$3 Billion later, here's how Elon Musk and SpaceX changed this corner of Texas.

BOCA CHICA, Texas – To Gilberto Salinas, the gleaming glass-and-steel building with the “SPACEX” sign emblazoned across its top stretching along State Highway 4 represents a portal into the future – a doorway to deep-space exploration just a few miles from his home.

Just down the road, workers mill in and out of the launch pad area where SpaceX founder Elon Musk and his team propel 5,000-ton rockets into outer space and from where the tycoon hopes to someday send humans to Mars.

“I still get goosebumps when I see those rockets launching,” said Salinas, chief executive of Brownsville’s economic development arm. “The future of deep-space exploration is happening here in our backyard.”

To Nansi Guevara, a Brownsville visual artist, the rocket-making complex is an irrevocable disruption to the shorebirds, ocelots and endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles that nest in the Rio Grande delta. It’s also the reason rents and property taxes are on a steep rise, she said, and why skilled workers from California and Florida are descending upon South Texas to fill high-paying jobs once promised to locals.

“More and more people are questioning it,” said Guevara, an activist who has opposed SpaceX.

Musk, the richest man in the world, has poured more than $3 billion into the ever-expanding rocket-producing venture of SpaceX, perched in a river delta about 22 miles east of Brownsville. Space travel enthusiasts have applauded his ambitious plans to launch rockets into outer space with the stated goal of some day placing a man on Mars.

Locally, support – if not outright enthusiasm – for SpaceX remains strong and widespread, though some like Guevara question just how much the venture has benefited locals and warn of harmful environmental impacts.

SpaceX’s media relations officials referred USA TODAY to their website for details on how they mitigate environmental concerns, where the company claims the list of measures it takes “just for operations in Texas is over two hundred items long, including constant monitoring and sampling of the short and long-term health of local flora and fauna.”

The company also partners with Sea Turtle, Inc., a local nonprofit focused on sea turtle conservation, and deploys workers to pick up litter around Boca Chica, according to the website.

“SpaceX is committed to minimizing impact and enhancing the surrounding environment where possible,” it said.

So far, the team at SpaceX has launched its biggest and most powerful rocket, Starship, six times, the latest one occurring last month. Musk has requested approval to ramp up operations to 25 launches a year and said he plans to move his entire rocket-building operation from California to South Texas.

Environmentalists and watchdog groups worry that Musk and others in the spaceflight sector may soon have freer rein when President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January; Trump has said he will appoint Musk to the “Department of Government Efficiency,” an advisory group mandated with downsizing government.

Musk, who spent more than a quarter-billion dollars to help Trump get elected, is now tasked with reducing government – even as he’s amassed billions of dollars in federal contracts and has faced scrutiny from federal agencies as chief executive of various ventures.

How that close relationship with the federal government plays out in South Texas remains to be seen.

“They’ve already been getting away with doing whatever they want and causing environmental damage to our community,” said Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network. “Now, we’re just worried it’s going to exacerbate and get worse.”

Launch day celebrations

To date, SpaceX has generated more than $800 million in direct and indirect taxes to local and state governments, drawn more than $99 million in tourism to the region and created more than 3,400 jobs for employees and contractors, according to figures SpaceX provided to Cameron County.

To reach the complex, visitors drive east from Brownsville along Highway 4 toward the beaches, on a road that runs roughly parallel to the Rio Grande. A decade ago, the area was desolate tidal flats dotted with sabal palms and Spanish Dagger yucca. Today, two futuristic-looking office towers and a soaring black-glass building comprise Starbase – 220,000 square feet of buildings spread over 350 acres. This is where SpaceX staffers design and build the rockets and control their launch.

About a quarter mile down the road, two soaring launch towers – one for each launch pad – sit sentry on SpaceX’s launch site, as workers mill around.

For Barton “Bic” Bickerton, 55, owner of the Hopper Haus Bar & Grill in nearby Port Isabel, the real magic happens during each launch, when his small establishment crams with space enthusiasts from around the world and SpaceX employees.

On those days, the bar, which has the word “BARBASE” painted on an outside wall and serves “Cosmic Coco” and “Lucky Launch” draft beer, opens early to accommodate enthusiasts watching the early morning launch. SpaceX employees celebrate at the bar with shots of Jameson. Visitors from Norway, Russia, Germany, South Africa and other countries fill the bar and spill out outside, toasting to space exploration or dissecting the science behind the latest launch.

“It’s really pretty cool,” Bickerton said.

Business has grown 40% since opening in 2021, said Bickerton, a former high school baseball coach. He’s building a larger dining room adjacent to the bar and a backyard patio to accommodate the ever-growing crowds during launches.

“Business wise, it’s been unbelievable,” he said.

