Dispute Erupts Over SpaceX’s Boca Chica Test Facility
A dispute has erupted between several environmental groups and the federal government over the impact of SpaceX’s test operations at Boca Chica Beach in south Texas.
The issue: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved SpaceX’s plan to use the coastal site for launching its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets up to 12 times per year.
However, Elon Musk’s company has instead been using its facilities to develop and flight test its larger Starship and Super Heavy boosters. The resulting impacts have been much greater than anticipated under the original proposal, environmental groups argue.
The Brownsville Herald reports:
Instead, the site has become the locus of SpaceX’s ambitious Starship development program. This has involved round-the-clock construction of Starship prototype components, expansion of the company’s build yard and launch/test pad facilities, preparations to build the Starship’s “Super Heavy” booster stage, and frequent closures of Boca Chica Beach and State Highway 4 for testing — well beyond what 12 or fewer launches a year would have called for.
The company’s activities have also involved the kinds of events one would expect where experimental spacecraft development is underway, including disruptive prototype failures and so far one genuine explosion, which occurred on May 29 when Starship prototype SN4 was destroyed on the test stand in a massive fireball.
The FAA has said that a new environmental assessment (EA) is being conducted to assess the effects these operations are having on the local environment, which include sensitive coastal wildlife areas.
Environmental groups, however, believe that an EA is insufficient given the impacts on the area.
Jim Chapman, president of Friends of the Wildlife Corridor and the main drafter of the July 3 letter to the FAA, told The Brownsville Herald that an EA is insufficient considering the magnitude of SpaceX’s impact and that SpaceX should perform the more rigorous Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) instead. Further, it’s not up to SpaceX to decide which type of review to conduct, as the FAA contends, but rather the agency itself, Chapman said.…
The July 3 letter to the FAA was signed by Chapman and representatives of the environmental groups Save RGV, Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, Defenders of Wildlife, Frontera Audubon Society, Center for Biological Diversity, and the Lower Rio Grande Valley Sierra Club Group. It urged the FAA to “develop a new or supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for SpaceX’s current and planned actions at their Boca Chica site.”
The interest part is the claim that the FAA has allowed SpaceX to decide what type of environmental review to conduct.
Chapman wrote back to the FAA in response to the agency’s July 17 letter and argued that it is the FAA, not the applicant [SpaceX], who decides whether to pursue an EA or an EIS. He quoted an FAA policy that states: “Once the FAA determines that NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] applies to a proposed action, it needs to decide on the appropriate level of review.” The three levels of NEPA review are a Categorical Exclusion, an EA or an EIS, according to the policy.
Under an EA, the review could bypass the public.
“The other thing is that with an EIS public participation is mandatory,” Chapman said. “There will be a public hearing and there will be a public comment period. With an EA, that’s all optional. If the agency wants to they can open it up to public comment or have a public meeting, but they don’t have to. There’s no law that says that that’s required. This needs public participation.”
76 responses to “Dispute Erupts Over SpaceX’s Boca Chica Test Facility”
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I’m surprised it’s taken this long. The original EA seemed pretty clear on what was supposed to happen which differs markedly from what has happened.
Cheers
Neil
This is why Elon Musk should have just taken over the old Matagorda Island AFB. Of course the area where he is at has little additional environmental value given the huge sections of the Texas coast protected by South Padre National Seashore and the King Ranch, but that won’t prevent the environmentalists from tying him up legally and killing the jobs he is bringing to one of the poorest regions in America.
Environazis were all over them at Vandy for the landings anyway. They are as unavoidable as flies at a picnic.
Is there room for a rocket port in your backyard?
I wish
I would be glad to have one next to me. I was able to see the NASA WSTF from my old house in NM. Sometimes they would be testing the engines of the DC-X and you would see the exhaust and hear them. Being close to the pass military aircraft, including B-1s, would overfly at 500 feet shaking the windows as they hit the afterburners to climb over the mountain.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Boeing hired those environmentalists.
Perhaps, but how would you go about convincing the Department of the Interior that launching a Starship on a Super Booster wouldn’t impact the old Matagorda Island AFB’s current use as a federal wildlife refuge?
