Having perhaps worked its way through the 100,000 gallons of raw sewage dumped into Buffalo Bayou shortly before New Year’s, the Houston Ship Channel received an additional contribution late yesterday: 15,000 gallons of beef tallow, which leaked into the waterway from a storm drain. There is, of course, much more where that came from: a rupture in an onshore tallow tank owned by a California company called Jacob Sterns and Sons caused 250,000 gallons of animal fat to spill on the waterway’s northern banks. A three-quarter-mile stretch of the channel — from City Dock 16 to the Buffalo Bayou Railroad Bridge — has been closed.
Some video of the scene, where six boats have deployed boom, from abc13:
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- Coast Guard responds to tank leak, section of Houston Ship Channel closed [MMD Newswire]
- Previously on Swamplot: Headwaters of the Houston Shit Channel
Photo and Video: abc13
That’s just beef stew; Houston style.. Nomnommnom..
It’s fairly artistic, just floating there in all its weird little shapes.
Sounds like Jacob Sterns and Sons is due for an EPA-issued penalty for violating federal SPCC regulations. They obviously did not provide secondary containment as required.
oh my yuck!
Luckily a whole lot of wildlife will enjoy this bonanza. Eventually.
Houston…..World’s Largest Toxic Zone,
Obama, shut down the beef fat industry!!!
/s
World’s Largest Toxic Zone?
What exactly is “toxic” about beef tallow? Some of the “biofuel” you greenies love so much is made from it. Birds and fish also love to eat the stuff, I’m sure it won’t last very long.
I just saw the cast from “The View” heading that way…
Imagine a rowing team running into that spill, the way that a Rutgers University crew once did in plowing through the oil slick from the Kin Buc Landfill in NJ.