By Brandt Mannchen 

I attended a March 5, 2026 town hall meeting at the Flukinger Community Center in the Channelview area about barges and air pollution.  The meeting was entitled: “San Jacinto Pollution Town Hall:  Chemical Barges”.

The meeting was organized by Public Health Watch (PHW) and had participation from Air Alliance Houston, Public Citizen, East Harris County Empowerment Council, Lone Star Legal Aid, Channelview Fire Department, Texas Health and Environment Alliance, and Channelview Health and Improvement Coalition (C.H.I.C.) 

Speakers at the town hall meeting included David Leffler, PHW, Frank Parker, longtime industrial consultant in the Houston Ship Channel (HSC) area, Salina Arredondo, PHW reporter, and Dr. Garret Sansom from Texas A&M.

David Leffler talked about how PHW was a journalistic endeavor to reveal public health and environmental problems and how to resolve them.  He encouraged everyone to go to their website, participate, and provide funding for the work they do.

Frank Parker talked about how important barges were to the HSC area.  He stated that they are the 18-wheelers of the waterways and can carry 100,000’s of gallons of chemicals and chemical products.  The barges keep getting bigger, carry very volatile products which can get into the water and air if spilled, and need to be handled so that there’s environmental protection every day on each barge.

Frank stated that the Port of Houston (POH) generated, via the various industries and their needs along the HSC, $439 billion/year in business.  Ninety percent of all vessel traffic consists of barges.  There’s been steady growth since the 1990’s and barge numbers in 1993 were about 100 and now are about 600.

The HSC area is full of history including where Lorenzo de Zavalla lived and the San Jacinto Monument.  Cemeteries of the first Texans are now underwater because of the expansion of the HSC.

Dr. Sansom is an environmental epidemiologist. He is interested in what the community health impacts are in the HSC area.  Black Swan events (rare occurrences with significant impacts) have occurred like the IBC fire and Hurricane Harvey, but we don’t have good data about cumulative impacts of air pollutants like benzene.  Most of our data is from workplaces with the assumptions that are made (healthy worker with personal protective equipment) about health for those workers that don’t fit community members in their homes.

Dr. Sansom said you need to look at air, water, food, noise, light, all these environmental effects that people are exposed to.

Salina Arredondo recently in December 2025 wrote and then had an article published on the PHW website about barges and the problems they cause.  Some of these problems are odors that occur at night, fear of what’s in each barge, and how complicated the regulatory process is.

The barge industry is extremely under regulated and very dirty.  A 2023 Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ, the state environmental agency) report, that is little known or publicized, found that ExxonMobil in Baytown released 3.98 million pounds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs)/year while all barges/year released 5.1 million pounds of VOC.

Air pollution from barges is undercounted and agencies have a hard time regulating barge air pollution because these vessels dock on land and then travel and dock in the water in areas where the Corps of Engineers and the POH allow, called fleeting areas.  The air pollution barges release isn’t visible and there’s almost no monitoring of air pollution from barges that are on the water. 

Dr. Sansom stated that VOCs are a large category of air pollutants and some of the most dangerous include benzene and 1-3, butadiene.  These can cause cancer.  Dose or concentration is important and we know little about the effects that many individual air pollutants have together on health.  We know little about cumulative impacts.  We know that sensitive populations, children, the elderly, and fetuses, can be more affected by air pollutants.

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 the major oil/gas companies sold off their tankers because they were required to have liability insurance that was very expensive.  This meant that smaller companies, which many times didn’t take care of the tankers as well, owned these ships. 

It’s complicated by the large number of air pollutants in some of our most used products.  Gasoline has 200 chemicals in it.  Vapor recovery systems can leak.  Loading/unloading of chemicals is where most air pollution occurs as well as the cleaning of vessels which can release a lot of air pollution.  The TCEQ has known for a long time that barges release a lot of air pollution but doesn’t regulate them.

TCEQ points to the HSC and the San Jacinto River as federally navigable waterways and that it can’t regulate barges on the water but only when they are loading/unloading on land.  TCEQ doesn’t monitor barges when they are on the water.  TCEQ doesn’t require barges to get air permits and they aren’t inspected by TCEQ.

The POH approves of every barge facility because due to state legislation it has ownership of the bottom, bed, and sides of the HSC and San Jacinto River.  POH hands out barge permits at meetings with little public notification and input and no requirement to reduce air pollution.

What’s needed is for the POH, U.S. EPA, TCEQ, and others to work together.  Frank Parker said the solution isn’t regulation, it’s the industry policing its own (at its own docks for instance) and the need for air technology.  We need to set a baseline that will be met by barges. Economics controls things along with better technology and many old barges are still used and they’re deteriorating. 

It’s not jobs or reduced pollution.  You can have both.  We need to make our minds up that we can do both.  You need allies to help you get this.  Go to the POH and begin the process of commenting on barge permits.  There is a cancer cluster in the HSC area that needs to be addressed.

“Shelter in place” has no scientific research that shows it protects you.  Agencies are always 1-2 decades behind in getting the knowledge and regulating problems. Barges are often stored on the water with chemicals in them.  This can set up a catastrophe when storms and floods occur and the barges break loose and hit the San Jacinto River Waste Pits Superfund Site and Interstate 10.