The way you go about convincing the Dept of the Interior to not interfere at Boca Chica. Write an environmental impact statement, and when it’s all done, your processes will be cleared and they’ll have minimal effect on any nature that you might pose a threat to. And the environmentalist community would have little to no legal status to become a problem. By bypassing the process, Space X opened themselves up to this.
Folks forget the long history of development at Boca Chica from army camps to resorts to vacation homes, all wiped cleaned by hurricanes over the years. And before that the Rio Grande River split it in half. It’s not like San Padre National Seashore which has always been wilderness.
Folks don’t forget it, we just don’t know it. 🙂 An environmental impact statement should that that into account. In fact, I’d bet that much of the impact statement deals with efforts to protect against those processes.
The local environmentalists should know it if they know as much about the environment as they claim to know.
You are not going to stop a category three hurricane when it comes ashore to wipe Boca Chica clean again and rearrange the landscape. Sand bars in river deltas a meter above sea level in hurricane zones are just not a good place to build major infrastructure.
Hopefully it will be a few years before SpaceX learns why the only structures at Boca Chica were a some vacation homes and a border patrol checkpoint
Wouldn’t you think that the bright minds would have built the high bay to survive at lease a cat 3?
Not even the VAB would likely survive a direct hit by a Cat 3 hurricane. Elon Musk is just gambling none will hit before Starship/Super Heavy are established.
Actually, hurricanes are no big deal. The winds are actually pretty low. Likewise, the surge would not do any real damage there.
The problem is with ANY hurricane, they spin off tornadoes. A medium size tornado hitting VAB would like do moderate to decent damage. A large tornado would move the building 10-20 miles away.
Or drop it off at the bushes ranch, looking for W when he is wearing red shoes.
The VAB is at last check rated to withstand a Cat 3. The Launch Control Center is rated for a Cat 5.
Glad they upgraded it. Not surprised about launch control as block houses are designed to withstand large explosions from wayward rockets.
What did SpaceX bypass? According to the environmental groups it is the FAA that decides the procedures, and SpaceX is providing the data.
I assume that US laws are set up for retroactive permission, which seems odd in some [most?] other nations, but fits with the general perception of a nation under the banner “act now, think later”. If Boca Chica was a planned urban area, the public should be in on it around here.
You let the government in you’re screwed.
Boca Chica is one of those areas the government ignores, and the locals like it that way.
Like or liked?
It would be no different than the interaction between KSFC and Merritt Island wildlife refuge. The bulk of the wildlife area is outside of the old airbase.
Chasing them all of the way to Brazil.
Or some place we’ve never heard of, owned and operated by some foreigner we’ve also never heard of. Operating under a flag of convenience for tax and regulatory purposes. With profits and future solar system expansion benefits going to countries we have heard of but dismissed.
Space will be developed, though it is not ordained that it be by SpaceX, or even by this country. And possibly by entities that care far less about the environment than even the local offenders. To say the least, some of the possibilities suck.
If they had included these activities in the orig application, they would not have created a legal ‘in’ for the environmentalist community to come in on. Ignoring this is just plain stupid. The country has had a very active environmental community for well over 60 years now, and they operate in all types of administrations and Congresses. To not account for this is just sloppy business. I seems that maybe Space X just thought it would ‘wish away’ these concerns like his fanboys would like to do, and not do the work needed to keep that at bay. Having seen that Andy Beal suffered a similar problem, surely someone must have raised this subject when they made the decision to operate outside the orig process.
Andrew Beal’s problem was going to foreign sites, first in the British Virgin Islands and then on the disputed border between Venezuela and Guyana.
His main island to launch from got shut down, or he simply stopped fighting, when it was found out that Sombrero Island was a rest stop for migrating birds.
Yes, but instead of learning from that mistake he instead made a worst one by picking his next location in a coastal region Venezuela, Guyana and a local indigenous nation claimed nearly starting a war. That was when the U.S. State Department had a little talk with him.
Meanwhile. the recently closed Matagorda Island AFB was just waiting for him if he only had the common sense to ask for it.
Beal Aerospace was a classic case of how not to run a rocket company.
First, give good paying jobs to hundreds of people in a poverty stricken region. Then ask for forgiveness.
