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"that brings concern"
no , you spewer of generic euphemisms.
West Virginia chemical spill cuts water to up to 300,000, state of emergency declared
"Everybody's wanting water, and there is no water," said grocery store manager Jeff Joseph," and that brings concern."
State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey warned residents about price gouging on water, ice and other items, calling it "just plain wrong" to inflate prices and encouraging those who've seen such practices to report them to his office's consumer protection division.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/some-peo...ssues-in-w-va/
Madhouse at any store that sells water. Well that was last night. today there's no water to be found. Anywhere. You should see the posts on Facebook, people in need and pleading for help. It's been just over 24 hours and Society is Breaking Down. Not a gentle thought.
ALL restaraunts are closed in a nine county area.
Hospitals are closing, only accepting Emergency Pts, Other Pts are being transported outta the area.
Pretty much all Public Buildings are closed, all Gov Buildings are closed, Schools are closed.
The scariest part is that nobody, NOBODY, has uttered one word on when it will get better.
"that brings concern"
no , you spewer of generic euphemisms.
Hundreds in W. Va. report exposure symptoms after crippling chemical spill
Last edited Sat Jan 11, 2014, 07:28 AM - Edit history (1)
Source: Fox News.com (I know...I know)
Hundreds of West Virginia residents are complaining of exposure symptoms after a crippling chemical spill compromised the public water supply for thousands of people and forced the closure of schools businesses, and restaurants in the state capital.
By Friday evening, 737 people had called the West Virginia Poison Center to report concerns or symptoms related to the spill, including nausea, vomiting, dizziness, diarrhea, rashes and reddened skin, state health officials told Reuters.
Dr. Elizabeth Scharman, director of the state's poison control center, said the symptoms vary "from very mild to much more bothersome.'' She told Reuters at least 70 people have been seen by an emergency room doctor, though only a handful have been admitted to hospitals.
About 300,000 people in nine counties entered their third day Saturday without being able to drink, bathe in, or wash dishes or clothes with their tap water. The only allowed use of the water was for flushing toilets. Officials remain unclear when it might be safe again.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/01/11...hemical-spill/
US House passed bill ravaging toxic-waste law - on same day as W. Virginia chemical spill
As West Virginians were learning Thursday of a devastating chemical spill in the Elk River that has rendered water undrinkable for 300,000 people, the US House of Representatives was busy gutting federal hazardous-waste cleanup law.
The House passed the Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act that would ultimately eliminate requirements for the Environmental Protection Agency to review and update hazardous-waste disposal regulations in a timely manner, and make it more difficult for the government to compel companies that deal with toxic substances to carry proper insurance for cleanups, pushing the cost on to taxpayers.
In addition, the bill would result in slower response time in the case of a disaster, requiring increased consultation with states before the federal government calls for cleanup of Superfund sites - where hazardous waste could affect people and the environment.
The bill amends both the Solid Waste Disposal Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act - often referred to as Superfund, which was created in 1980 to hold polluter industries accountable for funding the cleanup of hazardous-waste sites.
There are over 1,300 priority Superfund sites in the US.
The legislation was passed by a vote of 225 to 188, mostly along party lines, with all but four Republicans supporting the bill and all but five Democrats opposing it. One of those Democrats crossing party lines to support the changes to environmental law was Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia.
The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO), touted the “common-sense” changes as needed economic relief.
"We are five years into this failed experiment of increased government spending, taxation, and regulation,"Gardner said in a statement. "The results are clear:
The power to grow our economy and put Americans back to work lies in the private sector. (How's that working out for Americans?
With more than 80,000 pages of new federal regulations published in 2013 alone, common-sense revisions of existing rules and regulations are a vital part of ensuring businesses that power our state and local economies are given the capability to grow."
Critics point out that the bill severely weakens environmental protections. Earthjustice and 128 public interest groups said the legislation would “threaten human health and the environment while protecting polluters from liability for the costs of toxic cleanups.”
The legislation also "substantially increases the potential for harm in communities across the United States. As one in four Americans live within three miles of a hazardous-waste site, safe management and prompt cleanup of toxic waste sites are essential to our nation's health and economy,” the group added.
