State representative Armando Walle voices his opposition to a concrete batch plant planned in Aldine during a public meeting by TCEQ at the East Aldine Management District building on Thursday, April 7, 2022, in Houston.

Public hearings can be long, and crowded, and agonizingly tedious. People only attend when they’re concerned enough, desperate enough to be heard, or if they think they can actually do some good.

You can bet those conditions were met when a crowd of Aldine residents packed the East Aldine Management District building in April to urge the state’s environmental regulatory agency to intervene over a planned concrete batch plant in a neighborhood that already has too many of those polluting facilities.

The new one, expected to be built near a revamped public park with two community centers, was especially upsetting.

Holding signs that read “Don’t Make Our Air Quality Worse” and “No Cement Batch Plants,” many in the community were hoping for a contested case hearing, a chance to plead their case formally, according to reporting from the Houston Chronicle’s Emily Foxhall.

Magdalena Ruiz said she worried about the students at the nearby elementary school. Robert Andrado shared that he’d lost family members to cancer and that he worried a new plant would only worsen air quality conditions in the area. Ruben Salazar, who has asthma and lived near the site, said in a comment submitted to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that his health had already suffered from existing plants.

But in the end, it didn’t really matter what the folks at the hearing came to say. It was too late. Before they even walked through the door, it was too late. Before they waited hours as people lined up for a chance to speak, it was too late.

No one from the state agency ever told the crowd as much that night, but as it turned out, the deadline to request a contested case hearing had already passed.

“Why even hold the hearing that night?” Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia fumed to Foxhall in an interview.

Good question. It’s one many communities across Texas have asked and one that has contributed to faltering trust in TCEQ. From Gunter to Alamo to Aldine, Texans are fighting for better water and air quality. Too often, that has meant fighting the state first.

It shouldn’t be that way. And we’re not the only ones who think so.

The TCEQ is up for what’s called a “Sunset review,” a regular process conducted by a state watchdog body that evaluates the performance and function of state agencies and even whether they’re still needed at all. Among the concerns already identified by the Sunset Commission: public engagement and trust.

“(P)eople rely on TCEQ to protect their health and the environment but shortcomings in transparency and meaningful public participation contribute to public distrust of the agency,” according to the Sunset report.

The report identifies multiple reasons that the public has lost faith in TCEQ, but moments such as that hours-long exercise in futility in Aldine are the clearest examples. There’s confusion and frustration around what TCEQ does, what it doesn’t do, and what it can’t do even if it wanted to. It regulates emissions from industrial facilities, for example, but not nuisances caused by light and traffic from those facilities. Too often, the agency’s actions look more like rubber stamps for industry than rigorous reviews.

The agency had some 92,000 active air quality permit authorizations in 2021 alone and many of those never saw a public hearing. Most types of concrete batch plants, for example, are considered general or standard permits, according to the Sunset review. For those, TCEQ uses predetermined requirements for applications without “individual assessments of the proposed facility.”

Given the number of permits, holding a meeting for every single one would be an overwhelming proposition but the Sunset review did suggest adding earlier meetings for permit applications that already require one later on in the process.

Other recommendations include a strengthened public interest counsel, a tweaked compliance rating formula that puts greater emphasis on all types of violations, and public meetings for key agency decisions. If implemented with care, these changes could strengthen the relationship between the public and the agency meant to protect them.

In some ways, though, the recommendations don’t go far enough.

Take Aldine. TCEQ could do more to weigh the cumulative impacts of industrial activity on such neighborhoods. In a community already home to many industrial plants, even if individually they all meet state standards, one more facility can be toxic.

It’s kind of like how one hamburger by itself isn’t going to hurt anybody. But one, each week, for a person already suffering from high blood pressure and heart issues, is another matter.

Neighborhoods most affected by the pre-existing conditions, if you will, of industrial pollution deserve clearer answers on how to assess the overall risk to health and how they can protect themselves.

A Houston Chronicle analysis found not only that 54 percent of concrete facilities are located in neighborhoods where the majority of residents are people of color but that plants in largely Black neighborhoods were more likely to be one of several in the area.

The work TCEQ does is highly technical. It involves standards from the federal Environmental Protection Agency as well as state requirements. When a new plant such as Aldine’s files a permit, public notices are added to an online database but those only include summaries of the application where companies are able to promise “good practices” but not offer details. Notices are published in local media and mailed to representatives. Individuals can also sign up to be added to those mailings.

The way state Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, found out about this particular application, though, was by driving by the site and seeing two small signs on wooden posts stuck into the dirt. He posted a picture of it to Facebook and requested a meeting with TCEQ.

In an emailed response to the editorial board, agency spokeswoman Laura Lopez noted that “public meetings are often held by the agency regardless of whether the opportunity for a contested case hearing exists.” Lopez called TCEQ’s public notice requirements robust and informative.

Aldine residents and representatives might use different words.

Between the technical language, uncertainty about just what TCEQ can and cannot do, and a public notice system that doesn’t seem to be notifying the public, the challenges TCEQ faces in gaining trust are bigger than an additional meeting.

The review process is ongoing for TCEQ and things aren’t quite over for the East Aldine concrete batch plant, either. The company still needs permits from the county to develop in a floodplain.

As an agency, TCEQ works with federal standards, state requirements and its own rules. The Legislature should act to make sure that when communities such as Aldine speak out, they’re heard.

The Editorial Board is made up of opinion journalists with wide-ranging expertise whose consensus opinions and endorsements represent the voice of the institution - defined as the board members, their editor and the publisher. The board is separate from the newsroom and other sections of the paper. Winner of 2022 Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing.

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