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This article was originally published by Public Health Watch, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. Find out more at publichealthwatch.org.

SAN JACINTO RIVER, Texas — Over the past 30 years, federal and state agencies in Texas have allowed hundreds of oil and chemical barges to amass in a once-tranquil section of the San Jacinto River, just east of Houston.

Only about 100 barges were on the six-mile stretch of water in 1990, according to a Public Health Watch analysis of archival satellite imagery. Today, at least 600 crowd the narrow waterway.

For Houston’s refineries, chemical plants and pipeline terminals, the long, lumbering cargo ships are indispensable. They keep products moving on the adjoining Houston Ship Channel, one of the nation’s busiest shipping lanes and largest distribution centers for the chemicals used to make plastics and other everyday items.

But for the 54,000 residents of Channelview and Highlands — the two Harris County communities that border the San Jacinto River — the growing industry represents danger, not prosperity.

Air quality in their unincorporated neighborhoods ranks near or at the bottom of indexes nationwide. Although the problem is usually blamed on the hundreds of industrial facilities that line the Ship Channel, data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, shows the barges contributed more pollution in 2023 than a major Exxon Mobil facility.

The TCEQ estimated that the loading and unloading of barges and other small vessels released 5.1 million pounds of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, into Harris County that year. That’s 28% more than Texas’ largest VOC emitter — Exxon’s 3,400-acre refining and petrochemical complex on the county’s eastern edge — released over the same time.

VOCs include benzene, toluene and other highly combustible substances that can cause blood, kidney and liver cancers. In parts of Highlands, the average cancer risk from toxic chemicals is almost double the national average. In parts of Channelview, the risk is more than triple, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2020 Air Toxics Screening Assessment.

A TCEQ spokesperson downplayed the barge emissions problem, saying that barges were responsible for just 2.6% of all the VOCs released into Harris County in 2023.

But Public Health Watch has found major gaps in the TCEQ’s triennial emissions inventory, from which the 2.6% figure is drawn.

Unlike facilities that release pollution on land, barges aren’t required to obtain air pollution permits or report their emissions. The TCEQ inventory relies on data that’s self-reported by the industrial sites where barges are loaded and unloaded, not from direct monitoring of the barges themselves.

Perhaps more important, the inventory doesn’t include the chemicals barges release when they’re travelling or moored on the water. No state or federal agency gathers that information, even though experts say those emissions can be substantial.

Fumes can escape from cracks in the barges’ vapor recovery systems and from open hatches and relief valves. If pressure builds up in the barges’ chemical storage tanks, fumes are purposely vented, so the tanks don’t rupture or, worst case, explode.

“Anytime you’re transferring these volatile chemicals or gases, you’re gonna have some leakage,” said Frank Parker, a retired barge industry consultant. “It’s impossible not to have something.”

Parker said the industry is well aware that it’s largely unregulated.

“Once they’re away from the dock, nobody’s looking over your shoulders,” he said. “The maritime industry is pretty much behind [in regulation] than everyone else.”

Tim Doty, a former TCEQ scientist who spent more than a decade monitoring emissions along the river and Ship Channel, said the TCEQ has known about the barge problem since at least 2005. That’s when the agency began doing helicopter flyover studies of emissions in the area.

“It wouldn’t shock me if that [the 2023 estimate] is underestimated by a magnitude or more,” he said. “There’s kind of a hole in the regulations, so to speak.”

Doty said his mobile monitoring team sometimes took boats onto the river to record barge emissions. They’d wear respirators to avoid breathing the fumes while they worked.

Although the team submitted dozens of technical reports detailing barge pollution, Doty said the TCEQ still hadn’t dealt with the issue when he retired in 2018.

“It’s still an emission source that is, you know, generally uncontrolled and that the TCEQ doesn’t have a good handle on,” he said.

Public Health Watch asked the TCEQ if its current policies do enough to protect residents from barge emissions.

A spokesperson said in an email that “TCEQ........

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