As a small fishing boat bounced across the surface of Corpus Christi Bay, Clara “Cari” Villarreal Varner admired a stretch of wooded coast last June.

For the first time, Varner, a member of the Karankawa Tribe of Texas, was viewing the shoreline of a 3-square-mile area near Ingleside on the Bay, where archaeologists had discovered thousands of Karankawa artifacts in recent decades, including pottery shards, stone tools, and other pieces of evidence that this was once a frequently inhabited settlement.

“We see this beauty,” Varner said. “We can imagine that our ancestors were all … living their lives. And then, fast-forward.”

In the 1800s, many of the Karankawa, a tribe that inhabited much of the Texas coast before the arrival of the Spaniards, were massacred by militiamen and settlers. The survivors, including Varner’s own ancestors, scattered—leaving modern tribal members without a homeland or even any formal state or federal recognition. Now they fear artifacts in their ancestral settlement will be destroyed.

In Varner’s field of view, huge tanker ships were filling up with U.S. crude oil at the Enbridge Ingleside Energy Center, North America’s largest crude oil export terminal. She and other Karankawa people had teamed up with the Coastal Watch Association, a local environmental group, to file a lawsuit to prevent Enbridge Inc.—a Canadian oil and natural gas export giant—from enlarging its terminal to include parts of the ancestral settlement. They lost. In March 2025, the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the group’s lawsuit and greenlit Enbridge’s expansion in Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend v. United States Army Corps of Engineers.

“I feel saddened, I feel angry,” Varner said. “I feel not beaten down, though. I will not—we will not—give up.”

The anti-environment ruling, handed down by two judges appointed by President Donald Trump and a third Republican-appointed judge, was not unusual in federal cases in which Trump appointees participated, according to an analysis of 309 circuit court decisions issued between January 2018 and September 30, 2025. The analysis, by students at Northwestern University for the Texas Observer, focused on decisions by panels that included at least one Trump appointee and that included the words “environment,” “pollution,” or “climate” in all circuits except the 1st, which has no Trump appointees.

“This case reeks of environmental racism.”

More than half—167 of those rulings—were clearly anti-environment. The rulings generally benefited industry or other polluters, diminished environmental protections, or narrowed agencies’ ability to safeguard people and nature. Only a third favored environmental groups or causes; the results in the rest were mixed or unclear.

In his first term, Trump appointed a record-setting 54 federal appellate judges. Circuit judges are nominated by presidents and, if confirmed by the Senate, serve lifetime appointments. This analysis provides an early look at how those appointments will likely reverberate nationwide in terms of dismantling or failing to uphold environmental laws and policy, legal scholars said.

“Long term, it’s going to set a lot of precedent that pushes the law away from environmental protection, which will either lead to more-harmful outcomes for the environment, broadly speaking, or will necessitate the development of new legal and policy approaches,” said Ted Lamm, Associate Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.

In the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, where the Karankawa lost their case, 71 percent of those rulings were anti-environment, the highest percentage among courts in the analysis. During that period, the 5th Circuit—which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi—decided 31 cases.

“All of us that practiced before the 5th Circuit know that with an environmental case, we’re gonna have a hard time, whether it’s during the Biden administration or going all the way back to the Clinton administration,” said Jim Blackburn, a longtime environmental lawyer in Texas who serves as co-director of the Severe Storm Center at Rice University.

Nationwide, many major environmental lawsuits and cases are settled at the circuit level, which handles appeals from district courts, since very few are reviewed by the Supreme Court. 

“I think it’s always been true that the circuit courts aren’t doing the big flashy thing as much,” said Justin Pidot, who served as general counsel for the White House Council on Environmental Quality and is now a law professor at the University of Arizona. “But in terms of just the breadth of litigation that occurs, most of it gets resolved at the circuit court. So they’re incredibly influential.”

In Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend, the Native American and environmental groups argued that the project would have major impacts on environmental and cultural resources.