Humm, maybe I should put a gas station next door to your house. Mind if I put my tanks under your back yard? Like you I have contempt for environmental laws, and never check my tanks for leaks. I’m sure you won’t mind since you’re not one of of those pesky NIMBYs. I’ll blow a siren when the fuel truck comes in. You might want to go outside so you’re not cut by flying glass from your windows if there’s an explosion. I’m sure you’ll understand.
The private insurance industry would prevent that – no insurance, no mortgage to build it. No insurance, no supply contract from a refinery so nothing to put in those tanks. Far more effective than zoning as you aren’t going to be able to bribe an insurance company to look the other way. ?
President Trump doesn’t believe in sea level rise from global warming but the insurance industry still made him build a sea wall to prevent it before giving him insurance on his golf course in Scotland..
This is ‘Murica — we don’t need no stinkin’ insurance.
Industrial regulation in Texas? Zoning laws? The state where every two years a fertilizer plant explodes, taking out a large swath of the town that that grew up around it? (Act of God. Nothing to be done. Nobody knew ammonium nitrate and deisel fuel could do that.) The last time I was in Houston, the October sky was a lovely shade of orange. That was some time ago, to be fair, during the Reagan years. A shining city on the floodplain. Sans zoning. Texas is America’s Bhopal.
No, you can’t build your gas station next to my house. I don’t live in Texas. But I keep hearing that everyone is moving there, fleeing the commies and the socialists and antifa-in-their-black-planes. All the blue cities are burning, say the people not living in blue cities.
Pales in comparison to the 100’s of thousands of dead Americans because the president and the GOP turned basic viral abatement procedures into a political statement. I’ll take a few burning blocks to being responsible for over 100 thousand dead Americans who would normally have been alive if Americans had not been lead away from life saving measures of self protection. Funny you guys lead the march to war over 3000 dead Americans on Sept 11, but you guys are all crickets when it comes to a death rate on par with WW2. But I guess they’re people and not property, so I guess in your eyes the loss is nothing worth bothering over.
Actually it’s on par with the Hong Kong flu of 1968, but American was different then when the GI generation ran the nation.
On par when we did not know how to abate a virus. If the GOP had not made it a political point to take no precautions and spread the virus wider, we could have opened up a lot sooner, and a lot wider. Of course what I’m picking up from your response is that we should have taken no precautions and just kept functioning and accepted the higher death rate. So when do the numbers get too high for you? 500,000 a million? This is not over yet. We might get that high by the time this plays out. When is it worth your while?
1968 was a very different time. The top marginal income tax rate was up around 70%. We were building out the interstate highway system, not watching our bridges falling down. The middle class was growing, not shrinking. We led the developed world in every category. Today we’re in 55th place in infant mortality, and that’s with the entire EU only taking one slot. Belarus has us beat by a country mile. We are in 35th place in life expectancy, tied with Lebanon, where health and safety regulation is similar to that of Texas.
Also in 1968 comic books cost 12 cents each. They went up to 15 cents in 1969. That’s when I quit that habit.
The large majority of those deaths occurred in the Blue states where the Dem political leadership first poo-pooed Covid-19, then decided to mix all the cases that turned up into the general hospital and nursing home populations. Trump had nothing to do with any of that.
The key problem with the COVID virus that no one understood at the beginning was that it is most infectious before symptoms appear and around half of those who are infecting others never show symptoms. This is why the early safety measures of looking for symptoms failed with COVID because they were based on the experience with the closely related SARS and MERS with infected only when symptoms appeared. By the time the first cases appeared it was already established with evidence emerging of unrecognized cases in December in the US and Europe. It is why the screening of travelers for it beginning in January were not effective and lockdowns only marginally effective. It is also now known that the version in Wuhan was different and it mutated after reaching Europe to become more infectious which has been so devastating.
