Goldsmith Gas Plant Emissions: What the DCP Settlement Means for Your Family’s Legal Rights in Ector County
If you live near the Goldsmith Gas Plant — if your child’s asthma started or worsened while you lived under the orange glow of its flare, if you can still remember the rotten-egg smell that came with it on certain nights — you need to understand one thing about the settlement you may have just heard about: it does not compensate you. Not a dollar. The $500,000 that DCP Operating Company agreed to pay goes toward community air-quality improvements, not to the families who breathed what that plant released. The automatic penalties — up to $14,500 per ton of hydrogen sulfide — apply to future emissions exceedances, not to the harm already done to your lungs, your children, or your property.
What the settlement does, powerfully, is establish on the public record that one of the largest flared acid gas emitters in Texas was releasing hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide into the air your family breathed. That record is the foundation for a separate legal right you may still have — a toxic tort claim that the environmental groups’ citizen suit did not resolve and cannot resolve. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We handle toxic tort and environmental exposure cases in Texas, and this page is our honest assessment of what happened at Goldsmith, what the settlement covers, what it does not, and what your family can still do about it.
Prior to this action, the Goldsmith Gas Plant was among the largest emitters of flared acid gas in the state.
That single sentence — from the public record of the Clean Air Act citizen suit — is the anchor. The plant fifteen miles northwest of Odessa, in the heart of the Permian Basin, was not just another industrial facility. It was, by the characterization of the environmental organizations that sued, one of the worst in Texas for the kind of emissions that attack the respiratory system. And DCP Operating Company agreed to reduce those emissions, pay for community health improvements, and accept automatic future penalties. That agreement is now before U.S. District Judge David Counts, subject to review by the U.S. EPA and the Department of Justice. It is not a payment to you. It is, however, evidence.
What the Clean Air Act Settlement Covers — and What It Does Not
The settlement between four environmental advocacy groups and DCP Operating Company resolves a March 2021 lawsuit filed under the Clean Air Act’s citizen suit provision in the Western District of Texas. The citizen suit mechanism allows private organizations — not the government, not individual residents — to sue a company they allege is violating emission standards. The groups sued over flaring of sour gas at the Goldsmith Gas Plant, which released sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide into the air.
Here is what the consent decree provides:
Flaring-reduction improvements. DCP agreed to make changes that reduce gas flaring at the Goldsmith facility. This is a forward-looking operational change, not compensation for past harm.
$500,000 for local air quality and public health. This money goes toward community air-quality and public-health improvements in the Odessa area. It is environmental mitigation funding — not a fund that pays individual medical bills, lost wages, or pain and suffering to residents.
Automatic future penalties. DCP agreed to pay up to $14,500 per ton of hydrogen sulfide if emissions exceed certain limits in the future. These penalties are prospective — they punish future violations, not past ones.
What is missing from the settlement: you. The citizen suit resolved the environmental groups’ claims about emissions violations. It did not — and under the Clean Air Act’s citizen suit structure, it cannot — compensate individual residents for personal injury, property damage, medical expenses, or the fear of future disease. Those rights belong to you, separately, under Texas tort law. The environmental groups fought for clean air. They did not fight for your individual damages. Both are important. Only one puts money in your family’s hands for what you have suffered.
This is not a criticism of the environmental organizations — the Environmental Integrity Project, Sierra Club, Environment Texas, and Texas Campaign for the Environment accomplished something the state of Texas had not. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, as the article reporting on this settlement noted, has turned a blind eye to flaring in the Permian Basin. Federal enforcement of environmental laws has fallen by over 50% in recent years. The citizen suit exists precisely because regulators sometimes fail to act. But the citizen suit’s remedy is environmental — not personal. That gap is where your separate rights live.
The Defendant: DCP Operating Company and the Corporate Structure Behind It
When a midstream gas company settles a major environmental lawsuit, the first question a toxic tort lawyer asks is not “what did they pay?” It is “who is the entity that paid, and what is behind it?” The answer determines whether a companion personal-injury case has a recoverable defendant or an empty shell.
