At first, it was just another thing to worry about. Hurricane Harvey was headed straight toward the heart of America’s petrochemical industry, where dozens of refineries and chemical plants sit next to vulnerable communities. There were forecasts of biblical rainfall, which experts predicted could flood facilities and cause accidental toxic substance releases, or worse, explosions. If multiple plants shut down at once, there could be huge emissions of harmful air pollutants. And if too much rain fell on the region’s Superfund sites, they could overflow, threatening human health.



It’s been nearly a week since Harvey first made landfall in Texas, and all of these things have happened. In the most high-profile case, a flooded chemical plant east of Houston burst into blast smoke twice, leaking chemicals and sending 15 people to the hospital. Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Brock Long is calling the plume “incredibly dangerous,” noting that the organic peroxides at the facility pose threats to human health. Residents living in a 1.5-mile radius around the plant were ordered to evacuate.

But this is far from the only pollution event that has resulted from Harvey, and arguably not the most dangerous. More than one million pounds of toxic air pollutants have spewed into the region’s atmosphere due to mass refinery and chemical plant shutdowns, with more pollution events expected as the plants start to back up. Drinking water across southeast Texas is also “going to be contaminated,” infectious disease specialist Rick Watkins told the Guardian, because of the disruption of sewage systems, which will leak into floodwater. According to Newsweek, “drinking water has [already] come into contact with dirty floodwater.” Superfund sites, of which there are at least a dozen in Harris County, continue to threaten contamination of floodwater as well.

Other spills are happening too. Rainfall caused a 6.3-million-gallon gas tank to tip over and leak “an unspecified amount” of fuel at a Kinder Morgan facility in Pasadena. On Wednesday, the Sierra Club released a long list of issues reported at petrochemical facilities across the region. More are likely on the way.

Huge and mildly terrifying list of issues so far reported at petrochemical facilities after #Harvey, via @SierraClub pic.twitter.com/JkVNM2iOTq — Emily Atkin (@emorwee) August 30, 2017

These combined threats pose a truly unprecedented challenge for the regional office of the Environmental Protection Agency that covers southeast Texas. “I can tell you, there was nothing even remotely like this during Sandy,” said Judith Enck, the former EPA Region 2 administrator who handled the environmental response to that historic 2012 storm. “We had some refineries in New Jersey that were impacted, but nothing like this.”

