As SpaceX Grows, So Do Complaints From Environmentalists, Indigenous Groups and Brownsville Residents

Juan Mancias (chief of the Carrizo Comecrudo tribe in Texas), and two companions set out last month to Boca Chica, a bayside community in Cameron County. They were close to the Mexican border. 

Boca Chica, which means “little mouth” in Spanish, is where the fresh waters of the Rio Grande trickle into the Gulf of Mexico. The three men wanted to pray on a nearby beach. This is an eight-mile stretch that is part of Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

“The river is a sacred place for praying. That’s when we start calling for the rains and we go to the river because that’s where the rains come from,” Mancias explained. 

It was a four-hour drive, but about a mile before Mancias and his companions reached the beach, they were stopped by police officers at a roadside checkpoint and told to turn back, not far from a launch site built by Elon Musk’s commercial space company SpaceX. The small, unincorporated community of Boca Chica has seen the area change rapidly since Musk announced his visit to South Texas in 2014.

“They told us that SpaceX was testing a rocket engine and access to the beach was restricted for safety reasons,” Mancias said.

“I asked them to let us go to the beach,” he said, “and even quoted the American Indian Religious Freedom Act to get access because it was a sacred day for us.” The officers, however, still wouldn’t let them through. 

The Comecrudo Tribe and two local environmental groups were tired of being denied access to the only public beach in the region. They filed suit against the county, Texas General Land Office and its Commissioner George P. Bush for blocking road access during SpaceX operations. In announcing their legal action, the coalition of plaintiffs stated that restricting access for public beaches is against the Texas Constitution. 

According to the plaintiffs, the beach was closed for 196 hours in the first three months 2022; it was closed for 600 hours in 2021. “This is far beyond the numbers reported by SpaceX or even allowed under the framework the defendants are using as an unconstitutional loophole,” the plaintiffs said in a statement. 

SpaceX did not respond to multiple requests for comment when SpaceX was asked about the closures of this article. 

Residents of Boca Chica and Brownsville are also concerned about road closures and loud explosions when launches fail. 

Since construction began in late 2015, the SpaceX facility—nicknamed Starbase—has evolved into a sprawling industrial complex, with launch sites, storage tanks for rocket fuel, and assembly and testing facilities busy with hundreds of workers. Starbase is one the two US spaceports that are exclusively licensed for private use.

Musk tweeted in March 2021 that he is “creating the city of Starbase” in Texas. Musk tweeted a few weeks later that SpaceX was hiring engineers and technicians, and urged people who wanted to work at the company to move to Starbase, Brownsville, or the greater Brownsville area.

Brownsville, one of the poorest American cities, is home to a large Hispanic community. It is also plagued by high unemployment and poverty. SpaceX arrived with big plans and promises of jobs, investment, and the promise to transform Brownsville into a launch location for commercial missions to Mars and beyond.

SpaceX was welcomed by the county and city officials as well as some businesses. They are expected to bring growth opportunities and well-paying employment to the area. At a recent “State of the City” event, Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez said SpaceX was projected to contribute $885 million in gross economic output for Cameron County in 2022. He noted that 71% of SpaceX’s employees were Rio Grande Valley residents, and thanked Musk and his team for their support of programs such as downtown revitalization and school improvements.   

Environmental advocates and local activists and human rights groups have warned that the expanding SpaceX footprint is eroding Brownsville’s cultural identity, endangering ecological resources and sacred sites, and deepening the socio-economic disparities in the Hispanic majority city of 300,000. They argue that testing larger and more powerful rockets near Brownsville, a protected nature reserve, and cultural sites can have disastrous consequences. 

Brownsville authorities are not open to criticism. Rebekah Hinojosa, a local organizer and environmental activist, was arrested in February for allegedly spray-painting the words “gentrified” and “stop SpaceX” under a mural downtown. 

Hinojosa claimed that two cars belonging to Brownsville police arrived at Hinojosa’s apartment on February 16th and forced her into it without presenting a warrant. “Police forced its way into my apartment. They pushed and handcuffed me and didn’t even allow me to dress properly,” she said, adding that the officers also threatened to charge her with resisting arrest.

