Texan uses pollution settlement to help coastal community

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PORT LAVACA — Few people still fish for a living on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The work is hard and pay is meager. In the hearts of rundown seaside towns, dilapidated harbors barely recall the communities that thrived here generations ago.

But at the docks of Port Lavaca, one group of humble fishermen just got a staggering $20 million to bring back their timeless way of life. They’re buying out the buyer of their catch, starting the largest oyster farm in Texas and dreaming big for the first time in a long time.

“We have a lot of hope,” said Jose Lozano, 46, who docks his oyster boats in Port Lavaca. “Things will get better.”

It’s all thanks to one elder fisherwoman’s longshot crusade against the petrochemical behemoth across the bay, and her historic settlement in 2019. Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper from the tiny town of Seadrift, took on a $250 billion Taiwanese chemical company, Formosa Plastics Corp., and won a $50 million trust fund, the largest sum ever awarded in a civil suit under the Clean Water Act.

Now, five years later, that money is beginning to flow into some major development projects on this mostly rural and generally overlooked stretch of Texas coastline. Through the largest of them, the Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative, formed in February, Wilson dreams of rebuilding this community’s relationship with the sea and reviving a lifestyle that flourished here before global markets cratered the seafood industry and local economies shifted to giant chemical plants.

“I refuse to believe it’s a thing of the past,” said Wilson, 76, who lives in a converted barn, down a dirt road, amid a scraggle of mossy oak trees. “We’re going to put money for the fishermen. They’re not going to be destroyed.”

The fishing cooperative has only just begun to spend its $20 million, Wilson said. It’s the largest of dozens of projects funded by her settlement agreement. Others include a marine science summer camp at the Port Lavaca YMCA, a global campaign to document plastic pollution from chemical plants, a $500,000 study of mercury pollution in Lavaca Bay and the $10 million development of a local freshwater lake for public access.

“They are doing some wonderful things,” said Gary Reese, a Calhoun County commissioner. He also received grants from the fund to build a pier and a playground pavilion at other county parks.

The fund resulted from a lawsuit Wilson filed in 2017 under the Clean Water Act, which enables citizens to petition for enforcement of environmental law where state regulators have failed to act. By gathering evidence from her kayak over years, Wilson demonstrated that Formosa had routinely discharged large amounts of plastic pellets into local waterways for decades, violating language in its permits.

These sorts of lawsuits typically result in settlements with companies that fund development projects, said Josh Kratka, managing attorney at the National Environmental Law Center in Boston. But seldom do they come anywhere close to the dollar amount involved in Wilson’s $50 million settlement with Formosa.

“It’s a real outlier in that aspect,” Kratka said.

For example, he said, environmental organizations in Texas sued a Shell oil refinery in Deer Park and won a $5.8 million settlement in 2008 that funded an upgrade of a local district’s school bus fleet and solar panels on local government buildings. In 2009 groups sued a Chevron Phillips chemical plant in Baytown and won a $2 million settlement in 2009 that funded an environmental health clinic for underserved communities.

One reason for the scale of Wilson’s winning, Kratka said, was an unprecedented citizen effort to gather plastic pollution from the bays as evidence in court. While violations of permit limits are typically proven through company self-reporting, Wilson mobilized a small team of volunteers.

“This was done by everyday people in this community, that’s what built the case,” said Erin Gaines, an attorney who previously worked on the case for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. “This had never been done before, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”

Wilson’s settlement included much more than the initial $50 million payment. Formosa also agreed to clean up its own legacy plastic pollution and has so far spent $32 million doing so, according to case records. And the company committed to discharge no more plastic material from its Point Comfort complex — a standard which had never been applied to any plastics plants across the nation.

Formosa consented to regular wastewater testing to verify compliance, and to penalties for violations. Now, three times a week, a specially engineered contraption analyzes the outflows at Formosa. Three times a week, it finds they are full of plastic. And three times a week, Formosa pays a $65,000 penalty into Wilson’s trust fund.

It’s small change for a company that makes about $1 billion per year at its Point Comfort complex, or $2.7 million per day. To date, those penalty payments have totaled more than $24 million, in addition to the $50 million awarded in 2019.

