Harris County residents oppose concrete batch plant permit near Jersey Village

More than 1,152 residences sit within one mile of the proposed Heidelberg Materials concrete batch plant near Jersey Village, and neighbors say that makes the permit less a routine business filing than another industrial hit to an already burdened corridor in northwest Harris County.

Heidelberg Materials Southwest, LLC applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for Air Quality Standard Permit Registration No. 182311 for a permanent concrete batch plant at 11206C Gifford Hill Road in Houston, Texas 77041. The company said it wanted to acquire and continue operating an existing site rather than build a new one. TCEQ said it was processing the application in an expedited manner, and the agency scheduled a public meeting on the proposal for April 21, 2026.

Residents who opposed the permit said the health risk did not disappear because the plant already existed. Jayne Larkin, one of the neighbors featured in the debate, said her husband has terminal lung cancer and that the threat from concrete plants felt personal. “It makes me angry because I know what it does,” she said. Concrete batch plants can emit particulate matter, crystalline silica, carbon monoxide and other air toxins tied to respiratory disease and cancer, according to City of Houston legislative materials.

The county attorney’s office also pressed state regulators to deny the permit. Harris County Attorney Jonathan Fombonne cited Heidelberg’s alleged unauthorized equipment, recordkeeping problems, environmental discharges and dust buildup. The county has already sued the company over those issues. In February 2026, Fombonne announced a settlement in two environmental enforcement cases against concrete batch plants operated by the same company, collecting $428,685 in civil penalties and attorneys’ fees and bringing both facilities into compliance with Texas environmental laws.

The opposition around Jersey Village fits into a wider fight over how much industrial activity Harris County and the City of Houston are willing to absorb in the same neighborhoods. County program materials say there are more than 130 concrete batch plants across unincorporated Harris County and the city. Earlier county litigation over state permitting rules said more than 140 concrete batch plants operated inside county borders and that many were clustered in communities with large shares of racial and ethnic minorities, low-resource residents, immigrants and people with limited English proficiency.

Air Alliance Houston materials say the Heidelberg site sits within one mile of eight other concrete batch plants or aggregate facilities, eight Toxic Release Inventory facilities and 13 hazardous waste sites. The same groups have argued that the state permit system still does not fully account for cumulative exposure, especially to crystalline silica, which they describe as a known carcinogen. For families near Gifford Hill Road, the question is whether regulators are measuring the full neighborhood burden before letting another plant keep running.