Chemical spill in W.Va.

[BlueStreak]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/11/us-usa-westvirginia-spill-idUSBREA0902T20140111

Yeah, no need for environmental regulation. All it does is kill jobs, anyways. Besides, the companies will do an excellent job of policing themselves. They drink the water and breathe the air too, you know.

Where is Senator Barton? We need to apologize to Freedom Industries for embarrassing them like this. I feel so sorry for them. Why would anyone want to do business in a country where you're held responsible for your negligence and irresponsibility? They should move to a more favorable business climate. I wouldn't blame them at all. :rolleyes:

Dave

[finnbow]

Freedom Industries, eh? I saw their logo includes a big American flag. We should just leave this company alone because everybody knows that real patriots like to drink and bathe in 4-methylcyclohexane methanol.

[bobabode]

Isn't that the stuff they fry up freedom fries in?

[BlueStreak]

Freedom Industries, eh? I saw their logo includes a big American flag. We should just leave this company alone because everybody knows that real patriots like to drink and bathe in 4-methylcyclohexane methanol.

When some people speak of "freedom", they're not speaking of freedom in the general sense. They're speaking of their own "freedom" to behave like a total ass and make colossal messes without any ramifications to face from government or community. Screw that. That's freedom of the handful at the expense of many, which isn't freedom at all. It's tyranny.

Dave

[MrPots]

Turns out that as a chemical storage facility, it had no regulations or inspections to which it needed to comply. Nice little loophole there.

This is a nice jumping board into the water safety debate though, what with frackers on one side saying "don't worry" about the earthquakes and water, while the other side uses it's water Fawcett's as flame throwers and duct tapes it's pipes every time the earth shifts.

[Tom Joad]

Freedom Industries, eh? I saw their logo includes a big American flag. We should just leave this company alone because everybody knows that real patriots like to drink and bathe in 4-methylcyclohexane methanol.

Since 9/11 I have become very leary of people that make a big deal out of displaying the American Flag.

There are just too many similarities to:

http://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz359/Dog_of_the_Earth/nazi-flags.jpg (http://s843.photobucket.com/user/Dog_of_the_Earth/media/nazi-flags.jpg.html)

[bobabode]

Mine goes up on Flag day and Veteran's/Rememberance Day. That's it.

[BlueStreak]

Mine flies all the time.

But, if I saw somebody buring one, my only thought would be, "Asshole.", then I'd walk away. I'm not about to kill anybody over protest that I find distasteful. There's just something so "un-American" about that.

[BlueStreak]

Turns out that as a chemical storage facility, it had no regulations or inspections to which it needed to comply. Nice little loophole there.

This is a nice jumping board into the water safety debate though, what with frackers on one side saying "don't worry" about the earthquakes and water, while the other side uses it's water Fawcett's as flame throwers and duct tapes it's pipes every time the earth shifts.

That's really weird. Because I know from past experience that chemical storage regulations can get pretty anal. At the headlamp plant, we had to build a separate "explosion proof" building just to house paints and solvents.

[MrPots]

I thought it odd too, but that's what was reported on NPR this AM.

My own industry (my day job) is regulated out the ass.......

[piece-itpete]

Mine flies all the time.

But, if I saw somebody buring one, my only thought would be, "Asshole.", then I'd walk away. I'm not about to kill anybody over protest that I find distasteful. There's just something so "un-American" about that.

Nothing wrong with a punch in the nose there Dave. Don't HAVE to shewt'em, but it wouldn't hurt :D

Pete

[Tom Joad]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/11/us-usa-westvirginia-spill-idUSBREA0902T20140111

Yeah, no need for environmental regulation. All it does is kill jobs, anyways. Besides, the companies will do an excellent job of policing themselves. They drink the water and breathe the air too, you know

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21218-william-rivers-pitt-the-easy-problem-with-government

Let's take a look at the track record of private industry over the last 200 hours.

The giant retailer Target let it be known that it wasn't 40 million customers who had their financial data stolen, it was 70 million...and then it was 110 million...and it was also PIN numbers and email addresses that got snatched, too. If the federal government had allowed so profound a theft of financial information to take place, the good people at Fox News would be handing out the pitchforks and torches. After a third of the country was placed in peril of having their money stolen, thanks to the failure of private industry? Silence.

