While a roomful of diners polished off their cheesecakes during a gala banquet inside the Austin Convention Center earlier this month, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality handed out its annual top honors—the Governor’s Texas Environmental Excellence Awards. In a recorded video, Governor Greg Abbott praised the winners, in nine categories, for giving “their time, their talent, their treasure to the high calling of protecting our state’s natural resources.”
Samsung Electronics was one of the honorees for its innovative wastewater management program at Austin’s semiconductor manufacturing plant. The South Korean conglomerate had devised a way to remove copper from the facility’s wastewater stream. The new filtration system reduces the amount of sludge Samsung sends off to landfills as well as the chemicals used to treat the wastewater. What’s more, the company now makes $35,000 a year reselling recovered copper.
Left unsaid during the awards ceremony was the fact that TCEQ, the state’s environmental regulator, was actively investigating Samsung because of a wastewater discharge last year that turned a neighboring creek the shade of orange Gatorade. The investigation is still ongoing.
And the trouble Samsung may have gotten itself into with the regulators isn’t even the first time in the past year that it’s dumped pollutants into a neighboring body of water. In May 2021, two pumps at the semiconductor factory were damaged by an electrical fault. The result was that wastewater tanks containing sulfuric and hydrochloric Acid leaked into a containment tank. Then it rained—a lot. The pond burst and 65,000 gallons worth of the noxious liquid leaked from the Samsung campus into a stream that flows to Harris Branch Creek and eventually into the Colorado River.
TCEQ looked into the matter at the time and agreed with Samsung’s lawyers that it was an unpreventable “act of God.” The agency closed its investigation without assessing any fines. Texas was trying to lure Samsung at the time. The company was looking for a location to build a new chip-making facility that would create two thousand jobs. Taylor, a small town located northeast of Austin was in the running. But so were Phoenix, Buffalo, and others. State leaders surely didn’t want to let Arizona or, God forbid, New York, snag the prize.
Samsung made the announcement in November that economic development planners can only dream about. It would construct the new Taylor plant. It was the largest foreign direct investment in Texas, at $17 billion.
Yet, at the time of the announcement, Samsung’s semiconductor plant had already sprung another, much larger wastewater leak. This one began sometime last September and wasn’t contained for 106 days. It sent as much as 763,000 gallons of “acidic waste” into a stormwater pond, then Harris Branch Creek, then the Colorado River, according to a memo prepared by city of Austin officials. The incident turned the tributary of Harris Branch Creek into an orange-colored river, killing freshwater clams and fishes. A TCEQ spokesperson confirmed the news. Texas MonthlyThe state continues to investigate the spillage.
Samsung spokeswoman Michele Glaze said, “While we regret the release, we stand firm in our continued efforts of environmental stewardship.” She added that the company intended to take steps to prevent future releases.
Samsung didn’t discover the spill until January 14—months after it had begun. A day earlier, a judging panel for the Texas Environmental Excellence Awards had met and recommended this year’s winners, including Samsung. The panel was chaired by the TCEQ’s head of external affairs and Abbott’s top policy adviser on environmental issues. TCEQ and the governor’s office later approved the winners.
In a written statement, TCEQ noted that Samsung “had completed the innovation for which they were recognized” last fall, before the agency knew about the spill, adding, “Our investigation into the spill is a separate matter.” The governor’s office told me, essentially, that the recommendation for the award was made before the spill was discovered.
Texas isn’t known for its heavy-handed environmental regulations. Just this week, Abbott promised to ensure that the state remained a top destination for companies by cutting taxes and “rolling back unnecessary regulations.” But, even for Texas, giving an award to a company for wastewater innovation while simultaneously investigating the same company for its wastewater spills reeks of cognitive dissonance.
“It is certainly a stain on the award for Samsung to be investigated for unauthorized wastewater discharge,” said Gina S. Warren, codirector of the Environment, Energy & Natural Resources Center at the University of Houston Law Center. “It doesn’t on its face rise to a conflict of interest, but it doesn’t look great.”
What message does it send to TCEQ investigators determining whether Samsung deserves a penalty to watch the agency’s three commissioners shake hands with Samsung officials and congratulate them at a fancy banquet?
It’s as if Texas is telling you: Come to Texas! Bring your investment dollars and job! You can still win an award for environmental excellence even if you leak too much acid, turning a creek yellow. Is this what Texas wants to send? It seems so.