“Among those impacts are the risk of oil spills and accidents, direct and indirect impacts to seagrasses and the marine life that depend on them, impacts to cultural resources, light pollution, noise pollution, erosion, and air emissions,” reads the lawsuit initially filed in federal district court in Corpus Christi in 2021. The groups also argued that when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the project, it failed to follow requirements of federal laws to sufficiently consider climate change or the negative environmental impact of the export terminal expansion. 

Yet Judge Don Willett, a former Texas Supreme Court justice and a Trump appointee, who wrote the 2025 majority opinion, found that the Corps of Engineers had complied with the court’s narrow interpretation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a 1970 law that governs how agencies assess environmental impacts.

“In our circuit, the Corps’s obligations under NEPA to analyze climate change impacts are limited to ‘discussing relevant factors and explaining its decision,’” Willett wrote. “The Corps’s discussion of climate change here easily meets that standard.”

Enbridge embraced the rulings and underscored the importance of its expansion, which would “add five additional berths for oil tankers and barges, and essentially double its vessel capacity,” according to legal filings. 

“The terminal serves as a critical link in serving U.S. and global energy markets,” Enbridge spokesperson Michael Barnes said in an October email response for this story. “The Army Corps’ staff archaeologist confirmed there would be no effect from the dock project on cultural resources. We believe the district and appellate courts’ decisions were thoughtful and thorough.”

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which handles appeals from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, had the second highest percentage of anti-environment rulings in the analysis—10 of 16 cases or 62.5 percent.

In another case involving Enbridge, two Trump-appointed judges in the 6th Circuit reversed a district court decision in 2020 by ruling in Enbridge’s favor in a case involving its Line 5 pipeline, which carries oil from Wisconsin through Michigan into Ontario, Canada. The plaintiff, the National Wildlife Federation, argued that the company’s plan for responding to potential oil spills did not comply with requirements in the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. An Enbridge spokesman said the 2020 ruling provided “confirmation for all pipeline operators” that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s review was sufficient. 

Varner and her child, who uses the Karankawa name Níktam Kudéch (Illustration by Clay Rodery)

The lone non-Trump appointee on that panel, Gilbert S. Merritt Jr., authored a dissenting opinion, arguing the Trump-appointed judges took an “extremely narrow view” of wildlife and environmental protections. (Merritt, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, died in 2022.)

Trump’s appointees also affected rulings in circuits that traditionally leaned pro-environment, such as the 9th Circuit Court, the nation’s largest appellate court and the busiest for environmental cases. 

For decades, the 9th Circuit had been considered liberal. But, with Trump appointing 11 judges, it’s shifted right. By the end of 2025, 45 percent of the 9th Circuit’s judges had been appointed by Republican presidents, compared with only 28 percent before the first Trump administration.

“It’s historically been one of the two or three most liberal-leaning circuits, and then just the recent Trump run of appointees has just been able to shift the balance of who appointed the bulk of the judges there,” Lamm said.

Out of 70 decisions issued by 9th Circuit panels during the period included in the analysis, 35 percent were anti-environment, compared with 30 percent that favored environmental causes or litigants.

The Trump judges on the 9th have repeatedly weighed in against the environment and local communities, the analysis of opinions showed, including in a 2021 case called Center for Community Action & Environmental Justice v. the Federal Aviation Administration. 

In this case, local residents and environmental groups sued to block a new 600,000-square-foot Amazon cargo facility at San Bernardino International Airport, arguing that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) failed to fully assess air-quality and socioeconomic impacts, as required by federal law. A 9th Circuit panel rejected the claims, ruling that the agency took a “hard look” at emissions and cumulative effects in its environmental review.

In a dissent, Judge Johnnie Rawlinson—the only Democrat-appointed judge on the panel—described San Bernardino as one of the nation’s most polluted corridors, with some of California’s highest asthma rates. Rawlinson said the federal government failed to adequately consider the disproportionate health burdens on San Bernardino’s largely Latino and Black communities in approving the Amazon air cargo hub. She criticized her Republican colleagues’ ruling. 

“This case reeks of environmental racism,” she wrote.

In a response, Trump appointee Patrick Bumatay defended the ruling. “Of course, every judge is entitled to his or her own views, but the dissent’s assertions are unfair to the employees of the FAA and the Department of Justice,” Bumatay wrote.

