Teaming Up To Tap Into Texas Regulatory Capture

Inside Story: Teaming Up To Tap Into Texas Regulatory Capture

A sweeping investigation uncovered how Texas state agencies routinely shield the fossil fuel industry from accountability, enabling widespread environmental harm and public health risks. The multipart collaboration between Inside Climate News and The Texas Tribune, “State of Denial: How Texas’ Environmental Regulators Enable Big Oil and Other Polluters,” exposed how Texas regulators used a fictitious “one-mile rule” to suppress public complaints, downplayed cancer risks and allowed lax oversight of oil field wastewater spills.

Judges for the Society of Environmental Journalists’ 23rd Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment, who awarded the project second place for Outstanding Investigative Reporting, Small, praised the investigation for its “ambition and thoroughness,” calling it “a stellar series” that revealed how state agencies sidestep science, law and accountability.

Despite resistance from state agencies like the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the series used data analysis, public records and strong field reporting by the team of reporters: Peter Aldhous, Dylan Baddour, Alejandra Martinez and Martha Pskowski. Judges also praised the collaboration between newsrooms and the smart use of data as a model for impactful environmental journalism.

SEJournal Online interviewed Pskowski by email about the project. Here’s the conversation, lightly edited for clarity and style.

Martha Pskowski speaks to journalism students in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, in November 2024. Photo: Courtesy YoCiudadano

SEJournal: How did you get your winning story idea?

Martha Pskowski: My colleague Dylan Baddour and I began looking into regulatory failures in Texas at the urging of our editor, Vernon Loeb. The series picked up steam over the course of 2023, as we talked to environmental lawyers, advocates and residents. My stories on spills of produced water, an oil field waste product, came out of an offhand comment at a conference in Midland. When I learned that, unlike other states, Texas does not require these spills to be reported, I thought there was an important story to be told.

SEJournal: What was the biggest challenge in reporting the pieces and how did you solve that challenge?

Pskowski: The biggest challenge for my reporting on the impacts of produced water spills in rural Texas was building trust with people impacted by the problem. I found numerous lawsuits where property owners claimed damages from spills. But getting plaintiffs to speak with me was challenging. While many people in the oil fields will privately share their complaints about the oil and gas industry, they are worried about blowback if they criticize the industry publicly. I worked around this by relying heavily on public records: lawsuit filings, inspection reports and information that's required to be reported to the state legislature. I appreciate the residents and landowners who have the courage to speak out about these problems.

SEJournal: What most surprised you about your findings?

Pskowski: We were surprised how much of our reporting was "open secrets" in Texas. Environmental advocates had long suspected the state regulator used an unofficial "one-mile rule" to limit contested cases, but no one had reported it out like my colleague Dylan did. Produced water spills are ubiquitous throughout the state, but they had not received much attention in the media.

SEJournal: How did you decide to tell the series and why?

 

‘The common thread was always

the ways in which state regulators

abdicate responsibility and maintain

the status quo for polluting industries.’

 

Pskowski: The series grew organically during 2023. As we began to publish, we got more tips to follow up on. The common thread was always the ways in which state regulators abdicate responsibility and maintain the status quo for polluting industries. We weren't afraid to get in the weeds and explain the technicalities of environmental regulation. We backed up anecdotal evidence with data analysis, thanks to data journalist Peter Aldhous.

SEJournal: Does the issue covered in your project have disproportional impact on people of low income, or people with a particular ethnic or racial background? What efforts, if any, did you make to include perspectives of people who may feel that journalists have left them out of public conversation over the years?

Pskowski: Industrial pollution in Texas disproportionately impacts Black and Latino communities, as shown in our reporting along the Gulf Coast. Our reporting has also focused on rural areas, where residents struggle to get the attention of policymakers, and local media has been hollowed out. Dylan, the Tribune's Alejandra Martinez and I are Spanish speakers, which deepens our reporting in Texas.

SEJournal: What would you do differently now, if anything, in reporting or telling the series and why?

Pskowski: I would have enlisted the help of data reporter, Peter, earlier in the process. At first, I thought I could process the data I received on my own. I was wrong and spent unnecessary time wrangling spreadsheets. Getting a data reporter involved earlier can also head off problems with the quality of the data you're getting back in records requests and to clarify your requests before submitting them.

SEJournal: What lessons have you learned from your project?

 

‘Texas regulators are not forthcoming

with journalists. … But they're required

by law to provide records and that was

the foundation of our reporting.’

 

Pskowski: Records requests get the goods! Texas regulators are not forthcoming with journalists. We didn't get a single face-to-face interview with staff at either agency (the Railroad Commission or TCEQ). But they're required by law to provide records and that was the foundation of our reporting. Seek out sources like lawyers who can walk you through the intricacies of permitting and where to find documents.

Collaboration is crucial. Working with Alejandra at the Tribune allowed us to include reporting in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and helped our stories reach a larger audience. We're lucky to share resources with other nonprofit outlets in Texas, like the Tribune, and view each other as colleagues, not competitors.

SEJournal: What practical advice would you give to other reporters pursuing similar projects, including any specific techniques or tools you used and could tell us more about?

Pskowski: Each state's regulatory agencies are different, but learning how to navigate the online repositories of the TCEQ and RRC was extremely time-consuming. Find people who can show you the shortcuts to the information you need. Texas has 254 counties, so it's a struggle to find court cases and search in each jurisdiction. The website was an invaluable tool in helping identify relevant court cases statewide. See if your state has a similar tool. Comb through LexisNexis or Newspapers.com to find relevant reporting from years back. You never know when a nugget in an old news story can turn into a promising reporting thread.

SEJournal: Could you characterize the resources that went into producing your prizewinning reporting (estimated costs, i.e., legal, travel or other; or estimated hours spent by the team to produce)? Did you receive any grants or fellowships to support it?

Pskowski: The biggest expenses for this project were travel and data analysis. Dylan and I worked on this project from April through December 2023, and each month, I estimate we had around $1,000 in expenses. Inside Climate News supported the project every step of the way, and we did not have outside funding. There were some weeks we were exclusively working on this project, and other weeks we set it aside to do short-turn stories.

Martha Pskowski is a reporter for Inside Climate News in El Paso, Texas. She reports on the oil and gas industry, water scarcity and the impacts of climate change. She previously was an environmental reporter at the El Paso Times. She received an M.A. in journalism and Latin American studies from New York University. Martha worked as a freelance journalist in Mexico for the first four years of her career. In her spare time, she is usually running or cycling in the mountains of West Texas.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 10, No. 32. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.