Sulfur emissions caused by car hitting power pole

A number of folks in Laurel noticed the greenish-yellow smoke that was coming from one of the CHS Refinery’s smoke stacks last Friday afternoon.

In an email response to the Outlook’s query about it, Director of Marketing and Communications Bryan Brigand replied that a car accident had caused the strange-looking emissions,

“A vehicle struck a power pole off of Highway 212 early Friday morning resulting in power disruption that impacted our refinery in Laurel and created some temporary inefficiencies in our operations,” he wrote. “Refinery emissions increased during that time, and sulfur emissions were briefly visible from one of our stacks as operations stabilized. The refinery has recovered from the unplanned power disruption and CHS has notified all appropriate regulatory agencies. Safety is our core value, and, as part of that, we monitored sulfur emissions and the data indicates the refinery was below the national ambient air standard,” the statement concluded.