Edinburg council approves rezoning including 22-acre site near Orange Avenue despite residents’ safety concerns

Edinburg, Texas — The Edinburg City Council on Tuesday voted to approve agenda items that included a rezoning request for a 22-acre property adjacent to an existing fuel terminal near Orange Avenue, even as several residents urged the council to delay action and require additional safety, traffic and emissions analyses.

Residents who live on Orange Avenue told the council they feel ‘‘sandwiched’’ between industrial uses and raised health and safety concerns. ‘‘It's hazardous to the people that have made Orange their home,’’ said Aurelia Rodriguez, who gave her address as 305 West Orange and asked the council to ‘‘please do not give this an approval of rezoning just because there's other industrial.’’ She and other speakers said odors, increased truck traffic, light and noise would harm property values and daily life.

Developer and operator representatives from NewStart/Neustar Logistics said the near-term scope is limited. Houston Keck, senior manager of environmental compliance, said the company is seeking state and federal permits and has upgraded its vapor control equipment. ‘‘This current scope of the project is just two tanks that we're looking to construct here,’’ Keck said, adding the facility is subject to TCEQ, EPA, OSHA process safety management and NFPA reviews.

Planning staff and the city’s planning director repeatedly emphasized that the council’s action was on rezoning — a land-use decision — not on issuing building or environmental permits. Planning Director Jaime explained that, if rezoned, the developer would later submit detailed building and fire-safety plans to city departments and the fire marshal for review. ‘‘This is strictly a rezoning at this time,’’ Jaime said; ‘‘they own the whole 22 acres, so they're applying for the whole 22 acres to be rezoned.’’

Residents asked the council to require a traffic-impact study, hazard-buffer analysis and modeling of fire risk and vapor dispersion before any rezoning. One longtime homeowner warned that rezoning a large parcel creates the potential for additional tanks in the future: ‘‘Just because they're only needing 2 acres right now doesn't mean that stops the whole process,’’ the homeowner said.

Council members debated whether to pull the rezoning item for further negotiation. Several members urged the developer to meet directly with residents and asked staff to consider whether a smaller rezoning could address neighborhood concerns. Mayor Omar Ochoa and other members noted that rezoning follows the city's land-use map and that permitting reviews follow separate processes.

Ultimately the council approved items A through F by voice vote, which included the contested rezoning among other public-hearing items. The transcript records the motion and a voice vote; no roll-call tally was read into the record.

What happens next: If rezoned, the developer must submit building plans and permits; the city’s fire marshal, utilities, engineering and building departments will review safety, utility and access requirements as part of that process. Residents said they will press for more public review and safety measures during those steps.

Reported claims and context: Residents attributed several financial and operational claims to past city actions (including citations of prior bond amounts and water-rate increases); these figures were presented by speakers and not independently verified in council discussion.

The council meeting record shows the public hearing closed and the motion to approve the set of items passed; the council did not record a roll-call vote for the rezoning in the public transcript.