# The 1,078 open leak cases in Texas — and how to read them

> 1,078 leaking petroleum storage tank cases in Texas have no closure date, 404 of them at facilities that still have tanks in use. What an open case does and does not mean.

## The open cases

**1,078** of 29,830 Texas LPST cases — 3.6% — carry no closure date. The oldest was reported in **1972**.

### What « open » means here, exactly

It means one thing: the Commission’s file has a reported date and no
closure date. That is the entire content of the word.

It does **not** mean the site is leaking now. It does not mean
anyone is in breach. An old case can stay open because a long remediation was
never formally closed out, and a recent one because it is simply recent. The
file does not distinguish them — but the *dates* do, which is why
every case on this site is shown with its year rather than a status word on
its own.

### The distinction the dates draw

| Open cases by decade of reporting | Open cases | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Reported 1970s | 1 | 0.1% |
| Reported 1980s | 44 | 4.1% |
| Reported 1990s | 181 | 16.8% |
| Reported 2000s | 137 | 12.7% |
| Reported 2010s | 223 | 20.7% |
| Reported 2020s | 488 | 45.3% |

An open case reported in the 1990s and one reported last year are the same
word and a different situation. Roughly that is what separates a file the
regulator never formally closed from work that is genuinely under way.

### The 404 that matter most to a buyer

**404** of the open cases sit at a facility that
still has storage tanks registered — a live fuel site with an unclosed
leak case. Statewide, 6,822 sites have both a leak case and current
tanks, open or closed.

Neither of the Commission’s files contains that figure.
It exists only once the leak file and the tank file are joined on the facility
number, which is the one thing this site adds to the public record.
[How the joined dataset is built](/data.md).

### Where the open cases are

| County | Open cases | Share |
|---|---|---|
| [Harris](/county/harris.md) | 181 | 16.8% |
| [Dallas](/county/dallas.md) | 77 | 7.1% |
| [Tarrant](/county/tarrant.md) | 49 | 4.5% |
| [Bexar](/county/bexar.md) | 33 | 3.1% |
| [Hidalgo](/county/hidalgo.md) | 24 | 2.2% |
| [Nueces](/county/nueces.md) | 22 | 2.0% |
| [Denton](/county/denton.md) | 21 | 1.9% |
| [Jefferson](/county/jefferson.md) | 20 | 1.9% |
| [Cameron](/county/cameron.md) | 20 | 1.9% |
| [Smith](/county/smith.md) | 17 | 1.6% |
| [Jasper](/county/jasper.md) | 16 | 1.5% |
| [Midland](/county/midland.md) | 15 | 1.4% |
| [Gregg](/county/gregg.md) | 15 | 1.4% |
| [Montgomery](/county/montgomery.md) | 15 | 1.4% |
| [Wichita](/county/wichita.md) | 14 | 1.3% |
| [Galveston](/county/galveston.md) | 14 | 1.3% |
| [Travis](/county/travis.md) | 13 | 1.2% |
| [Lubbock](/county/lubbock.md) | 12 | 1.1% |
| [Bowie](/county/bowie.md) | 12 | 1.1% |
| [El Paso](/county/el-paso.md) | 11 | 1.0% |
| [Brazoria](/county/brazoria.md) | 10 | 0.9% |
| [Johnson](/county/johnson.md) | 10 | 0.9% |
| [Potter](/county/potter.md) | 9 | 0.8% |
| [Ector](/county/ector.md) | 9 | 0.8% |
| [Fort Bend](/county/fort-bend.md) | 9 | 0.8% |
| [Brazos](/county/brazos.md) | 9 | 0.8% |
| [Polk](/county/polk.md) | 8 | 0.7% |
| [Angelina](/county/angelina.md) | 8 | 0.7% |
| [San Patricio](/county/san-patricio.md) | 8 | 0.7% |
| [Jim Wells](/county/jim-wells.md) | 8 | 0.7% |
| [Reeves](/county/reeves.md) | 7 | 0.6% |
| [Webb](/county/webb.md) | 7 | 0.6% |
| [Orange](/county/orange.md) | 7 | 0.6% |
| Leon | 7 | 0.6% |
| [Tom Green](/county/tom-green.md) | 7 | 0.6% |
| [Hardin](/county/hardin.md) | 7 | 0.6% |
| [Taylor](/county/taylor.md) | 7 | 0.6% |
| [Collin](/county/collin.md) | 7 | 0.6% |
| [Van Zandt](/county/van-zandt.md) | 6 | 0.6% |
| Wheeler | 6 | 0.6% |

### And by TCEQ region

The Commission runs its remediation work out of sixteen regional offices, and a case belongs to one of them. The regional split is not the same shape as the county split, because a single region covers a great many counties — it is the closest thing the file offers to « who is handling this ».

| TCEQ region | Open cases | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Houston | 247 | 22.9% |
| Dfw Metroplex | 213 | 19.8% |
| Tyler | 96 | 8.9% |
| Beaumont | 89 | 8.3% |
| Corpus Christi | 57 | 5.3% |
| Abilene | 53 | 4.9% |
| Midland | 52 | 4.8% |
| Harlingen | 50 | 4.6% |
| Amarillo | 49 | 4.5% |
| San Antonio | 48 | 4.5% |
| Waco | 37 | 3.4% |
| Lubbock | 27 | 2.5% |
| Austin | 25 | 2.3% |
| Laredo | 14 | 1.3% |
| El Paso | 11 | 1.0% |
| San Angelo | 10 | 0.9% |

### What the file does not record, and you will want anyway

Three things a buyer asks that this file cannot answer, and it is better to
know that before relying on it:

- **What leaked.** There is no substance, no volume, no
measurement — only that a release was reported.
- **How far it went.** Nothing about soil, groundwater or
whether a neighbouring parcel is affected. A case is attached to a facility,
not to a plume.
- **What remains to be done.** An open case may be under active
remediation or simply never formally closed. The file draws no distinction;
only the reported date hints at it.

What it does record, and record well, is *that a case exists*, at
which facility, from when, and whether the Commission has signed it off. For a
records search that is the whole job — and it is why
a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment under ASTM E1527 — the search required by the federal All Appropriate Inquiries rule (40 CFR Part 312) before a buyer can claim the landowner liability protections that CERCLA offers goes further than one.

Of the 1,078 open cases, **404** are at a
facility that still has registered tanks, and they are spread across
16 of the Commission’s regions. Neither figure is in the source
files.

### An open case on a site you are buying?

An open case is a question, not an answer — the file does not say what remains to be done. Tell us the address and we pass the request to environmental consultants who do Phase I work in Texas.

We take no commission and we recommend no consultant. We have no arrangement with any firm today — we are collecting these requests in order to go and find them. [What we do with this](/privacy.md).

Every open case is searchable by its number or its site name. This page counts them; it does not list them, because a list of 1,078 named addresses under the heading « open leak » would be read as a verdict on each one, and the file does not support that. [Why the line is drawn there](/about.md).

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Página: https://lpst.pages.dev/open/
Fonte: Leaking Petroleum Storage Tank Sites and PST Delivery Certificates — Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
Recolha: 2026-08-21