In Trump’s first presidential term, federal judges often blocked administration efforts to roll back environmental protections. But as Trump has increasingly filled the courts with people who share his views, legal experts said he could have an easier time gutting environmental protections.

“One of the changes now, as compared to in the first Trump administration, is that the courts were quite favorable to environmental plaintiffs in the first Trump administration and are not so favorable to environmental plaintiffs now,” Pidot said.

Legal experts also said shifting the demographics of federal judges tends to stack the deck against environmental plaintiffs. Of the 54 federal appellate judges Trump appointed in his first term, 85 percent were white, and 80 percent were male. 

“I think if you look at the types of people that President Trump is appointing to the federal bench, they are not broadening the federal bench’s lived experiences,” said Robert Weinstock, the director of the Environmental Advocacy Center at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

In Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend, two of the judges on the 5th Circuit panel were white male Trump appointees: Willett and Kurt Engelhardt. The third judge was Edith Jones, a white woman and a Ronald Reagan appointee. 

In the ruling, the judges didn’t mention the Karankawa’s or other Native Americans’ concerns about the destruction of the land that holds artifacts of their forebears. 

Love Sanchez founded the Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend, an intertribal group representing Indigenous people from the Karankawa and other tribes whose traditional lands lie in the Corpus Christi area.

(1st Circuit had no Trump appointees. Credit: Dasha Dubinina)

Sanchez expressed dismay about the prospect of losing that coastline—and artifacts from Indigenous cultures—to an oil export terminal.

“It was so hard,” Sanchez said in an interview in October. “I was very sad. It was a blow, taking the loss because we had been working on stopping Enbridge since 2019 and—I’m sorry. I’m gonna cry talking about it, reliving it.”

Sanchez criticized Enbridge for not reaching out to the Indigenous groups. “They don’t even acknowledge us,” she said.

However, in an email provided for this story, Barnes cited Enbridge’s long record of working with Indigenous groups. “We rely on a collaborative approach in the communities where we operate,” Barnes said. “This includes working with hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America.”

Some community leaders argued that Enbridge’s expansion would be vital for the region’s economic growth, including Mike Culbertson, 68, who has served as president and CEO of the Corpus Christi Regional Economic Development Corporation since 2009. 

Culbertson said he supports the court’s decision to permit the crude oil export terminal expansion because, in his opinion, it would affect Ingleside’s industrial corridor, not residential areas. “We did not believe that [expansion] was encroaching on anybody,” Culbertson said. “It was the same use, essentially, for what they were asking for, and it only increases the economic wealth of the region.”

On a drive down State Highway 361 in May 2025, Culbertson pointed to towering storage tanks and sprawling manufacturing facilities that spanned the road for several miles. Culbertson, at the wheel of his red pickup, rattled off the names of each company, its square footage and number of employees. 

To him, the region’s massive expansion of plastic, liquefied natural gas, steel and chemical production, and export facilities illustrates how the area is capitalizing on its geographic location. “They’re here because you can get oil from the Eagle Ford or the Permian, and Enbridge can have it out into the Gulf in 15 minutes,” Culbertson said.

Culbertson grew up in the Coastal Bend and said he has witnessed the benefits of the fossil fuel industry expansion. “When I left here in 1975 to go to college, we were at 254,000 [people]. When I came back 30 years later, we were at, like, 280,000. That’s it. That’s all we’ve grown,” Culbertson said. “As we’ve brought companies here that bring wealth into the region, we have grown, and people have started staying here. Now we’re over 315,000.”

Culbertson dismissed claims made by Indigenous groups. “The Karankawas are actually gone. They don’t exist anymore,” he said.

The Karankawa’s historic presence along the Texas coast is undisputed. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi researchers have recognized four Indigenous tribes who traditionally occupied the Coastal Bend: “the Karankawa (Copanes), the Lipan Apache/Nde, the Comanche/Tonkawa, and the Coahuiltecan (Pamoque).”

