Ships were moving inbound and outbound on Monday morning through an area of the Houston Ship Channel that had been contaminated by a March chemical spill, the U.S. Coast Guard said, further loosening restrictions on the waterway. A total of 49 ships – 28 inbound, 21 outbound – were waiting to transit the 53-mile (85-km) waterway between the busiest U.S. petrochemical port and the Gulf of Mexico on Monday, the Coast Guard said. Monday’s queue of ships is about normal for the channel, but a third of the backlog that built up within days following a March 22 spill of chemicals when a dam failed at Mitsui & Co Intercontinental Terminals Deer Park, Texas, facility, where a massive March 17-20 blaze consumed 11 giant storage tanks. The spilled chemicals, mostly gasoline-blending components, forced the Coast Guard to shut the channel for three days. After the closure, […]