Environment Texas

We visited the site of the March 5 Union Pacific train derailment in Weatherford, Texas again on March 24 and unfortunately found that pre-production plastic pellets were still uncovered and escaping into the environment.

Take action by signing our petition at the link in our bio and signing up to participate in the International Plastic Pellet Count on May 2nd.

More than 10 trillion plastic pellets escape into our environment every year, and once in the environment they are almost impossible to remove. Wildlife often eat plastic pellets, since they resemble fish eggs and float on water. Additionally, since they start small, once in our waterways they can more easily degrade into even smaller microplastics.

Texas needs to do more to both stop these spills and ensure that when they do happen, they are covered and cleaned up promptly.

After contacting the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality about this spill, they told us that, “TCEQ regulations specify that for an incident involving industrial solid waste to be reportable, the release must exceed 100 pounds and impact waters of the state.” Since this spill did not directly enter a state-owned waterway, Union Pacific is not even required to give TCEQ a final report on the cleanup of the spill.