DCP Operating Company is the named defendant — the owner and operator of the Goldsmith Gas Plant, directly responsible for flaring operations, emissions control, and compliance with Clean Air Act requirements. But DCP Operating Company does not stand alone. DCP Midstream — the broader midstream gas business — has historically operated as a joint venture with deep-pocket energy-company parents involved in midstream operations across multiple basins. The corporate hierarchy matters because, in any companion toxic tort litigation, discovery must confirm the current corporate structure, identify whether parent entities can be reached through alter-ego or direct-liability theories, and determine where the real assets sit.
This is the same corporate-structure analysis we bring to every industrial defendant. The name on the operating permit is the starting point, not the ending point. The entity that holds the license may be thinly capitalized. The entity that sets the budget, approves the flaring practices, and decides whether to invest in emissions-reduction technology may be one or two layers up the corporate ladder — and that entity may carry the insurance coverage and the balance sheet that makes a real recovery possible.
A gas processing plant in the Permian Basin is not a small operation. The gas that comes out of tens of thousands of drilling sites across the basin must be stripped of dangerous hydrogen sulfide before it can be piped to Gulf Coast ports and petrochemical plants. The Goldsmith plant and facilities like it remove that hydrogen sulfide and other impurities, compress the gas, and send it via pipelines to markets. The flaring of sour gas — the process that releases sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide — is the byproduct of that operation. It is a known, measurable, controllable process. Which means the decision to continue excessive flaring, when available reduction technology exists, is not an accident. It is a choice. And in a toxic tort case, that choice is the engine for punitive damages under Texas law.
Texas Toxic Tort Law: Your Separate Legal Rights
Texas recognizes toxic tort claims under multiple theories of liability. The citizen suit settlement does not preclude any of them. Here is what Texas law gives a resident who was exposed to the Goldsmith plant’s emissions:
Negligence
DCP Operating Company owed a duty to operate its gas processing plant safely and to control hazardous emissions. If the company failed to implement available flaring-reduction technology, failed to comply with emission limits, or chose not to invest in controls that would have reduced the release of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide — and those emissions proximately caused respiratory injury to exposed residents — that is a breach of duty that supports a negligence claim. The consent decree itself, with its acknowledgment of the need for flaring-reduction improvements and its agreement to pay penalties, is powerful admission-adjacent evidence that the hazard was real and that the company’s practices fell short.
Private Nuisance
Continuous flaring of sour gas — emitting noxious, malodorous, and toxic hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide — interferes with the use and enjoyment of nearby residential and commercial properties. Texas law recognizes a private nuisance claim for property owners in the exposure radius. The odor of hydrogen sulfide is distinctive and unpleasant at concentrations far below dangerous levels. The visible flare, the smell, the knowledge of what was being released — these interfere with the quiet enjoyment of property in ways Texas courts recognize as actionable.
Trespass
Hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide are physical substances — gases and combustion byproducts that travel through the air and onto neighboring properties. Under Texas law, the physical intrusion of these gases onto your property constitutes actionable trespass, irrespective of whether the company was negligent. The gas crossed the property line. That is the tort.
Strict Liability for Ultrahazardous Activity
Processing and flaring sour gas containing high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide — a highly toxic gas that is lethal at low concentrations — may qualify as an abnormally dangerous activity under Texas common law. If it does, the company is liable without proof of negligence. The activity itself, by its nature, creates a risk of harm that cannot be eliminated by reasonable care. You do not have to prove the company was careless. You have to prove the activity was abnormally dangerous and that it caused your injury.
