In late August 2017, Hurricane Harvey’s torrential rains brought unprecedented flooding to Houston and large portions of the southeast coast of Texas. The storm destroyed homes and businesses, prompted numerous rescues, and left Texans to piece their lives back together. Harvey also led to substantial releases of toxic chemicals into communities.
The Houston area is home to hundreds of chemical plants and refineries. While highly visible incidents, like the explosions at the Arkema chemical plant, dominated news coverage, toxic chemical releases from plants occurred throughout the region.
In this episode of our podcast, we spoke with EDF’s own Dr. Elena Craft, who helped spearhead efforts to monitor these releases in real-time. Elena talks about her experiences on the ground, the inadequacies of many chemical plant risk management plans, and what it all means moving forward.
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One Comment
And yet the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is preparing to allow a new toxic landfill to be built in or near a Texas floodplain – just miles for Rio Grande river water supplies – to accept tons of toxic waste from Mexico and other states.
See: https://www.texastribune.org/2017/12/19/after-harvey-some-south-texans-more-wary-ever-about-plan-build-landfil/