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.
Where the open cases are
| County | Open cases | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Harris | 181 | 16.8% |
| Dallas | 77 | 7.1% |
| Tarrant | 49 | 4.5% |
| Bexar | 33 | 3.1% |
| Hidalgo | 24 | 2.2% |
| Nueces | 22 | 2.0% |
| Denton | 21 | 1.9% |
| Jefferson | 20 | 1.9% |
| Cameron | 20 | 1.9% |
| Smith | 17 | 1.6% |
| Jasper | 16 | 1.5% |
| Midland | 15 | 1.4% |
| Gregg | 15 | 1.4% |
| Montgomery | 15 | 1.4% |
| Wichita | 14 | 1.3% |
| Galveston | 14 | 1.3% |
| Travis | 13 | 1.2% |
| Lubbock | 12 | 1.1% |
| Bowie | 12 | 1.1% |
| El Paso | 11 | 1.0% |
| Brazoria | 10 | 0.9% |
| Johnson | 10 | 0.9% |
| Potter | 9 | 0.8% |
| Ector | 9 | 0.8% |
| Fort Bend | 9 | 0.8% |
| Brazos | 9 | 0.8% |
| Polk | 8 | 0.7% |
| Angelina | 8 | 0.7% |
| San Patricio | 8 | 0.7% |
| Jim Wells | 8 | 0.7% |
| Reeves | 7 | 0.6% |
| Webb | 7 | 0.6% |
| Orange | 7 | 0.6% |
| Leon | 7 | 0.6% |
| Tom Green | 7 | 0.6% |
| Hardin | 7 | 0.6% |
| Taylor | 7 | 0.6% |
| Collin | 7 | 0.6% |
| Van Zandt | 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.
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.