Many Texans assumed the Karankawa had been wiped out after members of the tribe were massacred and forced to disperse in the 1800s. In fact, their descendants moved, intermarried, and assimilated into Hispanic and Tejano communities. Then, in recent decades, some started reclaiming their identity as Karankawa and challenging the narrative of extinction.

Increasingly, non-Karankawa people also accept the tribe’s legitimacy and take offense at comments like Culbertson’s. 

“Yes, they do exist. How could they not exist?” said Courtney Shane, 50, a politically conservative stay-at-home mom who lives near the terminal site (and whose husband is employed by another big fossil fuel exporter). Shane also opposed Enbridge’s expansion. She shares the Karankawa people’s concerns and also believes her community is being overwhelmed by industrial facilities that drive out smaller businesses and drive up land costs. 

“I think we are growing too quickly, too irresponsibly,” Shane said. “And it’s sad because everybody loves Texas, and we are losing our Texas by all these industries.”

She’s trying to slow down that industrial growth by speaking at city council meetings and posting on a Facebook page called “Patriots of the Texas Coastal Bend.” A self-described “Constitutional Republican,” Shane said that more conservatives in Ingleside have started attending meetings and joining the opposition. 

Janet Laylor, a retired employee of the National Institute of Health and a resident of Ingleside, can watch dolphins swim through the back windows of her house. This was supposed to be her retirement home, but now she worries that industrial development will push her and others out. 

“This is not a Democrat or Republican issue. This is a community issue. And I think I have seen people at our meetings that are die-hard MAGA and people, like myself, that are very progressive, and we come together on this issue,” Laylor said.

A dense row of homes faces the waterfront, with foundations raised on pilings to accommodate the shifting tides. Residents gather on docks that jut out into the water to fish. Increasing numbers of huge tanker ships motor past. Patrick Nye, 71, has lived in his bayfront beach house since 1967 and has long considered Ingleside a peaceful escape, but he said it’s being threatened by Enbridge’s expansion. 

“We are already smelling the smells of the loading of the oil into the tankers,” Nye said. “We’re seeing smoke coming up from the tankers themselves as they idle. We see the seagrass being smothered by silt as they dock these vessels. And we’re seeing this whole thing propagate throughout this whole region.”

In 2019, Nye founded the Coastal Watch Association, a nonprofit environmental organization that joined Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend in the legal battle to try to stop Enbridge’s expansion. With more than 200 participants and a seven-member board of directors, the association generally monitors and often opposes pro-industry permits issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and works to raise public awareness about environmental destruction.

“This feels like a very colonialistic action.”

Members got involved in the federal lawsuit because they believed Enbridge’s expansion would harm marine ecosystems, encroach on Native American archaeological sites, and move industrial facilities close to residential areas, he said. 

“This feels like a very colonialistic action. … Somebody with a lot of money comes into your town, uses up all your resources, does not talk to the people that are there, makes money, and sends it somewhere else,” said Charlie Boone, president of the Coastal Watch Association and a neighbor of Nye’s.

(Illustration by Clay Rodery)

Still bruised from its 5th Circuit loss, the group has turned its focus to another industrial expansion threatening its coastal hamlet: an Enbridge joint venture to build a blue ammonia plant. Blue ammonia is low-carbon ammonia that generates power for electricity and transportation. The Coastal Watch Association has gone door-to-door in Ingleside getting locals to submit forms to TCEQ challenging the plant’s permits.

With the federal courts increasingly in the hands of anti-environment judges, the group sees the court of public opinion as its best option for future fights against polluting facilities. In fact, to some extent, the area’s environment defenders are deciding to strategically avoid the federal judiciary now. With six of nine judges on the U.S. Supreme Court appointed by Republicans, three of them by Trump, the odds seem greater of setting a harmful new precedent than of scoring a win.

Sanchez fears how future legal challenges might go: “[The 5th Circuit is] going to rule the same way, and then we’re going to go to the Supreme Court and we’re going to change the law and mess it up for other people challenging these things.”

Dasha Dubinina, Norah D’Cruze, and Rachel Schlueter are journalism students at Northwestern University. They began working on this story in January 2025 through an undergraduate research program overseen by Associate Professor Elizabeth Shogren and expanded it for the Texas Observer. 

