The three commissioners who run the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality will meet Aug. 26 with the air permit for a proposed ammonia plant at Ingleside as the first item on a 63-item agenda. It is the only item on the list that has already been through a contested case hearing.
Ingleside Clean Ammonia Partners, a venture of Enbridge and Yara Clean Ammonia, wants three air permits to build ammonia manufacturing, storage and loading works on Lexington Boulevard in San Patricio County. The company markets it as Project YaREN and puts capacity at 2.8 million metric tons a year. In October 2025 the applicant itself asked that the case go straight to the State Office of Administrative Hearings, where a preliminary hearing opened Dec. 4 and the evidence was taken later. What the commission takes up Aug. 26 is the judges’ written recommendation and a proposed order, along with the public comments and the executive director’s answers to them. The notice does not say what the judges recommended.
The state decision arrives after the local one went the other way. At a packed meeting in the Ingleside High School cafeteria on Dec. 9, 2025, a council member’s motion to approve the second reading of a special use permit for the project drew no second, and the permit failed. Supporters at that meeting argued the plant would diversify a local economy battered since the naval station closed. Opponents, among them Ingleside teachers and students, said the risk to neighbors was too great. The two approvals are separate, and a city zoning decision does not bind the state commission.
The other 62 items are mostly enforcement. Forty-eight are proposed orders against permit holders, 41 of them settlements the companies have agreed to and seven default orders entered when a company did not answer; among the named respondents are Exxon Mobil in Harris County and CITGO Refining and Chemicals in Nueces County, both of them agreed orders. The notice gives statutes and counties but no penalty figures and no findings. Commissioners also take up a rule stretching the first emissions inspection for new rental cars from two years to three, a petition from El Paso inspection stations asking to raise the fee they may charge, and appointments to an irrigation advisory council.
Watch whether the commission adopts the judges’ recommendation on the ammonia permit as written, changes it, or sends the case back.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 9:30 a.m. CT Wednesday, August 26, 2026. The notice was filed August 18.
- Where
- 12100 Park 35 Circle, Building E, Room 201S, Austin.
- Governing body & chair
- Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — three full-time commissioners named by the governor to staggered six-year terms, with a two-term limit. Brooke T. Paup, chairwoman. Kelly Keel is executive director.
- Format
- In person, with a Zoom webinar and a call-in line. The agenda is published in English and Spanish, and the notice points to a general information section on registering to speak and requesting an interpreter.
- Live video
- TCEQ webcasts · Zoom webinar ID 873 0073 7229, access code 059209 · dial-in (346) 248-7799.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · TCEQ agendas
Commissioners
- Brooke T. Paup — chairwoman; designated by the governor.
- Catarina R. Gonzales — commissioner.
- Tonya R. Miller — commissioner; appointed October 2025.
Roster from the agency’s organization chart dated January 15, 2026 and the governor’s appointment announcement, not from the agency’s Office of the Commissioners page, which still lists a former commissioner. Commissioners are full-time state officials based in Austin, and the agency does not publish hometowns. Kelly Keel has been executive director since December 2023; Laurie Gharis is chief clerk. Meeting contact: Georgia Carroll-Warren.