Dean Putegnat, co-owner of Redfish Recycling in Brownsville, quickly saw an opportunity to service Starbase’s sprawling complex and all the recyclable refuse it produces. His company collects 14 commercial containers and 70 residential containers from the space explorers a few  times a week, “about the size of a mini-municipality,” he said.

What he didn’t foresee was the influx of people from California, Austin and other areas who readily signed up for residential recycling service – and who are steadily pushing parts of the border into a more recycling-friendly area. As a result, the residential recycling segment of his business is rapidly growing, Putegnat, 51, said.

Given the sudden interest, a city proposal to bring curbside recycling to Brownsville could pass through city council next month, making recycling even more widespread, Putegnat said.

“More houses want recycling, more convenience stores need a recycling container, more restaurants need recycling,” he said. “SpaceX definitely has a lot to do with the indirect growth we’ve had.”

Rising rents and indigenous tribe restrictions

But with growth comes growing pains. Some locals point to rising rents, as out-of-towners move in to fill SpaceX jobs.

Christopher Basaldú, an anthropologist and environmentalist, said he was forced to vacate his Brownsville apartment in late 2021 when the owners sold the building. He’s now living in a smaller apartment with fewer amenities at a higher monthly rent, he said.

More concerning to Basaldú is the way SpaceX’s operations have threatened habitats near the launch site and, by closing the only access road to the beach during tests and launches, limit the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas’ access to Boca Chica Beach, which the tribe considers to be its historical and spiritual center. SpaceX closes the only access road to the beach several hundred hours a year during tests and launches.

During certain cycles of their native calendar, members of the tribe venture to the beach and place offerings and prayers – practices Basaldú said are hampered by SpaceX.

“We can’t participate in traditions that have been happening for many thousands of years,” said Basaldú, who is a member of the tribe. “In the course of just a few years, this foreigner billionaire has stopped that from happening.”

Last year, environmental and cultural groups, including the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Federal Aviation Administration, claiming the agency failed to fully assess Starbase’s impact on the surrounding area. The FAA has denied the claims.

For years, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has bristled at what he sees as government overreach in his space ventures – something he may have greater control over given his future position in the Trump administration.

Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based watchdog group, said Musk’s role in the upcoming administration presents two potential conflicts of interest: steering federal contracts toward his companies or watering down agencies that monitor his businesses, such as the FAA or the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“There are quite a few ethics and conflict of interest laws that will apply to him,” Amey said. “It will take a lot of self-policing as well as a strong ethics officer to make sure he doesn’t cross the line.”

Earlier this year, the FAA fined SpaceX more than $633,000 for reportedly not following regulations during two launches in 2023. In a post on X following the penalties’ announcement, Musk threatened to sue the federal agency.

“The biggest impediment to progress that we’re experiencing is overregulation,” Musk said earlier this year. “It takes longer to get the permit to launch than to build a giant rocket.”

SpaceX officials have agreed to take steps to mitigate the company’s impact on the surrounding environment. But recent events, such as the April 2023 explosion of a booster of the Starship rocket that sent debris flying in all directions and rattled homes several miles away, continue to alarm environmentalists and locals.

Rocket explosion debris

On a recent afternoon, Justin LeClaire, an avian conservation biologist with the environmental advocacy group Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries, plodded through the sand dunes just north of the launch sites, looking for signs of the snowy plover, Wilson’s plover and least tern – all shorebirds protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Instead, LeClaire pointed to a large chunk of concrete with a tangle of rebar sticking out of it, like a giant spider, wedged in the sand – a relic from last year’s explosion. Nearby, smaller chunks of debris – like bowling balls – dotted the sand.

Last June, his group surveyed nine shorebird nests the day before a Starship launch. The next day, they returned and tallied the impact: Out of 22 eggs that were in the nine nests, only five survived the launch intact – all other eggs were missing or deemed too damaged to be viable, according to the group.

The launches and occasional explosion, along with the steep increase in human traffic and the trash they bring, is wreaking irrevocable harm on the surrounding habitat, LeClaire said.

“All of these things combined could really be completely habitat-altering for the Boca Chica area as a whole,” he said.

Guevera, the artist, said when she first moved to Brownsville from Laredo eight years ago, she visited Boca Chica beach and ventured down to where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico. There, she took off her shoes and stepped into the river. Across the river, Mexican families splashed along the shoreline.

She felt a deep connection with the region and the historic river that has separated the U.S. from her ancestral homeland of Mexico for nearly two centuries.

Guevara said she’s dismayed that her access to that area is now restricted and bristles at the thought of Starbase slowly desecrating the area – all in the name of sending rockets into space.

“My quality of life here is good because of nature,” she said. “If we don’t have nature, what do we have?”

Follow Jervis on X: @MrRJervis.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Elon Musk and SpaceX changed this Texas town. Opinions differ on how.