By Wesley Muller
More than a month after a major industrial fire in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released an inventory list identifying the millions of gallons of motor oils, automotive fluids, and other petrochemical products at the site.
The information was made public Thursday, hours after the Illuminator reported the agency was waiting on permission from the executives of the Smitty’s Supply Inc. plant in Roseland that was destroyed in an Aug. 22 chemical fire that took two weeks to completely extinguish. The explosion and blaze sent smoke, soot and oily residue into the air and onto nearby homes, businesses, and a school. Petroleum products also spilled into nearby waterways, including the Tangipahoa River that leads to Lake Pontchartrain.
Detailed on a 305-page spreadsheet, the list includes a variety of flammable and otherwise hazardous products. Rough estimates indicate Smitty’s Supply stored several million gallons of motor oils, lubricants, antifreeze, coolants, hydraulic fluids, gas mixtures, transmission fluids, methanols, drilling oils, solvents, acids, bases, and other petrochemical products.
With four locations across the South, the company bottles, packages, and distributes bulk products to retail stores nationwide on behalf of major brands such as Shell, Pennzoil, Quaker State, Chevron, and Castro.
Smitty’s Supply also makes and bottles its own Super S brand of petroleum products and, before the fire, had bulk storage tanks on site with 8.7 million gallons of capacity.
Its Roseland facility, just north of Amite City, also housed a grease manufacturing plant, automated bottling lines, laboratory and testing facilities, three rail spurs, 36 rail cars, a fleet of 18-wheeler trucks and tankers, as well a printing, labeling and packaging line, and other operations across multiple warehouses, according to the company’s website.
The EPA had possession of the list for more than four weeks after obtaining it from Smitty’s Supply on Aug. 27 and initially refused to disclose it to the public. At the time and in response to a reporter’s subsequent requests, the federal agency said it needed to check with the company’s lawyers to ensure the list didn’t contain any “confidential business information” that would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. The law compels government agencies to share qualifying records with the public.
“Legal counsel for Smitty’s Supply provided EPA with an inventory list of the materials at the facility, which was used to inform response operations,” EPA Press Officer Edward Mekeel said Thursday. “The inventory contained off-the-shelf motor oil, antifreeze, degreasers, plasticizers, polymers, and paints. After confirming that the list does not contain Confidential Business Information, EPA is now making the list publicly available.”
The agency did not immediately respond to follow-up questions sent Thursday afternoon.
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