Rebekah Hinojosa and local advocates have spent over a decade opposing massive liquefied natural gas terminals planned near the Texas border with Mexico to protect Gulf-front land and wildlife. The activists lobbied banks, insurers, politicians, and companies to withdraw support, achieving some investor and insurer exits and cancellation of one proposed project. A federal appeals court vacated approvals for two major projects, citing insufficient consideration of environmental justice. A presidential declaration of an energy emergency and rollbacks of environmental justice protections have reopened pathways for several stalled projects, renewing threats to fisheries, coastal livelihoods, and nearby communities.
Using what they call a death by a thousand cuts strategy of opposition, Hinojosa, a founder of the environmental non-profit South Texas Environmental Justice Network, and her fellow advocates have traveled the world. They've pleaded with banks, politicians, insurers and companies to drop their support for the LNG terminals in the overwhelmingly Hispanic community near Brownsville on the edge of the Laguna Atascosa national wildlife refuge.
The most significant legal win came a year ago, when the US court of appeals for the DC Circuit vacated Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval of Rio Grande and Texas LNG, citing the agency's failure to fully consider the terminals' environmental justice impacts, among others things. But then Donald Trump was elected for a second time. The day he was inaugurated, Trump declared an energy emergency and rolled back rules on environmental justice and protections that had helped groups in Texas and Louisiana fight back.
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