The West Virginia Cluster-f.... [Archive]

Nbadan

01-10-2014, 09:34 PM

boutons_deux

01-10-2014, 09:48 PM

"that brings concern"

no shit, you spewer of generic euphemisms. :lol

Nbadan

01-13-2014, 01:05 AM

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/hundreds-report-exposure-symptoms-in-w-va-after-crippling-chemical-spill/

http://i.imgur.com/MexWFuJ.jpg

boutons_deux

01-13-2014, 07:05 AM

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. ( :lol How's that working out for Americans? :lol )

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 fucking America, and you right-wingers keep voting for Repugs.

boutons_deux

01-14-2014, 02:17 PM

yawn
John Boehner on West Virginia chemical spill: Let’s not rush to over-regulatehttp://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_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

strawman. over-regulation of 10s of 1000s of chemicals is hardly the problem

TSA

01-14-2014, 02:21 PM

The hoarders there everyone has laughed at are now doing the laughing.

RandomGuy

01-15-2014, 09:13 AM

West Virginia chemical spill cuts water to up to 300,000, state of emergency declared

http://cbsnews1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2014/01/10/c56181ac-2504-4d9c-a850-a61a2a57ef51/thumbnail/620x350/West%20Virginia%20bottled%20water%20shortage.jpg

"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-people-treated-for-water-related-issues-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.

The 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."
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/13/262185930/mysteries-persist-surrounding-west-virginia-chemical-spill

We know next to nothing about the chemical, other than at what level it is toxic to rats.

RandomGuy

01-15-2014, 09:18 AM

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-dangerous-is-the-chemical-spilled-in-west-virginia

best link so far.

My gut:
Looks like coal just got a bit more expensive.

boutons_deux

01-15-2014, 09:45 AM

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/2014/01/14/262502140/charleston-mayor-company-behind-chemical-leak-run-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. :lol

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 (http://www.people-press.org/2013/04/15/state-govermnents-viewed-favorably-as-federal-rating-hits-new-low/) 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/national/2013/10/26/a-blue-states-road-to-red/

So now WVA is going to be even more fucked up under Repug misgovernance, as is every state under Repugs.

boutons_deux

01-15-2014, 10:23 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/2014/01/14/262502140/charleston-mayor-company-behind-chemical-leak-run-by-renegades

Wild Cobra

01-15-2014, 01:10 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 (http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th/house-bill/2279/text?)

Solid Waste Disposal Act 42 U.S.C. 6912 (http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title42-section6912&num=0&edition=prelim)

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 (http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title42-section9606&num=0&edition=prelim)

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 subtitle 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 (http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title42-section9604&num=0&edition=prelim)

Sec. 9605. National contingency plan (http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title42-section9605&num=0&edition=prelim)

Sec. 9614. Relationship to other law (http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title42-section9614&num=0&edition=prelim)

Sec. 9615. Presidential delegation and assignment of duties or powers and promulgation of regulations (http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title42-section9615&num=0&edition=prelim)

Sec. 9620. Federal facilities (http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title42-section9620&num=0&edition=prelim)

Wild Cobra

01-15-2014, 01:23 PM

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-dangerous-is-the-chemical-spilled-in-west-virginia

best link so far.

My gut:
Looks like coal just got a bit more expensive.

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.

boutons_deux

01-15-2014, 01:29 PM

RandomGuy

01-15-2014, 02:52 PM

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.

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.

CHARLESTON, 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.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/15/freedom-industries-west-virginia-chemical-spill_n_4598230.html

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 fucked is that this will not cause any Republican politician to re-think cuts to budgets for inspections on such things because the tea party fucktards won't let them admit government regulation and/or oversight just might be a solution to this problem. Fucking dolts, and the people who pick them in GOP primaries... ARGH.

RandomGuy

01-15-2014, 03:14 PM

http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2014/01/blogs/free-exchange/20140118_fnp501.jpg

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.

RandomGuy

01-15-2014, 03:15 PM

http://i.imgur.com/MexWFuJ.jpg

Hey man, he created jobs and that is all that matters, right?

boutons_deux

01-15-2014, 04:08 PM

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 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/13/west-virginia-democrats-chemical-spill_n_4591905.html) 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-west-virginia-water-crisis-behind-chemical-spill-gaping-holes-in-state-and-federal-regulation

Fabbs

01-15-2014, 08:44 PM

West Virginia Water Crisis: Behind Chemical Spill, Gaping Holes in State and Federal Regulation

[SIZE=3][FONT=arial]MIKE ELK:
boutons,
continued props for finding spot on articles.

RandomGuy

01-16-2014, 10:10 AM

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

RandomGuy

01-16-2014, 10:13 AM

boutons_deux

01-16-2014, 10:42 AM

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/13/262185930/mysteries-persist-surrounding-west-virginia-chemical-spill

Here is a MUCH better article on the holes and what they mean:

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/14/262503731/the-catch-22-in-the-toxic-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.

boutons_deux

01-16-2014, 12:32 PM

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 (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/us/ban-on-tap-water-being-lifted-in-west-virginia.html?_r=0) 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

Winehole23

01-16-2014, 01:17 PM

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_Virginiaobviously, regulatory authorities were asleep at the switch. government ought to have protected the public from threats to health posed by "job creators"

boutons_deux

01-16-2014, 03:36 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

Winehole23

01-17-2014, 03:21 AM

the Obama administration you mean? couldn't agree more . . .

boutons_deux

01-17-2014, 06:51 AM

the Obama administration you mean? couldn't agree more . . .

Who is in the WH makes no difference to the decades long regulatory capture, and nobody in the WH will ever end the regulatory capture.

America is owned, operated by and exists to enrich/protect the UCA and 1%, is fucked and unfuckable. Then add in the 5 extreme activist Repug SCOTUS gang of motherfuckers who are yet again (after Citizens United) about to overturn decades of stare decisisand stop Obama's recess appointments to allow the Senate Repugs to keep going with their FRAUDULENT "nobody's home, no quorum" sessions.

Did I forget to mention that America is fucked and unfuckable?

RandomGuy

01-17-2014, 09:42 AM

obviously, regulatory authorities were asleep at the switch. government ought to have protected the public from threats to health posed by "job creators"

I think it is a combination of being asleep at the switch, under-resourced due to budget cuts, regulations have not caught up with industry, and the laws were designed, quite deliberately, to be toothless.

boutons_deux

01-17-2014, 10:53 PM

Company Behind West Virginia’s Chemical Spill Files For Bankruptcy (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/17/3181821/freedom-industries-bankruptcy/)heard on NPR that tanks were built in 1950s

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/17/3181821/freedom-industries-bankruptcy/

DUNCANownsKOBE

01-17-2014, 11:01 PM

Probably so.

I wonder if some environmental activist did this to get rid of coal.

:lmao:lmao:lmao

boutons_deux

01-20-2014, 03:41 PM

"Freedom" to socialize the losses: chemical company declares bankruptcy (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/17/1270475/--Freedom-to-socialize-the-losses-chemical-company-declares-bankruptcy)

This company lacks the assets to clean up their own messes. So have filed for bankruptcy.

A real winner here.

To all this can be added the fact that Freedom Industries was cofounded by an individual named Carl Lemley Kennedy II. As the Charleston Gazette has reported, Kennedy filed for personal bankruptcy in 2005 after he was hit with federal charges of tax evasion and failure to remit employee withholding taxes. He is reported to have admitted to diverting more than $1 million that should have gone to the Internal Revenue Service. (http://www.southernstudies.org/2014/01/freedom-to-pollute.html)Kennedy's involvement in Freedom Industries, the Gazette notes, does not seem to have been affected by the fact that he had once pleaded guilty to selling cocaine in connection with a scandal that involved the mayor of Charleston. The paper quotes the current mayor, who is said to have known Kennedy since the 1980s, as an "edgy guy."

Another remarkable aspect of the story reported by the Gazette is that Freedom Industries was struggling in 2009, and its Elk River facility was able to go on functioning only after the Army Corps of Engineers dredged that portion of the river using federal stimulus funds.

To summarize: a tax evader and drug dealer helped to establish a largely unregulated chemical company that benefitted from the federal stimulus but apparently did little in the way of preventive maintenance and set the stage for large-scale drinking water contamination.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/17/1270475/--Freedom-to-socialize-the-losses-chemical-company-declares-bankruptcy?detail=email

RandomGuy

01-21-2014, 12:38 PM

Winehole23

01-22-2014, 03:17 PM

Late last year, US Department of Agriculture chief Tom Vilsack boasted (http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2013/11/0215.xml) that US agriculture exports had hit an all-time high in fiscal 2013, and hailed "historic work by the Obama Administration to break down barriers to US products and achieve new agreements to expand exports." Underlying Vilsack's glee is the idea that growing huge amounts of food here and selling a big chunk of it overseas bolsters the US economy and stabilizes rural America.

Agricultural exports cause $36 billion in annual healthcare costs, along with about 5,100 premature deaths.

That kind of thinking has driven agriculture policy at least since the days when Richard Nixon's ag secretary Earl Butz exhorted farmers to scale up operations and plant "fencerow to fencerow" in order to supply foreign markets.

(http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a3XHqTm8OdzY&refer=us)

But a new paper (http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/publications/paulot2013c.pdf) (PDF) from Harvard suggests massive ag exports might not be the economic boon imagined by USDA secretaries. The researchers looked at a single farm pollutant, ammonia (NH3), which makes its way into the air from fertilizer applied to farm fields and from the manure that accumulates on livestock farms. Once it enters the atmosphere, as Erik Stokstad explained in an excellent (pay-walled) news item (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6168/238.summary) in Science, it "reacts with other air pollutants to create tiny particles that can lodge deep in the lungs, causing asthma attacks, bronchitis, and heart attacks."

http://engine.adzerk.net/i.gif?e=eyJhdiI6NTU5NjcsImF0Ijo1LCJjbSI6ODUzMDQsIm NoIjoxMzkwOCwiY3IiOjIzNjM1NiwiZGkiOiIxNTE3Nzc0NDZh NTQ0MTZlOTM5YTQzODk4YTRmMTA2YSIsImRtIjoxLCJmYyI6Mj kyMTA3LCJmbCI6MTUyNjA4LCJrdyI6InVuZGVmaW5lZCIsIm53 Ijo4NjQ3LCJwYyI6NCwicHIiOjQ0NzIwLCJydCI6Miwic3QiOj U2OTY2LCJ6biI6NjA4MTIsInRzIjoxMzkwNDE3MzM5NDAxfQ&s=dADtMq_zhAZEj0BExu_w-J9bPMU

The Harvard team found data on the ammonia emissions associated with various major crops and meat products between 2000 and 2009, calculated what percentage of each commodity goes to exports, and figured out what share of total ag-based ammonia emissions come from growing food for export.
https://www.motherjones.com/files/ammonia.jpg
Having calculated the total, they set about figuring out the public-health costs associated with all of that export-driven ammonia billowing about in the air we breathe. The results, as our friends at UpWorthy might say, will astonish you—but not in a warm and fuzzy way. They calculated that our agricultural exports cause $36 billion in annual ammonia-realted healthcare costs, along with about 5,100 premature deaths.

