Every day for almost four years, former Formosa Plastics workers and I scooped up plastic pellets and powders along Cox Creek and Lavaca Bay, bagging, tagging and storing them as evidence to back our case that the company has been polluting nearby waters for years.

After a long hard career working on the water, catching shrimp, fish and crabs, I was appalled by these little plastic bits that could end up in seafood and other wildlife.

We appealed to the company and Texas environmental regulators, but that did little to stop plastic pollution from Formosa’s Point Comfort plant from flowing into our community’s waterways. So we sued and we won. On Dec. 3, U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt signed off on Formosa’s record settlement of $50 million for local environmental mitigation programs and a promise bring plastic discharges to zero.

I’m so happy to have such a successful ending to this long saga and for Formosa to finally be held accountable after decades of dumping plastic into our water. But I’m also more concerned than ever about a petrochemical industry that is increasing U.S. plastic production using the country’s oversupply of fracked natural gas.

If Formosa Plastics can really achieve zero plastic discharges from this aging plastic plant in Texas, then every plastic-making factory in the country should be able to meet that same zero-plastic discharge standard. A new federal “zero discharge” rule would be a crucial step toward addressing the crisis of plastic pollution in our oceans, rivers and bays.

This “serial offender,” as Hoyt called Formosa Plastics in a June ruling, should definitely be able to meet the zero-discharge standard in neighboring Louisiana. The company is applying to expand its plastic plant in Baton Rouge and to build a massive new plant in St. James Parish, on the banks of the Mississippi River.

That’s ominous given the pervasive plastic pollution we documented from Formosa’s Texas plant — literally billions of plastic bits lining the banks, hidden in marshes and easily churned up in the water. Toxic pollutants can adhere to those plastic pellets, which get eaten by fish and travel throughout the marine food web, sometimes all the way to your seafood platters. In our county, mercury has been found to adhere to the pellets.

As a former shrimper, I’m frightened and disgusted by the idea of Formosa’s plastic pollution flowing into the Mississippi River and down to the Gulf of Mexico. I honestly can’t understand why officials in Louisiana, where the billion-dollar seafood industry is vital to the state’s economy, would welcome such a notorious plastic polluter — let alone why they would so heavily subsidize its St. James project.

This big plastic build-out needs to be halted to prevent plastic pollution. And we certainly need a moratorium until the federal government’s outdated water-pollution rules are updated.

San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper, my group and partner in documenting the case against Formosa Plastics, is among almost 300 organizations from around the country that filed a legal petition with the federal government this summer demanding strict new water-pollution standards for plastic plants.

We haven’t gotten a response yet from the Environmental Protection Agency, which doesn’t surprise me. Federal and state inaction over pollution from the petrochemical industry is why we were forced to file a citizen-lawsuit under the Clean Water Act to address Formosa’s egregious plastic pollution.

It shouldn’t be this way. . Petrochemical polluters should be regulated and monitored by government officials using modern standards and technology, not by me and other citizen activists.

It’s time for the federal government to finally regulate plastic pollution. Federal environmental regulators need to step up to protect our health, our environment and the industries that rely on clean oceans.

Wilson is the lead plaintiff in San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper and Diane Wilson vs. Formosa Plastics Corp.