STARBASE, Texas — Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Center, blasts the air conditioner in her car on a sweltering August afternoon in south Texas.
Large 18-wheelers and silver-glistening Cybertrucks speed past her in the other lane as she travels down Highway 4 toward Boca Chica Beach. “This road is always under construction,” Hinojosa remarked. “SpaceX is rapidly colonizing and changing the entire landscape of Boca Chica.”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the recently established metropolis of Starbase may soon further transform this region in the Gulf of Mexico. This city was founded in 2025 and is currently requesting that its citizens think about annexing about 7,100 acres of adjacent territory, which includes both private and state property.
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The city was established in part to support the expansion of SpaceX’s personnel and boost the company’s ability to develop and produce the goods required for additional rocket launches.
The Federal Aviation Administration granted SpaceX’s request to boost launches from its Boca Chica Launch Site in April of 2025.
According to the FAA document, these activities include “up to 25 annual Starship/Super Heavy orbital launches, up to 25 yearly landings of Starship, up to 25 annual landings of Super Heavy, and vehicle upgrades.”
All of this is a component of Musk’s purported ambition to construct a facility from which SpaceX might send people back to the moon and eventually Mars.
Launch pads, production facilities, and testing facilities are located within the existing SpaceX complex. During launches, Starbase manages road access to a neighboring beach and a nature reserve.
A potential annexation would enable “more efficient coordination with federal and state partners including the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services and others,” according to documents Starbase gave to nearby landowners and posted on their website.
Bekah Hinojosa, a co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, is standing on land that Starbase may seize. For NPR, Reynaldo Leaños Jr.
Environmental concerns
Grabbing the steering wheel, Hinojosa veers off the highway into a dirt road surrounded by vegetation.
She remarked, “We are on gorgeous, immaculate land owned by a property owner who does not want to get sucked up into Elon Musk’s city of Starbase.”
A number of individual landowners and activists like Hinojosa are worried about how the Starbase development will affect their neighborhood. She has communicated with a number of affected landowners, including Barbara Buckner, 56.
After escaping Poland during the Holocaust, Buckner’s grandmother settled in Chicago and bought real estate in south Texas. She is against the planned annexation. Who will Starbase give priority to, she wonders? Residents? Or SpaceX? Buckner queries, “How can you be assisting locals when you work for SpaceX?”
One of the two city commissioners and Starbase’s mayor, Robert “Bobby” Peden, is currently employed by SpaceX; Peden declined many requests for an interview.
According to Buckner, the planned annexation is only the first step. She stated, “I think they will keep attempting to expand.”
Eighty-three-year-old landowner Gerold Podraza expressed his opposition to the proposed annexation, saying, “It only indicates that the people who have money are able to do things that they, should not be permitted to do.” “They have the ability to convince politicians to make decisions that are detrimental to the community they represent, which is the only reason that is occurring.”
After tens of thousands of gallons of industrial wastewater were released into the surrounding environment, the Environmental Protection Agency determined that SpaceX had violated the Clean Water Act, according to an NPR story from 2024. “I have gone out here multiple times after a SpaceX launch to document all of the debris,” Hinojosa said, expressing concern that the number of rocket flights may escalate this type of environmental issue. “I have pictures of metal shrapnel blown up into this region we are on.”
When NPR questioned SpaceX about how their rocket launches affected the environment, the company did not reply.
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The legislation obviously permits Starbase to grow, according to Sofia Benavides, a Cameron County Commissioner who represents the region where Starbase is situated. “There is nothing that we can do to stop it,” Benavides stated.
Starbase has until August 18 to get feedback on the annexation plan from possibly affected landowners and ascertain whether they have the required signatures to proceed. After that, the city must have two public hearings before deciding whether or not to annex in September.
Hinojosa’s organization is looking into possible legal action to block the annexation.
“They refer to it as Starbase. “It is the SpaceX annexation when you draw back the curtain,” Hinojosa remarked. “The Rio Grande Valley is at risk from SpaceX. And for that reason, we will keep resisting.”
