Petrochemical Expansion in Texas Will Fall Heavily on Communities of Color, Study Finds

Researchers at Texas Southern University in Houston have analyzed demographic data around the locations of almost 100 industrial facilities proposed statewide and found that about 90 percent are located in counties with higher concentrations of people of color and families in poverty than statewide averages.

In a report released this month, the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern also found that nearly half of those proposed industrial sites—petrochemicals plants for manufacturing plastics, coastal export terminals, refineries and other facilities—were already above the 90th percentile for pollution exposure under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory, a measurement of harmful industrial emissions.

“Texas and other states must end decades-long industrial facility siting where economically disadvantaged fenceline communities serve as dumping grounds,” the report concluded.

Robert Bullard, the center’s director and lead author of the report, first came to prominence as a young sociologist at the university when he produced a 1979 study showing that all five of Houston’s city-owned landfills and six of eight city-owned incinerators were located in Black neighborhoods.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30112025/texas-petrochemical-expansion-will-fall-heavily-on-communities-of-color/