The bill is a "New Year’s gift to corporate interests,”
http://rt.com/usa/hazardous-toxic-waste-law-445/
Repugs keep ing America, and you right-wingers keep voting for Repugs.
yawn
John Boehner on West Virginia chemical spill: Let’s not rush to over-regulate
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/14/john-boehner-confident-west-virginia-has-ample-regulations-despite-huge-chemical-spill/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaig n=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29
strawman. over-regulation of 10s of 1000s of chemicals is hardly the problem
The hoarders there everyone has laughed at are now doing the laughing.
West Virginia chemical spill cuts water to up to 300,000, state of emergency declared
"Everybody's wanting water, and there is no water," said grocery store manager Jeff Joseph," and that brings concern."
State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey warned residents about price gouging on water, ice and other items, calling it "just plain wrong" to inflate prices and encouraging those who've seen such practices to report them to his office's consumer protection division.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/some-peo...ssues-in-w-va/
Madhouse at any store that sells water. Well that was last night. today there's no water to be found. Anywhere. You should see the posts on Facebook, people in need and pleading for help. It's been just over 24 hours and Society is Breaking Down. Not a gentle thought.
ALL restaraunts are closed in a nine county area.
Hospitals are closing, only accepting Emergency Pts, Other Pts are being transported outta the area.
Pretty much all Public Buildings are closed, all Gov Buildings are closed, Schools are closed.
The scariest part is that nobody, NOBODY, has uttered one word on when it will get better.http://www.npr.org/2014/01/13/262185...chemical-spillThe chemical is called 4-methyl-cyclohexane-methanol, or MCHM. If you've never heard of it, you're in good company. Most chemists and toxicologists hadn't either — nor had the water company, nor emergency responders in West Virginia who had to deal with thousands of gallons of it spilling from a tank into the Elk River, just a mile and a half upstream from the intake for the region's drinking-water plant.
State officials say they looked to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to give them advice about when they could tell people the water was safe to drink again.
"There are unknowns," acknowledges Karen Bowling, West Virginia's secretary of health and human resources. "So we have to rely on what's already known about [it] and what's [been] tested about this particular chemical."
We know next to nothing about the chemical, other than at what level it is toxic to rats.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-west-virginia
best link so far.
My gut:
Looks like coal just got a bit more expensive.
As usual, NPR has serious, in-depth, on-site journalism (that's why Repugs hate it and PBS)
Charleston Mayor: Company Behind Chemical Leak Run By 'Renegades'
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...n-by-renegades
The destruction of WVA by BigCoal is permitted by BigCoal-captured state and fed regulators.
eg, Coal ash, radioactive and laden with toxic heavy metals, is STILL not categorized as hazardous, regulated material.
edit: I see the article is way shorter than the program I heard on NPR, so listen to the program.
When Freedom was recently purchased, $1M was set aside to repair the holed containment berms around the storage tanks. Nothing was done. The interviewer caught the Freedom official denying there were holes, but admitted the set-aside to repair the holes.
ANYTHING remotely related to WVA coal industry is totally unregulated, uninspected. Chemical production is regulated (lightly, probably). Chemical storage (eg Freedom) isn't.
This corporate disaster has all the exact enablers as the West TX disaster. As in Repug TX, nothing will change in Repug WVA.
================
"Ordinary West Virginians used to look to Washington with something close to reverence. It was a partner in good times, a lifeline in bad ones, a powerful ally against the big corporations that came for its coal and timber. By some measures, West Virginia relies more on federal money than any other state.
But increasingly, it also has become an extreme example of the hostility that shows up in every national poll when people are asked how they feel about the federal government. Many here now speak of Washington as an enemy that threatens their economy and their way of life, that traps them into dependency.
What’s happening in West Virginia runs against the tide nationally, and even more, against the pull of its own history.
West Virginia exists as a state because it broke away from Virginia in 1863 and refused to join the confederacy. From Franklin D. Roosevelt’s era until the 2000 election, it was among the most reliably Democratic states, one of only six that Jimmy Carter carried in 1980, and 10 that Michael S. Dukakis won in 1988.
But in the past decade or so, “West Virginia has realigned politically with the Deep South, at least in presidential elections,” historian John Alexander Williams said in a June lecture in Charleston marking the state’s 150th anniversary. “Between the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, a time when voters were trending strongly Democratic in other parts of the nation, 366 of official Appalachia’s 410 counties increased their Republican share of presidential votes.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/nat...s-road-to-red/
So now WVA is going to be even more ed up under Repug misgovernance, as is every state under Repugs.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 01-15-2014 at 09:58 AM.