Now, $36 billion might seem somewhat modest compared to the total value of US ag exports, which as Vilsack recently announced, have surged to a record. But the headline export numbers are raw—they don't account for how much farmers spent to produce their export-bound bounty. When the researchers looked at the 2000-2009 period and averaged total exports minus production costs, they found that the net value of US ag exports came in at about $23.5 billion annually (see chart above).
Thousands of deaths aside, simple math—$23 billion in gains vs. $36 billion in costs—suggests that the US policy of pushing ag exports is a net economic loser. And as the authors make clear, ammonia emissions are only one of the hidden costs associated with large-scale agriculture. Others include eutrophication (fertilizer-fed dead zones in lakes and deltas) (http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/08/gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone-growth), loss of biodiversity, and greenhouse-gas emissions, including another by-product of excess fertilizer and manure, nitrous oxide (http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/n2o.html).

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/01/are-agriculture-exports-killing-us

boutons_deux

01-22-2014, 03:55 PM

What Freedom Industries’ Bankruptcy Really Means For Those Harmed By The Chemical Spill (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/22/3182911/freedom-industries-bankruptcy-bad-news/)

The bankruptcy has many wondering what exactly this will mean for the more than 25 lawsuits that have been filed against the company, and for the people who have been harmed by Freedom Industries’ spill.

Those who claim injury from the spill are not just those who have drank, cooked or bathed in the water — not just those who have become nauseous, developed rashes, or gone to the emergency room. Business owners, too, have lost profits after being forced to close for days on end. Workers at those businesses have lost wages. And West Virginia’s capital city of Charleston has said it has lost more than $120,000 in tax revenue over the course of the week following the disaster.

In its bankruptcy filing, Freedom Industries listed a maximum of $10 million in liabilities, or potential debts. But that $10 million is dubious — the company’s debts already include $6 million in combined debts to both the IRS and other creditors, with no lawsuits mentioned.

Now that they’ve filed for bankruptcy, however, lawyers may begin dropping their lawsuits against Freedom, according to Lutter.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/22/3182911/freedom-industries-bankruptcy-bad-news/

boutons_deux

01-23-2014, 12:23 PM

[Freedom Industries President Gary] Southern said money isn’t the solution to lift the stigma on his company for its suppliers and customers. He said the spill was causing “perception problems” for the firm.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/22/1271640/-Company-that-contaminated-WV-water-supply-reaches-bankruptcy-deal-bemoans-perception-problem?detail=email

RandomGuy

01-23-2014, 04:09 PM

I wonder if some environmental activist did this to get rid of coal.

No, seriously, name one chemical spill caused by ecoterrorism.

This is the kind of thing that I mean when I say your ability to think critically sucks ass.

I wonder if (group I don't like) did (something bad). This might be reasonable if the group had a pattern of committing that kind of attack. Ecoterrorists do some stupid things, but tend not to do things that cause potentially toxic chemical spills as far as I know.

Your confirmation bias destroys any credibility you might have, even when you might get something right, and what boggles my mind is that you are too stupid or lazy to even try to overcome this weakness, when it is pointed out to you.

Why is that?

Nbadan

01-23-2014, 11:22 PM

Governor Earl Ray Tomblin saying "it's your decision" to drink the water or not

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCUjCNZiq6Y

Winehole23

01-29-2014, 11:41 AM

The company at the center of the West Virginia water crisis immediately knew a second chemical leaked from its plant into the Elk River, and told its workers in an email, according to a state environmental official. However, Freedom Industries did not let state government officials know about the second chemical until days after the spill. And state environmental department official Mike Dorsey said most company employees did not skim far enough into the email to see that information.

It's unclear who sent the email or how many of the company's 51 employees it reached.

"The explanation I was given was that they had the information on the very first day," said Dorsey, chief of the state environmental agency's homeland security and emergency response division. "It was in an email that was being shared among company employees, but no one read far enough down the page to see that."

Freedom Industries President Gary Southern showed Dorsey the email Wednesday.

"(Southern) remarked that it should've been brought to his attention but wasn't," Dorsey wrote in an email Friday.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/wva-official-spill-company-knew-2nd-chemical

boutons_deux

01-29-2014, 02:28 PM

West Virginia scientist detects formaldehyde in water sample taken from restaurantA West Virginia environmental scientist said he found traces of formaldehyde (http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401290053) in water sample taken from a restaurant.

“It’s frightening, it really is frightening,” said Scott Simonton, a Marshall University scientist and member of the state Environmental Quality Board. “What we know scares us, and we know there’s a lot more we don’t know.”

Simonton said methanol, which is a main component of the 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol that leaked earlier this month (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/10/west-virginians-risk-non-stop-vomiting-if-they-drink-or-touch-water-after-chemical-spill/) into the Elk River, breaks down into the carcinogenic chemical formaldehyde.

“Your level of what risk you will accept is up to you, I can only tell you what mine is and I’m not drinking the water,” Simonton said, adding that his family won’t drink or cook with the water. “The formaldehyde had me personally a little freaked out.”

He told a joint legislative committee on water resources that he found traces of formaldehyde in water samples taken from the restaurant Vandalia Grille in Charleston.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/29/west-virginia-scientist-detects-formaldehyde-in-water-sample-taken-from-restaurant/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

RandomGuy

01-29-2014, 06:02 PM

Governor Earl Ray Tomblin saying "it's your decision" to drink the water or not

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCUjCNZiq6Y

http://influenceexplorer.com/politician/earl-ray-tomblin/3a69ebd7b72b4c34931f9ae4dbdaaeb3

The Gov stepped in after the previous one, but there is where the money comes from.

I wonder how much money the coal companies will give him if/when he actually decides to run for election/re-election?

RandomGuy

01-29-2014, 06:05 PM

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/01/are-agriculture-exports-killing-us

Where is Wild Cobra when you need him?

Usually when you mention anything to do with air pollution he is all over it.

boutons_deux

02-05-2014, 12:37 PM

Up To 82,000 Tons Of Toxic Coal Ash Spilled Into North Carolina River From ‘Antiquated’ Storage Pit (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/04/3244981/coal-ash-drained-dan-river/)

A stormwater pipe under an unlined coal ash pond at a shuttered plant in Eden, North Carolina, burst Sunday afternoon — draining tens of thousands of tons of coal ash into the Dan River.

Duke Energy (https://www.duke-energy.com/), which owns the Dan River Steam Station, retired since 2012, estimates (http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/prnewswire/press_releases/North_Carolina/2014/02/03/CL58382) that 50,000 to 82,000 tons of coal ash and up to 27 million gallons of water were released from the 27-acre storage pond. The leak has at least temporarily been stopped, while Duke works on a more permanent solution. Coal ash is a toxic waste byproduct from burning coal, usually stored with water in large ponds.

The closest community at risk from the spill is Danville, Virginia, which takes its water from the Dan River about six miles downstream of the pond. No water quality issues have been reported so far.

“This is the latest, loudest alarm bell yet that Duke should not be storing coal ash in antiquated pits near our state’s waterways,” Frank Holleman, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) (http://www.southernenvironment.org/) told the Charlotte Business Journal (http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/blog/power_city/2014/02/coal-ash-spills-into-dan-river-from-closed-duke.html).

SELC and others have been calling for Duke to remove ash from earthen basins such as the one at Dan River to more secure lined ponds to protect local water sources. Duke has 14 coal-fired power plants in the state, 7 of which have been retired.

In addition to air pollution, coal-fired power plants generate millions of tons of waste every year contaminated with toxic metals including lead, mercury, arsenic, chromium, and selenium — more than two-thirds of which is dumped into landfills, storage ponds, or old mines.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/04/3244981/coal-ash-drained-dan-river/

Duke Energy probably owns all NC Repugs who control the state. Don't expect much investigation and fines.

Winehole23

02-05-2014, 12:59 PM

storing coal ash in antiquated pits near our state’s waterwaysmaybe that was the clean up plan

Winehole23

02-06-2014, 12:32 PM

At the Dan River plant, the waste pond was expanded more than 40 years ago over an older storm water drainage pipe. That pipe, which empties into the river, collapsed last weekend, draining the pond above.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/us/power-plant-workers-try-to-plug-coal-ash-leak-in-north-carolina.html?_r=0

boutons_deux

02-06-2014, 09:14 PM

River Contaminated With High Levels Of Lead, Arsenic, Mercury After NC Coal Ash Spill (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/06/3257241/coal-ash-spill-lead-arsenic-mercury/)

So far, initial reports indicate (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/06/us-usa-northcarolina-spill-idUSBREA151TM20140206) that Danville, Virginia’s water supply is reportedly safe from the toxic slurry of coal ash that had spilled into a river (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/04/3244981/coal-ash-drained-dan-river/) upstream four days earlier.

But a lab analysis of Dan River’s water, conducted by Waterkeeper Alliance, show sobering findings. As opposed to “background” water tests Duke Energy allegedly collected,Waterkeeper’s analysis (https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/edit?mid=znHducluMnv0.kuCjIfobtE68) found the water immediately downstream of the spill with high levels of mercury, arsenic, lead, and other toxins.

Waterkeeper reported that the 0.129 mg/L for lead concentration alone is 50 times greater than the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommendation for wildlife and 1000 times the maximum for drinking water.

“Our sample crew on the Dan River today reports that there is still coal ash waste dripping out of the pipe,” Donna Lisenby, Global Coal Campaign Coordinator for Waterkeeper Alliance, said in a press release. “Waterkeeper Alliance is very concerned that neither Duke Energy nor government officials have released any heavy metal test results from the ash being discharged into the Dan River.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/06/3257241/coal-ash-spill-lead-arsenic-mercury/

Nbadan

02-08-2014, 04:41 AM

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the water crisis affecting West Virginia is just another example of industry putting profit over people.

Rockefeller said he doesn’t think the water in the counties affected is safe to drink.

“No, I don’t,” he said. “And even if some expert group told me it was safe, I don’t think I’d believe it.

Rockefeller said he may sound cynical, but he adds, that comes after 50 years of public service and seeing the way corporations operate.

Read more: http://wchstv.com/newsroom/eyewitness/140207_23057.shtml

boutons_deux

02-08-2014, 08:32 AM

Environmentalists say N.C. river is 'toxic soup' after coal ash spill

Activists said they believed the state and Duke Energy's results, but questioned why testing wasn't being done closer to the spill site.

"To me it sounds like they're cutting Duke a break by going downstream where there's going to be a dilution factor," said Amy Adams, the North Carolina campaign coordinator at environmental group Appalachian Voices.

Adams and others said they didn't need to look further than the inches-thick stew of coal ash floating down the river to know that environmental damage had been done.

"There's a layer of very fine toxic coal ash around the Danville intake, and as you go up the river, it becomes 2, 4, 8, up to 10 to 12 inches of ash on the surface, and it's slowly moving downriver," she said.