In West Virginia, some 300,000 people have been deprived of water to drink, bathe in, or prepare food with for days upon days now. Hospitals and retirement homes have had no water to work with, restaurants and other small businesses have been closed, because the water is so dirty you cannot even boil it to make it clean. Why? Because thousands of gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol were dumped into the Elk River by the magnificently-misnamed Freedom Industries, a private company that deals with coal.

But damn those pointy-headed bureaucrats in Washington, right? Except it's the public servants in Washington who are running down the crooks who stole all that information from Target. It's the public servants who are cleaning up the mess made by Freedom Industries, and who are trucking in thousands of gallons of clean water to make sure the West Virginia residents affected by this get through it.

And there's this, too: the site of the spill in West Virginia has not undergone a government inspection since 1991, because government is the problem, so they de-regulated everything. And when it does go wrong, as it always does (ask West, Texas), it's the taxpayer who pays for the clean-up that is performed by the public servants.

Clearly, the decades-long push to privatize everything will lead us all to paradise on Earth.

[Rajoo]

I expect this company to declare bankruptcy and walk away. Just how these go down.

Here is this: One lawsuit was filed Monday by a family who lives near Freedom's facility and alleges that they smelled the licorice smell off and on for more than a year. The lawsuit alleges that the family, identified only by their initials, had made several complaints to the state Department of Environmental Protection about the odor.
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401130058?page=2&build=cache

This usually means that there is possible ground water contamination and that is a very expensive cleanup.

[MrPots]

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21218-william-rivers-pitt-the-easy-problem-with-government

Tom, industry pretty much writes regulation these days. They write the regulations, submit them with a campaign check, and the lawmakers put their stamps on it without question.

This is our plutocracy.

[piece-itpete]

Heck I spoke to a hazmat truck driver a couple years ago, he inadvertently spilled a little nastiness when he decoupled his hose (tanker truck), they had to remove 6 square yards of gravel/dirt from the site!

Pete

[merrylander]

Given the Law of Conservation of Matter I would imagine that all of these spills are still out there polluting the environment even though they are diluted. Sooner or later the concentration will be enough to cause harm.

[MrPots]

And only then will someone say "why didn't we do something?"

[piece-itpete]

We are all guilty.

Pete

[Zeke]

We are all guilty.

Pete

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7gaqn32bY00/UVuY9fI7AJI/AAAAAAAAapo/oiOg2UIhjKo/s640/11540.jpg

[piece-itpete]

AAAAAHG! Must... Not... Look...

TOO LATE! Excuse me, I'm going to put an electric motor in my car :D

Pete

[BlueStreak]

We are all guilty.

Pete

So, we should do nothing?

Just carry on and not worry about it, because we're afraid it might take effort and cost us?

Sometimes this line of thinking makes me glad to be childless. I can't imagine what this place might look like in a hundred years, anyways.

Not sayin' it's you, Pete. I'm just sayin'.

Dave

[BlueStreak]

Nothing wrong with a punch in the nose there Dave. Don't HAVE to shewt'em, but it wouldn't hurt :D

Pete

I don't believe in quelling non-violent protest. Even if the idiots protesting disgust me. Give them a piece of my mind, perhaps. Hurt anyone over it? Never. I've grown up, in that regard.

Besides, I've been present when force was used to disperse peaceful protesters. It wasn't pretty. (At the behest of coal mine owners.)

[Tom Joad]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7gaqn32bY00/UVuY9fI7AJI/AAAAAAAAapo/oiOg2UIhjKo/s640/11540.jpg

Native American Wannabes give me a case of the ass.

That Dude was a spaghetti bender.

His parents were both right off the boat from Sicily just like my uncle Frank was for Christ sake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Eyes_Cody

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPnhNutY78o

[merrylander]

So, we should do nothing?

Just carry on and not worry about it, because we're afraid it might take effort and cost us?

Sometimes this line of thinking makes me glad to be childless. I can't imagine what this place might look like in a hundred years, anyways.

Not sayin' it's you, Pete. I'm just sayin'.

Dave

A my age I probably won't see the effects, it is these two that concern us.

[piece-itpete]

To say we don't have regulation is very untrue. There is no way to completely not pollute.

-unless we move manufacturing off the planets surface ;)

Pete

[BlueStreak]

To say we don't have regulation is very untrue. There is no way to completely not pollute.

-unless we move manufacturing off the planets surface ;)

Pete

Yes, there is regulation.

The question is; Why do we fight it so?

The answer is; Because we don't want to pay for it.

