Houston which houses more than 6,500 miles of oil and gas pipelines, 10 refineries and 500 chemical plants, was terribly destroyed by Hurricane Harvey. The flood left hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of people temporarily homeless and went on to cause the release of a sundry of hazardous and carcinogenic (cancer-causing) chemicals including benzene, vinyl chloride, and butadiene into the environment during the destruction of most of its industrial plants.
Harvey’s impact on some older chemical plants was documented, including the flooding of the Arkema Inc. which caused two explosions witnessed in real time.
According to the Associated Press (AP) and The Houston Chronicles in a report released this Tuesday, the impact of Hurricane Harvey on Houstons petrochemical plants was much greater than previously reported.
Using county, state and federal records, it was noted that there were more than 100 toxic chemicals released into the air, water or on land. It was also astonishingly noted in one recorded case, that over half a billion gallons of industrial wastewater from one chemical plant mixed with stormwater.
AP and Chronicle also found out that most of the industrial spills that occurred have not been investigated by federal investigators nor has there been an announcement of enforcement actions for the spills.
And Samuel Coleman of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regional office has said that the agency’s first and pressing goal was “addressing any environmental harms as quickly as possible, as opposed to making announcements about what the problem was”. He has told AP and Chronicle though that looking back, the public should have been alerted of “dozens of spills”.