The post Man v. Nature appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The post Strangest State: Chases, Chisos, Creatures, and Crossings appeared first on The Texas Observer.

This story was produced by Grist and co-published with The Texas Observer.

In the far corner of the Crockett County Senior Center, 75-year-old Cynthia Flores almost always has a puzzle going. She and her friends sort colors and look for edge pieces while they gossip — “faster than the telephone” — in the Tex-Mex blend of Spanish and English they grew up speaking in Ozona, a tiny ranching and oil outpost in far West Texas. A couple of days before Valentine’s Day, their puzzle surface was one of the few in the center not covered in red and pink hearts; preparations were underway for the big dance the following night.

“La comida esta ready,” another senior said, calling the puzzlers to lunch. Flores placed one last piece, then took her seat at a long community table. The plate in front of her would have delighted a nutritionist with its lean protein and mountain of steamed broccoli. She pulled a tiny plastic container of teriyaki sauce out of her bag and poured the contents over the meat. “They feed us what we need,” Flores said, “but I always fix it up.” Mostly, she said, she’s just thankful not to have to cook. Like many of her friends, Flores still lives at home, but comes into the center for lunch most days. After being married at 16 and preparing food for herself and her family for almost 60 years, she said she was ready for a break. 

Ozona resident Alex Castañeda collects the nickel-per-game buy-in for bingo at the Crockett County Senior Center. (Reid Bader / Grist)

Some might say Flores and her friends are living the retirement dream. The center is like a second home, with nutritious food and a full calendar of bingo, dominoes, and social events. Thanks to services like these, many of Crockett County’s aging residents have been able to stay in the familiar community where they, their parents, and sometimes even their grandparents grew up. Flores has been cutting hair locally for decades, working primarily out of her house. Many of her clients now are in their 90s. “I’ve been blessed to work in Ozona, where I can do my own thing,” she said. 

Ozona is the only town in Crockett County’s 2,800 square miles, and technically, it’s not even that. “The Biggest Little Town in the World,” as it brands itself, is technically unincorporated, meaning that the county is the only municipal government for its 2,800 residents. One person per square mile means Crockett isn’t the most rural county in Texas, but it’s up there. Taxes and regulations are minimal. The nearest city, San Angelo (the locals just say “Angelo”), is 90 minutes away. The nearest metro area, San Antonio, is three hours.

Ozona, Texas, also known as “The Biggest Little Town in the World,” sits at the crossroads of ranching, oil, and wind energy. ( Reid Bader / Grist)

In her chic, clear-frame bifocals and flowy duster, Flores makes aging gracefully in place in one of the most rural places in the United States look easy. It’s not. In many rural communities, seniors may find it hard or impossible to get the resources they need to remain in their homes and hometowns. Older Americans are already at risk of isolation, and living in a remote area can make that worse. Not to mention, resources are thin, local hospitals and other services are folding, and groceries may be pricey, far away, or both. According to the Rural Health Information Hub’s summary of U.S. Department of Agriculture data, 10.2 percent of seniors in rural areas don’t have sufficient access to healthy and nutritious food, compared with 8.5 percent in metro areas. 

But in Ozona, older adults like Flores are thriving. The Crockett County government has created a strong network of senior services, and ensures that they are supported — with the help of a wonky tax arrangement and some powerful new neighbors: wind companies.  

A rural highway outside Ozona stretches past rows of wind turbines, part of the expanding renewable energy footprint across West Texas. ( Reid Bader / Grist)

About 15 miles north of the senior center on State Highway 163, the wind turbines start cropping up, fleets of towering structures owned and operated by a company called NextEra Energy. In Texas, wind generates 29 percent of the power distributed by the state’s notoriously independent power grid—second only to natural gas. According to the state comptroller, Texas wind generation surpassed nuclear power in 2014 and overtook coal-fired generation in 2020. As of 2023, the state led the nation with 239 wind-related projects and more than 15,300 wind turbines. 

