Fear in New Sweden: Residents fight back against concrete plant plans in heart of Texas

NEW SWEDEN — Chat Lerma can see for miles from the window above her kitchen sink.

Livestock dots the hilly Travis County countryside out there, where acres of farmland take on the colors of their planted crops, stitching together a colorful patchwork of greens, yellows and beiges between the few thin farm roads. Only a handful of homes and a photogenic church, with its 104-foot copper steeple and white facade, break up the rural hills.

The picturesque view was the point. When she and her husband bought the property in 1982, they built their home themselves — somehow without a nail gun, she often says with a chuckle — and made real a floorplan with copious windows to allow for the best views.

In the front yard, a wooden plank in the ground underneath a shady tree affectionately calls the home “The Big House." That is because the Lermas’ children built and moved into their own homes on the property once they grew up. Now, the sounds of Lerma’s grandchildren playing outside can be heard over her goats and chickens most mornings.

“I always wanted to be out in the country. This was kind of my dream,” Lerma, 66, said of their home in northeastern Travis County. The Lermas live in New Sweden, a small community about 5 miles from Manor. The unincorporated area earned its name nearly 150 years ago when Swedish immigrants settled there and established the New Sweden Lutheran Church, which maintains an active congregation today.

The area is one of the last stretches of rural countryside left in mostly urban Travis County, where explosive growth in Austin and urban sprawl have bled into surrounding counties. For years, many residents of New Sweden have anticipated the expansion would reach them one day.

Some say that day is now here.

This summer, the rural community learned of plans to build two concrete batch plants — a type of industrial facility popping up across urban and rural areas in Texas that combines raw materials such as sand, water, aggregate and cement to create ready-mix concrete — about a mile away from the historic church, which is often called the "most photographed church in Texas."

The proposal, put forward by Five Star Concrete, has sparked concern from residents about air pollution, noise and whether the plant would be the beginning of an industrial buildup in the area. Others have raised concerns about the condition of the roads, worried that near-constant use by heavy cement mixers and trucks carrying raw materials could tear apart New Sweden's snaking county roadways that have brought avid cyclists to the area again and again.

For Lerma, the distinct character of New Sweden could be at stake.

"It will change the landscape of the whole area," she said recently in her kitchen. "There's still that little glimmer of hope that maybe it won't happen, but I think we'll just have to wait and see."

The opposition culminated on Aug. 9, when more than 60 people filled a Pflugerville hotel’s assembly hall for a public hearing hosted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Nearly all of the attendees pleaded with the agency to reject Five Star Concrete's application for an air quality permit, which would regulate the company's emissions of particulate matter.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, prolonged inhalation of particulate matter can cause health issues, including irregular heartbeat, aggravated asthma and premature death in people with heart or lung disease.

In April, Houston's chief environmental science officer in that city's health department, Loren Hopkins, said fine particulate matter from concrete batch plants can cause those symptoms, according to a city memo detailing Hopkin's testimony in support of proposed legislation regarding concrete batch plants.

The owner of Five Star Concrete, Les Garrett, fielded questions from attendees during the public hearing, but he declined to speak with the American-Statesman afterward about his company's plans or the community’s opposition. Messages left with the company’s dispatch center requesting an interview were not returned.

TCEQ issued the registration for the permit on Sept. 13, Ricky Richter, a TCEQ spokesperson, said in a written statement. Any person can file a motion to overturn — which would be considered by TCEQ's three commissioners — within 23 days after the mailing date of the notice of the signed permit. Should the commission not act on the motion to overturn within 45 days of the mailing date, the request would be denied.

What will the impact of the concrete batch plants be?

Though the public hearing was centered on the air permit application, most of the community's inquiries were about the day-to-day operations and scope of the proposed facilities, including how much new truck traffic could come to the quiet countryside.

Trucks bring in raw materials to concrete batch plants and move products from the plant to their intended delivery point, often up-and-coming residential or commercial developments or infrastructure projects like highways, bridges and parking lots. On average, a ready-mix concrete batch plant employs 10 to 20 trucks that make a total of 75 trips per day combined, according to the Texas Aggregates & Concrete Association.

