Texas parks department fights to withhold draft agenda amid fears of Boca Chica sale to SpaceX

McALLEN — Texas officials tasked with managing and conserving state parks were gearing up this month to cede control of more than 1,000 acres of public land that’s treasured for its natural habitat and beaches along the Gulf coast in Cameron County.

An agenda to discuss the issue behind closed doors, which was shared with The Texas Tribune, was drafted for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s commission meeting to be held in early November.

But after the item was pulled from the final agenda, the commission is staying silent on the issue and fighting to prevent a record of that planned discussion from reaching the public’s eyes.

Texas Parks and Wildlife owns a constellation of nearly 500 parcels of land in Cameron County, according to the county appraisal district. One of the largest plots is Boca Chica State Park, which is roughly 1,060 acres near SpaceX’s operations.

Elon Musk’s rocket company has increasingly acquired more land near the park over the last decade. This has stoked fears among locals and environmentalists that the richest man in the world will seize more — or full — control of a place that the community sees as their own.

On Oct. 19, the Tribune requested the draft agenda that listed the discussion after Texas Monthly reported the commissioners were expected to discuss the sale of 1,300 acres of land, purportedly to SpaceX, behind closed doors.

However, Texas Parks and Wildlife, a state agency tasked with managing and conserving natural areas for future generations, on Friday asked the Attorney General’s office to block the release of the draft agenda.

The Tribune independently reviewed the drafted agenda language for the planned closed-door discussion. The details were provided by a person familiar with the commissioners’ agenda process who asked not to be named for fear of losing their job.

Boca Chica State Park surrounds the site of SpaceX’s ever-growing operations in South Texas, where the company has bought hundreds of acres of land. An acquisition of the remote park would mark a significant increase in SpaceX’s control of land in the Rio Grande Valley, dealing a blow to community and environmental groups who hope to maintain the area’s natural state.

SpaceX employees recently established a new city called Starbase. Just last month, the city completed its annexation of more than 7,100 acres of land that encompasses a large portion of Boca Chica State Park. Annexation does not give the city ownership of the area, but it puts that land under the oversight of a city that is mostly led by SpaceX employees.

The parks department has since posted the official agenda for its November meeting, which does not include beginning the public notice process for the “disposition” of Cameron County land as part of its executive session. Commissioners, like most other public officials, are allowed to meet in private to discuss certain matters, so long as they provide notice to the public of those discussions.

The Tribune attempted to contact eight parks and wildlife commissioners, but none returned a request for comment. The Tribune could not immediately obtain contact information for Commissioner Dick Scott. In response to the Texas Monthly article, the agency said the commission is “not considering the sale of the Boca Chica property at its November meeting.”

Gov. Greg Abbott — who is responsible for appointing the commissioners and has received millions of dollars in campaign donations from Musk — said at an Oct. 19 news conference that a sale would not be brought up for a vote “anytime soon.” Abbott’s office has since deferred questions from the Tribune to the parks department. Department staff have not responded to several questions from the Tribune — including whether a sale could happen in the future.

SpaceX has also not responded to a request for comment for this article. Starbase City Administrator Cayetana Polanco did not respond to questions from the Tribune regarding the annexation or sale of the park.

At the Oct. 19 press conference, Abbott said he did not know details of what the commission was planning to discuss and said Texas has opened new parks in recent years. “No state in America has been adding more parkland than what I’ve done and what Texas has done,” Abbott said. “I want to continue to preserve our parkland in the state of Texas.”

In its letter to the attorney general’s office, the department argued the draft agenda mentioning the disposition of Cameron County land is exempt under the open records law that protects the “deliberative process.”

Department attorney Eric Trimble wrote that the draft agenda is “inextricably linked” with the policymaking functions of TPWD.

“Because this record is a preliminary draft of the agenda intended for public release in its final form, it necessarily represents the advice, opinion, and recommendation of the drafter,” he wrote in his letter.

