Beaumont, TX & Southeast Texas
Plant & Refinery Site Services on the Gulf Coast
TRP Land Clearing & Excavation, based in Beaumont, Texas, fixes potholes, laydown yards, gravel lots and erosion inside refineries and plants along the Gulf Coast, from Port Arthur, Nederland and Orange to Sabine Pass and Lake Charles. The owner, Karl Gillihan, runs every job and carries a TWIC card, OSHA 10 and OSHA 30, and Basic Plus. The work covers dig-out and base repair, parking lot grading and leveling, gravel top-up, drainage and rock armoring at eroded edges. TRP can also work as a subcontractor under an approved contractor's site program. Estimates are free and done on site.
Inside a refinery or a chemical plant, the ground work nobody plans for is the ground work that slows everything down. A laydown yard that ruts under the first crane mat, a contractor parking lot that holds water for a week after a rain, a gravel shoulder along a unit road that has washed out to the edge of the ditch. TRP Land Clearing & Excavation handles that work across Jefferson and Orange counties and along the Gulf Coast: potholes, gravel lots, parking lot grading and leveling, laydown yard rebuilds and erosion control, done so the fix is still there after the next storm.
The owner, Karl Gillihan, is second generation in logging, farming, land development and heavy equipment, and has spent 15 years in and out of refineries and plants across the Gulf Coast. He carries a TWIC card, OSHA 10 and OSHA 30, and Basic Plus, so gate access, safety orientations and permit-to-work are routine rather than a learning curve. He runs every job himself, from the walk at the gate to the last pass with the roller.
Gravel lots, parking lots and laydown yards, graded and leveled to drain
Most plant lots are gravel over clay, and most of them fail the same way. Traffic pushes the rock down into the subgrade, the low spots hold water, and the water softens the base until the lot is a field of ruts. Laydown yards get it worst. Crane mats, pipe racks and material stacks put concentrated weight on one spot for weeks, and when the mats come up the ground underneath has sunk or turned to mud.
Parking lot grading and leveling is the fix for most of it. We cut out the soft areas, rebuild the base where it has failed, and regrade the whole surface to a real slope so rain runs off to a ditch or an inlet instead of sitting in the middle of the lot. Base and gravel go down in lifts and get compacted as they go, then the surface is topped up and leveled so it drives flat and drains.
Turnaround contractor parking and busing lots need their own timing. They carry peak traffic for weeks, then sit nearly empty until the next one. The right time to regrade them is before the turnaround starts, and the right time to repair them is right after it ends, while the damage is fresh and the lot is quiet.
Potholes, unit access roads and the routes people ride and walk
A pothole on a unit access road is more than a rough ride. Potholes, ruts, soft shoulders and washed-out edges are trip, slip and rollover hazards for people on foot, on bicycles and in small utility vehicles, and inside a unit those are the people using the road. A broken edge that throws a bicycle or tips a cart, or a washout next to a walkway, is the kind of spot that gets flagged on every walkdown until somebody fixes it properly.
Proper means dig-out and base repair, not a bag of cold patch in a wet hole. The failed material comes out, the base underneath is rebuilt and compacted, and the drainage that caused the failure gets corrected so the new patch is not sitting in the same standing water. Gravel shoulders get the same treatment: rebuilt, compacted and shaped to shed water away from the road edge.
Where a road or lot needs full paving or an overlay, we bring in a paving partner who lays the mat. TRP manages the whole job around it, the prep, the base, the drainage, the scheduling and the cleanup, and stays your one point of contact from start to finish.
Erosion control at lot edges, ditch banks and culvert outfalls
Erosion inside a plant usually starts small and at the edges. Runoff from a lot or a road concentrates at one corner, cuts a channel, and starts undercutting the gravel from beneath. Ditch banks slough in after heavy rain. Culvert outfalls scour out a hole at the discharge end until the pipe is hanging in the air and the fill around it is washing away.
The fix is to put the water back where it belongs and protect the spots it hits hardest. That means rebuilding and reshaping undercut lot edges, cutting ditch banks back to a slope that will stand, resetting culverts at the right flow line, and armoring outfalls and channels with rock so moving water hits stone instead of clay.
This coast gets tested hard. Rita, Ike, Harvey and Laura each put heavy water across Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana, and erosion that starts in a storm like that tends to keep growing until the drainage is fixed. Sizing the rock and the drainage for the rain this region actually gets is cheaper than repairing the same edge after every big system out of the Gulf.
Why patches and gravel top-ups fail on Gulf Coast clay
The ground under most of the refinery corridor is heavy clay. Wet, it turns soft and pumps up into anything placed on it. Dry, it shrinks and cracks. Rock dumped straight onto it with no separation layer works its way down under load while the clay works its way up, and within a season the base course is gone. More rock on top just feeds the same process.
The other cause is water standing on the surface. A lot or road with no slope holds water in every low spot, and water sitting in a base course is what softens it. A pothole that fills every time it rains will keep coming back no matter how well it was patched.
A repair that lasts deals with all three: a prepared and compacted subgrade, a separation layer between clay and rock where it earns its cost, and grading that moves water off the surface and into a ditch that goes somewhere. We tell you at the estimate which of those your site needs and why.
Five industrial areas, one owner who knows the gate
We work the whole industrial stretch of the upper Gulf Coast. Port Arthur and the refinery corridor along Highway 87 and Highway 73 in Jefferson County, where spring and fall turnaround traffic hits the lots hardest. Beaumont and Nederland, from the Port of Beaumont on the Neches River and the I-10 corridor, past the Spindletop area and down Highway 69 to Nederland and Port Neches. Orange and Bridge City, with the chemical plants along the Orange side of the Sabine River and the approach to the Rainbow Bridge. Sabine Pass and Golden Pass, where LNG construction and operations sit along Highway 87 south at the mouth of the Sabine-Neches Waterway, exposed to storm surge. And Lake Charles, Westlake and Sulphur in Calcasieu Parish, along the Calcasieu River and Ship Channel, east of the Sabine on Interstate 10. Ask us about work on the Louisiana side.
Working inside a plant is its own discipline. It means a TWIC card for secured areas, the site safety orientation, permit-to-work for each job, and fitting the work around the plant's schedule rather than the other way around. Grading, base and gravel work involves no hot work. Ask us about plant prequalification and paperwork for your site.
TRP can also work as a subcontractor under an approved contractor's site program. Your company holds the site approval, and we work as your sub, going through whatever onboarding, orientation and paperwork your program requires before the first load of rock comes through the gate.
Industrial areas
Port Arthur, TX
Jefferson County
Port Arthur lies along the Sabine-Neches Waterway near Highways 87 and 73.
Beaumont & Nederland, TX
Jefferson County
Beaumont and Nederland sit along the Neches River corridor in Jefferson County.
Orange & Bridge City, TX
Orange County
Orange and Bridge City lie near the Sabine River along Highway 87 in Orange County.
Sabine Pass & Golden Pass, TX
Jefferson County
Sabine Pass and Golden Pass lie along Highway 87 at the southern end of Jefferson County.
Lake Charles, LA
Calcasieu Parish
Lake Charles sits on the Calcasieu River along Interstate 10 in Calcasieu Parish.
Services for plant sites
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you grade and level a gravel parking lot or laydown yard inside an operating plant?
Can TRP work as a subcontractor under our site approval?
Do you pave plant roads and lots, or only patch them?
What do you do about erosion eating the edge of a lot or a ditch bank?
Do you work in Lake Charles and the plants on the Louisiana side?
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