Oil-Stained Water Cuts Off Houston Industry From Gulf of Mexico

The Houston Ship Channel won’t reopen until the U.S. Coast Guard verifies a cloud of cancer-causing benzene has dissipated and oily runoff from the region’s worst chemical disaster in 14 years poses no threat to vessels or their crews.

Oil refiners, chemical manufacturers and grain exporters in Houston’s eastern suburbs are cut off from Gulf of Mexico shipping as the unfolding Intercontinental Terminals Co. calamity enters its second week.

Onshore, ITC achieved a significant milestone early Sunday in emptying more than half a million gallons of toxic liquid from a tank wrecked in the four-day blaze that erupted on March 17 and sent a mile-high plume of black smoke skyward.

The Coast Guard plans to move a test vessel through the channel’s 2-mile-long no-go zone to ascertain whether ship traffic can resume without disrupting efforts to skim gasoline ingredients that spilled into the waterway, Lieutenant Commander Jason Toczko said. He declined to estimate when the channel will reopen or specify when the test vessel will launch.

The channel, which is not a source of drinking water for Houston or its suburbs, connects the region’s dense warren of refineries, chemical processors and fertilizer warehouses to the rest of the world via Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Dozens of major companies rely on the waterway to receive crude oil and other raw materials, and to send out finished products like fuel and livestock feed.

ITC crews finally drained about 13,000 barrels (546,000 gallons) of a benzene-laced refining byproduct called pygas from a charred tank after two earlier unsuccessful attempts, Brent Weber, the company’s incident commander, said during a media briefing on Sunday.

Tank 80-7

An unknown quantity remains trapped in the tank beneath its floating roof, he said.

Clearing the tank — numbered 80-7 on the facility map — is a significant achievement for ITC because it allows crews access to other damaged tanks still holding dangerous chemicals they need to drain to eliminate the danger of new fires. A 2-foot (0.6-meter) deep pool of chemicals on the ground around the damaged tanks was reduced to 2 inches (5 centimeters) by Sunday morning.

Benzene levels in the air over suburban Deer Park and neighboring communities remained below harmful levels, Adam Adams of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said.

Trust ‘Not There’

That was a far cry from late last week when readings of the pollutant linked to leukemia and other forms of cancer shut entire towns, triggering panic and sending 1,000 people to a pop-up medical clinic.

Weary residents remained on edge, wondering what’s next and when normal life will return. For many Houstonians, it’s the worst industrial disaster since the 2005 explosion at BP Plc’s Texas City refinery that killed 15.

“There’s more tanks in there. Is it going to reignite? It’s very uncertain,” said Mercy Reyna, 50, who’s been suffering from headaches, eye discomfort and chest tightness. “The trust is not there. We feel like we’re not being told the truth of what’s going on.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he’ll file a lawsuit accusing ITC of violating clean-air laws. Meanwhile, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board said it will be investigating the disaster.