ITC Reports Progress and No More Setbacks at Its Deer Park Plant

The U.S. Coast Guard stepped up its efforts to reopen the Houston Ship Channel Sunday, by tripling the length of its booms as it worked to capture more of the chemical toxins released in the March 22 containment wall breach that followed the March 17 ITC tank farm fire.

Lt. Commander Jarod Toczko spoke about what the Coast Guard’s had accomplished and what it planned to do next at a morning press conference. “The area impacted within the Houston Ship Channel is about a two nautical mile span. The majority of product is contained. We’ve got pockets of oil collecting in other locations along the two-mile span.”

He said that more than 40 vessels were out in the Ship Channel since Saturday “actively skimming …trying to recover oil. Our focus today in addition to the continued cleanup is to look at options for potentially reopening the Ship Channel. Our plan right now is to send a test vessel, a light draft vessel, through the Ship Channel from Galveston.

ITC officials were able to report that they had successfully pumped out most of tank 80-7, repaired the ruptured containment wall and most of all — had no new bad news to deliver.