Last Chance To See 600 sq mi: Hidden
Missed Connections: Gefilte Fish...and "Chain Connections"
H-Town Rock
Rock Talk, Vol. IX
So imagine that you live across the street from a huge refinery. One morning, you notice an oily fog creeping into your neighborhood from the direction of the oil storage tanks; it passes, leaving everything covered in a layer of caramel-colored residue that may or may not be toxic. You'd expect people to rush to check things out when you call for help, right?
Uh, maybe not.
The scenario unfolded in Baytown in late January when some gas oil leaked out of a tank at the ExxonMobil refinery and a cloud of oil-containing steam drifted over the nearby Archia Courts public housing complex. The first call to a federal hotline was placed the afternoon of Monday, Jan. 23, the day the cloud appeared, but public officials didn't make the scene for two days. Exxon didn't even tell the state that the substance had drifted off the refinery property until nearly two days after the leak occurred. So what went wrong? According to the Chronicle, which cobbled together a timeline of the spill using public records and interviews, the delay was the result of overlapping reporting systems and a lack of personnel to review reports of spills like the one in Baytown.
The breakdown was local — Exxon told Baytown Mayor Calvin Mundinger that the spill had left refinery property at 3 p.m. the day of the spill, but didn't inform the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality until 6 p.m. the next day — but it also happened at the state level, where a report on the indicent sat at the TCEQ regional office overnight before anyone looked at it. And nationally, the first call from a resident to the EPA didn't go anywhere because the leak would not affect U.S. waters. If Exxon had reported the incident earlier, local emergency crews could have responded; by the time state and federal agencies kicked into gear, contractors hired by Exxon had already scrubbed much of the oily residue off affected houses and cars. Oh, and no residents called 911 or the Baytown Police Department — instead, they went directly to federal authorities. "Had we heard from neighbors, I feel confident that at some level — at least the fire department — would have driven out to the scene," City Manager Gary Jackson told the Chronicle.
Archia Courts residents, as you might expect, are frustrated with the whole situation. Felicia Joseph was one of the first people in the complex to call the federal hotline; she said she wouldn't call Baytown authorities because they "don't care, plain and simple." And she said she also wouldn't think of calling Exxon when such a spill occurs, even though calls to the company did lead to a cleanup of the neighborhood:
"What am I going to call the company for?" Joseph said. "That would be like calling a hit-and-run driver and saying, 'You hit my car.'"
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