"Freedom Industries distributes mining chemicals for Georgia-Pacific Chemicals, which is is owned by - ta da! - Koch Industries."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...n-by-renegades
Last edited by boutons_deux; 01-15-2014 at 01:15 PM.
Can anyone tell me what's wrong with HR 2279, or are you going to be good little lemmings?
H.R.2279 - Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act of 2014
Solid Waste Disposal Act 42 U.S.C. 6912
before:
(b) Revision of regulations
Each regulation promulgated under this chapter shall be reviewed and, where necessary, revised not less frequently than every three years.
after:
(b) Review of Regulations.
The Administrator shall review, and
revise, as the Administrator determines appropriate, regulations
promulgated under this Act.
Sec. 9608. Financial responsibility
Changes, added text in brackets and blue:
(b) Establishment and maintenance by owner or operator of production, etc., facilities; amount; adjustment; consolidated form of responsibility; coverage of motor carriers
(1) Beginning not earlier than five years after December 11, 1980, the President shall promulgate requirements (for facilities in addition to those under sub le C of the Solid Waste Disposal Act [42 U.S.C. 6921 et seq.] and other Federal law) that classes of facilities establish and maintain evidence of financial responsibility consistent with the degree and duration of risk associated with the production, transportation, treatment, storage, or disposal of hazardous substances. Not later than three years after December 11, 1980, the President shall [The President shall, as appropriate] identify those classes for which requirements will be first developed and publish notice of such identification in the Federal Register. Priority in the development of such requirements shall be accorded to those classes of facilities, owners, and operators which the President determines present the highest level of risk of injury.
(2) The level of financial responsibility shall be initially established, and, when necessary, adjusted to protect against the level of risk which the President in his discretion believes is appropriate based on the payment experience of the Fund, commercial insurers, courts settlements and judgments, and voluntary claims satisfaction. To the maximum extent practicable, the President shall cooperate with and seek the advice of the commercial insurance industry in developing financial responsibility requirements. Financial responsibility may be established[Owners and operators may establish financial responsibility] by any one, or any combination, of the following:[forms of security, including] insurance, guarantee, surety bond, letter of credit, or[and] qualification as a self-insurer. In promulgating requirements under this section, the President is authorized to specify policy or other contractual terms, conditions, or defenses which are necessary, or which are unacceptable, in establishing such evidence of financial responsibility in order to effectuate the purposes of this chapter.
---wow---
I'm stopping here. Too much cut and paste.
Other affected parts:
Sec. 9604. Response authorities
Sec. 9605. National contingency plan
Sec. 9614. Relationship to other law
Sec. 9615. Presidential delegation and assignment of duties or powers and promulgation of regulations
Sec. 9620. Federal facilities
Probably so.
I wonder if some environmental activist did this to get rid of coal. I haven't read the cause yet, but it wouldn't surprise me. A normal accident should have had adequate safeguards. I say put those responsible in front of a firing squad like they do in China, whether the corporate big-wigs, or ecoterrorists.
When Freedom was sold, holes in the enclosing berms were acknowledged with a $1M set-aside to fix the berms. iow, "adequate safeguards" wasn't there.
yes, the tanks were holed by environmental activists, rather than by mismanagement, cost-cutting, etc, by slimebags running companies in the BigCoal/Kock Bros empire.
My understanding:
There was a retaining wall with holes in it that should have been functioning. The property/tanks were recently sold and a sinking fund was established to repair it, but the company who purchased it, never did the repairs. I would presume the interest on the million bucks or so was enough of an incentive not to.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_4598230.htmlCHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — When state inspectors showed up unannounced at Freedom Industries to investigate a licorice odor wafting across West Virginia's capital city, company executive Dennis Farrell seemed to brush off any cause for concern.
But inspectors quickly found what was already contaminating the water for some 300,000 people: a chemical oozing from an above-ground tank and escaping through an old, cracked containment wall. A bag of absorbent material had been placed nearby and weighed down with a cinder block in a failed attempt to stop the flow.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- When state inspectors arrived at the Freedom Industries tank farm late last Thursday morning, they found a 400-square-foot pool of clear liquid had collected outside a white tank marked as number 396.
