Environmental advocacy groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, have called on federal agencies to halt the launch of SpaceX Starbase rockets off the coast of Boca Chica, South Texas.
In the letter, they pointed to recently reported environmental damage in government protected areas around the site.
“A report dated June 6, 2024, issued by the Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program, shortly after SpaceX’s fourth rocket launch, reported extensive damage to the nests of migratory birds in Boca Chica,” explained the letter, and was written to. many agencies, including the US Department of the Interior (DOI).
A report cited in the letter reports that every nest protected by the federal Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program monitored on the Boca Chica beach had no eggs or damaged eggs after starting on the 6 June.
“We now have irrefutable, irrefutable evidence of a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA),” said Eric Glitzenstein, director of litigation for the Center for Biological Diversity and the one of the signatories of the letter, in an interview with TPR.
Glitzenstein believed that the reported damage represented an environmental violation, which he thought would stop Starbase from starting under US law.
In May 2023, Glitzenstein represented the signatories in a lawsuit accusing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of failing to produce a proper environmental assessment of the Starbase project before it was built.
He explained: “The letter is designed to achieve two things. And it relates to the charges we have now in the case. It is designed to alert the government that we are seeing crimes going on. And it reinforces our argument that we’ve been making now in the case for months: that environmental testing is woefully inadequate. ”
Glitzenstein believed the Starbase case represented an illegal relationship between SpaceX and government regulatory agencies.
He added: “This is happening at an alarming rate. “I think here we have a kind of cooperative situation. And I think that participation situation and relationships are clear violations.”
The original lawsuit sought a court order to compel the FAA to do what it has never done — a full environmental impact statement on SpaceX’s activities at Starbase.
Currently, environmental advocacy groups are awaiting the court’s decision on their request to expand the case to include what Glitzenstein calls “significant damage to the environment and the environment” since the initial filing of the case.
Glitzenstein said they will also add the US Fish and Wildlife Service as a defendant in the lawsuit, pending court approval.
SpaceX is currently seeking approval from the FAA to start 25 launches a year from the Rio Grande Valley and land its Super Heavy payload right on the shore of the launch tower, rather than into the Gulf of Mexico.
The FAA must take input from the public before it can make those approvals.
Space X did not respond to TPR’s request for comment, nor did the organizations targeted in the letter.
FAA public opinion
Rio Grande Valley residents can share their thoughts with the FAA at the following events in August.
- South Padre Island Convention Center
Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024 – 1 pm to 3 pm and 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm - Port Isabel Event & Cultural Center
Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024 – 1 pm to 3 pm and 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
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