Gas spill stays out of the public eye

After 460,000 gallons of gasoline spills from tanks in Galena Park, it takes federal and state agencies almost two weeks to publicly acknowledge the storm-induced spill had occurred.

Jesse Perez, 41, a longtime resident of Galena Park, said he had grown accustomed to the smells of refineries and other plants in this heavily industrial community on the east side of Houston. But in that days that followed Hurricane Harvey’s departure from the area, he said he never smelled such strong gasoline odors in his neighborhood.

“It was a heavy smell, and it even carried inside our house,” Perez said. “We had to put air fragrances in the rooms just to air out the house.”

Perez was among the Galena Park residents who complained of the strong odors and burning eyes for days, unsure of the cause. It was only after news reports of a spill of nearly a half-million gallons of gasoline that residents suspected the cause of their discomfort. So little information was released by state and federal regulators that Perez feared the smell was coming from the Arkema chemical plant fires in Crosby, which were too far away.

Federal and state agencies took almost two weeks to publicly acknowledge the extent of the spill that had occurred in a storage tank complex operated by Oklahoma pipeline company Magellan Midstream Partners. Magellan employees notified the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Coast Guard, the Railroad Commission of Texas and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, but the only public record were entries in databases available on the internet.

The Railroad Commission and the Commission on Environmental Quality said they were aware

of the spill but did not publicize it. The Railroad Commission said it did not include the Galena Park release on its list of spills attributed to Hurricane Harvey because it was within the jurisdiction of other agencies.

The Galena Park spill was more than five times as big as all the other reported spills in Texas combined.

The Commission on Environmental Quality said it helped handled the spill alongside the Coast Guard, the Texas General Land Office and the EPA.

On Tuesday, the EPA released a statement on the spill, saying the vast majority of the leaked gasoline never escaped secondary containment booms and into nearby waterways, though some fuel seeped into the Houston Ship Channel. The cleanup operation, in which Magellan spread a blanket of foam over the gasoline to curb its volatile emissions, recovered about 8,000 of the nearly 11,000 barrels spilled, with a “significant” amount of the fuel likely evaporating, authorities said.

The EPA said it doesn’t expect the spill to have adverse environmental or health effects.

In the days after Harvey’s record rains, Texas energy companies reported a slurry of crude oil, wastewater and gasoline spilled from massive storage tanks across the state’s oil patches and its seaside refining complex. About 100 miles west of Houston, several huge steel tanks owned by one oil company sprung free from their piping and toppled over, tearing flowlines and spewing 1,117 barrels of crude and wastewater at eight well sites in Fayette County.

But even EnerVest Operating’s series of spills, which made up more than half of the estimated 1,930 barrels of leaked oil and wastewater in 23 separate spills reported to the Texas Railroad Commission, was only a fraction of the Galena Park spill.

“Those add up to a lot, but nothing comes close to this one,” said Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas in Austin, referring to Magellan’s spill.

Around 11:30 p.m. on the night that Hurricane Harvey left Houston on an eastward arc toward Port Arthur, Magellan employees discovered gasoline seeping from two massive fuel tanks.

The workers called 911, evacuated upwind and reported the spill to federal and state regulatory agencies, still unsure of its size. The spill was originally estimated as a leak of about 1,000 barrels, but that was revised to more than 10 times that amount on Sept. 5 after Magellan fully assessed the leak and the equipment.

Magellan spokesman Bruce Heine said the company initially gave a conservative estimate of the leaked volume, but that the “unprecedented flood water” from Harvey hindered Magellan’s access to the equipment and the true volume of the spill. Magellan actually thought it had overestimated the volume because only a “relatively small visible sheen” was seen on the contained water, Heine said.

The gasoline spill started from two above-ground storage tanks and, while Harvey’s flood waters are the culprit, “the specific cause of the tank release is under investigation at this time,” Heine said.

Metzger said he understands the delays in reporting the larger volume of the spill because of the floodwaters, but that it’s still important for the industry to get the news out as quickly as possible to the public to ensure they’re protected and informed.

News of the spill did not surface until six days after it was largely cleaned up, and the EPA did not craft a public statement on the spill until Tuesday, after the Associated Press broke the news about the spill on Monday.

Juan Flores, a lifelong Galena Park resident and former city councilman, said he and many other locals detected a strong petroleum smell for several days in Harvey’s aftermath.

Flores, who does outreach with the nonprofit group Air Alliance Houston, said people were closing doors and windows, but many still couldn’t escape the odor, he said.

“Smells are a part of living in GP, but this time is was real, real bad,” Flores said. “It’s part of life but, at the same time, it’s our kids who are suffering.”