In Crockett County, the turbines generate more than just electricity. Money from NextEra supports the meals that Flores and her friends enjoy at the center and helps make events like the Valentine’s Day Dance possible. 

It all comes down to clever utilization of a section of the Texas tax code. As a way of attracting large projects like wind farms, the state offers companies a temporary property tax break — up to 10 years — in exchange for local investment. This Texas Abatement Act (also known as Section 312) means less tax revenue in the short term, but more dollars immediately flowing to community projects and programs like the senior center in Crockett.

While some economists say the abatements are unnecessary to recruit the companies — there aren’t many places they can go where taxes would be lower — the opportunity to reduce start-up costs for wind turbines or data centers or other developments gives the county a bargaining tool.

Many counties and cities use funding generated from these deals to improve roads and other infrastructure that might be strained by the new development, or to fund other public projects that don’t have a place in the regular budget. In Medina County, for instance, officials negotiated with incoming data centers to improve roads where locals were concerned about increased traffic. 

In Crockett County, like many places in West Texas, roads, jobs, and public projects have long been tied to oil and natural gas revenue, with its attendant booms and busts. According to Crockett County Judge Frank Tambunga, oil and gas have kept public coffers full in Ozona, even with the ups and downs of the industry — and the steadier (though usually lower) revenues from wind farms will likely add consistency to an already healthy budget. 

Ozona’s services for seniors are usually funded by a mix of federal and local funds, as well as charitable donations. As NextEra expanded its wind farms and more turbines cropped up, Tambunga saw the opportunity to offer those aging support services a boost.

Outside Ozona, an oil pumpjack works beneath a line of wind turbines, a reminder that West Texas still runs on both the past and the future of energy.

(Reid Bader / Grist)

Tambunga is a native of Ozona. Now in his early 60s, he’s well acquainted with the sorts of choices his slightly older peers are making. He hears their concerns about health care, groceries, and social isolation. When he considered what to ask for in the tax abatement negotiations with NextEra, those concerns were top of mind. But rather than push for a new public department or project, Tambunga looked to those already doing the work in the community. 

“As we negotiate, we ask that, during the term of the abatement, that they make charitable contributions to nonprofit organizations to help the local groups,” said Tambunga. “It allows us to provide support for these organizations that help people within the community.”

Eligio Martinez remembers when the wind companies first arrived in Crockett County in the 2010s. He was a county commissioner back then (at times in Ozona, it feels like everyone has taken their turn in county office), and remembers talking to other counties to figure out the best terms for the tax abatement deal. Locally, he said, the wind turbines were an easy sell. “We welcomed them,” Martinez said. No one got caught up in the politics of green energy — something that Texas’ oil-funded politicians regularly debate — or even the aesthetic effect of adding turbines to the wide open vistas. They saw the chance to increase their tax base and gain funding for local services, Martinez said. “If it’s beneficial to the community, we’re going to stick together.”

For their part, the residents at the senior center didn’t understand exactly how the turbines worked — when the massive structures first arrived, they said, locals wondered if they could run electricity directly from the turbine and were skeptical when they learned that the electricity would be sent to Texas’ power grid to be used elsewhere. Energy-funded towns like theirs are used to asking: “How long will the royalties last?” They’re asking the same about the wind farms. They’ve lived long enough to watch booms and busts in nearly every industry — ranching, oil and gas, banking — but donations from the tax abatement deals and the increased tax revenue for the school district are welcome while they last. 

There’s a pragmatism, Martinez said, that comes from being so remote. “We’re very vulnerable here,” he said. When his mom got cancer in 2013, he saw just how vulnerable. He was lucky enough to have a job that allowed him the flexibility to take her to her chemotherapy appointments in San Angelo, but if he hadn’t, he wondered how she would have made the trek over and over, being as sick as she was.

Even for more able-bodied seniors, transportation is a hurdle in Ozona. The Concho Valley Transit buses make daily runs to San Angelo, and many use them for errands, but some don’t want to be out all day until the scheduled return trip. Some may have to check in for dialysis and cancer treatments at hours when the buses don’t run. And for those with more complex medical conditions or advanced cancer, San Angelo doesn’t have what they need. They’d have to go to San Antonio, Dallas, or even Houston — all between three and seven hours away. Whoever provides that transportation — usually a family member — is taking on substantial costs. 

