While Elon Musk looks up, residents down below say his rockets make life unbearable

In 2019, after Musk gave a presentation to residents about his vision for Starship, Pointer said she and her husband “knew we were toast.”

Pointer said she didn’t like the way SpaceX tried to buy residents out through what she called a “ruthless” third-party real estate firm called JLL. 

“They used very intimidating language on some of these poor folks,” she said, noting that properties in Boca Chica Village should have been appraised based on how much it would cost to buy an equivalent beach-bay home somewhere like South Padre Island. “SpaceX hired the right people because they got some of those old folks so scared that they gave it away for far less than it was worth.”

JLL did not respond to a request for comment.

The Pointers held out, having initially been told their property was worth just $70,000 and being offered $210,000.

Pointer said they eventually sold for “substantially more.” Their Boca Chica home is now part of SpaceX’s production shipyard and has been converted into an office dedicated to hazardous environmental safety. 

But Pointer blames state and county officials, not Musk or SpaceX. 

“You don’t blame a corporation for what governments propose and what greedy commissioners and boards allow,” she said, adding that she’s excited about the prospect of space travel and the technology that enables it. 

“There’s no way you can stand in the way of progress you want to see to bring us to an interplanetary world,” she said. “I hope I get to live long enough to see us back on the moon and on Mars. The idea brings tears to my eyes.”

Economic incentives

When SpaceX was first shopping around for locations for its private commercial spaceport in 2011, it negotiated tax breaks and other sweeteners with local and state officials in Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and Texas.

By 2014, Texas won the company’s business and associated promise of jobs and economic development. State and local officials offered Musk’s company about $20 million in financial incentives, including a 10-year county property tax abatement, legal protection from noise complaints and laws altered to close the public beach at Boca Chica during launches, as reported by The Dallas Morning News in 2014.

While the project has brought construction jobs to the Brownsville area, one of the poorest urban areas in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, many community activists question whether it’s bringing sustainable economic development.

“How many of these jobs are long term? Most of the folks are doing contracting work,” said Michelle Serrano, a Brownsville resident and activist. “Is this going to have a sustainable economic impact for our community, or is it more trickle-down economics?”

The SpaceX facilities can be seen from Boca Chica Village, Texas.Verónica G. Cárdenas for NBC News

In a document outlining SpaceX’s environmental and community impacts on the region, submitted to the FAA this year as part of the licensing process, the company states that the proposed development would employ up to 450 full-time workers, many of whom would move to the area from elsewhere, depending on when the expansion is approved. More than a quarter of those in Cameron County, where the spaceport is, live below the poverty threshold, which is more than twice the national average, according to Census Bureau data. 

The document suggests that the main benefit to the community will come from trickle-down effects from SpaceX workers spending part of their earnings on housing, goods and services in the area. Transient SpaceX workers would also spend money on hotels, food and rental vehicles.

The SpaceX facilities are seen behind Airstreams adjacent to the homes in Boca Chica Village, Texas, on Sunday. Verónica G. Cárdenas for NBC News

“While the population under the poverty threshold may not directly benefit through employment and income, it may indirectly benefit as regional economic health is improved through the proposed increase in employment for commercial space exploration activity,” it states. 

“Even if it does result in some local hires, it doesn’t undo the destruction in the community,” said Bekah Hinojosa, another community activist, pointing to the regular closures of the “poor people’s beach” and the displacement of those living in Boca Chica Village. 

Hinojosa pointed to comments made by Musk in 2018, during a news conference after the launch of SpaceX’s reusable Falcon Heavy vehicle. The billionaire was asked by a reporter how soon flights would be going to the moon or Mars. Musk said that test flights would need to take place first, most likely in Boca Chica, “because we’ve got a load of land with nobody around and so if it blows up, it’s cool,” he said.

The comments grated on some of Boca Chica’s residents, who have dealt with shattered windows and debris strewn across the beach and wildlife refuges after these explosions. 

Hinojosa went further, characterizing Musk’s position as “environmental racism.” Musk has an estimated personal wealth of about $310 billion and is the world’s richest man, according to Bloomberg.

“We’re a poor community and a people of color community,” she said, “But he’s trying to erase us and claim that we’re not there.”

Environmental impact

Musk’s comments also irked conservationists tasked with protecting the wildlife in the surrounding area, one of America’s most biologically diverse coastal wetlands.

“Musk is a very smart man. But he either was ignorant of the ecology out there or he felt his project was so much more important that it really didn’t matter what he did to the area,” said local environmentalist Jim Chapman. 

Chapman said he is alarmed to see rocket tests and launches taking place in such a “fragile and biologically important area,” adding that while tidal flats “are not very exciting to look at to the casual observer,” there’s a “whole web of life out there,” from algae to tiny crustaceans, that a food chain of birds and animals rely upon.    

“This is a very important area for migratory birds as it’s a huge stopover area,” said Jared Margolis, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, who submitted comments to the FAA questioning the legality of the SpaceX expansion. “Even a power plant would be concerning. But here you have giant rockets powered by methane that tend to explode, causing debris and noise impact, and we want to make sure the impacts are mitigated.”

While the SpaceX launch site is relatively small, covering about 75 acres, it’s sandwiched between delicate, protected tidal flats, wetlands and a much-loved public beach. Not only does the area provide a habitat for migratory birds, including endangered species such as piping plovers and red knots, it’s also one of the only places where the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, the most critically endangered sea turtle in the world, comes ashore to nest. 

Amid the constant construction noise, truck traffic, enormous floodlights over the site and debris from explosions, some species have already dwindled at an alarming rate, said David Newstead, director of the Coastal Bird Program for the Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program, a nonprofit group that works to protect the area’s bays and estuaries.

Newstead conducted a study of the local population of piping plovers, sparrow-sized shorebirds that nest and feed in coastal sand and are protected under the Endangered Species Act. He found that the population halved from 2018 to 2021, correlating closely with the intensity of SpaceX operations in the area.

In addition to the piping plover, the FAA has identified at least nine other endangered species that would be adversely affected by the SpaceX expansion, including the red knot shorebird, northern aplomado falcon, Gulf Coast jaguarundi (a rare wildcat), ocelot and five types of sea turtle.

There are also plenty of unknown impacts to small mammals, reptiles and the marine worms the shorebirds forage from the sediment because of the reverberations through the land from launches and construction activity, Newstead added.  

When one of the Starship prototypes exploded above the launchpad in March, it threw rocket debris five miles away, to the jetties at the southern tip of South Padre Island, as documented by local news media at the time. That prototype had just three Raptor engines. The Starship that SpaceX hopes to get approval to launch from Boca Chica will have at least 29 of them.

source: nbcnews.com