Evidence of spills at toxic site during floods

PASADENA, Texas -- The U.S. government received reports of three spills at one of Houston's dirtiest Superfund toxic-waste sites in the days after the drenching rains from Hurricane Harvey finally stopped.

Aerial photos reviewed by The Associated Press show dark-colored water surrounding the site as the floods receded, flowing through Vince Bayou and into the city's ship channel.

The reported spills, which have not been detailed publicly, occurred at U.S. Oil Recovery, a former petroleum industry waste processing plant contaminated with a dangerous brew of cancer-causing chemicals.

On Aug. 29, the day Harvey's rains stopped, a county pollution-control team sent photos to the Environmental Protection Agency of three large concrete tanks flooded with water.

That led PRP Group, the company overseeing the ongoing cleanup, to call a federal emergency hotline to report a spill affecting nearby Vince Bayou.

Over the next several days, the company reported two more spills of potentially contaminated stormwater from U.S. Oil Recovery, according to reports and call logs obtained by the AP from the U.S. Coast Guard, which operates the National Response Center hotline.

The EPA requires that spills of oil or hazardous substances in quantities that may be harmful to public health or the environment be reported to the 24-hour hotline immediately when public waterways are threatened.

The EPA has not acknowledged publicly the three spills PRP Group reported to the Coast Guard. The agency said an on-scene coordinator was at the site Wednesday and found no evidence material had washed off the site.

The EPA said it still is assessing the scene.

The AP reported in the days after Harvey, at least seven Superfund sites in and around Houston were underwater during the record-shattering storm.

Journalists surveyed the sites by boat, vehicle and on foot. U.S. Oil Recovery was not one of the sites visited by AP. The EPA said at the time its personnel had been unable to reach the sites, though they surveyed the locations using aerial photos.

After AP's report, the EPA has been highlighting its response to the flooding at Superfund sites. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt reiterated safeguarding the intensely polluted sites was among his top priorities during a visit Friday to the San Jacinto River Waste Pits, one of the sites AP reported on about two weeks ago.

Pruitt then boarded a Coast Guard aircraft for an aerial tour of other nearby Superfund sites flooded by Harvey, including U.S. Oil Recovery.

Photos taken Aug. 31 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show dark-colored water surrounding the site two days after the first spill was reported to the government hotline.

While the photos do not prove contaminated materials leaked from U.S. Oil Recovery, they show as the murky floodwaters receded, they flowed through Vince Bayou and emptied into a ship channel that leads to the San Jacinto River.

The hotline caller identified Vince Bayou as the waterway affected by a spill of unknown material in unknown amounts.

Thomas Voltaggio, a retired EPA official who oversaw Superfund cleanups and emergency responses for more than two decades, reviewed the aerial photos, hotline reports and other documents obtained by AP.

"It is intuitively obvious that the rains and floods of the magnitude that occurred during Hurricane Harvey would have resulted in some level of contamination having been released to the environment," Voltaggio said. "Any contamination in those tanks would likely have entered Vince Bayou and potentially the Houston Ship Channel."

He said the amount of contaminants spread from the site during the storm likely never will be known, making the environmental effect difficult to measure.

PRP Group, the corporation formed to oversee the cleanup at U.S. Oil Recovery, said it reported the spills as legally required but said subsequent testing of storm water remaining in the affected tanks showed it met federal drinking water standards. The company declined to provide AP copies of those lab reports or a list of specific chemicals for which it tested, saying the EPA was expected to release that information soon.

U.S. Oil Recovery was shut down in 2010 after regulators determined operations there posed an environmental threat to Vince Bayou, which flows through the property in Pasadena. Pollution at the former hazardous waste treatment plant is so bad that Texas prosecutors charged the company's owner, Klaus Genssler, with five criminal felonies. The German native fled the United States and is considered a fugitive.

More than 100 companies that sent hazardous materials and oily waste to U.S. Oil Recovery for processing are now paying for the multimillion-dollar cleanup there through a court-monitored settlement. Past sampling of materials at the site revealed high concentrations of hazardous chemicals linked to cancer, such as benzene, ethylbenzene and trichloroethylene. The site also potentially contains toxic heavy metals, including mercury and arsenic.

AP began asking the EPA whether contaminated material might have again leaked from U.S. Oil Recovery last week, after reviewing the aerial photos taken Aug. 31. The EPA said it visited the site on Sept. 4, nearly a week after site operators reported an initial spill, and again the following week. The EPA said that its staff saw no evidence that toxins had washed away from the scene during either visit.

PRP Group said the spills occurred at the toxic waste site on Aug. 29, Sept. 6 and Sept. 7. One of the EPA's media releases on Sept. 9, more than 11 days after the first call was made to the hotline, made reference to overflowing water at the scene, but did not describe it as a spill.