If approved, Five Star Concrete’s two proposed concrete batch plants will be on a 32-acre plot near the intersection of Manda Carlson and Jacobson roads, Garrett said while answering questions from the community at the public hearing. He projected that 50 mixer loads and 60 to 70 other support trucks would come in and out of the facility per day.

What developments the plants would feed was unclear, but Garrett said contractors with the Texas Department of Transportation have been among his customers. Five Star Concrete operates plants in Uhland, Georgetown and Hutto, according to the company’s website. Online TCEQ records show the company is seeking permits for new locations in the New Sweden area and outside of Salado in Bell County.

The latest effort marks Five Star Concrete's third application seeking the permit for its New Sweden location. The company's first application was submitted in early February but was withdrawn that same day. The second, resubmitted later that same month, was withdrawn on June 7 due to insufficient notice requirements, Richter said.

TCEQ has the power to levy fines when facilities release pollutants into the air, water or land that surpass the acceptable thresholds the agency designed to safeguard people’s well-being and the environment. TCEQ records show Five Star Concrete has not been subject to fines, according to TCEQ spokesperson Victoria Cann.

State-level changes to permitting for concrete batch plants

As Texas’ population continues to grow, so too does the need for roads, bridges and sidewalks. In the last five years, Cann said TCEQ has authorized more than 900 concrete batch plants — making up a large chunk of the agency's permitting workload.

Across the state, communities in which concrete batch plants have popped up have demanded that TCEQ strengthen its environmental regulations around the facilities. In June, TCEQ proposed a number of changes to the standard air quality permit typically sought by companies, including lower production limits, dust reduction and setting a minimum distance requirement from nearby communities.

Richter, the TCEQ spokesperson, said the agency is tentatively planning to bring those changes before TCEQ's three-commissioner board for consideration early next year. If approved, the updated requirements would apply to all new applications and would require an owner or operator of any existing concrete batch plants to operate under the new amended requirements no later than two years after the effective date or the renewal date of their registration.

However, these changes would not apply to Five Star Concrete's proposal in New Sweden. The company is seeking an air permit with what TCEQ calls "enhanced controls," meaning the company agrees to abide by additional protective measures — including positioning the facility with a further setback, or distance from the front, side and rear of the property lines — that go above what is required for a standard permit.

As a result of seeking this type of permit, some options are off the table for New Sweden residents. For example, TCEQ will not consider whether to grant any residents a contested case hearing. If granted a hearing, the company's application would be referred to the independent State Office of Administrative Hearings to be evaluated in a process that resembles a civil trial. The state office would then make a recommendation to TCEQ's commissioners on whether the permit should be issued.

Adrian Shelley, director of the Texas arm of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, said companies sometimes opt for the "enhanced controls" permits because the additional safeguards are relatively easy to add and rule out the possibility of a contested case hearing that can stretch the process out by six months or more — during which administrative judges with the State Office of Administrative Hearings could ultimately recommend against TCEQ issuing the permit.

"The enhanced controls are not an incredibly tall order and removes some probability out of the equation," Shelley, who attended the Aug. 9 public hearing, told the Statesman.

Both the standard permit and the permit with enhanced controls have a "no visible emissions” standard, though the enhanced control permit’s record-keeping requirements are much reduced, according to a University of Texas guide to air quality permitting for concrete batch plants.

Questions about public notification for the proposal

Mariza Sanchez moved from Austin to New Sweden six years ago, thinking the rural countryside might be where she and her husband would build their dream home one day.

Though whether they will build a new home in New Sweden remains to be seen, Sanchez achieved a different dream of hers in January when she started serving exotic shaved ice and Mexican food from her food truck, called La Fuente, next to her home.

"It took us five years to put it together, but (we wanted) to do something good for the community and try to find and possibly build our forever home here," Sanchez, 39, told the Statesman. "But now, that depends on if they actually put that concrete plant here or not."

