Future Heist

Connecting Texans
to steal back our land, water, and future

We expose the people draining our water and poisoning our land, connect the communities getting hit, and help Texans fight on the same side.

Texas oil regulator cuts out the public

Sep 17, 2026
Published in San Antonio Express News

Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian led the agency's effort to cut out public comment at meetings. Texans will now be heard only “at the discretion of the commissioners,” he said.

JAY JANNER/AMERICAN-STATESMAN — Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian led the agency’s effort to cut out public comment at meetings. Texans will now be heard only “at the discretion of the commissioners,” he said. JAY JANNER/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

As bad actors in the oil and gas business offload more of their waste onto the communities the industry most depends on, the state’s lead oil regulator just took a major step to ban Texans from speaking their minds…

How to fight Texas wastewater permits

All five Permian discharge applications—for the Pecos River basin—are currently under TCEQ review and comments are open now. You can submit comments or request a public meeting through TCEQ’s eComment site.

NGL Water Solutions Permian (Reeves County) — #WQ0005445000 — Proposed permit details —
Solaris Water Midstream (Reeves County) — #WQ0005471000 — Proposed permit details —
Solaris Water Midstream No. 2 (Culberson County) — #WQ0005474000 — Proposed permit details —
Texas Pacific Water Resources (Reeves County) — #WQ0005454000 — Proposed permit details —
Select Water Solutions (Reeves County) — #WQ0005495000 — Proposed permit details —

TCEQ Air Quality Event Data

Every year, Texas chemical plants, refineries, and industrial facilities report thousands of air quality events to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. These aren’t routine emissions—they’re excess releases, equipment failures, and spills that the companies are legally required to disclose.

What’s in here

100,000+ incidents
~2,000 chemicals
Full incident details

This dataset brings that scattered reporting into one place: 100,000+ incidents, with details on what was released, where, how much, and what the company said about what happened.

Download the data

Complete incident database

All incidents with full details: date, facility, chemicals, duration, and company responses, incidents.csv.zip

All incidents by chemical, incident_contaminants.csv.zip

Chemical breakdown…

1.2 Million Oil Wells Are Buried Underneath Texas. Do You Live on Top of a Dangerous One?

Published in The Texas Observer

Dallas-Fort Worth-area suburban housing (Shutterstock)

his spring, a Permian Basin pastor got an unpleasant surprise: a geyser of more than 1.5 million gallons… of toxic brine gushing up through the parking lot of the First Baptist Church in Grandfalls. It was a “zombie well”—what happens when the plug on one of the state’s hundreds of thousands of old wells fails, releasing poisonous gas and water onto the property above.

Oil execs exposed the industry’s greatest weakness

Published in Heated

A storage tank hold fracking wastewater, also known as produced water, in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Drillers in America’s largest oil-producing region are proposing to treat produced water and pour it onto crops and into waterways. (Photo by J Pat Carter/Getty Images)

Sometime in the next few months, Texas is set to issue its first permits letting the oil industry pour treated fracking wastewater into rivers and onto cropland….

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