Defunct companies have left behind energy facilities that leak toxins into fragile coastal ecosystems. And guess who has to clean them up?
By Russell Gold
October 2023
Under overcast skies, a four-seat propeller plane took off from an airstrip south of Houston for a routine patrol of the area’s waterways. Its crew, two volunteers with the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, flew low along Buffalo Bayou until they neared downtown. After executing a tight U-turn in their Cessna Skylane, they cut back east, passing north of Baytown, headed for Trinity Bay.
There they spotted a rainbow sheen—about thirty feet wide and a couple of hundred feet long—stretching across the murky water, a telltale sign of a leaking oil well. They had seen and reported it before. Now the well appeared to be releasing petroleum into the bay at a faster rate.
So the Coast Guard again notified the state’s General Land Office, which contacted the Railroad Commission of Texas, a preposterously named institution that has nothing to do with railroads and everything to do with the oil business. A week later, last February, inspectors from both state agencies took a boat out to check on the leak. The metal grating around the well, from which it should have been accessible, had severely corroded, making it too dangerous to stand on. This dashed their hopes for a closer examination, and they settled for snapping a few photographs of the decrepit equipment before heading back to land.
