Public Notice: Move Fast and Break Things

Boca Fuego! Engine Test on the SpaceX Starship (Photo by Steve Jurvetson / CC BY 2.0)

After the recent fiasco of a rocket launch at Elon Musk's SpaceX facility at Boca Chica, on the coast at the very southern tip of South Texas, there were lots of pictures of people picnicking in the surrounding parks and beaches waiting to watch the launch. But there weren't many pictures of people in the aftermath, which onlookers said looked like 9/11, with people walking around caked with dust. And while the video of the rocket exploding in midair went viral, there wasn't nearly as much exposure for the far more impactful explosion that happened on the ground, where an improperly prepared launchpad and site were pulverized by the initial rocket launch blast, sending shock waves and cement dust across a wide and environmentally sensitive area.

The New York Times quoted Louis Balderas, founder of the company that films SpaceX launches, as saying that the impact at liftoff was unlike anything he had ever seen, including "bowling ball-sized pieces of concrete that came flying out of the launchpad area" and a crater that he estimated was around 25 feet deep. Six miles away in the city of Port Isabel, the blast broke a window, and the city "ended up with a covering of a rather thick, granular, sand grain that just landed on everything," said a city spokeswoman. Musk tried to brush it off as a "human-made sandstorm. ... It's not toxic at all or anything. It did scatter a lot of dust, but to the best of our knowledge, there has not been any meaningful damage to the environment that we're aware of." But it wasn't sand, of course; it was presumably cement dust, though no one knows for sure yet, and if it "just landed on everything" in Port Isabel, it presumably also coated all the bays, wetlands, estuaries, etc. in at least a 6-mile radius.

And that's incredibly fertile and important habitat for a wide range of wildlife, including migrating birds and various endangered and protected species, such as the Kemp's ridley sea turtle and the piping plover. The launch area is within Boca Chica State Park, on the shores of waters that make up the Laguna Atascosa Nation­al Wildlife Reserve and the Boca Chica Wildlife Refuge, and within a mile of the Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area, Brazos Island Park, and several beaches.

So on Monday, the Center for Biological Diversity, the American Bird Conservancy, the Surfrider Foundation, Save RGV, and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas Inc. sued the Federal Aviation Administration for failing to fully analyze and mitigate the environmental harms resulting from the launch program. The FAA has meanwhile announced a hold on any further launches from Boca Chica until it can more fully examine the operations and effects on the surrounding environment.

More fallout to come.

Less dramatic, but equally pulverizing, the Texas Legislature rolls on, trying to crush local control in all forms, support the real estate developers who fund their campaigns, and generally do away with government regulation as much as possible (except regarding abortion). The hits keep coming, ever faster now as sine die looms, the May 29 end of the session. The latest monstrosity that snuck up on me is Senate Bill 2038, from the ever-delightful Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston. In the past week it's passed the Senate, and the House Land & Resource Management Committee, and may well be ... oops, now I see it's just been passed by the House on all three readings, so only awaits the governor's signature and it'll become law on Sept. 1. Well, isn't democracy efficient when it wants to be.

Anyway, what SB 2038 provides is that the owners of property within any Texas city's extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) will be able to simply opt out of being in the ETJ, and thus out of any environmental regulations that are currently required. The Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance, for one, sounded the alarm (too late), warning that the bill would "enable developers to clear-cut trees and ignore protections for creeks, caves and recharge features of the Edwards Aquifer," and among other things would "nullify 410,000 acres of San Antonio's tree preservation ordinance and 46,000 acres of its aquifer protection ordinance, as well as the aquifer protection regulations currently enforced within the ETJ's of New Braunfels, San Marcos, Austin, Sunset Valley, and all other home rule cities within our region." And indeed, this is not just here; virtually every city in the state has an ETJ. So, can it get worse? Wait until next week.

And speaking of lawsuits, as we go to press May 3, former residents of Congress Mobile Home Park, represented by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and Austin Community Law Center, have just announced the filing of Deceptive Trade Practice Act claims, alleging that the notice they received of their eviction from Congress Corner LLC, run by Reza Paydar, was insufficient under Texas law. See more in the Chronicle archives for Aug. 12 and Sept. 16, 2022.