A 4-foot wide stream of the liquid -- thicker than water, but not as heavy as syrup -- was flowing across the bottom of a containment dike. The flow disappeared right at the joint where the dike's wall connected to its floor.
Freedom Industries had set up one cinder block and used one 50-pound bag of some sort of safety absorbent powder to try to block the chemical flow, state Department of Environmental Protection inspectors say.
"This was a Band-Aid approach," said DEP air quality inspector Mike Kolb. "It was apparent that this was not an event that had just happened."
In an interview Monday with The Charleston Gazette, Kolb and DEP air quality engineer Dan Bauerle described discovering the leak of "Crude MCHM" that fouled the drinking water supply that serves hundreds of thousands of West Virginians.
Kolb and Bauerle provided new details of what they found at the site, and also revealed that the facility had been the subject of at least one odor complaint "several years ago" that DEP officials determined at the time was unfounded.The facility did not give any real attention to containment," Bauerle said.
State and county officials have described the Freedom facility's spill containment dike as full of cracks and holes.
"It's a very old dike," Sigman said. "If it had been my home's foundation, I would be concerned."
DEP emergency response director Mike Dorsey has said he learned the company at some point had put $1 million into an escrow account for repairs. It's not clear when that account was created or what -- if any -- timeline Freedom officials had for the fixes.
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401130118
My gut is that the tax-evading executive (see huff-po article) was using the escrow money to prop up the company, as noted.
What is ed is that this will not cause any Republican politician to re-think cuts to budgets for inspections on such things because the tea party s won't let them admit government regulation and/or oversight just might be a solution to this problem. ing dolts, and the people who pick them in GOP primaries... ARGH.
Nope, chemicals and fracking are our friends. No need for pesky government to get in the way of private industry stealing from people. THat might cut into profits and stock options or something.
Hey man, he created jobs and that is all that matters, right?
West Virginia Water Crisis: Behind Chemical Spill, Gaping Holes in State and Federal Regulation
MIKE ELK: Well, we’re seeing the same problems we saw in West, Texas. You had half-a-dozen regulators with potential oversight of this plant, but as the Department of Environmental Protection’s chief told Ken Ward of The Charleston Gazette, who, by the way, has been doing incredible, almost Pulitzer-quality reporting on this—as he told Ken Ward, "You know, this one just fell through the cracks." And that’s what we heard after the West, Texas, disaster: "It fell through the cracks."
Basically, some regulators knew about a groundwater permit they had at this plant. But this plant, they didn’t—you know, they didn’t have a sense of how many chemicals. The water authority had no idea what was there. They had never communicated about it in the past. And this is a major problem, because the Chemical Safety Board, which is a federal agency tasked with making recommendations on how to improve safety at chemical plants, three years ago, in 2009, recommended that the Kanawha Valley, which is where this plant is located, better coordinate among different agencies how to respond to these kind of disasters.
And there was no plan in place. The local emergency responders didn’t know about the chemicals. The water plant didn’t know about the chemicals. So there was no plan in place, and there was no communication between the different regulators about this. And this is the problem we see over and over again. There’s a lack of money going into regulation, and of the regulators that do exist, they don’t talk. And so, things fall through the cracks, like the Department of Environmental Protection said yesterday.
MIKE ELK: Yes. Well, yesterday, actually, the Department of Environmental Protections issued two complaints against Freedom Industries: one, for the failure to report the leak as soon as it occurred; two, for the failure to have any kind of prevention plan in place. They had a contamination wall there that could have prevented this water—you know, these chemicals from going into the water. But the contamination wall was so full of holes and cracks that the head of the DEP in West Virginia said he would be concerned if that foundation—if that was the foundation of his house. That’s how bad the quality of the concrete was. So, already we’ve seen two charges filed against Freedom Industries. They had no plan in place.
And I think there’s going to be a big criminal investigation going on there. The person heading it up is the U.S. attorney called Booth Goodwin. And Booth Goodwin is the U.S. attorney who has gotten several former Massey Energy officials convicted on very creative charges about obstruction of justice and conspiracy. And Booth Goodwin has already announced that he’s going to open a big criminal investigation. He’s got people on the ground. So it’s going to be interesting to see what happens.
