After a fire erupted at an industrial facility on the outskirts of Odessa earlier this summer, some nearby residents are now suing over the environmental contamination they say it’s causing.
Earlier this week, 19 Ector County residents and one business filed a lawsuit against the owners of Permian Basin Containers, which caught fire on July 23. The massive blaze burned for days, which the lawsuit says caused widespread pollution and created a “noxious smell” that permeated the surrounding area.
The lawsuit alleges that the way Permian Basin Containers was operated was negligent, claiming the facility improperly stored toxic chemicals, which residents claim eventually led to the fire. In a press release, Mark Rodriguez, who lives near the facility with his family, described the conditions they’ve faced since the fire.
"Everything smells like petroleum," said Rodriguez. "We just paid off the house not even a year ago but now we're in a contract to buy a new house because I can't go back."
The lawsuit aims to force the owners of Permian Basin Containers to clean up the site and the contamination it caused as well as conduct environmental testing and provide safe drinking water to residents. On top of that, residents are also seeking millions of dollars in damages.
In their initial court filings, the attorneys representing the Ector County residents said their clients “cannot live in their residences, cannot access safe potable water, and cannot live in an environment where their health is in grave danger.”
At first, local officials stated they did not believe any dangerous chemicals were being released by the fire. However, according to court documents, residents say fumes from the facility “caused eyes to burn and tear up” and that some people “experienced headaches and nausea, as well as strange sensations in their nose and throat.”
According to the lawsuit, the fire also left behind a “chemical soup” that is believed to be a combination of the water used to extinguish the blaze and the chemicals stored at Permian Basin Containers.
In court documents, lawyers described an “orange and black slick, more than a foot deep” that spread across the area surrounding the facility and “into homes and cars.” They say this mixture coated “everything in between, eventually morphing into a ubiquitous black sludge” and has “started killing vegetation.”
Now, residents worry this mixture is contaminating local groundwater. In this area, many rely on private wells for their drinking water and the lawsuit claims recent soil and water testing has found toxic chemicals like acetone, benzene and xylene.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is currently conducting an investigation into the pollution caused by the Permian Basin Containers fire, but has not released any further information.
Permian Basin Containers and officials with the company have not responded to a request for comment.
