Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

On March 22nd, 2014 two vessels collided in the Houston ship channel. And that’s when the TPW Oil Spill Response team sprang to action.

[Winston Denton] There was a timing issue with an incoming inbound ship and a barge and tug crossing the channel.

[Steven Mitchell] The crew members started reporting that they had oil leaking from the barge.

[Rebbecca Hensley] We had about 170,000 gallons of fuel that was spilled into the ship channel.

[Don Pitts] Any large spill like this, we get notified by the Coast Guard or the General Land Office to come and assist in the role of Natural Resource Advisors.

[Heather Biggs] Since it was a large event, we did pull people from Austin, from Corpus, even down from Brownsville we had folks coming in to help us.

[Angela Schrift] We coordinated, figured out what we’d need. Got the materials together and got down to the coast as soon as we could.

Meet the team, and find out what happened next, when you view their story next week on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV Series on PBS.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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