The money doesn’t belong to Wilson, who has never been rich, and she never touches it. It goes into a fund called the Matagorda Bay Mitigation Trust, which is independently managed.

Wilson evaluates grant applications and decides how the money will be allocated to government entities, registered nonprofits and public universities.

Many locals who know her story assume that Wilson is rich now, she said. But she never got a penny of the settlement. She was never doing this for the money.

“They cannot believe I would do this for the bay and the fishermen,” she said. “It’s my home and I completely refuse to give it to that company to ruin.”

Formosa also writes grants for community development programs, although none of them approach the size of the Matagorda Bay Mitigation Trust.

In response to a query from Inside Climate News, the company provided a summary of its community spending over 30 years, including $2.4 million on local and regional environmental projects, $2 million for a new Memorial Medical clinic, $2 million to upgrade local water treatment systems, $2 million to an area food bank, $1.3 million for local religious organizations and $1.2 million on scholarships for high school seniors.

The company has contributed $6.3 million for regional roadway improvements, donated 19 houses to the Calhoun County Independent School District and built a classroom in restored wetlands. Its annual employee golf tournament raises $500,000 for United Way charities, and its national headquarters in New Jersey gives $1 million each year to local charities. In Point Comfort it has programs to plant trees, protect bees and restore monarch butterfly habitat.

“Formosa Plastics has always believed in giving back to the community and approximately 30 years ago established education, environmental, medical, religious and scholarship trusts,” the company said in a five-page statement.

Since the 2019 settlement, Formosa has taken steps to address environmental challenges and reduce the environmental impact at its Point Comfort complex, the company said.

Formosa has installed pollution control systems to reduce the release of plastic particles, has partnered with industry experts to develop better filtration methods and is monitoring emerging technologies for opportunities to improve environmental stewardship, it said. The Point Comfort complex has also improved stormwater drainage to reduce plastics in runoff, and is engaging with community advocates to identify sustainable solutions.

“We understand the importance of protecting the environment and the communities where we operate, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement,” the statement said.

The fishing way of life 

Wilson fondly recalls the bustling fishing community of her youth in Seadrift, more than 60 years ago. There were hundreds of boats at the docks, surrounded by a town full of mechanics, welders, netmakers and fish houses.

They weren’t rich, Wilson said, but they were free. They answered to no one, except maybe game wardens. They had twilight every morning, the silence of the water, the adventure of the search, the thrill of the catch and a regular intimacy with spirits of the sea, sun, wind and sky.

“You are out there on that bay, facing the elements, making decisions,” Wilson said. “That is as close to nature as you can get.”

Over her life, she watched it all fall apart. There are no fish houses in Seadrift today. Almost all the old businesses were bulldozed or boarded up. Wilson’s own brothers took jobs at the giant petrochemical plants growing onshore. But every day off they spent back on the water.

Most people called her crazy, 30 years ago, when she started complaining about water pollution from Formosa. Powerful interests denounced her and no one defended her.

But Wilson never gave up speaking out against pollution in the bay.

“That bay is alive. She is family and I will fight for her,” Wilson said. “I think everyone else would let her be destroyed.”

Over years of persistent, rambunctious protests targeting Formosa, Wilson began to get calls from employees at the plant, asking to meet secretly in fields, pastures and beer joints to talk about what they’d seen. They told her about vast amounts of plastic dust and pellets washed down drains, and about the wastewater outfalls where it all ended up.

When Wilson started visiting those places, often only accessible by kayak, she began to find the substance for her landmark lawsuit, millions and millions of plastic pellets that filled waterways and marshes.

“Felt like Huck Finn out there, all that exploring,” she said.

In 2017, Wislon filed her petition in federal court, then continued collecting evidence for years before trial. It was the first case over plastic pellet pollution brought under the Clean Water Act, according to Amy Johnson, then a contract attorney with the nonprofit RioGrande Legal Aid and lead attorney for Wilson’s case.

Gathering nurdles 

Down the coast in Port Aransas, a researcher at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute named Jace Tunnell had just launched a project in 2018 to study water pollution from plastics manufacturing plants. At that time, little was known about the scale of releases of plastic pellets, also called nurdles, into the oceans from those industrial facilities.

