The Texas Commission for Environmental Quality has struggled to keep up with enforcement claims amid years of cuts to the state environmental agency’s budget,according to a recent study.

When adjusted for inflation, TCEQ’s budget was cut by roughly one-third between 2010 and 2024, even as the number of regulated industrial facilities in the state increased, according to an analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project.

The agency in 2010 had a budget of $539 million. The agency most recently worked on a $407 million budget in 2024.

That reduction coincides with a case backlog TCEQ faces. As of August, the agency reported a backlog of 1,480 enforcement cases.

In some cases, claims remain untouched for several years, said Kathryn Guerra, a former TCEQ employee who now works as an agency watchdog with the nonprofit group Public Citizen.

“Historically, the agency’s own enforcement policy was to hold enforcement cases for several years,” said Guerra, who also worked with EIP for their Texas analysis. “And that unfortunately created for the TCEQ a really extensive backlog of pretty complex cases. In one instance, very recently, we saw an enforcement case go before the commissioners for approval, that was 10 years of enforcement action.”

According to the TCEQ, of the 9,198 complaints filed in 2025, just 6% of claims were investigated within five days. Nearly 55% of claims took a month or more to address.

That could leave some communities without recourse, said Andrew Quicksall with SMU’s environmental health and compliance quality program.

“It’s like any other sort of enforcement or investigation that you may do,” Quicksall said. “Eventually things get backlogged to a point where you can’t address them. And we have those problems where we have environmental claims that go without investigation because the backlog is so large.”

Quicksall also said cuts at the federal level have also strained the TCEQ’s enforcement bandwidth. In the past, the EPA would help investigate state claims, but as the federal agency faces its own cuts, state cannot rely as much as in year prior.

The EIP’s report also found that during the last legislative session, TCEQ requested nearly $60 million in additional funding and over 150 new staff positions to address its growing workload.

Following the 2025 Legislative Session, lawmakers only approved part of TCEQ’s $60 million and increased staffing request only granting the agency 67 new positions and a $47 million budget.

That limited funding can shape how vigorously the agency pursues enforcement, Guerra said.

“TCEQ has discretion to implement its own enforcement policies, and we’re seeing those policies be very lenient towards industry,” he said. “The agency can be its own worst enemy with those enforcement policies because they’ve created a really complex backlog of cases by just holding them. Ultimately, what that means is that the communities that are suffering from environmental harm are not seeing any relief.”

TCEQ declined to provide a comment for this story, but the agency did send its annual enforcement policy report. In that report the agency says nearly a third of complaints are never investigated by the TCEQ but are either referred to another agency or are closed because of insufficient information.

The agency does acknowledge in its report that it has steered away investigators from enforcing new complaints because they were assigned to reducing its backlog.

Texas has seen a boom in industry and population in recent years. Advocates warn that if those trends continue, the reduced TCEQ budget may not be able to keep up with new enforcement claims in both existing and new sectors like data centers coming into the state.

In North Texas, Google already has two data centers in Red Oak and Midlothian with plans to build two more centers in the coming years. Google alone plans to invest $40 billion in Texas over the next two years. Other companies have also made plans in recent months, with millions of dollars coming to the state.

While state leaders have been eager to bring in these facilities, the massive centers use a significant amount of energy and water.

TCEQ, in a letter to the state legislature, warned increases in permits and new technologies like AI data centers could strain the agency’s operation.

“Without additional resources, it will be difficult for TCEQ to meet the increasing demands placed on the agency, including emerging technologies, and maintain state primacy for many of its programs.” the agency told lawmakers ahead of this year’s session.

Guerra worries growing industry could strain the already stretched investigators.

“I’m very concerned about the TCEQ’s capacity to regulate the industries it presently regulates and with this really booming expansion of AI and data centers that, by nature, take up significant resources and thereby need regulating,” said Guerra.

Despite seeing a marginal increase in the past few years, the TCEQ is not positioned to handle growing demand, according to SMU’s Quicksall.

“Our population is exploding,” Quicksall said. “And that’s kind of a hidden issue here. We should be increasing [the budget] because of our increasing population. These state budget numbers that come out are not per capita of the total budget. But of course, our emissions, our environmental needs, roughly, are per capita. And so while you see the last three and now four years as increases, in reality, we’ve only just now gotten back to where we were 15 years ago.”

Emmanuel Rivas Valenzuela is KERA’s breaking news reporter. Got a tip? Email Emmanuel at erivas@kera.org.

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