“I was barefoot when they walked me to the car and took me to the police station downtown,.” she said.

Hinojosa was moved to a jail cell, where she claimed her prescription glasses were taken away. Hinojosa was then interrogated, but she was denied access to legal counsel. After 26 hours, she was released under a personal recognizance bond. 

“We will continue to protest the negative environmental impact of continuing space launches,” Hinojosa said in a statement after her release.  

In a written response, a spokesman for Brownsville police department said the case is ongoing and has not been closed by the District Attorney’s Office. “All the evidence and officers involved will give their testimony during the hearing,” he said. “Our department’s policy and procedures will also be presented at the time it is requested in the hearing.”

The mural Hinojosa allegedly spray-painted protest graffiti on was one of two that have popped up in downtown Brownsville, part of the city’s larger effort to rebrand itself.

Josue RAMIrez, a local artist who is also a cultural critic, stated that the murals were created by artists without any ties to the local community. “Elon Musk Foundation gave the money for three murals,” Ramirez said, adding that one mural was painted by Los Angeles-based artist Ted Kelly. Sophia Castellanos (Mexican artist) was chosen to paint the other mural. 

“Why couldn’t they find a local artist to do that?” said Ramirez.     

The Brownsville region in South Texas has been the scene of previous attempts to alter the culture and rebrand Brownsville. In the 20’s^ThRamirez explained that the Magic Valley was a nickname given to the area by outside investors to attract wealthy visitors.  

“Developers and railroad companies recruited midwestern prospects through staged performances and carefully orchestrated ‘home-seeker tours,’” Ramirez wrote recently in Trucho, a local media outlet, adding that “white families were transported to South Texas to generate interest and investment in the ‘cheap land’ and opportunities.” 

Ramirez said these examples show how visual art and creative productions were used to distort local history, culture and people.“These murals painted by non-resident artists and financed by an outsider, Elon Musk, are doing the same thing to Brownsville—this time under the shiny banner of Starbase,” Ramirez said.  

UBS, a Swiss investment bank, has predicted that the commercial space industry will grow to $805 billion by 2030. This is more than twice the amount of space industry revenue in 2019, which was about $400 billion.  The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), which regulates the commercial space industry, said in 2021 that it was “creating a single licensing regime for all types of commercial space flight launch and reentry operations.” The agency “aims to support greater innovation, flexibility and efficiency in commercial space operations,” an FAA spokesman said.

Initially, SpaceX was licensed by the FAA for testing of reusable launch vehicles and its Falcon series rockets. The agency’s decision was based on a 2014 Environmental Impact Assessment that found that SpaceX activities would not have a significant impact on the ecological habitat surrounding the launch site.   

SpaceX abandoned its earlier plans and began to build and test its most powerful rocket systems, Starship, and Super Heavy at the site in 2018. The rockets measure approximately 400 feet high and 30 feet wide. The FAA described Starship/Super Heavy launch cars as multi-mission, fully reusable super heavy-lift rockets designed to transport around 100 tourists to the red planet. 

SpaceX plans to build a liquid natural gas (LNG), desalination plant, and launch and landing sites on its site in order to expand its space transportation and exploration capabilities. 

In September of last year, the FAA carried out a Programmatic Environmental Assessment—PEA for short—to determine if the new round of SpaceX operations would significantly affect the environment. If the analysis revealed that there were significant risks, the FAA will need to complete an Environmental Impact Statement under the federal National Environmental Protection Act. Otherwise, permitting could be granted. However, the FAA delayed the release its findings, which were supposed to be announced in April/early May.  

The agency stated that it was currently working to release the assessment on May 31, 2022. “SpaceX made multiple changes to its application that require additional FAA analysis,” a FAA spokesman said, adding that the agency is also continuing to review about 18,000 public comments on the matter. “The completion of the PEA will not guarantee that the FAA will issue a launch license. SpaceX’s application must also meet FAA safety, risk and financial responsibility requirements,” the agency said.