Medical Monitoring
Exposed residents within the plant’s emission plume zone may be entitled to a court-supervised medical monitoring fund. This would cover periodic pulmonary function testing, respiratory screening, and early-detection diagnostics. Medical monitoring is an increasingly recognized remedy in Texas mass exposure litigation. The documented emissions, the acknowledged public health risk, and the prior James Lake Gas Plant settlement — which funded replacement air filters for every classroom and office in Ector County Independent School District — together confirm that the health risk to the community, including children, was recognized and real.
The Medicine: What Hydrogen Sulfide and Sulfur Dioxide Do to the Human Body
Understanding what was in the air is the first step in understanding what happened to your family. Two pollutants drove this lawsuit, and they attack the body in distinct, documented ways.
Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S)
Hydrogen sulfide is a colorless gas with a characteristic rotten-egg odor at low concentrations. It is one of the most dangerous gases in the oil and gas industry. What makes it especially insidious is that at higher concentrations, it deadens the olfactory nerve — meaning the smell disappears just as the danger peaks. You stop smelling it at the exact moment it becomes most lethal.
At the concentrations community residents would be exposed to through facility flaring — lower than occupational knockdown levels but sustained over months and years — hydrogen sulfide causes respiratory irritation, eye irritation, headaches, nausea, and in susceptible individuals, exacerbation of existing respiratory conditions. Chronic exposure is associated with persistent respiratory symptoms and potential neurological effects. Children, whose lungs are still developing, are particularly vulnerable. The EPA’s Risk Management Program recognizes hydrogen sulfide as a regulated toxic substance with a threshold quantity of 10,000 pounds — meaning any facility holding more than that amount in a process must file a formal accident-prevention plan, including a worst-case-release scenario. The danger was foreseen, on paper, before anyone in your neighborhood was hurt.
Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)
Sulfur dioxide is a criteria pollutant under the Clean Air Act, subject to National Ambient Air Quality Standards. It is a powerful respiratory irritant that causes bronchoconstriction — the tightening of the airways — especially in people with asthma. Short-term exposure can trigger asthma attacks, cause wheezing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath. Children and people with existing respiratory conditions are the most sensitive. For a child living near the Goldsmith plant who developed asthma, or whose existing asthma worsened during the period of excessive flaring, sulfur dioxide exposure is a medically recognized causal factor.
The defense in any toxic tort case will argue that your respiratory condition came from something else — genetics, other pollution sources, lifestyle. The answer lives in the timeline, the dose reconstruction, and the medical literature. Sulfur dioxide is a known cause of bronchoconstriction. Hydrogen sulfide is a known respiratory irritant. The plant was among the largest emitters of these substances in the state. Your child’s asthma is not a coincidence to be explained away. It is a foreseeable consequence of breathing what that plant released.
The Evidence Clock: What Records Exist and How Fast They Can Disappear
Every toxic tort case lives or dies on evidence. The records that prove what the Goldsmith plant released, how much, when, and what the company knew about it are on a clock — and the clock is shorter than most people realize.
Plant Emissions Monitoring Data — High Urgency
The Goldsmith Gas Plant’s Continuous Emissions Monitoring System (CEMS) records, flaring volume logs, and emissions reports are the cornerstone of both regulatory violation proof and toxic tort exposure dose reconstruction. These records establish the quantity, duration, and concentration of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide actually released. The consent decree’s implementation may alter the company’s data retention practices, and corporate document destruction policies routinely cycle data. A litigation hold must be issued immediately in any companion tort action to freeze these records before they are legally destroyed or “migrated” to a format that makes them harder to retrieve.
Internal DCP Communications — High Urgency
The most explosive evidence in any toxic tort case is often not the emissions data itself but the internal communications about it. Emails, memos, and engineering analyses discussing flaring operations, emissions exceedances, available control technology, and cost-benefit analyses of flaring reduction reveal what the company knew, when it knew it, and whether it made a deliberate decision to continue excessive flaring rather than invest in reductions. Corporate email retention policies routinely cycle messages on schedules that can be as short as months. This is the evidence that turns a negligence case into a punitive damages case. It must be frozen the day a case opens.