One take away is that allowing unrestricted international travel will need to change with a greater focus on health and quarantining overseas travelers. In the old days the length of time spent on the ship was basically a form of quarantine with health problems emerging by the time the ships reached their destinations. Another is the need to monitor remote regions better for emerging diseases and better safety cautions when doing so particularly when working with local populations that may already be infected. The fortunate thing about COVID-19 is so few people are able to be infected by it. It looks like it peaks out at around 20% of the population exposed. The other is that only a small percentage of those exposed get sick enough to be hospitalized. Sampling showed that probably 2 million New Yorkers were likely infected by COVID-19 but only about 25,000 died from it. That is only about 1.25 percent which is very low for a new disease like this one.
Humm lets see. Here’s the top 5 by state as of Sept 13, 2020
New York 32.6k
New Jersey 16k
Texas 14.3k
California 14.3k
Florida 12.6 k
And if you look at the deltas, as in where it’s growing fast, it’s almost all red states. By the time this is over red states are going to exceed blue states except California. They will still remain high. If you’re going to blame the Dems for the deaths that occurred because of the positive actions they took, then you’re going to have to accept the numbers as a result of the deliberate disinformation campaign conducted by the GOP. And those numbers are evident in the very high growth rates of red states.
Covid-19 deaths are no longer “growing fast” anywhere in the U.S. – not even in the stupidest of blue states. The general trend line everywhere is downward. Your own numbers show NY & NJ, with a combined population of 28 million, have more than 48,000 Covid-19 deaths. That’s a quarter of all Covid-19 deaths in the entire United States out of less than 10% of the U.S. population. CA, TX and FL – the three most populous U.S. states with a combined total of 90 million people – have only 40,000 Covid-19 deaths among them.
Politicians of your general political persuasion have punched well above their weight in many states in implementing stupid and disastrous policies that killed tens of thousands needlessly with NY and NJ leading the pack. Trump had nothing to do with any of this as public health is mostly a state and local responsibility and Democrats at these levels were appallingly not up to the job.
“
Covid-19 deaths are no longer “growing fast” anywhere in the U.S.”.HAHAHAAA, I’m going to remember that and throw it right back at you. Thanks.
And yet you are happy to buy the fuel Texas produces along with the plastic, rubber, pesticides, etc. Where do you think the modern conveniences you are used to come from? But you are more than free to go back to riding horses and living like it was 1850 again
https://twitter.com/MrAndyN…
I live in a blue city. Fortunately, it’s a minor blue city just outside a really big blue city. The latter has had some significant BLM and Antifa problems and more have just occurred a few miles east in another satellite blue city – Compton. I assure you the stories of burnings, lootings and shootings in big blue cities are not at all fictional. Neither are the convoys of moving vans leaving them.
Well I can’t help but feel that Mr Amazon Moneybags is just hurling spanners from afar in an effort to slow SpaceX down. Same thing with the StarLink complaints to a large degree; though the trains heading to their final orbit and orientation do look spectacular.
The environmentalist monkey-wrenching of Boca Chica probably has less to do with SpaceX competitors and more to do with the change of the political status of Elon Musk.
Musk is no longer a hero to the Left, now he is considered an enemy. The final break came after Musk decried the closing of his Tesla factory in Commiefornia.
ULA is giving grants to these environmental groups ?
if i was russia and china I would be doing the same
It seems to me that the main thing that is getting up most peoples’ noses is the highway closures, people hate not being able to get from point A to point B in the usual time/way. The local authorities, I should imagine, will be forced to react against SpaceX’s best interests because of this.
PS: I guess they could always construct a waterproof tunnel and avoid closures completely. Know any good tunnel boring companies? 🙂
The highway just goes to the beach, which is also closed during this period. No one is on that road passing through to get someplace else.
And, yet, MSA, when looking at Mary’s coverage of events there always seems to be traffic passing in front of her cameras. Stay safe, Paul.
That traffic is passing when the road isn’t closed. And most of that traffic is probably SpaceX employees driving from one end of the property to the other. Boca Chica never had more than about a dozen locals and, except for Mary, they seem to be gone now that SpaceX has bought them out. The people on the SpaceX payroll now constitute pretty much the entirety of the “locals.” Somehow, I don’t expect any of them to be making unfavorable statements during the EIS public comment process.
A few are probably sightseers wanting to see Starship for themselves. The beaches aren’t all that nice, but are much safer now that SpaceX is there. But if it’s a beach you are looking for there are many miles of great ones on South Padre Island available.
