After Harvey, Houston needs petrochemicals more than ever

Imagine cleaning up after Harvey without plastic garbage cans, plastic bags, chlorine bleach or diesel fuel.

How about rebuilding a house without insulated copper wire, wet-space drywall, paint or power tools.

The explosions and fires at the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby were a terrifying reminder of the dangerous chemicals and processes involved in making plastics and coatings. The flames jetting from the flare stacks along the Houston Ship Channel are menacing, and the black smoke billowing into the sky is ominous.

Those facilities, though, make the building blocks for our homes, and without them, recovering from a hurricane would be impossible. Yet we take them for granted.

We don't lionize the engineers who spent their lives designing those petrochemical plants and refineries, the vast majority of which survived Harvey just fine. There are more than 400 such facilities in the Houston area, and only three reports of significant, dangerous and uncontrolled chemical releases so far.

To put this in perspective, Greater Houston is the world's largest producer of plastic resin pellets, the little white chunks of plastic shipped in bulk to factories around the world, where machines color and mold them into the plastic and rubber products you find in your home.

Houston is making more pellets than ever because Texas is home to cheap natural gas. Companies in Houston have built a half-dozen new plants to super-heat natural gas in steam crackers to produce ethylene gas.

Ethylene gas, which is flammable, is then pressurized and combined with a catalyst to make polyethylene, the most common plastic. Polyethylene is then combined with other chemicals to serve different purposes.

Needless to say, whenever a flammable gas is heated and pressurized, something can go wrong. But when you consider that companies make about 80 million tons of polyethylene a year with very few accidents, the engineering deserves our respect.

Producing transportation fuels involves an equally hazardous process at refineries up and down the ship channel. And while Texas refineries typically produce 4 million barrels of gasoline a day, there are very few problems.

Last week I wrote a column blasting Arkema and other facilities that leaked chemicals during Harvey. I felt comfortable criticizing them in the midst of a natural disaster because the vast majority of the industry weathered the storm without creating a public hazard.

Arkema, and others, further deserve criticism because they also have rejected the public's right to know what hazardous materials they have stored in our neighborhoods. Nor have they shared how they minimize risks.

We have the right to demand this information and to demand that regulators inspect facilities to confirm compliance.

What we don't need, though, is the hyperbole coming from environmental groups like the Sierra Club last week.

"For as long as I can remember, my hometown of Houston has been littered with dangerous chemical plants, oil and gas refineries, and hazardous waste facilities," Bryan Parras, a Sierra Club organizer wrote in a statement. "These sites have caused devastation for my family, my friends, and my neighbors for years, polluting our air and water with deadly toxins."

Yes, he really did say devastation.

Chemical plants and refineries have undoubtedly polluted our city, but they haven't caused devastation. These plants did not destroy the homes of 100,000 Houstonians. These plants have not razed entire towns to their foundations.

In fact, these plants are critical to rebuilding after true devastation.

Let's keep things in perspective. The majority of petrochemical plants and refineries in Houston have improved dramatically over the past 20 years. Air and water pollution are down dramatically. New facilities going in now are extremely efficient and environmentally responsible.

There are old plants that are dangerous and should be closed, and we should demand greater action from our government to prevent more pollution.

Most people, though, need to acknowledge that we are the reason these plants exist. If we didn't need chemicals, plastics and fuel, there would be no reason to build these dangerous places. No matter how much they may scare us, they are our creation. We are responsible for them.

So when you walk across your new polyurethane-sealed wooden floor and tap a plastic anchor into the drywall to rehang the family photos, take a moment to think about the geniuses who made all of those things possible.