TCEQ Inspection Records — Medium Urgency
TCEQ inspection reports, notice of violation letters, complaint records, and enforcement actions related to the Goldsmith facility demonstrate regulatory notice of emission problems and prior complaints from area residents. Government records are generally preserved under public records laws, but informal complaints and field notes may be purged on standard retention schedules. These records are critical for establishing the company’s knowledge and notice — and for rebutting any defense claim that the company was unaware of the problem.
The Consent Decree and Federal Court Filings — Low Urgency
The consent decree and all filings in the citizen suit are federal court records, permanently maintained. These contain admissions, stipulated facts, and agreed-upon emission limitations that serve as prima facie evidence of the hazard in companion tort litigation. The decree’s acknowledgment of public health impact is admissible. These records are safe — but they must be obtained and analyzed by counsel who understands how to use them.
Regional Air Quality and Community Health Data — Medium Urgency
TCEQ and EPA monitoring stations in Ector County provide ambient concentration data for dose reconstruction and plume modeling — the science of mapping where the emissions traveled and who was exposed. Community health data, including asthma prevalence and respiratory hospitalization rates in Ector County, can establish elevated disease rates in the exposure corridor. Public health datasets are retained but historical school-level data may be inconsistently archived. The prior James Lake settlement’s school air-filter remedy is itself evidence that the health risk to children in Ector County was recognized and addressed.
The Money: What a Toxic Tort Claim From Goldsmith Emissions Is Worth
We do not promise outcomes. We do promise honesty about what these cases are worth, based on the categories of harm Texas law recognizes and the documented facts of this exposure.
Individual Toxic Tort Claims
For an individual Ector County resident with mild to moderate respiratory injury and clear geographic exposure proximity to the Goldsmith plant — meaning you lived or worked within the emission plume zone for a sustained period — the case value range typically runs from $50,000 to $150,000. That figure reflects past and future medical expenses for respiratory conditions such as asthma exacerbation, chronic bronchitis, reduced pulmonary function, or chemical pneumonitis; lost wages; and non-economic damages for pain, suffering, and loss of quality of life. Every case is fact-specific. Your exact value depends on your medical records, your residential history, the severity and permanence of your condition, and the strength of the dose reconstruction linking your exposure to the plant’s emissions.
Consolidated Group Action
Where multiple exposed Ector County residents with documented respiratory injuries join in a consolidated action, the aggregate value — combining individual damage awards, medical monitoring, and property diminution — can reach $2,000,000 to $10,000,000 or more against a deep-pocket defendant. The power of a group action is twofold: it shares the cost of the general-causation experts and atmospheric modeling across many plaintiffs, and it presents the defendant with a jury of Ector County residents hearing how a company in their own community released toxins into the air their children breathed.
Medical Monitoring
Separate from individual injury damages, a medical monitoring cause of action would fund a diagnostic surveillance program for the exposed population. This is not compensation for an injury you already have — it is the cost of watching for injuries that may develop because of what you were exposed to. The value of a medical monitoring fund depends on the size of the exposed population and the scope of the monitoring protocol, but in a community the size of Odessa and surrounding Ector County, it can be substantial.
Property Damages
Property owners in the exposure zone may have a separate claim for diminution in property value attributable to proximity to a documented major emitter. The consent decree’s public record of the plant’s emissions status — among the largest in the state — is evidence that the property value impact is real, not speculative.
Punitive Damages
If discovery reveals that DCP knew of available flaring-reduction technology, knew its emissions exceeded permitted limits, and chose not to implement controls to save costs, punitive damages are warranted. Texas governs punitive (exemplary) damages under Chapter 41 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which caps punitive damages based on the defendant’s net worth — but the cap does not apply where the defendant’s act constitutes a felony. Environmental statutes carry criminal provisions. That intersection is potentially significant. The pattern described in the public record — a plant that was among the state’s largest flared acid gas emitters, that continued excessive flaring when reduction technology was available, and that only changed practices after being sued — is the kind of pattern that supports a punitive damages theory.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The figures above are honest ranges based on the categories of harm and the documented facts, not predictions of what your specific case will produce.