I suspect most of the unfavorable comments will be from the “Friends of the Swamp Rat” and other similar groups although the human smugglers are probably not happy either as they had to relocate to the west of Brownsville where the river is deeper.
Check it out in streetview This road is literally the end of the world, uh USA in this case. There isn’t much around there to qualify as a point B besides SpaceX and a strip of beech. The nearest town is Brownsville about 20 miles up the road which also looks kinda post-apocaliptic. I guess it’s just a couple of folks that are disturbed while going to their favorite deserted beech. And maybe some angry scorched scorpions.
Too wet for scorpions, but rattlesnakes call it home along with your usual assortment of biting flies.
And, yet, Sander, when looking at Mary’s coverage of events there always seems to be traffic passing in front of her cameras. Stay safe, Paul.
SpaceX has hundreds of people working at Boca Chica. Almost all the traffic you see in BCG Mary’s video footage is SpaceX people driving from one end of the property to the other.
Plenty of birds in the videos. It may scare them with engines firing and explosions, but they come back. It is against Federal law to harass migrating birds. I do not think sea gulls I see are migratory. I wonder if Red Birds come down in the Winter? I have birds that are Grey with a Black cap. They get upset,me too, when the neighbors shoot for several hours in a row. I hide in my Concrete block house. They fly away, but come back. They are about due to fly in as it is getting cold in Min. They have a Ma call and will answer if I imitate their call. Nice friendly bird. Don’t know if they come to this site.That is the only contact I have with them, except eye. I have taught Dragonflies to respond by moving their head if I move my head up and down or sideways. Wild pets.
Isn’t SpaceX planning to use 20-mile offshore platforms?
My vote is for SpaceX to keep running at full speed. If it were up to the environmentalists nothing would get done in the USA. All our manufacturing would be outsourced to countries like China who have near zero environmental protections with massive human rights abuses and the resulting impact would be exponentially worse.
The original 2014 EIS states the impact evaluated is of up to 12 launches per year, and that “within the 12 launch operations per year, SpaceX may elect to have permitted launches of smaller reusable suborbital launch vehicles from this proposed site.”
Sure. Let’s go ahead and drive the most innovative Aerospace company to set up shop somewhere else. I’m sure New Zealand would host them.
International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) prevents that. Because of ballistic missiles and spy satellites, most space technology is treated as “munitions”, which are export-restricted. SpaceX can’t move to another country.
Depends on the country they want to move to. And it should be noted U.S. DoD satellites have already been launched from New Zealand.
Maybe not. Rocket Lab has also had its problems with enviro-wackos in Middle Earth.
Yes, they are strong down there.
“Under an EA, the review could bypass the public.”
I don’t think that’s accurate. It is possible to exit the EA process without a public comment period… but only by going into an EIS (as opposed to a FONSI), and there’s no way out of the EIS without public comment.
A public comment period is required if the EA process is to end with a FONSI.
So there will be public input, regardless of how the EA process ends.
Parts of the earth don’t get much more barren and useless than Texas. If not there, where?
Ouch!
California these days.
Are ULA, Northrop Grumman and Boeing and everything Internet Backbone provider funding the environmentalists? Could it be that they are trying to be good citizens and protect the environment?
Love to see someone Follow The Money…
NO ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT. In fact, they’ve moved to methane based fuels which are significantly cleaner, are testing small scale at this time, and are keeping everything within the existing land boundaries they puchased. A Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy launch would be much more disruptive than the work they’re doing now.
Yes, It won’t be until Super Heavy starts launching Starships into orbit they will have a major impact. And they should have the offshore launch platforms built by then. A ocean front condo in South Padre should give some good views.
First super heavy orbital flight will not be from offshore.
And even if it was, there will be other greeners concerned about marine life. Musk has many enemies with money.
Musk has, and has had, a lot of enemies in a lot of places – especially Congress. His enemies failed to knock him off when he was a lot poorer and weaker than he is now. He also has – and will continue to have – a friend in the White House. There are only three men with more money than Elon and all three are enemies of Donald Trump. And when it comes to people with money, Musk has a lot of friends as well as enemies.