Duke Energy has also gotten in trouble for its coal ash storage before. Last year, North Carolina residents sued the company for continued coal ash contamination around the state. And a study published in August (http://waterkeeper.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Lemly-Lake-Sutton-Selenium-Report-final.pdf) (PDF) found that Duke’s coal ash kills nearly one million fish a year in one North Carolina lake alone.

Given the company’s history of previous incidents in the state, environmentalists say they were surprised by the size of this week’s spill, but not surprised that it happened.
“There’s one surefire way to fix this: remove the coal ash from unlined pits near surface water,” said Amy Adams. “Every single one is a ticking time bomb.”

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/2/6/environmentalistssayncriveristoxicsoupaftercoalash spill.html

standing assumption: the corporatocracy is lying.

Winehole23

02-09-2014, 03:48 AM

boutons_deux

02-09-2014, 11:04 AM

boutons_deux

02-09-2014, 01:58 PM

Saw this clever quote:

"When there is a huge solar energy spill, it's called having a nice (sunny) day"

Fabbs

02-09-2014, 02:11 PM

True story.
When Duke was running the Enron/rape California scam with WuBullya, a Duke electrical plant worker here in S.D. was ordered to shut off equipment.
Even tho the state was in the midst of a **power shortage**.

He knew this was b.s., documented all the times he was ordered to shut off and who told him.
Went to the Fed Whistleblower program.

Long/short he ended up having his life threatened, not a damn thing was done and no one got in trouble but him.
Forced to resign.

boutons_deux

02-09-2014, 08:37 PM

West Virginia families, billed for smelly water they didn’t use, bill water company right back

The chemical spill in West Virginia has left thousands of people near Charleston with licorice-scented tap water that they’re afraid to use, despite the assurances of government and their water company.

West Virginia American Water promised customers a credit on their bills for the water homeowners needed to use to flush their pipes of contamination.

But when many received their January bills, the credit was no where to be found, ThinkProgress reported (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/07/3267811/west-virginia-water-bills/?wtf). And some bills showed hundreds of gallons of water use that homeowners claimed as impossible even with the flushing, given how circumspect their water use had been since the January 9 contamination of the Elk River with 10,000 gallons of Crude MCHM.

Their invoices leave space to estimate the cost of lost wages and profits from when businesses closed, extra school costs, sewage bills from flushing pipes and the cost of additional taxes they’ll be forced to pay to manage the crisis, theWest Virginia Gazette reported (http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201402080031).

Brooke Drake, of Charleston, told the Gazette that she estimated that the water crisis has cost her $290, mostly in gas and hours lost picking up bottled water.

The water company asked customers to flush their pipes twice last month. During those flushes, customers were asked to leave their water on for 25 minutes, a process that WVAM said (http://www.amwater.com/files/PR31CreditforSmallBus.pdf) should use at most 500 gallons of water. A 1000-gallon credit for homeowners and 2000-gallon credit should have appeared on bills this month, WVAM President Jeff McIntyre told ThinkProgress.

But several people approached ThinkProgress with their bills, showing no credit and inexplicably-increased water usage.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/09/west-virginia-families-billed-for-smelly-water-they-didnt-use-bill-water-company-right-back/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

boutons_deux

02-10-2014, 02:10 PM

BigChem has tainted everything with their shit

Studies Link DDT, other Environmental Toxins to Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/studies-link-ddt-other-environmental-toxins-to-late-onset-alzheimers-disease/?&WT.mc_id=SA_EVO_20140210

boutons_deux

02-11-2014, 01:59 PM

BREAKING: Pipe Break At Coal Facility Contaminates West Virginia Waterway (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/11/3277541/west-virginia-coal-slurry-spill/)

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/AP759879768837-638x510.jpg

A coal preparation facility spilled an unknown quantity of coal slurry into a creek in Kanawha County, W.V. Tuesday morning, according to West Virginia officials.

As the Charleston Gazette reports (http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201402110032), the spill occurred at Patriot Coal’s Kanawha Eagle operation, which is located near Fields Creek. The operation is near Winifrede, WV (http://www.statejournal.com/story/24691929/coal-slurry-leak-reported-in-kanawha-county-wv) — southeast of Charleston, the state’s capitol and site of last month’s major chemical spill (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/10/3145221/west-virginia-emergency-coal-chemical-spill/). The amount of coal slurry that spilled is still unknown, but a West Virginia DEP spokesman told the Charleston Gazette that the spill could probably be characterized as “significant.”

According to the county’s emergency services director, the spill was caused by a break in the eight-inch slurry line that ran between the preparation plant and the company’s refuse impoundment, which occurred sometime between midnight and 5:30 in the morning. According to the DEP, the company in charge of the facility reported the spill to the DEP at 7:30 a.m.

Workers have shut down the slurry pumps to stop the spill, but the slurry has contaminated (http://www.statejournal.com/story/24691929/coal-slurry-leak-reported-in-kanawha-county-wv) the creek, which flows into the Kanawha River. Responders are trying to contain the spill to Fields Creek in the hopes that it does not reach the Kanawha River. Officials say if the spill does reach the river they don’t think it will affect drinking water because there are no water intakes downstream of the spill.

Coal slurry (http://www.sludgesafety.org/what-coal-slurry) is a mix of solid and liquid waste that’s created from coal preparation, a process that includes washing coal with chemicals like MCHM. The DEP said in a statement (http://www.dep.wv.gov/news/Pages/DEP-Investigates-Coal-Slurry-Spill-in-Kanawha-County.aspx) that the facility utilizes a frothing chemical called Flomin 110-C that contains MCHM, the same chemical that spilled from a Freedom Industries holding plant and contaminated water for 300,000 West Virginians last month. Lawmakers have been grappling with how to prevent similar spills from happening in the future — West Virginia Sen. John Unger (D), introduced a bill (http://legiscan.com/WV/text/SB373/2014) aimed at regulating above-ground storage tanks that was passed unanimously in the Senate, but Tuesday morning’s spill proves that other holding facilities, including impoundments, are also at risk of spills.

Slurry has spilled before in West Virginia — in 1972, a coal slurry impoundment dam in Logan County burst, spilling 132,000,000 gallons of liquid onto small mining settlements, killing 125 people and injuring 1,121.

And in October of 2000 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/11/inez-coal-slurry-spill-to_n_757900.html), a coal slurry spill in Martin County, Kentucky, spilled 306,000,000 gallons, polluting 100 miles of waterways and killing aquatic life and plants in West Virginia and Kentucky.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/11/3277541/west-virginia-coal-slurry-spill/

Clean Coal! The Green Solution! :lol

boutons_deux

02-11-2014, 04:05 PM

West Virginia Water Nightmare: Private Testing Finds Coal Chemical In 40 Percent Of Homes (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/11/3278131/west-virginia-chemical-homes/)

One month after a major chemical leak spilled 10,000 gallons of crude MCHM into the Elk River and the water supply for 300,000 West Virginia residents, private testing found (http://www.downstreamstrategies.com/documents/reports_publication/letter-to-legislative-leaders_2-7-14.pdf) the main chemical ingredient in 40 percent of homes sampled.

All of the homes tested had followed the prescribed flushing procedure — several of them multiple times, said Evan Hansen, principal at Downstream Strategies, the environmental consulting firm that carried out the testing.

“I’m not surprised that MCHM is still being detected,” said Hansen. “In talking to people in the area, people are still reporting smells and some people are reporting reactions with their skin, so it seems clear that in some locations, the water isn’t clean yet.”

Last week, several schools in the area were forced to close (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/09/3196981/chemical-spill-timeline/) after staff and students complained of the licorice-like smell characteristic of crude MCHM. One teacher reportedly fainted, and “several students and employees complained of lightheadedness and burning eyes and noses.”

Though West Virginia American Water gave its customers the green light to begin flushing their systems and using the water several weeks ago, none of the state and federal officials testifying at a congressional hearing on Monday would confirm that the water is indeed safe.

Hansen also emphasized that samples were taken from cold water taps and they ran the water for several minutes before taking a sample. Thus, the results report
water quality as delivered to homes from the West Virginia American Water distribution system.

Downstream’s testing detected 4-MCHM in the range of .011 to .13 parts per million, well below the threshold recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of 1 ppm. The 1 ppm threshold has repeatedly been called into question (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/18/3181641/west-virginia-water-safe/), however, due to the scarce scientific data on crude MCHM and the fact that it has never been tested on humans.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/11/3278131/west-virginia-chemical-homes/

RandomGuy

02-11-2014, 05:57 PM

RandomGuy

02-11-2014, 06:01 PM

Poisoned the water. Again.

Duke can afford it. Probably already estimated the clean up and litigation cost due to negligence. They might have underestimated the litigiousness when they made the calculation 40 years ago.

Was it really cheaper than safety?

Quien sabe?

I would wonder at which companies donated the most to the politicians that worked to enact "tort reform" of the sort that would limit a private individuals right to sue for damages in cases like this. I haven't checked, but such efforts tend to have gotten enacted in the red states in general.

Yet another example of the business faction's fucking over of the poor faction in the GOP, and the poor faction going along because they think they are "free-marketeers".

Nbadan

02-11-2014, 08:53 PM

Pretty obvious that the industry has done a piss poor job regulating itself...that's what government at every level has come too...I'm starting to think that Congressional term limits and recalls are needed to fight back against 'corporate citizens'

boutons_deux

02-12-2014, 06:32 AM

"industry has done a piss poor job regulating itself"

Law of the Universe: business self-regulation NEVER works to protect people and environment, that's why businesses HATE all regulations.

" fight back against 'corporate citizens' "

Corporate-Americans will select and finance their own Human-American candidates, and trash the others.

boutons_deux

02-14-2014, 10:11 AM

RM coming down hard on NC Governor Duke Energy (he worked there for 28 years)

Every time a env group sues a company, Gov. Duke replaces the plaintiffs with NC then "settles" with eg Duke Engery to study how to get better, or a trivial fine $100K, or does nothing.

NC govt has now blocked all such suits entirely

Rachel Maddow Exposes Dirty Deal in Duke Energy Toxic Coal Ash Spill

http://ecowatch.com/2014/02/14/rachel-maddow-duke-energy-coal-ash-spill/

boutons_deux

02-19-2014, 02:22 PM

Coal Ash Piles Up As High As 5 Feet In North Carolina River, Endangering Aquatic Life

The pipe break that spilled up to 82,000 tons of toxic coal ash into a North Carolina river has affected parts of the river as far as 70 miles away from the spill’s source, federal officials said Tuesday.

According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials, a pile of coal ash 75 feet long and as much as 5 feet deep has been discovered at the bottom of the Dan River near the site of the spill in Eden, North Carolina. In addition, coal ash as thick as 5 inches has accumulated on the riverbed across North Carolina’s state line. Kerr Lake, a major reservoir in North Carolina, has also seen coal ash buildup.

The officials said they were concerned about the long-term environmental impacts of the spill, especially the spill’s effect on fish and other aquatic life. They said coal ash, a waste product created during the coal-burning process and which contains mercury, arsenic, lead, and other toxins, can bury aquatic life in the river and clog the gills of mussels and fish. The Dan River is home to two endangered aquatic species: the Roanoke logperch and the James spinymussel. North Carolina officials have already warned residents to avoid prolonged contact with parts of the Dan River and not to eat the fish.

