Plastic pellet pollution is in Galveston Bay and likely accidental, nonprofit says

GALVESTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Earlier this month, Environment Texas, a nonprofit that advocates for clean air and water across the state, hosted a clean-up event at Sylvan Beach. Specifically, volunteers were cleaning up plastic pellets, a kind of microplastic found in Galveston Bay. These tiny little plastic beads, also known as nurdles, are the building blocks used to create plastic products.

Volunteer groups like Environment Texas collected more than 2 million of these pellets along the Gulf Coast. Still, an estimated 10 trillion plastic pellets enter waterways worldwide.

How do they end up in Galveston Bay? Luke Metzger, Environment Texas' executive director, says they get there typically by accident.

"Companies will discharge wastewater, often legally, and the pellets can find their way into the wastewater as part of the manufacturing process. They're not intentionally doing this, but they're being careless about it," Metzger said, claiming that this is likely a violation of the Clean Water Act.

Plastic pellet pollution's impact goes beyond an eyesore along beaches. It can impact habitats for marine life and the fishermen and women who rely on the bay for their way of life.

Diane Wilson, a former shrimp farmer documenting years of plastic pellet pollution in Lavaca Bay, claims the pollution changed her entire town.

"My community is dead," Wilson told ABC13. "The town is boarded up. They don't sell webbing anymore. They don't sell cable. They don't sell anything related to shrimping, or fishing, or welding. It literally not only kills the sea life out there, (but) it affects the fish houses, the shrimpers in the shrimp boats, and the communities."

In 2019, Wilson was on the winning side of a $50 million lawsuit against Formosa Plastics. She and others claimed the company knowingly dumped billions of plastic pellets and other chemicals into Lavaca Bay. After this, Wilson told ABC13 she sank her shrimp boat on the Formosa discharge pipe that destroyed the local fishing grounds.

This year, Environment Texas has helped bring forth new bipartisan legislation called the "Plastic Pellet Free Waters Act." This bill would authorize the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set new rules to prevent pellets from being discharged into waterways, making the act illegal.

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