Sampling of St. Louis Estuary and Lake Superior surface water after the Superior Refinery Fire in 2018

On April 26, 2018, there were multiple explosions and a fire at the Husky Refinery in Superior, WI. Safety measures worked well, with no loss of life and few injuries; however, significant smoke and soot emissions from the fire itself did impact the local airways and may also have impacted local watersheds, the Twin Ports harbor and far western Lake Superior. Thus, we measured water quality in the St. Louis estuary and far-western Lake Superior in an attempt to determine if residual petroleum products and/or black carbon (soot) associated with the refinery fire entered Lake Superior or the Saint Louis estuary in measurable amounts. There were indications of very localized impact in total organic carbon and dissolved organic carbon data and aerial deposition of soot in some black carbon samples from surface waters. We did not find measurable petroleum hydrocarbon in our samples.