“The deposits vary with the river characteristics, but the short- and long-term physical and chemical impacts from the ash will need to be investigated more thoroughly, especially with regard to mussels and fish associated with the stream bottom and wildlife that feed on benthic invertebrates,” Tom Augspurger, a contaminants specialist at the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

The impacts of this particular spill on river life aren’t yet known, but coal ash spills have had devastating effects on rivers in the past. In December 2008, about 525 million gallons of coal ash spilled in Tennessee, flooding up to 300 acres of land and making its way into the Tennessee River. That spill “resulted in a tremendous fish kill,” according to a local paper. Given the severity of past coal ash spills, environmental groups in North Carolina are worried about the effects of this latest coal ash spill, especially the worry of toxins like lead and mercury accumulating in Dan River fish.

“Most studies have shown the environmental impacts from coal ash leaks last for 10 years or more,” Kara Dodson, a field organizer with Appalachian Voices, told Elon University’s The Pendulum. “The science isn’t out on that yet, but it could be decades before we stop seeing effects from this spill.”

In December 2013, a study found that coal ash has been responsible for the deaths of 900,000 of fish each year in Sutton Lake in North Carolina, which has long served as a cooling lake for a Duke Energy coal-fired power plant. The study also found that some species of fish examined showed deformities such as curved spines, misshaped or missing fins, and mouth and jaw defects — defects that the study said are consistent with elevated levels of selenium, a toxic element found in coal ash.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/18/3305001/coal-ash-endangering-wildlife/

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 02:28 PM

What was a water pipe doing, running under a chemical waste pond?

Who's stupid idea was that?

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/toxins-leaking-2nd-pipe-nc-coal-ash-dump-22573501

On Feb. 2, a pipe running under a coal ash pond collapsed at Duke's Dan River Steam Station, spilling up to 82,000 tons of coal ash mixed with 27 million gallons of contaminated water.

boutons_deux

02-19-2014, 02:40 PM

What was a water pipe doing, running under a chemical waste pond?

Who's stupid idea was that?

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/toxins-leaking-2nd-pipe-nc-coal-ash-dump-22573501

blaming the storm water pipe?

which was probably laid in an open trench and filled over.

do you think the local storm water people tunneled UNDER the hazmat lake? :lol

the question is what was Duke Energy doing putting hazmat lake over a storm water pipe?

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 02:40 PM

the company who built the waste pit, presumably. the pipe preexisted the pond, i think.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 02:44 PM

the question is what was Duke Energy doing putting hazmat lake over a storm water pipe?

Either way, it was the local permitting process that is to blame.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 02:45 PM

the company who built the waste pit, presumably. the pipe preexisted the pond, i think.

Probably. See precious post.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 05:24 PM

you want the Duke off the hook and blame regulatory agencies for its carelessness, clearly.

RandomGuy

02-19-2014, 05:53 PM

you want the Duke off the hook and blame regulatory agencies for its carelessness, clearly.

Can't have facts fall outside the preferred narrative.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 05:56 PM

on the contrary, RG, any given set of facts can be twisted to suit the purpose.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 06:05 PM

you want the Duke off the hook and blame regulatory agencies for its carelessness, clearly.
If they knew the pipe existed, they should be held to some measure of accountability. However, what if they only saw a good place to build a reservoir, and asked for the permit? Do you claim they knew the pipe was under that location? I would suggest they should have known, but what if they didn't?

I do not claim to know the inside scoop, nor have I said they are not at fault. I am only factually pointing out that the government agency that issued the permit is clearly to blame for most, or all of the problem. Such a permit should have never been issued.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 06:11 PM

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 06:15 PM

State and local regulators turn a blind eye to shenanigans, until someone fucks up.

WC is crying crocodile tears over the fact that regulation was neither so stringent nor so effective as to prevent the accident.

bad government is to blame.
In this case, tell me. Pipes are known to break with age. Just how blind can someone be to allow such a thing to happen.

I am saying that it was irresponsible to issue such a permit. I am saying that the agency that issued that permit clearly has fault in this case.

Why are you making this about me? Is your argument so weak, you have to deflect the discussion?

Th'Pusher

02-19-2014, 07:57 PM

In this case, tell me. Pipes are known to break with age. Just how blind can someone be to allow such a thing to happen.

I am saying that it was irresponsible to issue such a permit. I am saying that the agency that issued that permit clearly has fault in this case.

Why are you making this about me? Is your argument so weak, you have to deflect the discussion?

Clearly the local regulators were too close to the business. WC making a good argument for federal oversight.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:04 PM

yep

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:06 PM

I am saying that the agency that issued that permit clearly has fault in this case.That's what I was saying you said. I stated your position accurately.

Why are you upset?

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:08 PM

That's what I was saying you said. I stated your position accurately.

Why are you upset?

WC is crying crocodile tears over the fact that regulation was neither so stringent nor so effective as to prevent the accident.
If you say so.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:11 PM

you wish state and local regulation were strong enough to enforce public safety, or, that it ought to have been.

given that it clearly isn't, wouldn't you say more federal oversight is called for?

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:11 PM

Clearly the local regulators were too close to the business. WC making a good argument for federal oversight.
Not at all. However, I hope the people responsible need to be held accountable. Investigate why it happened. There might have been a payoff, it could have been incompetence, it could have been poor regulations, or something else yet. Find out what happened and fix it. Prosecute or fire someone if the investigation warrants it.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:12 PM

how does one fix the problem of energy lobbyists regulating the energy sector?

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:13 PM

you wish state and local regulation were strong enough to enforce public safety, or, that it ought to have been.

given that it clearly isn't, wouldn't you say more federal oversight is called for?

No.

I see no need for such a thing to happen.

Are you using such things for an excuse to make this nation more totalitarian?

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:13 PM

Not at all. However, I hope the people responsible need to be held accountable. Investigate why it happened. There might have been a payoff, it could have been incompetence, it could have been poor regulations, or something else yet. Find out what happened and fix it. Prosecute or fire someone if the investigation warrants it.Including, presumably, the officers of the company, whose negligence both in constructing and maintaining the waste pond led to the accident. Right?

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:14 PM

how does one fix the problem of energy lobbyists regulating the energy sector?

Put the corruptible people, and the people buying them, in jail. Or at the very least, make them pay their wealth to cleanups when they are needed.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:15 PM

No.

I see no need for such a thing to happen.

Are you using such things for an excuse to make this nation more totalitarian?Not at all. Just trying to follow your train of thought.

You're the one who suggested local authorities weren't getting it done.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:16 PM

Including, presumably, the officers of the company, whose negligence both in constructing and maintaining the waste pond led to the accident. Right?
People who are responsible for faulty designs are fired in corporation. We need to do the same to government employees.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:17 PM

Put the corruptible people, and the people buying them, in jail. Or at the very least, make them pay their wealth to cleanups when they are needed.be nice if corporate officers were separately liable for the egregious negligence and misconduct of the companies they run, but oddly, it seldom works out that way.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:18 PM

Not at all. Just trying to follow your train of thought.

You're the one who suggested local authorities weren't getting it done.
In this case, yes. They really blew it. I don't know how old that pond was, but an investigation needs to be done, and hold the responsible parties accountable.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:18 PM

be nice if corporate officers were separately liable for the egregious negligence and misconduct of the companies they run, but oddly, it seldom works out that way.
Engineers come and go for such reasons. The level of corruption you imply is why we have whistle blower laws.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:19 PM

I don't know how old that pond was, but an investigation needs to be done, and hold the responsible parties accountable.including Duke Energy, if misconduct or negligence is revealed?

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:20 PM

Engineers come and go for such reasons.meant corporate directors and officers and such. technical coolies like engineers naturally come and go.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:21 PM

including Duke Energy, if misconduct or negligence is revealed?
If it's their negligence, then yes. make them pay for it. If someone authorized a payoff for a permit that would otherwise not be granted, then you have at least two people to put in jail and/or drain them of all their net worth.

make an example of these people so others don't want to do the same.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:23 PM

meant corporate directors and officers and such. technical coolies like engineers naturally come and go.
When a head engineer approves a design, he should lose his job if the design was faulty and cause such an incident. Things like this do happen. Companies fire such people for incompetence regularly.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:24 PM

then you have at least two people to put in jail and/or drain them of all their net worth.you think we should put polluters in jail?

whoa. radical.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:24 PM

meant corporate directors and officers and such.

Again, whistle blower laws.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:25 PM

you think we should put polluters in jail?

whoa. radical.

Is it intentional or accidental?

Accidental, no, but still hold responsible.

Something serious and intentional? I'm OK with a firing squad.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:27 PM

I'm OK with a firing squad.:lmao

Th'Pusher

02-19-2014, 08:28 PM

Is it intentional or accidental?

Accidental, no, but still hold responsible.

Something serious and intentional? I'm OK with a firing squad.

What if it was just a Duke chief/director leaning on one of his republican friends in the legislature that got the permit expedited without the proper due diligence? What then?

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:29 PM

Again, whistle blower laws.and what do you do when no one blows the whistle on their own employer?

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:29 PM

who or what protects public health and the environment then?

boutons_deux

02-19-2014, 08:36 PM

and what do you do when no one blows the whistle on their own employer?

the perp escapes punishment. Corporate-Americans skate free, poor Human-Americans get screwed.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:50 PM

What if it was just a Duke chief/director leaning on one of his republican friends in the legislature that got the permit expedited without the proper due diligence? What then?
I'm not going to respond to all possibilities. I think my point is well taken. this shows you obviously think I'm going to defend a republican from corruption. No, I will not.

At least take both of their net worth if it takes that much money to help fix the problem.

Must I remind you what I have said several time? I don't like most politicians, and I normally only vote republican as the lesser of two evils. You would be wise not to think I blindly support any of them.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:51 PM

and what do you do when no one blows the whistle on their own employer?
I never claimed we lived in a perfect world.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:51 PM

was asking WC, thanks, though

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:52 PM

I never claimed we lived in a perfect world.that's not an answer, that's an evasion.

who protects the public when the company won't tattle on itself, and the regulators are captured by industry?

you know, like in this case?

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 08:54 PM

that's not an answer, that's an evasion.

who protects the public when the company won't tattle on itself, and the regulators are captured by industry?

you know, like in this case?
We then have problems.

How is my answer evasive when I simply acknowledge i don't have all the answers. We do what we can to stop corruption, but we will always have some.

If we take harsh measure when we do find guilty parties, it will send a message to others that contemplate such ideas. Deterrents are not perfect, but they do have an effect.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 08:57 PM

there's no role for federal oversight, if industry and local officialdom are corrupt? I thought you wanted responsible people shot.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 09:05 PM

there's no role for federal oversight, if industry and local officialdom are corrupt? I thought you wanted responsible people shot.
How many will do corrupt things if such actions are dealt with severely? How will federal oversight help of it's just a different person to be corrupted? Corrupt a federal official, and now you have control over 50 states, instead of one state by corrupting a state official.