The Nurdle Patrol, as Tunnell called it, was beginning on a shoestring budget to methodically collect and catalog the nurdles in hopes of getting a better picture of the problem. That’s when Tunnel, a fourth generation Gulf Coast native and a second generation marine scientist, heard about a fisherwoman who was also collecting nurdles up the coast.

He contacted Wilson, who shared her data. But Tunnell didn’t believe it. Wilson claimed to have gathered 30,000 nurdles in 10 minutes. Tunnell would typically collect up to 200 in that time. He drove out to see for himself and found, to his shock, that it was true.

“The nurdles were just pluming up back there,” Tunnell said. “It really was an eye opener for me of how bad Formosa was.”

At that time, Wilson and her small team of volunteers were pulling up huge amounts of plastic from the bay system and logging it as evidence.

In 2019, the case went to trial. At one point, she parked a pickup truck full of damp, stinky plastic outside the federal courthouse and brought the judge out to see. She also cited Nurdle Patrol’s scientific method for gathering pellets as a means to estimate overall discharges in the bay.

“Diane was able to use Nurdle Patrol data in the lawsuit to seal the deal,” Tunnell said.

Later that year, the judge ruled in Wilson’s favor, finding Formosa had violated its permit limits to discharge “trace amounts” of plastics thousands of times over decades.

Formosa opted to negotiate a settlement with Wilson rather than seek a court-ordered penalty. In December 2019, the two parties signed a consent decree outlining their agreement and creating the $50 million Matagorda Bay Mitigation Trust.

Funding community projects 

Right away, Wilson signed over $1 million to the Nurdle Patrol, which Tunnell used over five years to build an international network with 23,000 volunteers and an online portal with the best data available on plastic nurdles in the oceans. They’ve also provided elementary and high schools with thousands of teaching kits about plastics production and water pollution.

“There’s no accountability for the industries that release this,” Tunnell said as he picked plastic pellets from the sand near his home on North Padre Island in early December. “Of course, Diane kind of changed that.”

The trust’s largest grant programs are still yet to take effect. Wilson allocated $10 million to Calhoun County to develop a 6,400 acre park around Green Lake, the second largest natural lake in Texas, currently inaccessible to the public.

The county will begin taking bids this month to build phase one of the project, which will include walking trails and birding stands, according to county commissioner Reese. Later they’ll build a parking lot and boat ramp.

The county brought this property in 2012 with hopes of making a park, but never had the money. Initially, county officials planned to build an RV park with plenty of pavement. But funding from Wilson’s trust forbade RVs and required a lighter footprint to respect the significant Native American and Civil War campsites identified on the property.

“It’ll be more of a back-to-nature thing,” Reese said. “It’s been a long time coming, we hope to be able to provide a quality facility for the public thanks to Matagorda Mitigation Trust.”

By far, the largest grant from the trust has gone to the fishermen. Wilson allocated $20 million to form a cooperative at the docks of Port Lavaca — an unlikely sum of money for seamen who struggle to feed their families well. Wilson dreamed that this money could help bring back the vanishing lifestyle that she loved.

The fishermen 

Today, most of the remaining commercial fishermen on this Gulf coast come from Mexico and have fished here for decades. It’s hard work without health insurance, retirement plans or guaranteed daily income. But it’s an ancient occupation that has always been available to enterprising people by the sea.

“It’s what we’ve done our whole life,” said Homero Muñoz, 48, a board member of the fishermen’s cooperative, who has worked the Texas coast since he was 19. “This is what we like to do.”

Lately it’s been more difficult than ever, he said. Declining vitality in the bays, widespread reef closures by Texas authorities and opposition from wealthy sportfishing organizations force the commercial fishermen to compete for shrinking oyster populations in small and distant areas. Then, the fishermen have little power to negotiate on low prices for their catch set by a few big regional buyers, who also own most of the dock space. The buyers distribute it at a markup to restaurants and markets across the county.

“There isn’t anyone who helps us,” said Cecilio Ruiz, a 58-year-old father of three who has fished the Texas coast since 1982.

To help the fishermen build a sustainable business, Wilson tapped the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, an organization based in Atlanta originally founded to help Black farmers and landowners form cooperatives in the newly de-segregated South. For FSC, it was an unprecedented offer.

