A collision near the Houston Ship Channel on March 22 involving a 585-ft bulk carrier and a barge containing 924,000 gal of bunker fuel sent oil straight into Galveston Bay, the gateway to one of the busiest ports in the U.S.
The U.S. Coast Guard has estimated that about 168,000 gal of oil were released following the collision. “Some of that has already been recuperated and they’re still working on the cleanup,” says Rosio Torres, spokesperson at the Joint Information Center, the Unified Command Center for what’s being called the Texas City “Y” Incident.