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 09:05 PM

who's gonna shoot the bad guys if industry and local officials are corrupt?

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 09:06 PM

who's gonna shoot the bad guys if industry and local officials are corrupt?
LOL...

I'm sure there would be many volunteers!

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 09:07 PM

mob justice?

:lmao

Winehole23

02-19-2014, 09:10 PM

say what you want about environmental regulation and civil liability, it's way more consensual, equitable and predictable than a mob lynching.

Wild Cobra

02-19-2014, 09:29 PM

You sure extrapolate things in a comical manner.

Winehole23

02-20-2014, 02:23 AM

you inspired me, WC.

boutons_deux

02-20-2014, 11:04 AM

WEST VIRGINIA IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS

I don't care any more what's the matter with Kansas because Kansas doesn't seem to care what the rest of us think, but what in the fk is the matter with West Virginia? Specifically, what in the fk is wrong with the elected officials in West Virginia, and more specifically, is Governor Earl Ray Tomblin waiting until you can see the state glow from space before he realizes that his business-friendly environment is primarily occupied wth poisoning the state's actual environment?

Right now, as the state is still grappling (http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/17/west-virginia-residents-still-wary-of-water-after-chemical-leak/) with the effect of the chemical spill from the conveniently bankrupt Freedom Industries, and from a deluge of coal slurry (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-11/patriot-coal-plant-spills-waste-2-months-after-bankrupt.html) into a river an Kanawha County, this one courtesy of the recently-emerged-from-bankruptcy Patriot Coal, Governor Earl Ray and his environmental secretary have decided that this is the ideal moment (http://morgancountyusa.org/?p=757) to turn West Virginia into a catchbasin for fracking fluids.

The legislation, HB 4411, which would allow the disposal of drill cuttings and associated drilling waste generated from well sites in commercial solid waste facilities, passed the House Energy Committee yesterday. And the Energy Committee is seeking to bypass the House Judiciary Committee and move the bill straight to the House floor.In July 2013, Huffman, without consulting solid waste authorities throughout the state, sent a memo to landfill owners and operators laying out how they could blow by their monthly tonnage limits to accommodate the fracking wastes.

Once again, as it is on so many other issues, it is out in the states where environmental issues are most directly being either ignored, or actively exacerbated, largely because state governments are cheaper and easier to buy. (Here's a nice story about the lagoons of pig shit (http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/03/chinas-dead-hog-scandal-gross%E2%80%94-so-are-our-factories-farms)currently afflicting Iowa.)

There's a straight line to be drawn from unregulated exploding fertilizer plants in Texas to the decision by West Virginia's government to turn their already poisoned state into a repository for the toxic byproduct of an entirely new form of dirty energy extraction. There doesn't seem to be any penalty to be paid for a governor who willingly allows his state to get poisoned as long as JOBS! can be waved around as a talisman. And, well, the rest of their constituents have to live with it. Or not.

Wetzel County County Solid Waste authority member Bill Hughes is concerned about the radioactivity of fracking wastes. "When you are drilling down, your gamma log, gamma radiation detector starts spiking,"Hughes said at a Wetzel County Commission meeting in September 2013. "That's how they know they are in the Marcellus. They want to stay in the real rich black stuff. That's where the money is, the gas is. When you bring this up to the surface, the radiation doesn't stay down there. All the fluids, all the solids, bring it up."

Hughes said that while Pennsylvania requires radiation monitors, West Virginia does not. "My concern is the landfill workers," Hughes said. "They are there daily at the site, working at the landfill, unloading these trucks. I don't know in what proximity they are to the drill mud. These are all unknowns. My point is we don't even know."

You're not supposed to know. That's the point.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/west-virginia-fracking-021814

boutons_deux

02-20-2014, 11:27 AM

Either way, it was the local permitting process that is to blame.

as always with WC, govt IS the problem, not the corporate money corrupting/controlling govt.

It was Duke Energy corrupting state/local govt to obtain whatever TF Duke Energy wanted.

boutons_deux

02-20-2014, 11:56 AM

here's another Repug state govt colluding with frackers to suppress dissent and open state parks to fracking

"Frackgate": Ohio Regulators Planned to Subvert Eco-Groups, Promote Fracking in State Parks

A fracking scandal is unfolding in Ohio. Environmental groups and state lawmakers slammed Republican Gov. John Kasich and state regulators this week over internal documents that they say show the Kasich administration planned to collude with the oil and gas industry to publicly promote fracking in state parks while fending off criticism from a "Nixon-style enemies list" of state lawmakers and environmental groups.

In 2012, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) outlined a broad public relations campaign for selling Ohioans on the benefits of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in two state parks. The 13-page "communication plan (https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.progressohio.org/images/Strategic_Drilling_Comms_Plan.pdf)," which was uncovered by the Ohio Sierra Club, proposes that the ODNR enlist support from "allies" in the Kasich administration and the oil and gas industry and "marginalize the effectiveness of communications" of fracking opponents. The plan was never implemented.

The plan admits that the fracking initiative would "blur public perception of ODNR's regulatory role in oil and gas," which would "require precise messaging and coordination by ODNR."

Industry Friends and Environmental Foes

A list of "current and potential" non-governmental allies in the plan includes Halliburton, the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, the US Chamber of Commerce and America's Natural Gas Alliance.

A list of targeted "opposition groups" includes the Ohio Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, EcoWatch, Waterkeeper Alliance, Ohio FrackAction and two Democratic state lawmakers.

The ODNR communication plan warns that fracking in state parks would be met by "zealous resistance" from anti-fracking activists who are "skilled propagandists." The public, the plan states, would be vulnerable to messages from fracking opponents who would paint the initiative as "a dangerous and radical state policy by Gov. Kasich." Anti-fracking activists also may stage confrontational protests and try to physically or legally stop fracking operations on public lands, the plan states.

"This is an unprecedented collusion between oil and gas companies and the agencies that regulate them," said Brian Kunkemoeller, a program coordinator with the Ohio Sierra Club who stumbled on the plan last week while reviewing files from a public information request. "This isn't just bad news for our parks and forests, it's bad news for our democracy."

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21957-frackgate-ohio-regulators-planned-to-subvert-eco-groups-promote-fracking-in-state-parks

RandomGuy

02-20-2014, 01:02 PM

I never claimed we lived in a perfect world.

No we don't.

Your libertarian ideal would be far worse, and demonstrably so.

Winehole23

02-21-2014, 03:11 PM

according to this site, there were no federal regs related to coal ash until this year: http://www.southeastcoalash.org/?page_id=50

boutons_deux

02-21-2014, 06:50 PM

according to this site, there were no federal regs related to coal ash until this year: http://www.southeastcoalash.org/?page_id=50

Yep. Big coal bribed coal ash out Of hazmat category

Wild Cobra

02-21-2014, 11:17 PM

Yep. Big coal bribed coal ash out Of hazmat category
Please provide us with the evidence.

boutons_deux

02-22-2014, 01:28 AM

Please provide us with the evidence.

coal ash has never been classified as toxic by EPA, CWA, or anything. Just how do you think Ms of tons of that dangerous crap escaped regulation?

Wild Cobra

02-22-2014, 01:30 AM

coal ash has never been classified as toxic by EPA, CWA, or anything. Just how do you think Ms of tons of that dangerous crap escaped regulation?
And that's because of bribes?

Evidence please.

boutons_deux

03-02-2014, 03:44 AM

Ash Spill Shows How Watchdog Was Defanged

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/03/01/us/POLLUTE/POLLUTE-articleLarge.jpg

RALEIGH, N.C. — Last June, state employees in charge of stopping water pollution were given updated marching orders on behalf of North Carolina’s new Republican governor and conservative lawmakers.

“The General Assembly doesn’t like you,” an official in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources told supervisors called to a drab meeting room here. “They cut your budget, but you didn’t get the message. And they cut your budget again, and you still didn’t get the message.”

From now on, regulators were told, they must focus on customer service, meaning issuing environmental permits for businesses as quickly as possible.

Big changes are coming, the official said, according to three people in the meeting, two of whom took notes. “If you don’t like change, you’ll be gone.”

But when the nation’s largest utility, Duke Energy, spilled 39,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River in early February, those big changes were suddenly playing out in a different light. Federal prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into the spill and the relations between Duke and regulators at the environmental agency.

The spill, which coated the river bottom 70 miles downstream and threatened drinking water and aquatic life, drew attention to a deal that the environmental department’s new leadership reached with Duke last year over pollution from coal ash ponds. It included a minimal fine but no order that Duke remove the ash — the waste from burning coal to generate electricity — from its leaky, unlined ponds. Environmental groups said the arrangement protected a powerful utility rather than the environment or the public.
Facing increasing scrutiny and criticism, the department said late Friday that the company would be cited for two formal notices of violating environmental standards in connection with the spill. It is not clear what fines or other penalties could result.

"These are violations of state and federal law, and we are holding the utility accountable,” said the state environmental secretary, John E. Skvarla III.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/us/coal-ash-spill-reveals-transformation-of-north-carolina-agency.html

boutons_deux

03-04-2014, 02:48 PM

Five More Duke Energy Power Plants Cited For Storing Coal Waste Improperly

The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on Monday cited five more Duke Energy power plants for not having storm water permits.

These citations follow two others issued Friday against the Dan River Steam Station in Eden, where, on February 2, 39,000 tons of coal ash were funneled through a broken storm water pipe under a coal ash pond and into the Dan River.

Duke Energy faces potential fines of $25,000 per day, per violation. Regulators say they are still in the process of assessing how coal ash is stored at all 14 of Duke’s sites in North Carolina. Coal ash is a toxic sludge left over from the burning of coal in old power plants.

“It is shocking that Duke Energy was openly violating the most fundamental requirements of clean water laws, and discharging industrial storm water directly into the Dan River illegally,” Frank Holleman, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center told the Los Angeles Times.

Duke has 30 days from the issuance of the violation notices to make its case to the DENR before fines are set.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/04/3359261/stormwater-violations-duke-energy/

how will NC governor for Duke Energy get involved?

boutons_deux

03-06-2014, 06:40 AM

Another risisble wrist slap

Huge Coal Company To Pay Largest-Ever Fine After 6,000 Clean Water Violations In 7 Years

Alpha Natural Resources, the third-largest coal company in the U.S., agreed to pay a $27.5 million fine after violating water pollution permits in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

Over the last seven years, Alpha and its subsidiaries discharged heavy metals into waterways across those five Appalachian states 6,289 times, through 794 different discharge points, sometimes by as much as 35 times the legal limit.

( :lol fucking insane. why is there a "legal limit" to dumping poisons in waterways? :lol )

The pollutants that spilled from the coal mines throughout Appalachia include “iron, pH, total suspended solids, aluminum, manganese, selenium, and salinity,” according to an EPA press release.

The giant coal company will also spend $200 million to stop sending toxic discharge into the nations rivers and streams. According to the AP, which obtained details about the settlement on Wednesday, “under the agreement, the mine operators will install wastewater treatment systems and take other measures aimed at reducing discharges from 79 active coal mines and 25 coal-processing plants in those five states.”

