‘Suezmax’ Oil Tankers Could Soon Ply Poisoned Waters of Texas’ Lavaca Bay

"Fishermen and environmentalists say a plan to export crude would require dredging mercury-laced sediment in a Superfund site, imperling oyster reefs and the natural habitat."

"On a cloudy morning in early May, Diane Wilson lowered herself into a coffin in a boat on the trailer she’d parked to block the entrance to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ office in Galveston, Texas.  

A retired shrimper and headstrong environmental activist, Wilson, 72, was flanked by a pair of fellow septuagenarians who unfurled a banner that read, “Kill a bay. Kill the fisherman. Kill a Community.”

It didn’t take long for the police to arrive.

Wilson and company were protesting an Army Corps’ project, authorized by Congress in December, to dredge the Matagorda Ship Channel, midway between Galveston and Corpus Christi, so that Suezmax ships—also known as VLCCs, short for Very Large Crude Carrier—could export oil from Texas via Port Calhoun, a sleepy provincial terminal slated for $1 billion in improvements."

Aman Azhar reports for Inside Climate News May 30, 2021.

Source: Inside Climate News, 05/31/2021