East Austin Tank Farm

In 1928, the City of Austin created a Master Plan that ended up relegating many industrial land uses, and Black and Hispanic residents, to the east of what later became IH-35. One of these industrial facilities was the East Austin Tank Farm, a 52-acre site housing storage tanks first erected in 1948, and ultimately holding more than 10 million gallons of fuel for Chevron, Star Enterprise, Citgo, Coastal State, Exxon and Mobil. In 1991, Mobil applied for a state expansion permit, and the East Austin Strategy Team and People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources, concerned about neighborhood health effects, began an effort to close the tank farm. By February 1993, after public campaigns, health surveys, and litigation, all the tank farm tenants had announced closure of their operations, and in 2008 the state declared that the cleanup was complete.