Pollution

In Port Arthur, Creating COVID-19 Medical Equipment Puts Residents’ Health at Risk

Local petrochemical facilities pump out essential plastic goods—for gloves, masks, gowns, and more—as well as harmful pollutants.

No More Nurdles? Formosa’s Agreement to Stop Pumping Plastics Into Lavaca Bay Is Historic

Gulf Coast citizen-activists collected 30 million plastic pellets in order to prove that Formosa was violating the Clean Water Act.

Nurdles All the Way Down

How Texans are taking on plastic pollution—one piece at a time.

Transportation Overtakes Electricity As Top Polluting Sector

Transportation edged out electricity as the biggest source of carbon emissions last year in the United States.

Five of the Worst Mercury-Polluting Power Plants Are In Texas

According to a new report ranking the ten worst mercury-emitting coal plants in the US.

Texas’s Love Affair with “Big Chicken”

How have industrial chicken farms changed Texas? 

Texas Waterways are Nation’s Fourth Most Polluted

Companies released some 14.6 million pounds of industrial pollutants and toxic chemicals into Texas' waterways in 2010. Find out which water channels are the dirtiest. 

Survey Says Texas Has Three of America’s Dirtiest Cities

Three Texas metropolitan areas landed on Travel + Leisure's list of America's dirtiest cities.

A River (of Pig Blood) Runs Through It

Columbia Packing Co., a meatpacking plant in Dallas's Oak Cliff neighborhood, has been accused of dumping pig blood into Cedar Creek, which feeds into the Trinity River. 

More EPA Regulations Upset Power Industry Leaders

The EPA announced new mercury emissions rules that please environmentalists, but the timeline and potential price tag worries industry officials.

Environment • Tony Amos

Gulf pro.

Big Bend, R.I.P.?

Air pollution from Mexico has descended on Big Bend big time and while officials on both sides of the border dither, our last unspoiled frontier is slipping away.

Pine and Agony

Refinery Woe

Citizens groups in Corpus Christi blame pollution for high cance rates—but they must prove it.

More Precious Than Oil

Pipeline leaks, unplugged wells, toxic drilling materials, and a virtually unregulated oil industry are leaving a legacy of polluted groundwater.

Trouble, Trash, and Texas

Twenty years after the first Earth Day celebration, environmentalists are once again trying to get Texans interested in saving the planet. There are good reasons why they may once again fail.

Heavy Breathing

Houston’s air may be a slow killer, but the state and the feds spend more time battling each other than fighting pollution.

Mexico City Is the Most Uninhabitable City in the World.

From the Mexico Package (September 1975).