But unless there’s serious jail time, unless there’s serious consequences, I think this is just going to be another tragedy that’s forgotten about. Kate Sheppard of The Huffington Post had a great article yesterday where—about interviews with different West Virginia Democrats, and a lot of West Virginia Democrats are kind of tepid about calling for new regulations in the wake of this, just like we saw in West, Texas, where Obama spoke at the memorial of the workers that died in West, Texas, and didn’t even mention the word "lack of regulations." So—
http://truth-out.org/news/item/21224...ral-regulation
boutons,
continued props for finding spot on articles.
NPR did a good article on that as well.
The GOP is pretty much wrong on this, newer regulations are needed.
Sort of presents a conundrum for the states anti-government population that leans decidedly to the party whose standard spiel is "more government regulation isn't needed".
http://www.270towin.com/states/West_Virginia
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/13/262185...chemical-spill
Here is a MUCH better article on the holes and what they mean:
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/14/262503...-chemicals-law
IN fact I may make a thread on that topic.
NPR better be careful with so much truth. VRWC/ALEC/Repugs will renew their campaign agains PBS/NPR
"The way Congress wrote the law, EPA can order companies to study old chemicals only if EPA has evidence that the chemicals might be dangerous. But it's hard for EPA to get that evidence unless the industry does the studies in the first place."
So the captured congress wrote a crappy catch-22 law that rendered the law and the captured EPA useless, while expecting the corporations to spend their profits testing the chemicals, aka, self-regulation, which ALWAYS FAILS.
Fear Is Why Workers in Red States Vote Against Their Economic Self-Interest
So why wasn't more done to prevent this, and why isn't there more of any outcry even now?
The answer isn't hard to find. As Maya Nye, president of People Concerned About Chemical Safety, a citizen's group formed after a 2008 explosion and fire killed workers at West Virginia's Bayer CropScience plant in the state, explained to the New York Times: "We are so desperate for jobs in West Virginia we don't want to do anything that pushes industry out."
Exactly.
I often heard the same refrain when I headed the U.S. Department of Labor. When we sought to impose a large fine on the Bridgestone-Firestone Tire Company for flagrantly disregarding workplace safety rules and causing workers at one of its plants in Oklahoma to be maimed and killed, for example, the community was solidly behind us - that is, until Bridgestone-Firestone threatened to close the plant if we didn't back down.
The threat was enough to ignite a storm of opposition to the proposed penalty from the very workers and families we were trying to protect. (We didn't back down and Bridgestone-Firestone didn't carry out its threat, but the political fallout was intense.)
For years political scientists have wondered why so many working class and poor citizens of so-called "red" states vote against their economic self-interest. The usual explanation is that, for these voters, economic issues are trumped by social and cultural issues like guns, abortion, and race. (TGN here, aka, The Repug Southern Strategy to recruit racist Dems to be racist Repugs)
I'm not so sure. The wages of production workers have been dropping for thirty years, adjusted for inflation, and their economic security has disappeared. Companies can and do shut down, sometimes literally overnight. A smaller share of working-age Americans hold jobs today than at any time in more than three decades.
People are so desperate for jobs they don't want to rock the boat. They don't want rules and regulations enforced that might cost them their livelihoods. For them, a job is precious - sometimes even more precious than a safe workplace or safe drinking water.
This is especially true in poorer regions of the country like West Virginia and through much of the South and rural America - so-called "red" states where the old working class has been voting Republican. Guns, abortion, and race are part of the explanation. But don't overlook economic anxieties that translate into a willingness to vote for whatever it is that industry wants.
This may explain why Republican officials who have been casting their votes against unions, against expanding Medicaid, against raising the minimum wage, against extended unemployment insurance, and against jobs bills that would put people to work, continue to be elected and re-elected. They obviously have the support of corporate patrons who want to keep unemployment high and workers insecure because a pliant working class helps their bottom lines. But they also, paradoxically, get the votes of many workers who are clinging so desperately to their jobs that they're afraid of change and too cowed to make a ruckus.
http://robertreich.org/post/73471886666
Last edited by boutons_deux; 01-16-2014 at 03:34 PM.
obviously, regulatory authorities were asleep at the switch. government ought to have protected the public from threats to health posed by "job creators"
regulatory authorities have been captured and neutralized by BigCarbon, BigChem, BigFinance, etc. They are willfully NOT doing their jobs
the Obama administration you mean? couldn't agree more . . .
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