WASHINGTON (AP) – State and federal agencies say they are responding to reports of oil spills and chemicals from Hurricane Ida after the publication of aerial photos by The Associated Press.
Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Nick Conger said Thursday that a special plane carrying photographic and chemical detection equipment was sent from Texas to Louisiana to fly over the area hard hit by the category storm. 4, including a Phillips 66 refinery along the Mississippi River, where the first AP reported an apparent oil spill Wednesday.
Coast Guard spokesman Gabriel Wisdom, the 3rd-class NCO, said Thursday that his plane has also flown over the refinery, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico. The AP posted photos of a thousand-mile-long brown-black spot in the waters south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana.
The AP reported first the possible spills on Wednesday after reviewing aerial images of the disaster area taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Ida made landfall Sunday, her eye wall cut in Louisiana with winds of 150 mph and a storm surge so powerful that it temporarily reversed the flow of the mighty Mississippi.
NOAA photographs showed a black and brown spot floating near a large platform with the name Elisperation Offshore Drilling painted on its heliport. The Houston-based company said Thursday that its Enterprise 205 platform was secured and evacuated safely before the storm arrived and that it suffered no damage.
“Company staff returned to the facility on September 1 and confirmed the integrity of all systems and that no environmental discharges from our facilities occurred,” the company said in a communiqué.
Sandy Day, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Office of Environmental Safety and Enforcement, which regulates oil rigs, confirmed it had received a report Wednesday on the oil spill that the PA had posted photos of. But the location was within state waters, rather than the farthest federal jurisdiction.
Patrick Courreges, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, said his agency had no way to physically investigate the spill.
“It’s going to be a while for us before we can get out,” Courreges said Thursday. “We don’t have planes, helicopters or boats for golf.”
Aerial photographs taken by a NOAA plane on Tuesday also showed significant flooding at the massive Phillips 66 Alliance refinery in Belle Chasse, Louisiana. In some sections of the refinery, a rainbow glow and black stripes were visible in the water leading to the river.
In statements issued Monday and Tuesday, Phillips 66 said there was “some water” at the refinery, but did not answer questions about environmental hazards.
Only after AP sent photos to the company on Wednesday showing extensive flooding and what appeared to be oil in the water did the company confirm that it had “discovered a glow of unknown origin in some flooded areas of the Alliance refinery. ”.
“Right now, it looks like the brightness is assured and contained in the refinery lands,” Phillips 66 spokesman Bernardo Fallas said Wednesday evening, three days after the hurricane erupted. “There is cleaning equipment on site. The incident was reported to the relevant regulatory agencies upon discovery. “
Although the faults characterized the spill as a “glow of unknown origin,” the report Phillips 66 made Wednesday to Louisiana regulators called it “heavy oil in flood waters,” according to a call log. of the state provided to the AP. The log also contained a call from an oyster collector concerned that the refinery’s water pollution was littering environmentally sensitive beds downstream.
Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality spokesman Greg Langley said Wednesday that a state assessment team was sent to the refinery and noted that an on-site oil spill with feathers and absorbent pads was being addressed. A dike had been broken in to protect the plant, allowing water to flood during the storm and come out again as the tide receded.
Langley said there was no estimate available as to how much oil could have spilled from the refinery.
Louisiana regulators tracked about 100 reports of chemical and oil spills statewide as of Wednesday. According to the call log, reports range from sunken vessels filtering diesel to overturned fuel tanks and flooded pipelines. Several chemical manufacturers also reported ventilation or savings of toxic chemicals due to the loss of electricity.
Stephanie Morris, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office, said that four days after the Ida attack, state regulators were still in the early stages of responding to the environmental hazards generated by the storm. . He said a state plane had flown over the affected area, focusing more on identifying ongoing threats than quantifying what had already leaked into the water and air.
“We’re in what we call the rapid assessment phase, because we’re trying to assess it from the air,” Morris said. “We just have an idea of what is there and of the locations. We still don’t have an idea of what the sources or volumes of the glitters might be.”
___
Follow AP investigative journalist Michael Biesecker on http://twitter.com/mbieseck
___
Contact the AP Global Research Team at [email protected].