The U.S. Gulf Coast’s most important industrial waterway partially reopened on Monday after it was polluted with cancer-causing benzene and toxic runoff from the region’s worst chemical disaster in more than a decade.
A two-mile (3.2-kilometer) stretch of the Houston Ship Channel’s that’s been closed for three days will be open during daytime hours while the clean-up continues. Pilots have been ordered by the U.S. Coast Guard to stay at least 30 minutes apart so each vessel can be inspected to ensure it’s not dragging oily residue through the water.
The partial reopening means that oil refiners, chemical makers, grain exporters and other industries in Houston’s eastern suburbs are no longer cut off from the Gulf of Mexico and international markets. The Port of Houston handles more than $130 billion in trade annually. Industrial chemicals are by far the largest bulk commodity traversing the waterway, followed by petroleum coke and grain.
More than 30 ships were stranded earlier Monday on either side of the no-go zone as the unfolding Intercontinental Terminals Co. calamity entered its second week, according to Coast Guard figures. Royal Dutch Shell Plc slowed fuel production at its Houston-area refinery because of the disruption to waterborne crude deliveries, Reuters reported.