Cynthia Giles, who runs the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement office, told the AP that the settlement was “the biggest case for permit violations for numbers of violations and size of the penalty, which reflects the seriousness of violations.”

“This is the largest one, period.”

A big part of the reason this settlement was so comprehensive and expensive is because in 2011, Alpha Natural Resources bought a coal company called Massey Energy. Massey’s coal operations account for more than half of the violations represented in Wednesday’s settlement.

Alpha spent $7.1 billion to purchase Massey, and it has been picking up the pieces ever since. Months after the purchase agreement was announced, Massey was still fighting a legal battle over dumping 1.4 billion gallons of toxic coal slurry into old underground coal mines — knowing all the while that the mines leaked into the water supply. Alpha settled the lawsuit with hundreds of West Virginia residents in 2011.

Massey received global headlines for the tragic explosion in 2010 that killed 29 miners, and stayed in the headlines as Massey CEO Don Blankenship’s confrontational relationship with safety regulators prompted shareholder calls for his resignation. In 2009, Blankenship called the idea that safety regulators cared more about coal miners than he did “as silly as global warming.” This despite the small world encompassing coal industry and coal regulators: President Bush appointed a former Massey official to an MSHA review commission in 2002.

In 2012, Massey mine superintendent Gary May pled guilty to charges of criminal conspiracy over deceiving federal safety regulators. When the Mine Safety and Health Administration would come for an inspection, May would warn miners, increase air ventilation, falsify records, and cut corners in order to hide dangerous safety violations.

Though 2014 is barely two months old, the U.S. has seen a raft of coal spills — in West Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia again, and West Virginia again — signalling the problem of dirty coal is not going away.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/05/3366341/clean-water-violations-coal-fine/ (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/05/3366341/clean-water-violations-coal-fine/)

BigCoal is as filthy and corrupt an industry as politics, and as the rest of BigCorporate.

RandomGuy

03-06-2014, 05:37 PM

boutons_deux

03-06-2014, 05:53 PM

Duke Energy Must Immediately Stop Polluting Groundwater In North Carolina, Judge Rules (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/06/3373851/duke-energy-must-immediately-stop-polluting-groundwater-in-north-carolina-judge-rules/)

A North Carolina county judge ruled Thursday that Duke Energy must immediately act to stop groundwater contamination coming from its 14 coal-fired power plants in the state.

The ruling (http://www.southernenvironment.org/uploads/pages/2014%2003%2006%20Order%20on%20Petition%20for%20Jud icial%20Review.pdf), issued by Judge Paul Ridgeway, directs (http://www.wral.com/judge-duke-energy-must-halt-coal-ash-pond-contamination/13456301/) Duke to come up with a plan to clean up sites that have been contaminated by leaking coal ash ponds, reversing a 2012 North Carolina Environmental Management Commission ruling that Duke wasn’t required to immediately clean up contaminated groundwater from its operations. That ruling was contested by multiple environmental groups more than a year ago, but the new ruling comes just over a month (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/28/3341721/duke-energy-pressured-coal-ash-spill/) after about 35 million gallons of coal ash from a Duke Energy coal ash basin spilled into the Dan River.

“The ruling leaves no doubt, Duke Energy is past due on its obligation to eliminate the sources of groundwater contamination, its unlined coal ash pits, and the State has both the authority and a duty to require action now,” D.J. Gerken, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a statement (http://www.southernenvironment.org/newsroom/press_releases/nc_coal_ash_court_rules/). “This ruling enforces a common-sense requirement in existing law – before you can clean up contaminated groundwater, you first must stop the source of the contamination- in this case, Duke’s unlined coal ash pits.”

According to the SELC, data collected over the years clearly shows that coal-fired power plants have caused groundwater contamination in the state, but until now, the state had maintained that it couldn’t take action against Duke until it figured out the extent of the pollution.

“Arsenic has been detected at levels exceeding legal standards in the groundwater at the Dan River plant at every sampling event since January 2011,” Pete Harrison, a staff attorney at the Waterkeeper Alliance said (http://www.southernenvironment.org/newsroom/press_releases/nc_coal_ash_court_rules/). “If the state had exercised its authority to require cleanup of those ponds previously, the catastrophic February 2014 coal ash spill could have been prevented. The time to use this authority to require cleanup at other plants around the state is now, before another disaster occurs.”

The SELC also says that most of North Carolina’s coal ash ponds are aging — some have been in operation for as long as 50 years. Gerken told the Charlotte Observer (http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/03/06/4746141/duke-must-act-on-ash-contamination.html#.UxjfNPldV8E) that the only solution he knows of for halting pollution from the ponds is to move the ash from the ponds into lined landfills.

Duke’s environmental citations have piled up in the weeks after the Dan River spill. This week, the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) cited (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/04/3359261/stormwater-violations-duke-energy/) five Duke Energy power plants for not having storm water permits, citations that came a few days after two other power plants were cited for the same reason. Gov. Pat McCrory has pressured (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/28/3341721/duke-energy-pressured-coal-ash-spill/) Duke to clean up the spill, giving the utility until March 15 to submit clean-up plans to the state, and has also said he wants Duke Energy to remove coal ash from all holding ponds that sit on water sources.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/06/3373851/duke-energy-must-immediately-stop-polluting-groundwater-in-north-carolina-judge-rules/

BigCoal, propagandize us AGAIN how BigCoal in CleanCoal! :lol

boutons_deux

03-15-2014, 10:58 AM

New Emails Suggest Coal Ash Polluter Helped State Regulator During Investigation (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/14/3408751/emails-north-carolina-duke-energy-coal-ash/)

Emails obtained by the Associated Press (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_COAL_ASH_SPILL_NORTH_CAROLINA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT) suggest staff at North Carolina’s environmental regulatory agency coordinated with Duke Energy officials before intervening in a suit by citizen groups against the company.

For several years, various citizen groups in the state have attempted to sue Duke Energy (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/06/3373851/duke-energy-must-immediately-stop-polluting-groundwater-in-north-carolina-judge-rules/)under the Clean Water Act. Ponds in which the company was storing its coal ash — the residue left over after coal is burned for power generation — were reportedly leaking and contaminating North Carolina’s groundwater.

In January 2013, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) filed notice that it intended to sue Duke Energy over the same matter. According to emails the Center provided to the AP this week, a Duke lobbyist contacted the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to set up a meeting just days after the 2013 filing. “The emails suggest the company and regulators were in frequent contact,” the AP reported, “with a lawyer for Duke even advising the state on legal strategy at one point.”

Lawyers for the SELC had informed the state government that citizen groups could not be blocked from participating in the dispute over the coal ash. But in April of 2013, a lawyer for Duke tried to find case law that could convince a judge otherwise. In May, the Duke lawyer emailed an example case to North Carolina’s Special Deputy Attorney, who forwarded it to the top lawyer at the DENR. Then in July, the Special Deputy Attorney went before the judge in the suit to argue that citizens groups should not be allowed to participate from the legal proceedings against Duke. The judge ultimately turned down the argument.

“They tried to keep us from being full parties in the case,” said Frank Holleman, a senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Duke is the lawbreaker. DENR is the law enforcement agency. They are supposed to be protecting the people. Instead, they are working with the lawbreaker to find a way to limit the participation of the citizens groups in the law enforcement proceedings in the way that will benefit the lawbreaker. It’s astonishing.”

The DENR had used its authority to negotiate a proposal in which Duke would pay a $99,100 fine to settle the violations of the Clean Water Act, but would be under no requirement to actually clean up the pollution. That settlement was derided by environmentalists as a “sweetheart deal,” and was tabled after a massive new spill from one of Duke Energy’s coal ash ponds in February of this year (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/28/3341721/duke-energy-pressured-coal-ash-spill/).

Eighty-two thousand tons of coal ash leaked into North Carolina’s Dan River, polluting 70 miles of the river and layering as much as 5 inches of coal ash slurry along some points of the river bed.
The latest spill has sparked (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/28/3341721/duke-energy-pressured-coal-ash-spill/) a federal criminal investigation into whether DENR has been inappropriately lax in regulating Duke Energy due to its close interactions with the company.

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory also worked (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/04/3359261/stormwater-violations-duke-energy/) for Duke Energy for 28 years and received substantial financial support form the company in his campaign. McCrory recently said (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/06/3373851/duke-energy-must-immediately-stop-polluting-groundwater-in-north-carolina-judge-rules/) he wants Duke Energy to remove coal ash from all the ponds that sit near water sources. He also gave Duke Energy until tomorrow to come up with a plan to clean the latest spill.

According to the SELC, data collected over years reveals (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/04/3359261/stormwater-violations-duke-energy/) that coal-fired power plants and their coal ash ponds in the state have polluted North Carolina’s groundwater. The Center also argued that most of North Carolina’s coal ash ponds are aging, with some having been in operation for as long as 50 years. The DENR has also cited a total of seven power plants, including at least five owned by Duke Energy, for not having proper storm water permits.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/14/3408751/emails-north-carolina-duke-energy-coal-ash/

Confederate Repug good ol' boy misgovernance, malfeasance, what's not to love?

NC governor is really Governor Duke Energy, worked for Duke about 28 years.

Duke Energy gets its name from Tobacco Death Merchant and monopolist

"In 1885, James Buchanan Duke acquired a license to use the first automated cigarette (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette) making machine (invented by James Albert Bonsack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Albert_Bonsack)), and by 1890, Duke supplied 40% of the American cigarette market (then known as pre-rolled tobacco). In that year, Duke consolidated control of his four major competitors under one corporate entity, the American Tobacco Company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Tobacco_Company), which was a monopoly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly) in the American cigarette market."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Duke

Duke, poisonous shit for your lungs, poisonous shit for your water, poisonous shit for your air.

MultiTroll

03-15-2014, 11:37 AM

great articles Bouts, keep it up.

boutons_deux

03-18-2014, 09:54 AM

Hidden Camera Reveals Dumping of Toxic Coal Ash Into Ohio River

http://files.cdn.ecowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Screen-Shot-2014-03-17-at-12.41.52-PM.png

http://files.cdn.ecowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Screen-Shot-2014-03-17-at-12.41.37-PM.png

This photographic evidence, along with Google Earth satellite images (https://docs.google.com/a/sierraclub.org/document/d/1BAALtSdVg6mQmRil-GvsQ3ST1QLoP5CS8345ONMFwEA/edit) from 1993 to present, support the Sierra Club (http://www.sierraclub.org/) and Earthjustice (http://earthjustice.org/)’s notice of intent to sue (https://docs.google.com/a/sierraclub.org/file/d/0B99rOgSuwtDySTVhck53M0R4TUE/edit) LG&E for violating the federal Clean Water Act and the terms of the utility’s own permit allowing only an “occasional” discharge into the river.

“It’s devastating to think that this could have been going on for more than 20 years,” said Sierra Club organizer Thomas Pearce, who helped install the hidden camera last year. “It’s like the North Carolina (http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/14/duke-energy-coal-ash-cleanup/) or West Virginia spills (http://ecowatch.com/2014/01/10/west-virginia-coal-chemical-spill/) but in slow motion, with no one to stop it.”

