A massive fire tore through the abandoned cooling towers at the former P.H. Robinson power plant in Bacliff, but the structures destroyed were not part of EPCOR’s purchase for a future desalination facility, officials said.
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EPCOR officials say that the fire that destroyed the cooling towers of the old P.H. Robinson power plant in Bacliff early Sunday morning did not affect the area that was supposed to be turned into a big desalination plant.
Friday at 2:44 a.m., the Kemah Fire Department got the first call about the fire on Sunday. To put out the fire, departments from Pearland, Alvin, League City, Hitchcock, San Leon, Webster, La Marque, and Santa Fe, among others, came from all over Galveston and Brazoria counties. You could see thick, black smoke from the fire on the Interstate 45 overpass and for miles around the scene until Sunday afternoon.
Crews from Galveston County said they were able to keep the fire inside the abandoned cooling towers. Firefighters remained at the scene until Monday morning, vigilant for any potential flare-ups.
Videos of the fire quickly spread on local and national news networks because of how dramatic the clouds of smoke coming from the closed station were. The hosts of "CBS This Morning" discussed the fire on air, saying that the smoke made the sky look darker in the morning.
In 2009, Houston Lighting & Power shut down the power plant that they had built in the 1960s and put online in 1971. EPCOR USA, a Round Rock-based branch of the Canadian power company EPCOR, bought most of the land in 2024. Last month, the business said it had applied for a permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to turn the land into a desalination plant that could make well over 26 million gallons of drinkable water every day for the Greater Houston area.
But Matthew Atwood, a spokeswoman for EPCOR, said that the cooling towers that were destroyed in the fire were not one of the things that the company bought. "The cooling towers that burned down were not part of EPCOR's 2024 purchase," Atwood said, adding that the fire does not change the plans for the redevelopment.
Officials from the county said the event shows how unsafe long-idled industrial sites still are, but they stressed that the fire was limited to buildings that were already going to be torn down. EPCOR is still progressing with its project to enhance the area's drinking water source.
Investigators into the fire have not yet said what caused it.
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