At least 28 vessels were waiting for permission to enter the Houston Ship Channel late on 24 March as a portion of the waterway remained closed following a spill at Intercontinental Terminals' (ITC) storage facility in Deer Park, Texas.
Another 26 vessels are unable to depart the ship channel, according to a joint task force set up to respond to the spill of chemicals and fire retardant used to put out a blaze at the ITC facility last week.
The US Coast Guard closed a section of the ship channel from Tucker's Bayou adjacent to the ITC facility to light 116 on 22 March when a 10ft section of a containment wall around a section of the tank farm was breached. Foam used to extinguish the initial fire and other chemicals flowed into the Houston Ship Channel. Cargo operations on the ship channel were closed from light 139 to light 129.
The root cause of the breach remains under investigation. The containment wall was secured at 5am ET on 23 March. The breach and the associated release of product caused an elevation in volatile organic compounds (VOCs), ITC said, leading to a shelter-in-place was warning for nearby businesses and adjacent areas.
ITC said it made "significant progress" over the weekend removing pyrolysis gas from one of the tanks. Crews are working to remove the remaining liquid. Vacuuming operations also continued at a ditch adjacent to the tank farm where product leaked after the breach.
A fire first broke out at ITC on 16 March when a naphtha tank manifold leaked and ignited, according to a filing to state environmental monitors. The fire later spread to tanks holding toluene and xylene, sending a black cloud billowing over Houston for days.
The fire was first extinguished on 20 March after many days of fire crews covering the site in foam. High levels of benzene have been reported since then, leading to numerous shelter-in-place warnings.
The fire reignited briefly on 22 March but was extinguished within an hour, ITC said.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Coast Guard have taken actions to contain runoff from the ITC site using booms and pumping it to storage containers.
The Coast Guard's Gulf Strike Team, which specializes in spill cleanups, has been called in to assist. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA is providing spill trajectories to the unified command.
TCEQ and its contractor have been sampling surface water and have offered to pay for additional help from Texas A&M University.
