A public hearing has been set for Tuesday, July 14, on a Texas-based company’s proposed barge cleaning facility to be located on the Mississippi River near BREC’s Farr Park Equestrian Center.
Concerns about the facility—which Port Arthur-based Tubal-Cain Marine Services officials say they’ve been working to locate at 6800 River Road for more than a year—first arose in February when a Riverbend homeowners’ association was notified that DEQ was conducting a permit review of the project.
Homeowners in the area and BREC officials have since called for more information on the project in general, as well as specifics on the kinds of chemicals that will be used at the facility and subsequent air pollution issues.
A public notice on the meeting issued by LDEQ this morning addresses some of those questions, listing a number of pollutants and estimated emissions from the facility. See the specifics.
The notice says the facility is to include a dockside mooring area, two working deck barges with 10 mounted 15,000-gallon storage tanks, as well as a steam boiler, transfer pumps and piping, a truck loading station and enclosed flare.
At the facility, “barges will be emptied of their residual liquids and gas, then cleaned,” the notice says. “The residual liquid material in the barges will be pumped into storage tanks. The storage tanks will only store the residual materials on a temporary basis. These materials will be removed from the barges, the remaining vapors will be flared until it is safe to vent the barges to the atmosphere.”
The public hearing will take place beginning at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 14, in the Oliver Pollock room of the LDEQ headquarters in Baton Rouge, 602 N. 5th St.
—Steve Sanoski
