Texas environmental regulators will decide Oct. 7 whether people living near a planned biogas plant in Ellis County get a formal hearing before the state lets it spray treated waste across 4,553 acres of farmland.
The plant would take food-waste slurry and cow manure, run it through sealed tanks that capture the methane, and sell the gas into a pipeline. What is left over is a liquid the applicants describe as fertilizer: about 56,000 gallons a day, held in a 12-million-gallon lagoon and hauled by tanker truck to corn, Bermuda grass and hay fields scattered as far as 11 miles away in Ellis and Navarro counties. The applicants are two land-and-cattle companies and a limited liability company registered in Weston, Massachusetts.
The commissioners are not voting on the permit. They are voting on whether to send it to a contested-case hearing, the trial-like proceeding that is the only real chance opponents get to cross-examine an applicant’s engineers under oath. Who asked for that hearing is not in the posted notice, and the agency has not published the backup file that would name them. The state did hold a public meeting on the permit in Waxahachie in September 2025. Public Citizen, an advocacy group critical of the agency, counted 52 hearing requests before the commissioners in 2025 and says they denied 40 percent of them.
Three more contested wastewater permits sit on the same agenda, in Hunt, Williamson and Burnet counties. Behind them is the enforcement docket: 56 agreed and default orders, 21 of them air-quality cases against names including Exxon Mobil, Formosa Plastics, Phillips 66, LyondellBasell and Chevron Phillips Chemical. The penalties are not in the notice. The agency publishes a docket total after the vote, not before.
The commission takes all of this up without a permanent chief. Kelly Keel left the executive director’s job Oct. 2 to run the Texas Association of Business, and no successor has been announced. The agency also owes Gov. Greg Abbott a report Oct. 19 on how it is carrying out his order pausing every permit sought by a data center project, which he issued Sept. 21 and widened to cover air and water permits statewide.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 9:30 AM, Wednesday, October 7, 2026. TRD 2026005795 was filed September 29.
- Where
- 12100 Park 35 Circle, Building E, Room 201S, Austin.
- Governing body & chair
- Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — three full-time commissioners appointed by the governor to staggered six-year terms. Chairwoman Brooke T. Paup. No seat is vacant.
- Format
- Open meeting, 66 items: four contested permits, 56 enforcement orders, a gifts item, a public comment session and four closed-session items. In person, by Zoom and by phone.
- Live video
- Zoom webinar 834 6873 3260, access code 569789; by telephone (346) 248-7799. Agenda contact Georgia Carroll-Warren, 512-239-3313.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · tceq.texas.gov
Commissioners
- Brooke T. Paup — chairwoman; Austin; named chair January 2025; term to 2027.
- Catarina R. Gonzales — Austin; former governor’s policy adviser; term to 2029.
- Tonya R. Miller — Austin; former state public utility counsel; term to 2031.
Roster from the agency’s commissioners page, rechecked September 30 and cross-checked against the governor’s appointment releases, which confirm Paup as chair from January 7, 2025 and Miller’s appointment October 3, 2025. Miller is a former chief executive of the Office of Public Utility Counsel and a former TCEQ air division employee. The agency’s separate commission directory page is stale and still lists a commissioner who left in October 2025; it was not used. Kelly Keel, executive director since December 2023, became president of the Texas Association of Business effective October 2, 2026; the agency has announced no successor, and Steven Schar remains deputy executive director on the September 3 organizational chart. General Counsel Mary Smith and Chief Clerk Laurie Gharis staff the commission. Eli Martinez is listed as interim public interest counsel — that statutorily independent post has not been permanently filled.