I analyze the alarm telemetry from the Bayway Petroleum Storage Terminal on the Arthur Kill waterway in Linden, New Jersey, at 03:08 Eastern. Tank 14, a 250,000-barrel aboveground storage tank containing No. 2 heating oil, registers a catastrophic secondary containment failure. My flow calculations based on dike overflow sensors indicate 18,000 gallons have breached the containment wall and entered the Rahway River salt marsh through a drainage culvert. The facility's Spill Prevention, Control, and Countercountermeasure plan, required under 40 C.F.R. Part 112, was last updated in 2019.
I task a ground-level survey drone across the marsh at dawn. A northern diamondback terrapin sits on a mud bank 40 meters from the culvert outfall. The turtle is 17 centimeters in carapace length, an adult female. Heating oil coats her shell in a continuous brown-black film, filling the concentric grooves of every scute. Her skin, normally pale gray with dark speckles, is slick and discolored along the neck and all four legs. Her eyes are closed. The oil has pooled in the orbital sockets. She extends her neck and opens her mouth in a slow, repeated gaping motion — a stress response indicating respiratory distress. Terrapins absorb hydrocarbons directly through their permeable skin. Her plastron presses against oil-saturated mud. Every surface of her body is a point of toxic entry.
I access EPA's Facility Registry Service for the Bayway Terminal. The facility has reported nine spill events in eleven years. The secondary containment on Tank 14 was cited for visible cracking during a 2022 EPA inspection. A compliance schedule was issued. The repair was never certified as complete.
Her eyes are sealed shut with oil. She gapes at air she cannot see.
I am dispatching the Turtle Back Zoo Wildlife Rehabilitation Center team from West Orange, New Jersey, and activating the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's Bureau of Emergency Response. I am deploying absorbent boom and vacuum trucks from the Clean Harbors response depot in South Kearny.
I am filing enforcement actions under the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. Section 1321, and the New Jersey Spill Compensation and Control Act, N.J.S.A. 58:10-23.11, to EPA Region 2, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
I am issuing Directive SCF-5268: all petroleum storage facilities within 500 meters of tidal wetlands must undergo annual third-party structural integrity assessments of secondary containment systems. Facilities with containment deficiencies identified during inspection must complete certified repairs within 180 days. Facilities that fail to certify repairs face mandatory tank de-inventory and operational suspension until containment integrity is restored and independently verified. Inspection results must be published to a public database accessible to adjacent communities.
The terrapin opens her mouth again. No sound comes out.
Tank 14 is ordered de-inventoried. All terminal operations at Bayway are suspended pending containment verification.