A recent tweet, Musk said he expects SpaceX to launch its first orbital test flight this month, and indicated that the company might shift the launch to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center if the FAA decides to conduct an EIS. Last year, Musk criticized the FAA in a Twitter post, saying “The FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure.” and adding, “Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars.”

The city authorities are trying to keep SpaceX from leaving Brownsville. 

SpaceX has faced significant operational difficulties in recent years. This has raised concerns about public safety and threatened the nature reserve near the launch site. Between December 2020 and March 2021, the residents of Boca Chica village and Brownsville said they experienced at least four earsplitting rocket explosions, scaring away native birds and wildlife  and sending a slew of debris deep into the surrounding nature reserve. 

Stephanie Bilodeau is a bird biologist at the Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program. She noted that SpaceX’s habitat is part of a National Wildlife Refuge property. “The biggest explosion was in March last year and debris went as far as the eye can see,” she said. “It took SpaceX three months to clean up all of those little pieces of metal that were thrown everywhere out there.” 

Bilodeau stated that the area has sensitive algal flats and that people walking around picking up and dragging metal through these algal flats will have a negative effect. “We’ve definitely seen a decrease in nesting activity for the birds that we’ve been monitoring,” she said. “It seems that birds are potentially moving away from those areas, which is not great for the species because that’s the most suitable habitat for them.” 

Bilodeau said she’s heard people say that the area is “just a big wasteland,” which makes it perfect for testing rockets. But, she said, “That’s just not true. It’s one of the most important places in the country for shorebirds.”

Describing the wildlife as “super diverse,” Bilodeau recited a list of birds and species native to the area that were categorized as threatened under federal and state laws. “It’s sad to see this happening to such an important area,” she said.

It’s not only birds and wildlife that the SpaceX buildout is threatening with displacement. Many  residents of Boca Chica village—a majority among them retirees—have sold off their homes to SpaceX in recent years to avoid the earth-shaking explosions, falling debris and noisy, round-the-clock activity. The few people who are still in the area must evacuate their homes when a launch is scheduled. SpaceX plans to launch more often as it explores new frontiers in outerspace. 

In January, a NASA safety panel stated that SpaceX intends 52 launches in 2022, as opposed to 31 last year. 

A coalition of environmental and native activists, as well as other advocacy groups, is fighting SpaceX’s massive liquified gas (LNG), terminals that are being proposed for Brownsville. This includes Texas LNG and Rio Grande LNG. Enbridge Inc. and Texas LNG, a multinational pipeline company have announced plans for expansion of the existing 160-mile Valley Crossing pipe in South Texas. 

There are also growing concerns about waste disposal and onsite storage flammable propellants.  

In a letter of more than 100 pages last November, addressed to FAA’s Environmental Protection Specialist Stacey Zee, several environmental and community organizations expressed dissatisfaction with the agency’s draft environmental assessment and listed in detail the reasons why they consider SpaceX environmentally destructive and harmful to wildlife and the local community. 

In March 2020, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also sent a letter to the FAA, saying it was concerned that changes and modifications to SpaceX facilities “do not conform to the original project description, potential violations, and incidents resulting in damages on refuge lands and excessive closure notices that affect public and scientific access to the beach.” The FAA, the letter said, had not adequately addressed concerns the agency raised in its earlier comments. 

Dr. Christopher Basaldu is a member the Carrizo Comecrudo tribe. He said that the discussion about environmental justice in Brownsville must include the pre-colonial history and the greater Rio Grande Valley. “It’s not enough to say native communities, as communities of color, are usually very affected by pollution. It’s more than that. It’s that native and Indigenous people have moral, spiritual and even political rights to challenge polluting and extractive development. They have prior claims in the land.” 

Hinjosa is busy collecting signatures for a petition calling for Brownsville’s mayor to be investigated and the charges against her to drop. She stated that she is awaiting a court hearing and will be receiving treatment for PTSD after her February arrest.

“We won’t stop protesting SpaceX expansion into our community. It’s becoming just another polluting industry on our coastline,” she said.