The Defense Playbook: What to Expect and How to Counter It
When you bring a toxic tort claim against a midstream gas company, the defense has a playbook. Knowing it in advance is half the battle. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows these plays from the inside. Now he sits on your side of the table.
Play 1: The “General Causation” Challenge
The defense will argue that you cannot prove hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide is capable of causing the type of injury you claim. The counter is the medical literature itself. Sulfur dioxide is a criteria pollutant under the Clean Air Act specifically because it causes respiratory harm. Hydrogen sulfide is a recognized toxic substance with documented respiratory effects. The world’s leading health authorities have classified these substances as harmful to human health. General causation — the question of whether the substance can cause the type of injury claimed — is established by the science. The defense’s real fight is on specific causation: whether THIS exposure caused YOUR injury.
Play 2: The “Alternative Cause” Defense
The defense will argue that your respiratory condition came from something else — other Permian Basin pollution sources, genetic predisposition, smoking, allergies, or background air quality. The counter is dose reconstruction: an atmospheric scientist models the emission plume from the Goldsmith plant, maps it against your residential history, and calculates your specific exposure. Combined with your medical timeline — when symptoms began, when they worsened, how they correlate with periods of known excessive flaring — the dose reconstruction ties your injury to this source, not another. The Permian Basin has many pollution sources, which is exactly why precise plume modeling matters. Your exposure to the Goldsmith plant’s emissions is not the same as your exposure to a compressor station three miles in the other direction.
Play 3: The “Pre-Existing Condition” Trap
If you or your child had asthma before the exposure, the defense will argue the plant did not cause it. The counter is the eggshell-plaintiff doctrine: a defendant takes the victim as found. If the exposure worsened a pre-existing condition — made the asthma more severe, increased the frequency of attacks, reduced pulmonary function further than it would have declined otherwise — the defendant is responsible for the worsening, even if it did not create the original condition. Your medical records before, during, and after the exposure period tell this story. The before-and-after comparison is the proof.
Play 4: The “Statute of Limitations” Trap
Texas law gives you two years to file a personal injury or property damage lawsuit, generally measured from the date the injury occurred or was discovered. For toxic exposure, the clock does not necessarily start on the day you breathed the gas — it may start when you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, the connection between your respiratory condition and the plant’s emissions. The consent decree itself — publicizing the plant’s emissions status and the connection to community health — may be the event that started the clock for many residents. The discovery rule’s application to chronic toxic exposure is fact-dependent. Do not assume you are too late. Do not assume you have plenty of time. Talk to a lawyer who can evaluate your specific timeline.
Play 5: “The Settlement Already Addressed This”
The defense may argue that the Clean Air Act citizen suit settlement precludes individual claims. It does not. The citizen suit resolved the environmental groups’ claims about emissions violations. It did not adjudicate, settle, or release any individual resident’s personal injury, property damage, or medical monitoring claims. Those are separate rights held by separate plaintiffs under separate legal theories. The settlement is not a shield against your tort claim — if anything, it is a sword, because it establishes facts about the plant’s emissions that the company can no longer credibly dispute.
How a Toxic Tort Case From Goldsmith Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a companion toxic tort action is constructed, from the day you call to the day a number is on the table:
Week one: preservation. The first move is a litigation-hold letter to DCP Operating Company and any parent entities, demanding preservation of CEMS data, flaring volume logs, internal communications regarding emissions and control technology, TCEQ correspondence, and all records relating to the consent decree’s implementation. This letter freezes the evidence before corporate retention policies can legally destroy it. The fastest-dying records — internal emails, supporting emissions data — drive the urgency.
