Galveston Bay gets C grade
This is the fourth year the watershed has received ‘adequate for now’ rank
Fewer than 1,500 gallons of oil spilled into Galveston Bay in 2017 — a spot of good news. But there’s still work to be done, a report says.
Fewer than 1,500 gallons of oil spilled into Galveston Bay in 2017, a report released Wednesday said — a spot of good news for Texas’ largest estuary, which churned with more than 90,500 gallons the previous year.
“Oil spills have been declining since 2003,” said Lisa Gonzalez, president and CEO of the nonpartisan research group, Houston Advanced Research Center. “We got through 2017 without a large oil spill in the bay.”
But there’s still a lot of work to be done to improve the overall health of the Galveston Bay watershed, which again received a C, or “adequate for now,” grade on its annual report card. And the grade “isn’t necessarily” a reflection of what occurred during Hurricane Harvey last year, Gonzalez added.
The flow of toxic chemicals from Harvey, however, provides plenty of reason for worry. The Houston Chronicle has reported that 150 million gallons of raw sewage and industrial discharge spilled into communities and waterways as a result of the storm. And about 100 companies, including Valero Energy, ExxonMobil and Arkema, reported spilling chemicals, some of which undoubtedly reached the bay.
This is the fourth year that the bay has been graded by Gonzalez’s center and the Galveston Bay Foundation, an environmental advocacy group. And it’s the fourth year the watershed has received an “adequate for now” rating.
“Despite the fact that we haven’t seen a lot of movement, this really is a longterm effort,” said Bob Stokes, the foundation’s
president. “The goal of the report card is to call attention to Galveston Bay ... and let people understand that we’re all connected to Galveston Bay. The things we do in our daily lives ... impact the bay.”
The report covers six categories: human health risks, water quality, wildlife, habitat, coastal change and pollution. Only water quality received an A, or “excellent,” grade, despite the gallons of toxic sludge that spewed into the waterways during Harvey.
Bay monitoring lacking
Some of the information collected for the report card — about birds, water temperature and freshwater inflows, for example — was gathered before Harvey. Other information was gathered after the storm, but it took some time for agencies to resume sampling schedules because of unsafe conditions, the report card states.
“In most cases, the gaps were short and likely still include some impacts of Hurricane Harvey,” according to the report card.
One of the problems is the lack of monitoring data, both during and after major storms, she said.
Earlier this year, the Chronicle and the Associated Press published a series on the government’s inaction following more than 100 toxic spills on land, in water and in air during and after Harvey, even though documents show that benzene, vinyl chloride, butadiene and other known human carcinogens were among the dozens of tons of industrial chemicals released throughout Houston’s petrochemical corridor and surrounding neighborhoods and waterways.
The news organizations found that testing by state and federal regulators of soil and water for contaminants largely was limited to Superfund toxic waste sites.
On Galveston Bay’s report card, the groups graded water quality by looking primarily at dissolved oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorous.
The levels of dissolved oxygen and nitrogen in water samples from rivers, bayous and the bay “were most often at acceptable levels for supporting diverse and healthy aquatic life,” the report stated. “The water quality problems that did exist — relating to high levels of phosphorus — typically occur in bayous that receive runoff and wastewater from human activity in residential, industrial, commercial, and agricultural areas.”
Other challenges that the bay faces are the decline of the blue crab, which is incredibly important for the commercial fishing economy, and trash along the waterways.
“Although litter and trash are widely identified as serious problems for Galveston Bay and its tributaries, there is no systematic, baywide monitoring to reduce this kind of pollution,” the report states. “Assessments determining liter introduction pathways and hotspots along bay and bayou shorelines could go a long way to determining best practices to reduce future litter pollution.”
Another problem: Dioxin is leaching into sediment in the Houston Ship Channel from the San Jacinto Waste Pits.
Pits sink score
The pits were used into the 1960s to store waste taken by barge from a nearby paper mill. The site was originally on the riverbank in eastern Harris County, but over time, subsidence, dredging and construction of the Interstate 10 bridge near Channelview altered the path of the river, and the site became partially submerged.
The pits became a federal Superfund site in 2008 and were capped in 2011, partly in response to prior reports of leaks and fears of damage from hurricanes.
In October, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to remove tons of toxins from the waste pits, but the responsible companies at the time said they opposed the plan as too risky for the environment.
Then in April, the EPA reached a long-awaited agreement with the companies to clean up the pits.
The removal’s estimated cost is $115 million. Clean-up design is expected to take about 29 months, with the cleanup to follow.
Find more information about the Galveston Bay report card at https://www.galvbaygrade.org/.