Written by Emily Hynds

Baytown is home to 83,000 people, roughly 1,000 of whom live within one mile of an Exxon petrochemical complex, the Washington Post reports. Some residents call the refinery's smokestacks “dragons” that regularly spew harmful air pollutants and cancer-causing toxics into the air.

Between 2005 and 2016, Exxon reported to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality more than 16,000 violations of environmental laws. But the state fined them only five times in 2021 and 2022, for a total of $156,000. In 2022, Exxon earned a record profit, bringing in $55.7 billion.

For more than a decade, residents and environmental groups have been pushing the oil giant to take responsibility for their pollution. But Exxon has appealed again, dragging the case into a new court to get a previous decision overturned.

'They explicitly argue that citizens should not be allowed to bring wide-ranging enforcement actions, that [this] usurps the role of the government, which betrays exactly what they’re scared of: citizens taking action to enforce the law when government regulators don’t,' said Josh Kratka, a senior lawyer with the National Environmental Law Center and one of the attorneys representing plaintiffs in the case. 'It serves as a warning to anyone who wants to sue Exxon for doing anything.'

Meanwhile, Baytown residents are dealing with damages to their homes, asthma and concerns about cancer while their plants die in their backyards. “I don’t know what the solution is," Sharon Rogers says. "I just want [Exxon] to do the right thing by everybody. It’s awful to have to always live in fear."

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