Martinez started looking for ways to raise funds to help others in his community pay for these travel expenses. He was a radio DJ, so his first idea was a music festival. He organized a day-long festival, and posted some student volunteers by the door to collect entry fees. Almost no one came to hear the music, he said, but when he checked with the students at the door, they had raised $5,000. People had simply dropped off donations. Even if they didn’t want to spend the day listening to music, they wanted to help. Everyone knew this was a huge issue for rural Texans, and that most likely, at some point, they too would need to make long drives to access various forms of medical treatment. 

Martinez hosted a few more music festivals, but eventually realized that he didn’t need to put on an event — locals were ready to donate. He created a nonprofit, In Care of Ozona (or “Coz 4 Oz”), that provides gas cards and hotel funds for folks who need to travel for medical care. 

This year, Martinez became a beneficiary of the very programs he helped negotiate back on the commissioners court: He received two donations from NextEra, totaling $3,000 — Coz 4 Oz’s entire budget for the moment. 

It’s not just medical emergencies that create transportation woes in Ozona. Ordinary errands can be just as burdensome. As in many small towns, the local grocery store prices are high. Prices are better in San Angelo, so seniors will often carpool for the 90-minute drive, or if someone is planning to make a trip, they’ll take a list of what their neighbors need. Much of the impromptu organizing runs through the senior center, said Director Emily Marsh. “It’s like a huge family.”

Back at the Crockett County Senior Center, while Flores and her friends were working on their puzzles, 69-year-old Arletta Gandy loaded trays of hot meals into her small SUV. The former grocery store manager’s dangly, candy heart-inspired earrings bobbled as she heaved a box full of lunch sacks onto the back seat. She and two other volunteer drivers show up to the senior center every weekday to drive the three “Helping Hands” routes, delivering meals to 42 seniors around Ozona. It’s a good way to get out of the house in her retirement, said Gandy, who doesn’t consider herself “from Ozona” because, as she said, “I’ve only been here over 20 years.” 

Arletta Gandy delivers lunch to a resident in Ozona, part of the network providing food and support to older Texans in rural communities. (Reid Bader / Grist)

After eight years delivering meals in the community, she knows the routes by heart. She knows which recipients have dietary restrictions and which dogs will run out of the house if she opens the door too wide. At some houses she chats briefly. Others have their own rituals. One man does little more than reach out from behind his screen door, but every day, as Gandy walks back down the plywood ramp overpassing the porch stairs, he says, “See you later, alligator.” 

“After a while, crocodile,” Gandy responds. 

“Nacho nacho,” the man calls back. 

“Nacho nacho,” Gandy replies. 

The Helping Hands program has been operating in Ozona for as long as Director Stacy Mendez can remember. She’s been involved since childhood. “I remember helping my grandmother and aunt deliver meals,” Mendez said. The program began in a local Catholic church, and when the Crockett County Senior Center opened with its commercial kitchen over 20 years ago, Helping Hands moved in.

Arletta Gandy delivers lunch to a resident in Ozona, part of the network providing food and support to older Texans in rural communities. (Reid Bader / Grist)

In Texas alone, an estimated 100,000 seniors rely on meals funded through Meals on Wheels programs like this one. Across the board, federal funding for these programs has dwindled as pandemic-era appropriations expired and the Trump administration began canceling grants and slashing federal budgets. A government shutdown in the fall further disrupted an already unstable funding stream. Last September, a $20,000 donation from NextEra came just in time, Mendez said. It kept their lean operation afloat, replacing the lost federal dollars and allowing Helping Hands to continue operating through the shutdown, while other programs around the state had to cut back services. 

Other Texas counties could also use the renewables boom to meet local needs. The number of Texans 65 and older is expected to more than double from 3.9 million in 2020 to 8.3 million by 2050, making it the state’s fastest growing population, according to AARP. That’s a concern for hunger advocates like Jeremy Everett, director of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, because seniors are already one of the most food-insecure groups, after young children. But while kids can get food through their schools, such hubs don’t usually exist for seniors, especially in rural areas. In 2026, Meals on Wheels reported that nearly 14 million seniors worried about having enough food.