Dave

[finnbow]

To say we don't have regulation is very untrue. There is no way to completely not pollute.

-unless we move manufacturing off the planets surface ;)

Pete

I heard that those tanks in WV haven't been inspected since 1991.

[Zeke]

Native American Wannabes give me a case of the ass.

That Dude was a spaghetti bender.

His parents were both right off the boat from Sicily just like my uncle Frank was for Christ sake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Eyes_Cody

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPnhNutY78o

That's the joke. :)

[Rex E.]

Since 9/11 I have become very leary of people that make a big deal out of displaying the American Flag.

There are just too many similarities to:

http://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz359/Dog_of_the_Earth/nazi-flags.jpg (http://s843.photobucket.com/user/Dog_of_the_Earth/media/nazi-flags.jpg.html)

Agreed for the most part. I avoid any company that had "Patriot" or "freedom" in their name as well.

[Rajoo]

The chemical overflowed a containment area around the tank run by Freedom Industries, which supplies products for the coal-mining industry. It migrated over land and through the soil into the river. The leak happened about a mile upriver from the West Virginia American Water plant.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/12/us/west-virginia-contaminated-water/

The secondary containment should not have overflown if it was properly sized. Typically, secondary containment is at a minimum the size of the tank, so in case of a leak, all of the chemical in the tank is contained. This will surely be raised but too late.

[BlueStreak]

I still can't get over the fact that there is no regulation concerning this type of chemical storage. It's outside and in large volume for crying out loud.

Dave

[Tom Joad]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTeUdJky9rY

[Rajoo]

I still can't get over the fact that there is no regulation concerning this type of chemical storage. It's outside and in large volume for crying out loud.

Dave

There are bigger questions Dave. Why would anyone want to allow (permit) a chemical storage facility on a river a mile upstream from fresh water intake? This alone defies any common sense.

[BlueStreak]

There are bigger questions Dave. Why would anyone want to allow (permit) a chemical storage facility on a river a mile upstream from fresh water intake? This alone defies any common sense.

For real.:(

Dave

[MrPots]

Agreed for the most part. I avoid any company that had "Patriot" or "freedom" in their name as well.

I'll add "Americans for..."

[bobabode]

I'll add "Americans for..."

and Freedom Works. ;)

[Tom Joad]

There are bigger questions Dave. Why would anyone want to allow (permit) a chemical storage facility on a river a mile upstream from fresh water intake? This alone defies any common sense.

It was probably the cheapest most convenient site.

And for corporations it's all about their bottom line, and potential impacts to society be damned.

[CarlV]

It was probably the cheapest most convenient site.

And for corporations it's all about their bottom line, and potential impacts to society be damned.

Yep, no way would I consider using the water again from that source without having it tested for myself. They are as likely to be as honest and truthful as Chevron and Exxon are.


Carl

[merrylander]

There are certain advantages to having one's own well.

[MrPots]

Until a fracking operation sets up nearby.

[piece-itpete]

Then you can use your bathwater to fuel your furnace.

Pete

[icenine]

I still can't get over the fact that there is no regulation concerning this type of chemical storage. It's outside and in large volume for crying out loud.

Dave

From what I saw on MSNBC the coal companies basically tell the regulators in WV what to do. The company that leaked that stuff into the water was/is a chemical supplier to the coal industry there...hence the lack of oversight.

[finnbow]

From what I saw on MSNBC the coal companies basically tell the regulators in WV what to do. The company that leaked that stuff into the water was/is a chemical supplier to the coal industry there...hence the lack of oversight.

Morever, I saw where the company pumped out the remaining chemical from the tanks at the sight in question and transported it to another site. WV state authorities then chose to inspect the new site and saw a number of infractions similar to those that allowed/caused the previous spill.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/company-wva-spill-cited-issues-2nd-site-21540955

[icenine]

Morever, I saw where the company pumped out the remaining chemical from the tanks at the sight in question and transported it to another site. WV state authorities then chose to inspect the new site and saw a number of infractions similar to those that allowed/caused the previous spill.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/company-wva-spill-cited-issues-2nd-site-21540955

Yeah the events are showing that there is basically no regular oversight on these places....no employee training for 10 years? Why worry about it if the state does not care.

[bobabode]

...and the other shoe drops. Freedom Industries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today. :mad:

[BlueStreak]

Have you guys seen the latest on this?

