State Regulators Reject Concrete Batch Plant Permit Near Burleson After Three-Year Fight

After a three-year dispute with area residents, Texas regulators have voted down an air quality permit that would have allowed a concrete batch plant to operate in south Tarrant County.

Commissioners of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality voted unanimously on Wednesday to dismiss with prejudice the application filed by J7 Ready Mix LLC. The company had sought to operate a concrete mixer near homes at 5428 Farm to Market 1187 in Burleson, close to Rendon. A dismissal with prejudice means J7 cannot try to obtain an environmental permit for that site again.

Commission chair Brooke T. Paup pointed to the company's failure to formally withdraw its application and take part in the contested case process that residents had requested. She also said J7 did not publish a notice of the preliminary hearing held last year. A permit notice had been published earlier in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, but State Rep. David Cook said in 2023 that J7 had initially acted in bad faith by not meeting public notice requirements. A J7 representative did not respond to the Fort Worth Report's request for comment.

J7 filed its application in May 2023. Months later, more than 200 residents, some living within hundreds of feet of the proposed site, attended a state-hosted meeting to voice opposition. The agency's database shows it received comments from just over 570 people.

Sean Ashman, whose family lives about 20 yards from the originally planned location, said he does not object to concrete mixers in general but does not consider a residential neighborhood a fitting place for industrial work. Residents, including Rendon resident Brandon McElroy, said the plant could harm air quality and public health. Ashman noted the effects would be long term, with pollution, dust and noise even if operations ran eight hours a day, five days a week.

The permit would have covered operations emitting particulate matter between 2.5 and 10 microns in diameter. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, inhaling particles of that size can aggravate asthma, decrease lung function and increase respiratory symptoms.

The case took an unusual turn this spring. As residents prepared for a preliminary hearing scheduled for May, a J7 representative emailed state officials in April to say the company was no longer pursuing the permit, according to official documents. In June, McElroy and 15 others filed a motion asking regulators to dismiss the case and bar J7 from seeking a permit at the same location, saying the process had been "stressful and costly." Days later, an administrative law judge from the State Office of Administrative Hearings recommended denying the permit and barring the company from reapplying for the Burleson site.

McElroy said the fight is not over. Although J7 is blocked from the site, the ruling does not stop other developers. Through his nonprofit, Green Air Solutions, which he founded in 2023 to raise money for residents' legal fees, he and other members plan to meet local legislators. They want to end what they see as a lack of consequences for developers who walk away from permits, and to seek more limits on where industrial operations can be located.

"TCEQ allows these applicants to go about their day. … There's no penalty to them," McElroy said. "And here we are on the hook, having to spend our hard-earned money."