Diane Wilson demands Dow CEO stop plastic pollution and withdraw experimental nuclear reactor plans from the Texas Gulf Coast
For Immediate Release
SEADRIFT, TX – MARCH 10, 2026 – Diane Wilson, 78, Executive Director of San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper (SABEW) and a fourth-generation Texas shrimper, is entering her second week of a hunger strike outside Dow Chemical’s Seadrift manufacturing facility.
Yesterday, when SABEW attempted to deliver a formal demand letter to the facility’s site director to forward to Dow CEO Jim Fitterling, they were met by Dow’s head of security, John Weitz. Weitz informed them that former site director Heather Lyons had been replaced by interim director Thomas Welch, and offered to “handle” the letter himself. When SABEW requested delivery to a senior official, Weitz ordered them to stop video recording, told them they were on private property, and said that Wilson specifically would be arrested if she set foot on Dow property, citing her history of a 2002 action at the facility, in which she scaled an 80-foot chemical tower to unfurl a banner regarding the Bhopal disaster. Shortly after, Calhoun County sheriff’s officers arrived and presented Wilson and a SABEW member with a formal order to sign, bearing Weitz’s name, stating that they would be arrested if found on Dow property. When SABEW requested a copy of the order they had been asked to sign, they were told they could not have one. The letter is being sent directly to Fitterling at Dow’s headquarters in Midland, Michigan.
Wilson began the hunger strike and 24-hour encampment on March 2nd in protest of two simultaneous threats from Dow to the community: the company’s unprecedented request to eliminate the only existing permit limit on plastic pellet discharge into Texas waterways, and its plans to build four experimental nuclear reactors on the same industrial site using a design that has never been licensed or built anywhere in the United States.
The demand letter makes two requests: that Dow commit to zero discharge of plastic pellets, powder, and flakes from its Seadrift facility and incorporate that commitment into its operating permit; and that Dow cancel all plans to build nuclear reactors at the site and withdraw its construction permit application from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Wilson says she will not end her strike until both demands are met.
“I’ve watched these waters my entire life. I’ve watched the plastic pour into them. Now Dow wants a permit to keep on doing it – but much more than before. They want to legalize plastic pollution. I’m not going to eat until they stop,” said Diane Wilson, Executive Director of San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper. “This bay belongs to the people of Texas, not to Dow Chemical.”
An Ongoing Pattern of Pollution — and an Unprecedented Request to Make It Legal
Dow’s Seadrift facility manufactures pre-production plastic pellets called nurdles, a raw material used in the production of plastic consumer goods. The facility’s existing state permit allows for the discharge of no more than “trace amounts” of “floating solids.” Despite this limit, SABEW waterkeepers have observed and collected millions of nurdles in and along local waterways around the facility on a near-constant basis.
On a single day of sampling on New Year’s Eve 2025, SABEW collected millions of pellets in one spot in the Victoria Barge Canal which flows into San Antonio Bay. Rather than upgrade its pollution controls to comply with its existing permit, Dow has asked the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to rewrite the rules, arguing that “trace amounts” is too vague and that Dow should instead be explicitly permitted to discharge plastics into the bay. Dow proposed no replacement limit. If granted, the permit would be the first of its kind in Texas.
Such a permit could set a dangerous precedent for plastic manufacturers in Texas and across the country. Globally, an estimated one billion pounds of nurdles enter the world’s oceans each year.
Dow’s permit amendment is not the only plan the company is advancing at the Seadrift site.
The company is also seeking permits to build four nuclear reactors on the same site through its subsidiary, Long Mott Energy LLC, using a reactor design with no conventional steel-reinforced concrete containment structure, unlike every existing U.S. nuclear plant. The reactors would generate high-level nuclear waste to be stored on-site at the Seadrift facility indefinitely. There is currently no licensed permanent repository for such waste anywhere in the United States.
“Dow can’t keep plastic out of our bay. Now they want to run reactors that have never been built or licensed in this country, next to our waters near our homes, and that’s just crazy,” said Wilson.
Background
On December 17, 2025, Earthjustice and Environmental Integrity Project, on behalf of SABEW, issued a Notice of Intent to Sue Dow under the Clean Water Act’s citizen suit provision, which allows the public to take legal action when regulators fail to enforce the law. On February 13, 2026 – one business day before SABEW’s planned federal filing – the State of Texas filed its own lawsuit against Dow, citing “habitual” illegal water pollution violations. Under the Clean Water Act, a state lawsuit can block a citizen suit, even if the state’s action seeks weaker penalties. SABEW believes the timing was not coincidental.
Perales, Allmon & Ice, PC, an Austin law firm, is representing SABEW and has successfully intervened before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, challenging Dow’s pending construction permit application.
MEDIA CONTACTS
Dan Le, dan@sanantoniobaywaterkeeper.org