Nearly 500,000 Gallons Of Gasoline In Single Houston Spill; Officials Took 2 Weeks To Acknowledge It

[hatrack]

EDIT

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.

Both the Railroad Commission and 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, author ties said.

EDIT

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Galena-Park-gasoline-spill-dwarfed-other-Harvey-12192956.php?cmpid=btfpm

[mountain grammy]

1. But the Texas governor asks for $160 BILLION

for storm relief.. bullshit.