Located about 18 miles east of Brownsville, Boca Chica Beach offered a secluded respite for visitors before Musk chose the area as a testing ground for the company’s rockets. Because the beach is free to access and separated from the commercial beaches of South Padre Island, it has sometimes been referred to as “the people’s beach.” However, because of SpaceX activity, the beach is surrounded by industrial construction sites and is sometimes closed for rocket launches.

Bekah Hinojosa, a Brownsville resident and co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, said SpaceX’s potential purchase of the beach amounted to a hostile takeover.

“They are forcing SpaceX down our throats, but public land is not there for some billionaire to try to buy it and exploit it,” Hinojosa said in a statement.

State Rep. Erin Gamez, a Democrat from Brownsville, said that she and other Texas House Democrats submitted a public information request to the department for all documents related to a potential plan to sell Boca Chica State Park.

“Boca Chica Beach belongs to the people of Texas,” Gamez said in a statement. “It is where families in the Rio Grande Valley have fished, camped, and watched the sun come up over the Gulf for generations, and it is one of the last wild beaches we have left.”

Agendas for the agency’s meetings are prepared by the executive director in cooperation with the commission chair and with input from commissioners, according to the commission’s policies. However, the agency’s public policies do not state who reviews the early drafts and do not explicitly lay out who has the authority to remove an item.

However, the individual who confirmed the veracity of the draft said agenda items are removed frequently and for various reasons before an agenda is completed.

The department has sold or transferred large tracts of public parkland before — but those properties often continued to be preserved as natural areas overseen by other government entities. One of the few instances of an entire state park being sold occurred in 2008 when the agency sold the former Eagle Mountain Lake State Park for $9.2 million. The funds from the sale were used to purchase Palo Pinto Mountains State Park, which opened its doors earlier this year. Eagle Mountain is now owned by the Tarrant Regional Water District and is still a natural area.

State law allows the agency to sell land if ownership of the property is no longer in the best interest of the department, and the money from the sale must go toward improving or acquiring other land that is dedicated to the same purpose as the land that was sold. The sale must also be approved by the commission.

If the commissioners were to take up a sale of Boca Chica State Park in the future, a final vote on whether to approve the sale would have to be taken during the open session of the meeting.

The park is located on the southeastern corner of Texas, just three miles north of the mouth of the Rio Grande. It was acquired by the state in 1994 and consists of more than 1,000 acres of dunes, flats, marshes and coastal grasslands.

Since SpaceX first chose the area to be the site to test its rocket launches in 2014, the company has continued to purchase more land in the vicinity for future development plans.

Musk has also made huge investments in Texas political races — including this election cycle. In Abbott’s latest campaign finance reports in his bid for reelection, Musk donated nearly a fifth of the $26 million Abbott raised from Sept. 25 through Oct. 24.

Musk also spent nearly $200 million in the U.S. Senate race between Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican, and state Rep. James Talarico, the Democrat. The donations went to political action committees that support Paxton’s campaign.

SpaceX’s expansion efforts have received pushback from environmental groups and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, who consider the land of Boca Chica to be sacred.

Together, the groups have attempted to block the previous sale or exchange of land to SpaceX by the state and federal government. That includes an exchange of land between SpaceX and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The groups sued to stop the federal agency from giving SpaceX 715 acres of land in a nearby wildlife refuge in exchange for 683 acres of private land near another refuge. Last month, however, a federal judge denied their request for an injunction, allowing the land swap to go through.

The Nature Conservancy in Texas, a nonprofit that aims to conserve land and bodies of water, purchased Boca Chica State Park in 1992, then conveyed the property to Texas Parks and Wildlife two years later.

James McGuire, state director for the Nature Conservancy, said lands that were acquired for conservation and public use should continue to serve those purposes.

“Boca Chica State Park provides enduring benefits for wildlife, habitat connectivity and outdoor recreation, while helping preserve the unique character of our Texas coast,” McGuire said in a statement.

“As development pressures mount in Texas, maintaining protections for remaining natural areas is becoming increasingly important,” he added. “We hope these values—rooted in conservation—play an essential role in any discussions regarding future ownership or management of Boca Chica.”

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