Houston residents concerned over planned large-scale storage of oil and gas chemicals

Residents of Houston Gardens/Plantation Houston Estates and surrounding communities have expressed grave concern about a proposal by an oil services company to store large quantities of chemicals at Industrial Site, Ruimveldt.

They have written to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) raising a series of concerns and seeking assurances. As reported in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek, international oilfield chemical company Nalco Champion has applied to the EPA for authorisation to operate a chemical warehouse facility at Ruimveldt Industrial Estate. According to a notice in Stabroek News, Nalco Champion Guyana has submitted an application for an Environmental Authorisation for the operation of a chemical warehousing facility at the John Fernandes Ltd. Inland Terminal, at 4055 Industrial Site, Ruimveldt, and the transportation of chemicals from the Inland Terminal to John Fernandes’ Water Street port for transfer to the Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels offshore Guyana. The facility at the Inland Terminal facility will be engaged in the filtration, storage and warehousing of oilfield chemicals to supply the FPSO vessels that will be offshore of Guyana. The proposed operation estimates that 1,493,000 kg of specialty and commodity chemicals will be imported and stored onsite and will occupy 5,000 square metres with the intention of extending to 20,000 square metres as oil production increases.

The Notice added that the proposed development of the operation will also involve the construction of office spaces, installation of a laboratory, storage of mechanical equipment and parts, and transportation of chemicals, among other activities.

As a result, in keeping with the Environmental Protection Act, the notice said that an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is required before any decision to approve or reject the proposed project is taken since it may have significant impacts on the environment.

Members of the public are therefore invited, within 28 days of the Notice, to make written submissions to the EPA, setting out the questions and matters which they require to be answered or considered in the EIA.

In a letter to the EPA released to the press yesterday, the residents of Houston Gardens/Plantation Houston Estates and surrounding areas requested that a number of issues be addressed by the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA).

They said that they had been forced to seek recourse to the press since two letters to the EPA related to developments in the Houston area, have received no response.

The residents said they wanted the EPA to identify the internationally recognized environmental group(s) which assisted it to compile the list of consultants to do ESIAs and wanted to know which consultant on the list is being used to conduct this ESIA.

“If no such list exists, the residents of Houston Gardens/Plantation Houston Estates and surrounding communities regard the entire process as being flawed and call on the EPA to abort the process and to halt the chemical plant development until such time as an appropriately qualified consultant is appointed in accordance with the EP Act 1996 to conduct the ESIA”, the letter said. The residents are also requesting that an environmental cost/benefit analyses, as opposed to an economic cost-benefit analyses, be conducted for the proposed development. “The analyses should identify the environmental costs and benefits of the proposed development. We have identified as major impacts the risks to the health and well-being of our families, the detrimental impact on the quality of our community life and the depreciation in the values of our homes. This project must only advance if is demonstrated that the environmental benefits to the residents of Houston Gardens/Plantation Houston Estates and other impacted communities exceed such environmental costs”, the letter stated.

The residents added that they understand that the Central Housing and Planning Authority and the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission has zoned all lands in Houston Gardens/Plantation Houston Estates and surrounding areas as residential and/or agricultural.

“The ESIA shall include confirmation from the CHPA/GLSC whether the land identified for this and additional developments in the area of John Fernandes Inland Terminal have been altered to commercial/industrial use. Evidence must also be presented in the ESIA to confirm that residents of Houston Gardens/Plantation Houston Estates and surroundings were consulted if such a change was made. Our property transports clearly stipulate that the Houston Gardens/Plantation Estates are strictly for residential purposes. It is inconceivable that the authorities responsible for regulating our country’s land use would so perilously place an activity such as chemicals handling, so close to the homes of citizens”, the residents said. They added that there are several canals, bordering the community, into which waste and stormwater from the John Fernandes Inland Terminal facility is discharged.

“At least one of these canals is blocked causing water to stagnate within close proximity to our homes. The risks of waste or contaminated runoff from the proposed development must be seriously assessed given the interaction with our community’s internal drainage. The ESIA must consequently include numerical surface water quality modeling to confirm no impacts on the surface water quality. There is a groundwater well located within 200 m of the proposed development. The ESIA must include a detailed description of structural geology and hydrogeology of the area to ensure no discharges to groundwater and a monitoring plan to confirm the conclusions of the ESIA”, the residents contended.

The residents added that previous letters to the EPA dated July 2018 and June 2019 requested action from the EPA to address several threats to human health and the environment related to developments in the Houston Gardens/Plantation Houston Estates area. They said this proposed chemical plant “catapults the need for action from the EPA into a sphere of indisputable urgency”. The residents say that they also understand that there are other impending developments in this area. “We are therefore requesting that the EPA conduct a Sectoral Environmental Assessment to examine the cumulative environmental, social and economic impacts on the residents of Houston Gardens/Plantation Houston Estates and surrounding areas of all developments planned by the current owners/lessors of the lands in this Houston area”, the letter said.