[BlueStreak]

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401170030

Read it carefully, now.

See, Freedom Industries went into bankruptcy for back taxes dating to 2010. It has since been bought out by a company owned by the same man who runs another company that owns..........(Drum roll please.);

Freedom Industries.

Dave

[finnbow]

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401170030

Read it carefully, now.

See, Freedom Industries went into bankruptcy for back taxes dating to 2010. It has since been bought out by a company owned by the same man who runs another company that owns..........(Drum roll please.);

Freedom Industries.

Dave

Ahh, freedom.;)

[BlueStreak]

I'm still thinking the public owes Freedom Industries an apology for putting Charleston in the way of it's toxic waste runoff. Then we should forgive all of their tax debt and give them a cut, because obviously they don't intend to pay taxes or any other debts they owe anyways. Being a polluting debt deadbeat is exemplary of the highest True American, Sons of the Revolution, Freedom Loving Patriot tradition and we should celebrate it.

Dave

[Tom Joad]

I'm still thinking the public owes Freedom Industries an apology for putting Charleston in the way of it's toxic waste runoff. Then we should forgive all of their tax debt and give them a cut, because obviously they don't intend to pay taxes or any other debts they owe anyways. Being a polluting debt deadbeat is exemplary of the highest True American, Sons of the Revolution, Freedom Loving Patriot tradition and we should celebrate it.

Dave

Absolutely.

These are the, and Hank Reardons, Howard Roarks and John Galts that carry the rest of us lazy slackers on their shoulders and for that we should be eternally grateful.

[Tom Joad]

Your unregulated free market at work.

Got poison in your water?

Thank a Republican.

http://news.yahoo.com/company-west-virginia-spill-failed-disclose-second-chemical-013146604--sector.html

Company in West Virginia spill failed to disclose second chemical
The company behind a chemical spill that left about 300,000 people in West Virginia without tap water failed to disclose a second chemical in the leak, state officials said on Wednesday.

The company, Freedom Industries, had previously said that only one chemical, crude MCHM, had spilled from one of its storage tanks into the Elk River at Charleston on January 9.

Freedom Industries told the state Department of Environmental Protection on Tuesday that a second chemical, PPH, was in the above-ground tank despite an order immediately after the spill to disclose what was in it, the department said in a statement.

Governor Earl Ray Tomblin said he was "very disappointed" that it took Freedom Industries, a maker of specialty chemicals, 12 days to disclose the presence of PPH.


continued (http://news.yahoo.com/company-west-virginia-spill-failed-disclose-second-chemical-013146604--sector.html)

[bobabode]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-west-va-chemical-spill-20140129,0,4877251.story#axzz2rpEvd2u4.

Whaddya know? Formaldehyde in the water according to water quality official in West Virginia. This comes after the water is declared safe to drink. :mad:

Take a hot shower and you'll be breathing it. A$$holes. :mad::mad::mad:

[piece-itpete]

On the flip side, monkeypaw production is through the roof.

Pete

[CarlV]

Yep, no way would I consider using the water again from that source without having it tested for myself. They are as likely to be as honest and truthful as Chevron and Exxon are.


Carl

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-west-va-chemical-spill-20140129,0,4877251.story#axzz2rpEvd2u4.

Whaddya know? Formaldehyde in the water according to water quality official in West Virginia. This comes after the water is declared safe to drink. :mad:

Take a hot shower and you'll be breathing it. A$$holes. :mad::mad::mad:


Yep, no surprise here.

Carl

[CarlV]

Nice update. :rolleyes:

The Huffington Post | by James Gerken
Posted: 02/06/2014 11:31 am EST Updated: 02/06/2014 11:59 am EST

Several schools in the Charleston, W.Va. area have dismissed students amid ongoing concerns over water quality, nearly a month after a massive chemical spill in the Elk River.

Students at Riverside High School in Belle were sent home early on Wednesday, according to the Wall Street Journal. Several students reported burning sensations in their noses and eyes and two people were sent to a local hospital, including one teacher who fainted. A nearby elementary school was also closed early on Wednesday.

Students' reported symptoms are consistent with exposure to 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol, or MCHM, which was released in the Jan. 9 spill and contaminated the drinking water for about 300,000 residents for over a week. The chemical, which is used to process coal, has a strong licorice-like smell.

Link (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/chemical-spill-concerns-west-virginia_n_4738032.html?view=print&comm_ref=false)


Carl