individuals. The success is already shadowed, however, by plans to build a new port facility to support the export of shale gas from Calhoun County. The port project works against decarbonization and will exacerbate climate change. It also will involve deep dredging of Lavaca Bay, roiling mercury-laced sediment in one of the nation’s largest and most toxic Superfund sites, created by the operations of a now-closed Alcoa aluminum refinery, which released estimated 1.2 million pounds of mercury into the Bay in the late 1960s and 1970s. This is a combo disaster at its worst, when earlier successes in environmental protection are undermined by failed environmental protection today.
ARCHIVE LINKS
Collection: Calhoun County Backstories
Collection: Launching Environmental Activism