A Pollution Prevention Committee
G. A. COLLINS,  JR.
Supervisor of Operations
The Texas Company
Lawrenceville Works
Lawrenceville,  Illinois
The Lawrenceville Works is one of the Texas Company's modern
oil refineries located at Lawrenceville, Illinois, along the Embarrass
River. Lawrenceville extends along the west bank of the Embarrass and
is nine miles west of Vincennes, Indiana, and the Wabash River. The
refinery borders the southeast city limits of Lawrenceville and extends
approximately one and one-quarter miles along the west bank of the
river. The Embarrass empties into the Wabash River about nine miles
south of Lawrenceville.
Like all small streams, the Embarrass is quickly affected by each
rainfall and the volume and quality of its water changes often. There
is some aquatic life in the stream even though it carries some industrial
wastes and raw sewage in the lower stretch.
The refinery processes some 45,000 to 60,000 barrels of crude oil
daily and the water needed for the operations is pumped from the
Embarrass River. Operations in the plant include crude distillation,
vacuum distillation, thermal cracking, fluid catalytic cracking, thermal
reforming, polymerization, naphtha and middle distillate treating, asphalt
manufacture, and high pressure steam generation. Most of the water
pumped from the river is used as boiler feed water for the steam generators or as make-up for evaporation losses from the cooling towers.
The raw river water is treated before it is used. The waste waters
from the refinery pass through gravity type oil separators before they
are returned to the river, and some of the waste water is treated to
remove undesirable compounds before it is returned to the river.
Stream pollution was at one time commonly thought of as something that mainly endangered public health. However, in recent years,
public interest and governmental regulatory agencies have directed their
attention toward the effects industrial wastes have on the water users
on the rivers and toward ways and means of reducing the amount of
these wastes in the rivers.
An example of the interest that the State regulatory agency has
shown is evidenced by the survey work they performed at the plant in