A coal ash pond for LG&E’s Mill Creek Generating Station, which sits on the Ohio River, is the source of the pollution. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) previously classified the pond as being “high hazard (http://earthjustice.org/features/campaigns/high-and-significant-hazard-coal-ash-dump-sites),” meaning a failure or misoperation of the ash pond dam will likely result in fatalities and environmental damage.

While the federal Clean Water Act does protect waterways from pollution, there are no federal safeguards specific to coal ash pollution (http://ecowatch.com/2014/01/30/epa-finalize-first-coal-ash-regulations/). The Sierra Club is part of a legal agreement with 11 organizations compelling the EPA to finalize safeguards against coal ash pollution by Dec. 19.

http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/17/camera-reveals-dumping-coal-ash-ohio-river/

Clean Coal, just another UCA/VRWC lie.

Wild Cobra

03-18-2014, 10:37 AM

Excuse me if i have a hard time believing an activist group with an agenda.

Two pictures, one taken in January this year, and a Google 2010. I would like to see several photos, days in a row to believe these are not two cherry picked days.

I also went to ecowatch.com. At Duke, they have 11 photos, but the pumps are hooked up differently than claimed between the two.

Inconsistency? Ignorance? What is it with them?

http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/17/duke-energy-coal-ash/#/BlackoutGallery/326556/2

Winehole23

03-18-2014, 10:41 AM

you didn't even read the lede

Wild Cobra

03-18-2014, 10:44 AM

you didn't even read the lede
Interesting how there is no link to the time lapse photos.

Two pictures, one taken in January this year, and a Google 2010. I would like to see several photos, days in a row to believe these are not two cherry picked days.

Winehole23

03-18-2014, 10:56 AM

keep digging, sport

Wild Cobra

03-18-2014, 11:05 AM

keep digging, sport
How about you showing me.

boutons_deux

03-19-2014, 03:09 PM

In these revealing stories in Sunday’s New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/us/north-carolina-investigating-another-duke-energy-site.html?action=click&module=RegiWall-Regi&region=FixedCenter&version=meter+at+5&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsite search%2F%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26p gtype%3DHomepage%26module%3DSearchSubmit%26content Collection%3DHomepage%26t%3Dqry890%23%2Fduke%2520e nergy%2520cape%2520fear&pgtype=article&priority=true&_r=0) and Monday’s Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-coal-ash-cape-fear-river-20140316,0,7688341.story?page=1#axzz2wDdtGJJR), Duke Energy admitted its workers were pumping coal ash wastewater out of a toxic wastewater pond and into a canal which drains into the Cape Fear River. The Cape Fear River is a source of public drinking water for residents in Fayetteville, Sanford, Dunn, Harnett County, Fort Bragg and Wilmington.

Even more startling, Duke Energy described the pumping of coal ash wastewater into a watershed as part of “routine maintenance.” The New York Times quoted Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks as saying: “They’re lowering the water to conduct the maintenance they need to.” According to the New York Times, Duke claims it notified state regulators—a claim that was contradicted by officials with DENR.

http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/17/duke-energy-coal-ash/#/BlackoutGallery/326556/2

boutons_deux

03-21-2014, 05:54 AM

North Carolina Says Utility Pumped Millions of Gallons of Wastewater in River

Duke Energy, the electric utility whose massive spill of toxic coal ash into a river six weeks ago is part of a federal investigation, illegally pumped as much as 61 million gallons of coal-ash wastewater into a second river from September to last week, North Carolina regulators charged on Thursday.

Both the accidental spill and the deliberate releases occurred not far upstream from municipal drinking-water intakes.

The utility’s officials have said that the pumping was part of preparations for routine maintenance of two settling ponds that hold ash, the remains of coal burned to generate power.

But regulators cast doubt on that claim on Thursday. “The state’s investigation revealed that the pumping activities ongoing at this plant far exceeded what would reasonably be considered routine maintenance,” said Tom Reeder, the director of the water resources division at the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

A spokeswoman for the water resources division, Susan Massengale, noted that Duke had spent 31 days emptying 17.4 million gallons of water from one ash pond and 78 days releasing 44.4 million more from a second.

Peter Harrison, a lawyer for Waterkeeper Alliance, the New York-based environmental group that first uncovered the pumping, said Duke’s explanation was “absurd.”

“They’ve essentially simulated a terrible coal-ash spill by pumping the pond out,” he said.

Duke briefly addressed the releases in a statement on Thursday evening, saying that “water was being pumped to the existing, permitted outfalls and was being monitored according to the plant permit.” The statement said Duke notified state officials before beginning pumping.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/us/north-carolina-says-utility-pumped-millions-of-gallons-of-ash-waste-in-river.html?from=homepage

Winehole23

03-21-2014, 08:47 AM

How about you showing me.not my post. jeez you're like a baby bird.

Wild Cobra

03-21-2014, 10:38 AM

not my post. jeez you're like a baby bird.
Why have you just become full of lame excuses these last couple years?

Winehole23

03-21-2014, 11:20 AM

it's not my job to back up someone else's post, or to backstop your refusal to read or do your own homework.

Wild Cobra

03-21-2014, 01:53 PM

it's not my job to back up someone else's post, or to backstop your refusal to read or do your own homework.
Your reply "keep digging" can suggest you know something that you are not sharing.

boutons_deux

03-21-2014, 02:26 PM

Your reply "keep digging" can suggest you know something that you are not sharing.

:lol

"Do You Own Research"

-- (c) WC

Winehole23

04-01-2014, 08:49 AM

Freedom Industries did not hold up well under scrutiny. It had failed to file mandatory leak-prevention plans with the Department of Environmental Protection. State inspectors made occasional visits, as in April, 2010, when a neighbor complained of a licorice smell that “leaves a bad taste in your mouth,” but the plant was never fined.

Freedom Industries was founded in 1992 by Carl Lemley Kennedy II, a local businessman who had owned real estate and restaurants. In 1987, he had pleaded guilty to selling cocaine as part of an operation that brought down Charleston’s mayor at the time, Mike Roark. The Mayor pleaded guilty to cocaine possession and went to jail. Kennedy got probation. He and some partners converted a former Pennzoil facility into Freedom Industries, and by 2005 the business was valued, in court papers, at $13.5 million. That year, after federal prosecutors accused Kennedy of tax evasion and pocketing money withheld from workers’ paychecks, he became an informant. He made controlled cocaine buys and wore a wire to record a former business associate, a septic-tank cleaner who told his drivers to pour sewage down the drain. For his coöperation, Kennedy served less than two years.

By 2009, Freedom had forty-five employees, but it needed help from the government: a buildup of silt in the Elk River was making it difficult for barges to reach the tanks. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used four hundred thousand dollars in federal stimulus funds to dredge the river, and Freedom survived. In December, 2013, Freedom was acquired by Chemstream Holdings, which is owned by J. Clifford Forrest, the founder and president of a Pennsylvania-based coal company named Rosebud Mining. Eight days after the spill, Freedom, facing dozens of lawsuits, filed for bankruptcy.

The responsibility for regulating Freedom Industries fell to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, which during the past decade has been urged to scale back its enforcement. “It’s not subtle,” Pam Nixon, who retired this year after fifteen years as a senior department official, told me. She recalled a staff meeting in which Joe Manchin, the governor from 2005 to 2010, “said that when the industries see the D.E.P. coming onto their property he wanted them to feel comfortable.” Manchin, a Democrat, had prospered as a middleman who helped coal mines sell to power plants and other users. Once in office, he repeatedly advised the department to shift its emphasis from enforcement to “compliance assistance.” By that, Nixon said, he meant, “If there was a problem, work to make sure that the company can continue to operate. . . . He didn’t want us to come down heavy-handedly.” Nixon, who served as the department’s Environmental Advocate, expressed her concerns about gaps in enforcement to the head of the department, a Manchin appointee named Randy Huffman. “He said, ‘Remember how this administration feels about these industries.’ ”

In 2008, the Charleston Gazette discovered that in a nearly five-year period coal companies had self-reported around twenty-five thousand violations of the Clean Water Act, but the D.E.P. had not reviewed the reports or issued a fine. The following year, federal investigators from the Office of Surface Mining wrote that West Virginia had become so lax in its enforcement of coal-mining pollution regulations that “the consequences for violating the law, even when the violations are intentional, willful and blatant, are not significant enough to be a deterrent.” In 2010, Manchin left the Governor’s Mansion and ran for the U.S. Senate. He promised to protect the state from environmentalists’ “attempts to destroy our coal industry and way of life in West Virginia.” The American Chemistry Council, the leading industry group, spent two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars on advertisements praising Manchin as the “Senator for Our Future.” In a campaign ad, Manchin fired a rifle into a copy of a climate-change bill. On his Senate financial disclosures, he has reported income of more than three million dollars between 2009 and 2012 from Enersystems, a coal brokerage that he owned. (It is now run by his son.)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/04/07/140407fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=all

Winehole23

04-01-2014, 08:52 AM

But the Freedom Industries spill exceeded the public’s capacity for tolerance. Governor Tomblin announced that his office would propose legislation—the “spill bill,” as it was known—to govern aboveground storage tanks of the kind that leaked at Freedom Industries. To understand who had a hand in creating the bill, Ken Ward, Jr., of the Gazette, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for communications between the Governor’s office and lobbyists and lawyers connected to the chemical and coal industries. He received a hundred and fifty-eight pages of e-mails and documents. They revealed that the Governor’s office had arranged a closed-door meeting for what it called “the stakeholders,” which included the Chamber of Commerce, the Oil and Gas Association, and the Coal Association. No citizens’ groups or environmental organizations were invited.

Later, industry groups sent detailed notes on the bill. Rebecca Randolph, the president of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, which lobbies on behalf of the chemical industry, proposed eighteen exemptions to the law that would “address some of our concerns.” Eventually, when lawmakers held a hearing to review the bill, regulators were unable to justify some of the exemptions. “They didn’t have any idea why things were in there,” Ward said. “It’s so ingrained in the way the legislature works that most of the people that cover the State House are kind of immune to how outrageous that is.”

same

Winehole23

04-01-2014, 09:10 AM

“I smell freedom in my shower. I smell freedom in my sink. I will shower in my freedom, but my freedom I won’t drink.”

boutons_deux

04-01-2014, 09:25 AM

Review Of West Virginia Water Finds More Work To Be Done

A group of independent researchers has found that the chemical crude MCHM is still present in some West Virginia homes. That's the coal-cleaning chemical that spilled into the Elk River back in January out of a storage tank operated by the company Freedom Industries. The spill contaminated drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people. The research group was formed by West Virginia's governor after public pressure.

Dave Mistich of West Virginia Public Broadcasting reports on the research group's latest findings.

DAVE MISTICH, BYLINE: Samples taken from 10 homes across the affected area in mid-February showed traces of MCHM, with the highest levels at one home coming in at 6.1 parts per billion. That's hundreds of times lower than the CDC's short-term drinking water screening level.

