Are Houston's petrochemicals safe from hurricanes?

TEXAS CITY, Texas (AP) — When Hurricane Ike was on its trajectory for the petrochemical industry clustered here, the storm had the makings of an environmental nightmare unlike anything in U.S. history.

Of course, that didn't happen. Ike's storm surge was less severe than feared and the floodwalls, levees and bulkheads built around the region's heavy industry generally held. Some hazardous material spilled, but nothing to cause the widespread environmental damage some feared.

But many of the plants and refineries are protected by a 1960s-era, 15-foot-high levee system built by the Army Corps of Engineers that is strikingly similar to the one around New Orleans that failed catastrophically during Katrina.

"The industry clearly is aware that these facilities are located in an area vulnerable to hurricanes," said John Felmy, chief economist with the American Petroleum Institute.

The shortcomings are plain to see.

For example, Texas City — home to seven massive facilities run by industry giants like the Dow Chemical Co., BP and Valero — is surrounded by a ring levee system that includes earthen levees without erosion-control concrete, long stretches of floodwalls similar to those that failed during Katrina and a mishmash of levee heights.

"They've got the same piles of dirt and flawed I-walls that destroyed New Orleans defending 22 percent of the nation's refining," said Robert Bea, a civil engineer and levee expert with the University of California-Berkeley.

The Corps of Engineers is aware of the danger.

"There certainly is risk and there certainly can and will be storms that may come along that will overtop those levees," said Col. David C. Weston, the corps' Galveston district commander.

"If you had 25 feet of surge, you'd be 10 feet over the top of those structures, and I would expect to see significant damage" to the refineries and other infrastructure, Weston said.

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