The fumes from the flares smell strongly on top of the levee and when I drove by the Norco plant on River Road. She hadn’t heard any warning about issues with the air quality, so she said she wasn’t thinking about it much. She said she was but while we spoke the wind was taking the smoke away from us so it wasn’t too bad.
I asked if she was worried about the air quality. Her parents never worry about flares from the plants, she told me - but they seemed worried to her this time, since they said the flares had never been this big before. Riley Guillory, another Norco resident, told me that the flares turned the sky an eerie orange color after Ida hit. He took out his cell phone and took a few pictures of the billowing black smoke pouring from the flares before driving off. Everyone thought it would hit as a Category 2, he said. We chatted about the storm and he said no one was ready for a Category 4 hurricane. I told him I was reporting on Ida, and that the flares are part of the story since I had never seen them so bad.
#NORCO LA SERIES#
Shell agreed to pay a $350,000 civil penalty as part of the settlement and to take a series of steps to reduce the amount of waste gas it flared and the pollutants released during flaring.Ī security guard who said he worked for Shell spotted me taking pictures of the flares and asked what I was doing. Environmental Protection Agency reached a settlement with Shell over allegations that flaring at the site violated the Clean Air Act and state law. Man checking damage to a home in Norco, Louisiana, that shares a fence line with Shell’s plant. The plumes I captured before are white and gray in color, very different from the black smoke visible after Ida. I’ve spent time in Norco before, photographing the town’s Christmas parades in the shadow of the industrial complex and under plumes from the plant’s stacks. Norco, Louisiana, sits on the east bank of the Mississippi River, about 25 miles west of New Orleans, in a region known as the “Petrochemical Corridor” to some and to others, including the United Nations, as “ Cancer Alley.” The town’s very name stems from a Shell affiliate that was known over a century ago as the New Orleans Refining Company, or NORCO. View of Norco from an overpass approaching the city from the New Orleans area. I have been able to see flares from mid-way across the bridge before, but never from that far away. I could see the black smoke coming from Norco when I got on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, a nearly 24-mile bridge that crosses the lake connecting Mandeville to Metairie. His sentiment was shared with everyone I met on the streets of Norco. He told me that he worked at Shell years ago and was the first computer foreman on the catalytic cracker, key equipment in an oil refinery. “I have never seen this many flares.” Peter Anderson with his rescue dogs, Phoebe and Joe, walking over a railroad track in Norco with Shell’s plant behind him. “This is bad,” Peter Anderson, who was born and raised in Norco, told DeSmog. Norco’s flares light up the sky a day after Hurricane Ida hit. “This process adds to air pollution because it leads to flaring off excess toxic gases, together with natural gas and oxygen, to keep the chemicals from building up to dangerous pressures.”īlack carbon released by flares can be a powerful - if short-lived - greenhouse gas in its own right. “Some of the area’s refineries started shutting down operations leading up to Harvey, including ExxonMobil, Petrobras, Shell, and Chevron Phillips Chemical,” DeSmog reported in 2017. Refinery flares can add to air pollution in the wake of natural disasters. Ida made landfall on Sunday, August 29 as a Category 4 hurricane - and remained a hurricane for 16 hours after its official landfall, maintaining strength as it passed over the swampy southern Louisiana coastline.Īfter Ida passed, black smoke darkened the skies over Norco, rising from bright red flares. Shell’s Norco refinery was one of multiple Louisiana oil refineries that shut down on Friday, August 27 as Hurricane Ida gained strength crossing the Gulf of Mexico’s unusually warm waters. NORCO, LOUISIANA - For over a century, the Shell Norco Manufacturing Complex has dominated Norco, Louisiana’s skyline as it refines up to 10.1 million gallons of oil a day and produces up to 3.33 billion pounds of ethylene a year.
0 kommentar(er)
