IKE’S TOXIC IMPRINT “So far, regulatory officials have identified 228 sites potentially poisoned with gasoline, industrial chemicals, feces and other contaminants from Greater Houston to Lake Charles, La. But none of the reported spills is considered major, authorities said. Cmdr. Virginia Kammer, who leads the U.S. Coast Guard’s cleanup efforts along the Texas coastline, said the largest spill was about 3,000 barrels, and the responsible facility moved quickly to get the problem under control.” What about the region’s 28 Superfund sites? No word yet, but the EPA has “started to investigate.” [Houston Chronicle]
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Tag: Pollution
BLOWING THIS WAY FROM TEXAS CITY “[Sunday] night for about two hours, BP’s refinery released an estimated 2,725.59 pounds of sulfur dioxide when the pressure spiked during a planned shutdown — so if you were cruising through Texas City and noticed a suffocating smell that may have been it. Meanwhile, starting [Monday], and continuing for the next week, BP has three more emissions events scheduled that are related to maintenance and the aforementioned planned shutdown at the refinery. Through the magic of the Internet, you can determine the substances involved in the releases, which include benzene.” [Hair Balls]
There’s trouble in Sherwood Forest: Newman Branch, a stagnant finger of Buffalo Bayou that traipses between Little John and W. Friar Tuck Lanes, had fire hydrants running full force on Friday to flush out raw sewage that mysteriously appeared in the waterway, reports Allan Turner in the Chronicle:
Houston oilman Dewey Stringer, who lives near the point where the bayou passes Memorial, said similar pollution has periodically plagued the waterway for at least five years. Generally, however, heavy rainfall dilutes the contamination.
Stringer, who was among residents to report the pollution to authorities, said the odor was so severe that he and his wife found it difficult to sleep. He had planned to relocate to Galveston this weekend and commute to work.
Stringer said he has developed eye irritation from vapors rising from the bayou and both he and his wife have developed persistent coughs.
- Buffalo Bayou tributary flushed [Houston Chronicle]
- Sewage Contaminates Neighborhood [Houston Chronicle]
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6btY7WqNBM 400 330]
Frustrated that his occasional reports on area petrochemical-plant emissions events haven’t received more attention, Banjo Jones of the Brazosport News (aka former Chronicle reporter Steve Olafson) resorts to video. His first feature: the odorous results of a power outage this past Sunday at the Chevron Phillips chemical plant in Old Ocean. That’s in Brazoria County, about an hour’s drive southwest of Houston.
- Caught on videotape !! [Brazosport News]
- Old Ocean, Tex., the hellhole they call home [YouTube]
Houston’s lone professional tourists, John Nova Lomax and David Beebe, stop off at the Brady’s Island in the Ship Channel midway into their latest day-long stroll . . . through this city’s southeastern stretches:
The air is foul here, and the eastern view is little more than a forest of tall crackers and satanic fume-belching smokestacks, sending clouds of roasted-cabbage-smelling incense skyward to Mammon, all bisected by the amazingly tall East Loop Ship Channel Bridge, its pillars standing in the toxic bilge where Brays Bayou dumps its effluent into the great pot of greenish-brown petro-gumbo.
While Brady’s Landing today seems to survive as a function room – a sort of Rainbow Lodge for the Ship Channel, with manicured grounds that reminded Beebe of Astroworld — decades ago, people came here to eat and to take in the view. This was progress to them, this horrifically awesome vista showed how we beat the Nazis and Japanese and how we were gonna stave off them godless Commies. As for me, it made me think of Beebe’s maxim: “Chicken and gasoline don’t mix.â€
More from the duo’s march through “Deep Harrisburg”: Flag-waving Gulf Freeway auto dealerships, an early-morning ice house near the Almeda Mall, a razorwire-fenced artist compound in Garden Villas, Harold Farb’s last stand, colorful Broadway muffler joints, the hidden gardens of Thai Xuan, and — yes, gas-station chicken.
“There is nothing else like the Southeast side,” Lomax adds in a comment:
I see it as the true heart of Houston. Without the port and the refineries we are nothing. The prosperous West Side could be Anywhere, USA, but the Southeast Side could only be here.
- Sole of Houston: Deep Harrisburg: Lomax and Beebe Take on the East Side Again [Houstoned]
- Brady’s Landing
- Previously in Swamplot: Long Point, Long Walk, Long Story, Telephone Road Walking Tour: Not How They Sang It Was, Shade, Subs, Plexes and Suds: A Bissonnet Story, Lonely East Side Walking Tour, Walking on Bellaire
Photo of El Torito Lounge on Harrisburg: John Nova Lomax and David Beebe
That beautiful flare glowing from atop ExxonMobil Chemical’s Olefins plant in Baytown last Thursday night wasn’t just a pretty New Year’s display for the city. It came with a couple of bonuses: two “not specifically authorized” releases, including 6,857 pounds of benzene, plus a bunch of other fun toxins.
Not to be outdone, the nearby ExxonMobil oil refinery decided to celebrate the new year in its own special way, releasing a bouquet of smelly agents including 3,010 lbs. of neurotoxicant carbonyl sulfide into our lovely Gulf air.
Now when Houston visitors ask you why the east side of the city has an odor reminiscent of cooked cabbage, you’ll be able to explain why.
Meanwhile, two environmental organizations are interrupting the normal course of business over in Deer Park with a pesky lawsuit:
“On average of more than once a week for at least the past five years, Shell has reported that it violated its own permit limits by spewing a wide range of harmful pollutants into the air around the Deer Park plant,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas.
- ExxonMobil emits thousands of lbs. of benzene and other nastiness to mark new year in East Harris County, TX [Brazosport News]
- Air Emission Event Report for Tracking Number 101998 [TNRCC]
- Air Emission Event Report for Tracking Number 102061 [TNRCC]
- Environmental groups file suit against Shell Oil [Houston Business Journal]
- Groups sue over refinery pollution [Galveston County Daily News]
Photo of Baytown sunrise: Bill Jacobus