“This is an amazing project, very historic,” said Terence Courtney, director of cooperative development and strategic initiatives at FSC.

Usually, money is the biggest obstacle for producers wanting to form a collectively owned business, Courtney said. He’d never seen a case where a donor put up millions of dollars to make it happen.

“Opportunities like this don’t come around often. I can’t think of another example,” Courtney said. “We saw this as something that history was compelling us to do.”

The Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative

In 2020 Courtney started traveling regularly to Port Lavaca, meeting groups of fishermen, assessing their needs, discussing the concept of a cooperative and studying feasibility.

The men, who speak primarily Spanish, had trouble understanding Courtney’s English at first. But they knew someone who could help: Veronica Briceño, the daughter of a late local fisherman known as Captain Ralph. As a child, she translated between English and Spanish around her father’s business and the local docks and harbors.

Briceño, a 40-year-old worker at the county tax appraisal office, was excited to hear about the effort. She’d learned to fish on her grandfather’s boat. Her father left her four boats and she couldn’t bring herself to sell them. She joined FSC as a volunteer translator for the project.

“These men, all they know how to do is really just work,” she said. “They were needing support from someone.”

A year later, FSC hired Briceño as project coordinator. They leased an old bait shop with dock space at the harbor in Port Lavaca and renovated it as an office. Then in February 2024 they officially formed the Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative, composed of 37 boat owners with 77 boats that employ up to 230 people.

Now Briceño has a desk at the office where she helps the fishermen with paperwork, permitting and legal questions while coordinating a growing list of contracts as the cooperative begins to spend big money.

Negotiations are underway for the cooperative to purchase a major local seafood buyer, Miller’s Seafood, along with its boats, dock space, processing operations and supply contracts for about $2 million.

“I hope they help carry it on,” said Curtis Miller, 63, the owner of Miller’s Seafood, which was founded by his uncle in the 1960s. “I would like to see them be able to succeed.”

Many of the cooperative members have worked for Miller’s Seafood during the last 40 years, he said. The company handles almost entirely oysters now and provides them wholesale to restaurants on the East Coast, Florida and in Texas.

The cooperative has also leased 60 acres of bay water from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to start the largest oyster farm in Texas, a relatively new practice here. FSC is now permitting the project with the Texas General Land Office and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“That might be the future of the industry,” said Miller. “It might be the next big thing.”

‘It can be revived’

At a recent meeting of the cooperative, the members discussed options for a $2.5 million purchase of more than 7,000 oyster cages to install on the new farm. They talked about plans to visit and study a working oyster farm. The cooperative is finalizing a marketing and distribution plan for the farmed oysters.

The project would give two acres to each oysterman to farm, and would finally do away with the frantic race to harvest the few available oyster areas before other boats do. Now, they’ll have a place of their own.

“To have our own farms, liberty to go to our own piece of water,” said Miguel Fierros, 44, a bearded, third-generation fisherman and father of three. “It’s a unique opportunity I don’t think we’ll ever get again.”

Briceño, the project coordinator, hopes that the practice of oyster farming will bring a new generation into the seafood industry here. Neither of her kids plan to make a living on the water like her father or grandfather, who always encouraged the family to find jobs with health insurance and retirement. Now her 21-year-old son works at Formosa, like many of his peers, as a crane operator.

Perhaps this cooperative, with its miraculous $20 million endowment, can realize the dream of a local fishing industry with dignified pay and benefits. If it goes well, Briceño said, maybe her grandkids will be fishermen someday.

“We’re going to get a younger crowd actually interested,” she said.

This project is just getting started. Most of their money still remains to be spent, and the fishermen have many ideas. They would like to buy a boat repair business to service their fleet, as well as a net workshop, and to open more oyster farms.

For Wilson, now an internationally recognized environmental advocate, this all just proves how much can be accomplished by a stubborn country woman with volunteer helpers and nonprofit lawyers. Ultimately, she hopes these projects will help rebuild a fishing community and bring back the fishermen’s way of life.

For now, the program is only getting started.

“It can be revived,” Wilson said. “There is a lot of money left.”

Disclosure: The Texas General Land Office and Texas Parks And Wildlife Department have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.