Month one to three: records and experts. The consent decree and all underlying filings in the citizen suit are obtained from the federal court record. Regional air quality monitoring data is pulled from TCEQ and EPA stations. A board-certified toxicologist is retained to establish general causation — that hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide are capable of causing the respiratory diseases claimed. An atmospheric scientist is retained for plume modeling and exposure reconstruction — mapping who was exposed, when, and at what concentration. A pulmonologist is retained for specific causation — linking the individual plaintiff’s respiratory condition to the documented exposure.
Month three to six: discovery. Depositions of DCP operations personnel, environmental compliance staff, and corporate decision-makers. Internal engineering and cost documents are produced. The gap between what DCP knew was feasible — what flaring-reduction technology was available — and what it actually implemented is the engine for punitive damages. This is where the case is won or lost.
Month six to twelve: mediation and trial preparation. Mediation should be timed after key emissions data and internal communications are produced but before summary judgment, when DCP’s exposure to a jury of Ector County residents is most acutely felt. Any settlement demands account for DCP’s corporate structure and insurance coverage. If the case does not resolve, it is tried in Ector County state court or the Western District of Texas Midland-Odessa division — where the jury pool has deep familiarity with the oil and gas industry and can distinguish legitimate energy production from negligent, cost-driven emission of toxins into a neighboring community.
Who Is Most Likely to Have a Claim
Not everyone in Ector County has a toxic tort claim from the Goldsmith plant’s emissions. The strength of a potential claim depends on several factors:
Geographic proximity. You lived, worked, or attended school within the plant’s emission plume zone. The atmospheric plume model will define this zone, but generally, residents within a few miles of the plant who were downwind during periods of heavy flaring are the strongest candidates.
Duration of exposure. You were present in the exposure zone for a sustained period — not a single drive-by, but months or years of residence during which the plant was flaring sour gas.
Documented health effects. You or your child have a medical diagnosis of a respiratory condition — asthma, chronic bronchitis, reduced pulmonary function, chemical pneumonitis — that began or worsened during the period of exposure. Your medical records are the proof. Emergency room visits, urgent care visits, pulmonary function tests, medication prescriptions, and school nurse reports all document the timeline.
Families with children are priority contacts. Pediatric respiratory injury carries both heightened damages value — because a child’s lungs are still developing and the injury may affect them for decades — and compelling narrative power. The prior James Lake Gas Plant settlement funded air filters for every classroom in Ector County ISD. That remedy exists because the risk to children was recognized. If your child developed or worsened asthma while living near the Goldsmith facility, their case may be among the strongest.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
If you believe you or your family may have a claim related to Goldsmith Gas Plant emissions, here are the practical steps to take — and what not to do:
Do gather your medical records. Pull together every doctor’s visit, ER trip, urgent care visit, prescription record, and pulmonary function test that documents your respiratory condition and its timeline. The before-and-after comparison is the proof problem’s solution.
Do document your residential history. Write down every address you lived at during the period you were near the Goldsmith plant, including dates of residence. Note whether you could see the flare from your home, whether you smelled the rotten-egg odor, and when symptoms began or worsened.
Do preserve any correspondence with TCEQ or the plant. If you ever filed a complaint about odors, emissions, or air quality, locate and preserve that record.
Do talk to your neighbors. Other families in your area may have experienced similar health issues. A group action shares expert costs and presents a stronger collective case.
Do not sign anything from DCP or its insurers. If anyone representing the company or its insurance carrier contacts you with a release or a settlement offer, do not sign it without speaking to a lawyer first. A release may extinguish rights you do not yet know you have.
Do not give a recorded statement. If an insurance adjuster or company representative asks you to tell your story on a recording, decline. That recording is built to be used against you, not to help you.
Do not post about your case on social media. The defense will mine your public profiles for evidence that contradicts your claim — photos that suggest you are active when you say your breathing is limited, posts that misrepresent your timeline, anything that can be taken out of context.