“Without the ability to safely and reliably access affordable food, senior adults may no longer be able to live in the rural communities they have called home,” Everett said. 

In Crockett County, money from the wind farms is helping to address that issue. The county is also working with the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty to identify ongoing gaps. Especially in times of economic uncertainty, a coalition-based approach to senior hunger is vital, said Everett. No one sector can meet every need, so partnerships between local governments, industry, and nonprofits are key. “That’s how strong food systems are built from the ground up,” Everett said.

There’s another group of Crockett County seniors who benefit from the wind farms: ranchers. Steve Wilkins’ family has owned and operated the 6,000-acre Flying W Ranch for four generations, and he and his wife Belinda now breed Brahman beef cattle and lease part of their land to hunters. Belinda also sits on the board of the senior center. 

Steve Wilkins stands beside a pen of Brahman cattle outside of Ozona, part of a livestock tradition that has shaped the family for generations.

(Reid Bader / Grist)

As of Valentine’s Day, Wilkins reckoned he was probably a month or so away from signing a deal to lease part of his family ranch to a wind company. Most of the ranches around them have already done so. “I’ve kind of been dragging my feet on it,” Wilkins said. He’s not sure how he feels about wind energy, but these days ranchers have to be pragmatic. Many also lease to oil and gas companies — one of the more lucrative ways to keep a ranch intact. But in “mature regions” like Crockett County, many oil wells have already been producing for decades, putting them near the end of their productivity. Natural gas can have a similar lifespan, but big profits tend to drop sharply after the first six months to two years. 

Wind, of course, is not a finite resource. Theoretically, the region could keep producing wind and reaping the benefits indefinitely, or as long as demand for electricity continues apace. Still, there’s skepticism about how long it will last, Belinda said. If the wind boom comes and goes, they’ll just have to keep adapting, as they always have. 

In any case, the wind farms are a longer-term investment. Wind money doesn’t start flowing to the ranchers immediately, Wilkins said. The companies told him that it could be seven or eight years before they start seeing royalties. At 70, Wilkins said, that’s of little use to him. But ranchers are also used to seeing land management in generational terms. “Maybe my kids can keep the ranch,” he said. 

Cynthia Flores works on a client at a small Ozona salon, one of the everyday businesses that anchor the town’s economy and social life.

(Reid Bader / Grist)

In the hours leading up to the Valentine’s Day dance, Jerry and Willa Perry checked in for their weekly appointment at Flores’ in-home salon. Jerry removed a red MAGA-style cap that said “Make Texas A Country Again” and placed his hearing aids inside while Flores trimmed his white hair. Willa, his wife of 70 years, looked on smiling. “I can’t wait to get you home,” she joked, raising her eyebrows playfully. Jerry smirked — although he could not hear her, he got her meaning just fine.   

Flores charges on a sliding scale from about $12 to $40 to make sure all her clients can afford to stay coiffed. She makes enough to stay in the house, which she rents. But at her age, she said, she knows that she’s just one medical emergency away from needing full-time care, which she’ll likely find at the county’s local public nursing home.   

After finishing with her last clients, Flores changed into a billowy red pantsuit, pearls, and bedazzled sneakers. The dance didn’t start until 6 p.m., but she and several other regulars were there by 5 to get a good table. Emily Marsh and Belinda Wilkins enlisted their help setting out food on the long buffet. By the time the DJ fired up the first cumbia number, about 60 seniors were seated around the dance floor with plates of chips, cookies, and veggies with dip. 

Things started slowly, but began to pick up when a country two-step song came on. Judge Tambunga and his wife got up to dance, and other couples immediately followed. At the next cumbia, Flores rustled up a group of single ladies to take the floor. A couple songs later, she led a conga line. 

This story was supported by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network.

The post In Rural West Texas, Renewable Energy Brings a Windfall for Seniors appeared first on The Texas Observer.