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Overview of Formosa Drainage Study

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This supplementary legal document describes recommendations for storm- and waste-water management improvements for the Formosa petrochemical plant in Calhoun County, Texas. The text is a fairly standard drainage assessment. The author describes non-trivial discharge of pollutants out of the plant’s outfalls, which drain into local waters, and the inability of the plant’s systems to prevent flooding from even small storms. For some context on this, it is pretty standard to design a stormwater system to be able to drain the 100-year storm (that is, the storm with a 1% or less chance of occurring in any given year). Formosa’s Texas plant demonstrated the inability to convey even the 2-year storm.

Formosa Drainage Study

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Emphases are mine:

“Problem areas were identified based on the results from the outfall drainage studies provided by Formosa. Thus, all the results in the OPCC rely on those studies, uncertainities associated with those studies, and the assumptions made for those studies, some of which may or may not be appropriate as I pointed out in Supplement #2 [Page 4]” (3)

“The proposed improvements assume that the conveyance capacity of the problem areas is increased 100%, which would be able to handle twice as much flow that it currently does. The results from the Drainage Study are not conclusive as to what storm event Formosa’s system currently is capable of conveying. The report does mention that the system is not capable of conveying the 2-year storm, and “sometimes” not even the 1-year storm event.” (3)

“A 45% contingency is applied to the OPCC due to the uncertainties associated with underground utilities, likelihood of existence of low road crossings and need to replace those, groundwater impacts, other unknowns, and additional costs associated with engineering, etc. 45% is reasonable and in line with industry practices in my experience, especially given the large amount of unknown information available.” (4) 

“My opinion from my July 9, 2018 report that “there have been and are still pellets and/or plastic materials discharges above trace amounts through Outfall 001” is further supported by the deposition testimony of Lisa Vitale, as representative for Freese & Nichols, Inc, that she and her colleagues have seen floating white pellets or small plastic pieces in Lavaca Bay and in the area near outfall 001 as part of her work on the receiving water monitoring program for Formosa’s TPDES permit...Ms. Vitale also testified that she told John Hyak of Formosa about these sightings as well as has sent him water samples with the pellets about five or six times, including at least one time prior to 2010. This, along with the June 2010 EPA Report I cited in my July Report, demonstrates to me that Formosa was aware of problems related to discharges of plastics from its facility since at least in 2010.” (6)

 

National Health Institute

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1. Instituto Nacional de Salud -INS- (National Health Institute) is one of the State-funded leading health and biomedicine institutions in charge of: i. Developing and managing scientific knowledge on health and biomedicine, in order to contribute the health conditions of people; ii. Researching health and biomedicine through basic and applied sciences; iii. Monitoring health safety; iv. Act as a national laboratory of reference.
2. During the beginning of Covid 19, INS has monitored the cases in Colombia, analyzed positive results from national labs, organize and systematize datasets; inform citizens about infection numbers and projections, and recommend epidemiological models to the central government.

Source link (here)

National Health Institute: Open Data

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https://www.datos.gov.co/Salud-y-Protecci-n-Social/Casos-positivos-de-COVID-19-en-Colombia/gt2j-8ykr/data

This is the online open data about the evolution of COVID-19 displayed by the National Health Institute INS (Instituto Nacional de Salud) from Colombia.

1. The INS publishes this data after gathering results from the rest of the country.
2. This informations supports government´s decisions on quarantine, projections and bringing normal life back.
3. The INS has criticized the results of tests received from some regions. They argue that they are not well handled and they must not to be reconfirmed.

The Group of Inmunovirology of the University of Antioquia

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The Group of Inmunovirology of the University of Antioquia isolated and cultured SARS-CoV2, the pathogen that causes the COVID-19. This will allow researchers to test how the virus acts against antiviral medication and desinfectant products, that will provide key information about the effectiveness of those.

Link source (here)

Evidence on cabin desinfection

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Cabin disinfection started to by adopted in different public places in Colombia, either by initiative of the private sector or public institutions. However, in this bulletin, the Ministry of Health reminds that they could harm human health and there is not evidence of its effectiveness.

https://www.minsalud.gov.co/Paginas/Cabinas-desinfectantes-no-son-recomendables-para-covid-19.aspx

National Health Institute

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https://www.datos.gov.co/Salud-y-Protecci-n-Social/Casos-positivos-de-COVID-19-en-Colombia/gt2j-8ykr/data

1. The INS publishes this data after gathering results from the rest of the country.
2. This informations supports government´s decisions on quarantine, projections and bringing normal life back.
2. The INS has criticized the results of tests received from some regions. They argue that they are not well handled and they must not to be reconfirmed.