Do call a lawyer. The evidence clock is running. The medical records need to be assembled. The preservation letter needs to go out. The experts need to be retained. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
Why the Permian Basin Context Matters for Your Case
The Goldsmith Gas Plant does not exist in isolation. It sits in the most prolific and heavily industrialized oil and gas production region in the United States — the Permian Basin, where tens of thousands of drilling sites extract gas that must be processed before it can reach market. Permian Basin oilfield operations are the economic engine of Ector County and the Midland-Odessa metropolitan area, which has more than 110,000 residents — many living in proximity to gas processing facilities, compressor stations, and flaring infrastructure.
This context matters for your case in two ways. First, it means the jury pool in Ector County understands the oil and gas industry. They know the difference between legitimate industrial activity and negligent pollution. They can be educated to hold a company accountable for unnecessary emissions without being anti-industry. Voir dire should explore jurors’ connections to the energy industry without alienating — focusing on whether they can hold a company accountable for unnecessary pollution while respecting lawful industrial activity.
Second, the Permian Basin’s industrial density creates the “alternative cause” problem the defense will exploit. Multiple facilities in the region emit pollutants. The defense will argue your respiratory condition came from background air quality, not from the Goldsmith plant specifically. This is why precise plume modeling — mapping the Goldsmith plant’s emission plume against your specific residence — is essential. Your exposure to the Goldsmith plant is not the same as your general exposure to Permian Basin air. The plume model is what separates the two.
The Western District of Texas’s Midland-Odessa federal division handles substantial energy and environmental litigation arising from Permian Basin operations. Ector County state courts are equally familiar with the industry. Either forum can be appropriate depending on the case strategy. This is the second Clean Air Act citizen suit against a large gas plant in Ector County in the past five years — the first, against the James Lake Gas Plant, also resulted in a settlement that reduced sour gas flaring and funded air filters for every classroom and office in ECISD. The pattern is established. The community has been here before.
The Firm: Who We Are and How We Work
Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years licensed and practicing in Texas courtrooms, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — he knows how to find the story the documents tell, and he knows how to tell it to a jury. He leads a firm that has recovered $50,000,000+ for injured clients over more than two decades of practice.
Lupe Peña is a former insurance-defense attorney. He spent years at a national defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to value, deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how claim valuation software works, how IME doctors are selected, how surveillance is deployed, and how delay tactics are engineered. He now uses that inside knowledge for injured clients. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
We handle cases on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. Your first consultation is free, and it is confidential. Call 1-888-ATTY-911, any hour, any day. We have 24/7 live staff — not an answering service. Hablamos Español.
If your family has been affected by emissions from the Goldsmith Gas Plant — if your child’s asthma, your respiratory condition, or your property’s value has been impacted by what DCP Operating Company released into the air — the environmental groups fought for clean air and won. The question now is whether you will fight for what it cost you personally. That fight is separate. That fight is yours. And we can help you wage it.
For cases involving refinery and industrial facility accidents or wrongful death from environmental exposure, the same firm, the same investigative rigor, and the same insider knowledge of how the defense operates apply. The environmental groups used the Clean Air Act to force change. Texas tort law gives you a different tool — one that compensates your family for what was taken from you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the DCP settlement mean I automatically get money?
No. The $500,000 in the settlement goes toward community air-quality and public-health improvements, not to individual residents. The automatic penalties apply to future emissions exceedances. No part of the citizen suit settlement compensates individuals for personal injury, property damage, or medical expenses. Those are separate claims you would need to pursue independently under Texas tort law.
Can I still sue DCP even though they settled with the environmental groups?
Yes. The Clean Air Act citizen suit resolved the environmental organizations’ claims about emissions violations. It did not adjudicate, settle, or release any individual resident’s personal injury, property damage, or medical monitoring claims. Your tort rights are separate, held by you as an individual, under Texas law. The settlement does not preclude your case — it provides evidence for it.
