Major Sulfuruc Acid leak in Texas

[James48]

I don’t know how this one didn’t get covered, but four days ago there was a MAJOR Sulfuric Acid leak of over one million gallons into the Houston ship channel. A pipe broke and it poured into the water. It’s huge.

Houston Texas:

https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/jacintoport-boulevard-chemical-leak-channelview-texas/285-73f3625c-5b1a-406d-9d18-27e32aa262d0

[Ilsa]

1. Trump and Abbott have practically expatriated anyone

who would have investigated it, cleaned it up, or sought remuneration for the damage. Did anyone need to alert health authorities?

[jmowreader]

2. They probably did exactly what you're supposed to do

Call the fire department and the US Coast Guard's National Response Center.

I'm only going to assume the NRC called the US Chemical Safety Board, which is one of Trump's least favorite agencies. They called the EPA, which Trump also hates.

This is a strange one. The facility, which is there for loading chemicals onto ships, has catwalks over their intertank pipes. One of the catwalks collapsed (because it's hanging over a tank full of highly corrosive material and eventually weakened) and broke a pipe. Most of the acid was caught by the containment system, but some got into the waterway.

https://www.marineinsight.com/shipping-news/1-million-gallons-of-sulphuric-acid-spills-into-houston-ship-channel-after-facility-accident/

[ProfessorGAC]

3. An Unknown Amount?

Huh?
The containment system is a fixed volume per unit height.
It would take 30 seconds to safely measure the depth & another 5 seconds to determine the mass in the containment.
Those tanks, from my experience, have inventory recorded at least once a day.
So, if we know how much was in the tank, so:
Last Inventory - (Remaining tank inventory + Containment) = Spill not contained.
There is no logical or responsible way they don't know how much went unrestrained into the channel.
My guess is it's pretty bad, otherwise they'd readily report "96% of the spill was contained" or something to that effect.
Neutralizing sulfuric is pretty simple, but the problem is it dilutes in water very fast and completely.
So, whatever was spilled is now spread out over a few cubic miles of water.
One other thing: this was spent sulfuric. This is typically 100-100.8% sulfuric and very often has organic content.
This could be a major environmental event.

[area51]

4. Kick. n/t