Chemical Smells Unrelated To Hazardous Material At Refinery, EPA Says

Reports of strong petroleum or other chemical odors in St. Croix this week were almost certainly unrelated to hazardous materials being removed from the oil refinery, Environmental Protection Agency officials said Thursday evening.

Although it was not clear exactly what people were smelling or why, the stink likely originated from transfers of fuel at the nearby container port, EPA officials said in a briefing broadcast online.

EPA experts were at the refinery as hazardous materials were removed. So were layered “concentric circles” of air monitoring equipment calibrated to detect a wide array of toxins that might potentially escape in the process, said Walter Mugdan, the deputy regional director. The monitors detected none of these chemicals.

“We have a very high degree of confidence that the odors people are smelling are not associated with anything going at the refinery,” Mugdan said. “We believe many of them are associated with transfers from Ocean Point Terminals, standard procedures that go on routinely but there’s obviously heightened awareness given what’s going on.”