How long do I have to file a claim?
Texas generally applies a two-year statute of limitations for personal injury and property damage claims. For toxic exposure, the clock may not start on the day you were exposed — under the discovery rule, it may start when you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, the connection between your health condition and the plant’s emissions. The public disclosure of the plant’s emissions status through the consent decree may be the event that started the clock for many residents. The discovery rule’s application is fact-dependent and not guaranteed — talk to a lawyer to evaluate your specific timeline. Do not assume you have plenty of time, and do not assume you are too late.
What health conditions are connected to hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide exposure?
Hydrogen sulfide is a respiratory irritant that causes eye, throat, and lung irritation, and at sustained community-level exposures can exacerbate existing respiratory conditions and cause persistent respiratory symptoms. Sulfur dioxide is a criteria pollutant under the Clean Air Act specifically because it causes bronchoconstriction — the tightening of airways — and is especially harmful to people with asthma. Both substances are recognized by health authorities as harmful to human health, particularly to children whose lungs are still developing. If you or your child developed asthma, experienced worsening of existing asthma, chronic bronchitis, reduced pulmonary function, or recurrent respiratory infections while living near the Goldsmith plant, those conditions may be connected to the emissions.
Do I need to have lived right next to the plant to have a claim?
Not necessarily, but geographic proximity is a critical factor. The strength of your claim depends on whether you lived, worked, or attended school within the plant’s emission plume zone — the area where atmospheric modeling shows the released gases traveled. An atmospheric scientist can model the plume and map it against your residential history. Generally, residents within a few miles who were downwind during periods of heavy flaring are the strongest candidates, but every case depends on its specific facts.
What if my child already had asthma before we lived near the plant?
You may still have a claim. Under the eggshell-plaintiff doctrine, a defendant takes the victim as found. If the exposure worsened your child’s pre-existing asthma — made it more severe, increased attack frequency, reduced lung function further than it would have declined otherwise — the company is responsible for the worsening, even if it did not create the original condition. Your medical records before, during, and after the exposure period are the key evidence. The before-and-after comparison is what proves the difference.
How much does it cost to hire a lawyer for this?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The first consultation is free and confidential. We advance the costs of investigation, expert retention, and case development. You pay nothing out of pocket to start.
What if I am not sure my health problem is connected to the plant?
That is exactly what a free consultation is for. We do not guarantee that your condition is connected — we investigate. A medical and legal review can determine whether your specific health history and geographic exposure profile support a claim. The consultation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you. If your situation does not support a claim, we will tell you that too. Honesty is not just ethical — it is how we build trust with families who have already been failed once.
Is there a connection between the Goldsmith plant and the earlier James Lake Gas Plant settlement?
Yes. The James Lake Gas Plant, also in Ector County, was the subject of a separate Clean Air Act citizen suit resolved within the past five years. That settlement reduced sour gas flaring at the plant and funded the purchase of replacement air filters for every classroom and office in Ector County Independent School District. The fact that a prior settlement specifically addressed the health risk to schoolchildren in the same county — by providing air filtration — is evidence that the risk to children from gas plant emissions in this region was recognized and real. It is not a coincidence that two of the largest gas plants in Ector County were sued for the same type of emissions within five years of each other.
What should I do right now to protect my potential claim?
Three things: gather your medical records documenting any respiratory conditions and their timeline; write down your residential history including every address near the Goldsmith plant and the dates you lived there; and call a lawyer for a free consultation. Do not sign anything from DCP or its insurers, do not give a recorded statement, and do not post about your health or the plant on social media. The evidence clock is running — the sooner you act, the more proof can be preserved.
If your family breathed what the Goldsmith Gas Plant released — if your child’s asthma, your breathing problems, or your property’s value trace back to years of living under that flare — call us. 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. Hablamos Español. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. Legal Emergency Lawyers™.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.