Sanchez attended the Aug. 9 public hearing but had not planned to speak out against the proposal, she said. However, when she noticed she was one of only a few Hispanic people to attend, she felt obligated to say something. She questioned whether there had been sufficient outreach to the Hispanic community in and around New Sweden.

"It was surprising," Sanchez said of the meeting. "I'm pretty sure that, if they had known, they would have come. If they had heard about it, they would have said something to unite with the community of New Sweden and the people from the church."

About 75% of residents within a 5-mile radius of the proposed plants are people of color and have limited English speaking, according to public data from EJSCREEN, an online environmental justice screening and mapping tool created by the EPA.

TCEQ is required to put a notice in a local newspaper for such public hearings. For the Aug. 9 hearing, TCEQ published notices in the Statesman and El Mundo, a Spanish-language newspaper distributed in the Austin area, Richter said.

The applicant — Five Star Concrete in this case — selects the location for the public hearing, though there are some requirements for the venue, Richter said. The venue must be located within the same county as the proposed site, he said.

This year, after a yearlong review of TCEQ's effectiveness by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, state lawmakers made a number of recommendations to TCEQ, including that the agency should increase the notice it gives the public about its meetings and the period during which people can comment on agency matters after the end of a public meeting.

Should the concrete plants get the go-ahead from TCEQ, Sanchez said she would likely move elsewhere, though she would keep her New Sweden property and keep her business open.

Cyclists worry about impacts to roads

As a fervent cyclist, Garner Vogt favors the open countryside in the New Sweden area for his near-daily bike trips.

It was on one of those trips more than 35 years ago that he found where he and his wife, Patty, would live and later raise their children: an old, seemingly abandoned Victorian home with a "For Sale" sign out front. Moving from a garage apartment in Austin at the time, the two now-retired education administrators traded in their urban lifestyle for a property hemmed by milo and cotton.

"We just wanted the solitude, the quiet and being able to work in the garden and ride our bikes," Vogt, 64, told the Statesman. "It's just very idyllic."

The area is beloved by cyclists, especially on cooler mornings. The New Sweden Lutheran Church — also a popular rest stop for the cyclists — hosts an annual "Blessing of the Bikes" to kick off the season, where Rev. Hans Lillejord blesses each cyclist to ensure they remain safe while riding.

Vogt said he worries the heavy traffic from the proposed concrete batch plants will make "mincemeat" out of the area's county roads.

"We still see tons and tons of cyclists all the time," Vogt said. "Cyclists on road bikes are going to end up with flats. That makes it much harder."

Some locals may leave New Sweden behind

Moving to New Sweden was the respite Milton Cocke needed.

In 1967, Cocke was drafted into the U.S. Army as a young man. His two-year stint saw him deployed to Vietnam. When he returned to U.S. soil, he started looking for a place to settle down with certain amenities — it needed to be a ways from any cities, have land to start a garden and grow food and have some fresh air.

"It is good therapy. To own a piece of dirt is extremely liberating," Cocke, 75, told the Statesman. "My goal in life was to have a small place where I could be pretty self-sufficient. A lot of veterans need that."

The Jacobson Road property Cocke purchased and built a home on is one of the closest to the site of Five Star Concrete's proposed plants — just over half a mile away. If the plants are built, Cocke said he'll likely be able to see the facility through a window near his kitchen table.

Cocke said he and his wife, Lynda, are considering moving away. While he said he understands and respects Five Star Concrete's desire to expand his business, he does not think the facilities would "fit" in the community.

Cocke worries he is close enough to the site that the beeping of trucks and cement mixers could keep him from sleeping. During the Aug. 9 public hearing, the owner of Five Star Concrete, Garrett, said the vehicles used by the company are quiet enough that people could maintain a conversation next to them while the machines are in use.

But Cocke was skeptical. To test his theory, he drove his truck to the road alongside where the plants could be built and laid on the horn to find out whether his wife could hear it from their home.

"You could hear it here," Cocke said.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: New Sweden Texas near Austin fights concrete plant plans