WV TAP project manager Dr. Andrew Whelton notes the levels of MCHM in the homes are also lower than the state-established screening level of 10 parts per billion.

DR. ANDREW WHELTON: The public should feel encouraged that the levels that were detected in the homes are significantly less than January 17th and significantly less than when the spill occurred. There is, however, a low level of MCHM being distributed to the population from the water treatment plant. So there still remains this issue of persistence of this chemical in the water system.

MISTICH: In addition, recent testing conducted by WV TAP also indicated that MCHM wasn't present just before West Virginia American Water's Elk River intake. However, Whelton says traces of the chemical were found in a nearby home, leading them to believe that the chemical was being added to the water supply at the treatment plant.

WHELTON: The results of that testing that we conducted for a different purpose actually helped us determine that MCHM was leaving the water plant but wasn't entering it, and therefore it's likely that it was a source of MCHM for the community.

MISTICH: Whelton and company then recommended the water company to collect samples before intake after and within their treatment facility. Ultimately, those results indicate that the filtering process was the source of the chemical continuing to make its way through the distribution system.

Here's Laura Jordan of West Virginia American Water.

LAURA JORDAN: These results that we got back this week change nothing about the commitment that we've made to our customers ever since January 19th was the first time that we, in my recollection, that we announced to our customers we will be changing out all of the activated carbon in our filters as soon as conditions allow.

MISTICH: Jordan says the filter change is a weekslong process, with weather and other variables playing a role. Nevertheless, the company has been under fire for not acting sooner.

Elkview resident Perry Dotson says he and his wife have experienced rashes, even after taking his doctor's recommendation to take baths in cold water.

PERRY DOTSON: I think the water company needs to be more aggressive in installing these new filters. It does not do very much good to be two or three months down the road to finish, you know, that process. And I think they need to move quicker and faster to get those filters out.

MISTICH: As WV TAP plans to expand their in-home testing to a larger scale, they've charged a group of health effects experts to examine available toxicological research on MCHM. And while that panel is expected to release some conclusions this coming week, including scrutinizing the short-term drinking water screening levels suggested by the CDC, some, like Dotson, clamor for long-term medical monitoring.

DOTSON: Well, I think that's the bottom line, you know? What this stuff is going to do to the 300,000 people who have been exposed to this chemical now and in the future? And I think that's really the bottom line. You know, you want to protect your people from any particular problems that may occur, you know? And so if need be, set up some kind of monitoring system.

MISTICH: And Dotson may get his wish. A bill passed by the state legislature is set to require the Bureau for Public Health to conduct long-term medical monitoring. However, the bill awaits Governor Earl Ray Tomblin's signature, and a deadline for that to happen looms only until Tuesday.

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/29/296421958/review-of-west-virginia-water-finds-more-work-to-be-done

boutons_deux

04-01-2014, 09:26 AM

Toxic Chemical Dioxane Detected In More Water Supplies

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/26/294639904/toxic-chemical-1-4-dioxane-detected-in-more-drinking-water-supplies

boutons_deux

04-03-2014, 11:07 AM

Duke Energy Wants Citizens Groups Barred From Complaint

http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/alphabet/rsn-D.jpguke Energy is asking a judge to prevent citizens groups from taking part in any action that would make it clean up nearly three dozen coal ash pits in the state. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources filed a complaint against Duke last year, and several citizens groups got involved in the case, saying the pits polluted groundwater. But Duke filed a motion on Monday to remove the groups from the case. The motion comes nearly two months after a coal ash spill at a Duke plant coated 70 miles of the Dan River in toxic sludge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/us/north-carolina-duke-energy-wants-citizens-groups-barred-from-complaint.html

boutons_deux

04-06-2014, 01:46 PM

Wild Cobra

04-06-2014, 02:55 PM

What Should Happen To Coal Ash Ponds? (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/04/3423230/coal-ash-ponds/)

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CoalAshPonds-638x401.jpg

A screenshot of an interactive map by the Sierra Club shows coal ash zones throughout the United States. Yellow spots mark coal ash ponds, orange spots mark “high hazard” coal ash ponds, and red spots mark coal ash “disaster sites.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/04/3423230/coal-ash-ponds/

Well, considering this is from liberal agenda sites, I don't give too much merit. It would have helped their claim if these markers were on google maps so we could independently look at the, but no. These liberal sites only give enough information to instill fear in their faithful followers.

boutons_deux

04-06-2014, 03:30 PM

Well, considering this is from liberal agenda sites, I don't give too much merit. It would have helped their claim if these markers were on google maps so we could independently look at the, but no. These liberal sites only give enough information to instill fear in their faithful followers.

yes, all environmental orgs are paid liars.

google "us government map coal ash sites"

Wild Cobra

04-06-2014, 03:42 PM

yes, all environmental orgs are paid liars.

google "us government map coal ash sites"
LOL...

I just did. I didn't get anything remotely close!

boutons_deux

04-09-2014, 09:27 AM

Environmental Regulator Sides With Energy Company In Coal Ash Lawsuit (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/09/3424634/denr-coal-ash-appeal-duke/)

North Carolina’s environmental regulatory agency has joined Duke Energy in appealing a ruling that the company must clean up groundwater pollution from its coal ash storage ponds, Bloomberg reports (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-08/duke-energy-north-carolina-appeal-coal-ash-ruling.html).

Duke Energy runs seven coal-fired power plants in the state, and keeps the coal ash — residue left after the coal is burned — in 33 ponds near its operating facilities. Many of the ponds are over 50 years old, and state environmental groups have long feared they were leaking chemicals into the North Carolina’s underground drinking water supplies. Several groups filed a suit demanding Duke take immediate action to clean up their operations back in 2013, and Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway ruled in their favor on March 6 of this year. His decision also said the state’s Environmental Management Commission broke the law by failing to require Duke to move quickly to clean up the pollution.

Duke appealed the ruling on April 3, and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) — which includes the Environmental Management Commission — joined the appeal on Monday (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-08/duke-energy-north-carolina-appeal-coal-ash-ruling.html).

According to the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), which is providing legal aid to several of those environmental groups, data collected over years shows the coal ash ponds (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/04/3359261/stormwater-violations-duke-energy/) have in fact fouled North Carolina’s groundwater. According to (http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/31/3747499/epa-looked-askance-at-denrs-proposed.html?sp=/99/102/110/) the Charlotte Observer, the federal Environmental Protection Agency also expressed concerns back in 2013 that the DENR was not responding rapidly or rigorously enough to the problems with Duke’s coal ash ponds. Monitoring of groundwater near Duke’s Asheville and Riverbend plants in particular showed levels (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/01/3421513/duke-begins-clean-up-dan-river/) of boron, manganese, and thallium in excess of regulatory limits.

Duke Energy and the DENR previously tried to settle the case with an agreement (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/01/3421513/duke-begins-clean-up-dan-river/) that would’ve required Duke to pay a $99,100 fine, with no cleanup requirements.

Environmental watchdog groups denounced the arrangement as a “remarkable sweetheart deal,” and EPA officials privately told the DENR that the amount “seems low considering the number of years these facilities are alleged to have been out of compliance.” The EPA also said more testing and monitoring for pollution should be required.

That settlement deal was ultimately scuttled after a new spill (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/01/3421513/duke-begins-clean-up-dan-river/) from one of Duke’s ponds dumped 39,000 tons of coal ash slurry into North Carolina’s Dan River. The incident also sparked (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/28/3341721/duke-energy-pressured-coal-ash-spill/) an ongoing federal criminal investigation into whether the DENR was inappropriately lax in regulating Duke Energy.

Emails obtained by the Associated Press in March suggest (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/14/3408751/emails-north-carolina-duke-energy-coal-ash/) DENR staff members were coordinating legal strategy with Duke officials during the suit.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/09/3424634/denr-coal-ash-appeal-duke/

yep, more (red state) corrupt Repugs protecting/enabling/enriching BigCarbon, screwing people and the environment.

boutons_deux

04-22-2014, 11:35 AM

Coal ash unmonitored in fill sites across N.C.

Coal ash, infamous for its recent splash into the Dan River, also lies along Charlotte’s outerbelt.

It’s next to a Huntersville car dealership and under a Lowe’s store in Mooresville.

The ash was used to level ground and fill gullies. Duke Energy once sold it for 50 cents to $1 a ton, disposing of waste – and a liability – it would otherwise have had to store in ponds or landfills.

At least 1.8 million cubic yards of dry ash are buried in nearly two dozen places around Charlotte, not counting power plants. That’s enough to cover 1,100 acres a foot deep in ash.

An unknown amount of wet ash, removed from ponds and regulated separately, was also used as fill material. The state can’t locate records before 2011 that would show where or how large those sites are.

State standards are so minimal that even property owners, much less their neighbors, might not know what’s underfoot. And while ash has a known ability to contaminate groundwater, fill sites are rarely tested.

State officials acknowledge the need for stronger regulation. :lol In a REPUG state, yeah, that's a sure bet! :lol

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/04/20/4852864/coal-ash-nc-fill-sites.html#.U1aYj1VdWkc#storylink=cpy

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/04/20/4852864/coal-ash-nc-fill-sites.html#.U1aYj1VdWkc (http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/04/20/4852864/coal-ash-nc-fill-sites.html#.U1aYj1VdWkc)

Clean Coal! :lol

boutons_deux

05-03-2014, 10:43 AM

Duke Energy Directors Survive Angry Shareholders Meeting, Plan Canoe Trip Down River They Polluted (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/02/3433564/duke-energy-shareholders-angry/) :lol

Duke CEO Lynn Good has agreed to a canoe trip to survey three of the company’s 32 coal ash basins with environmentalists (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579536034081099924?mg=ren o64-wsj).

But Waterkeep Alliance’s Donna Lisenby is critical of Duke’s handling of the situation, telling ThinkProgress that the company must begin “to focus on the entire length of the Dan River, not just the part near the Dan River plant.” :lol

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/02/3433564/duke-energy-shareholders-angry/

Yes! Let's all focus on the parts of the river Duke hasn't poisoned, YET! :lol

boutons_deux

05-05-2014, 11:39 AM

The men who poisoned Charleston’s drinking water now have a “new” business

“Freedom Industries, the company whose chemical leak contaminated the tap water of 300,000 West Virginians, will cease to exist once it goes through bankruptcy, but that doesn’t mean its executives are out of the chemical business,” according to an excellent investigative report by The Charleston Gazette (http://wvgazette.com/article/20140501/GZ01/140509994/1101).

A January spill (http://grist.org/news/coal-chemical-spills-in-west-virginia-leaving-300000-without-tap-water/) of a coal-cleaning chemical from one of Freedom’s rusty tanks triggered a major crisis (http://grist.org/news/freedom-industries-kept-west-virginia-spill-details-secret/) for Charleston residents, who had to find alternate sources of water. Roughly a third of them experienced negative health impacts from the polluted water, experts estimate (http://wvmetronews.com/2014/04/22/health-official-chemical-spill-made-more-than-90000-sick-in-some-way/).

But while Freedom Industries is technically going out of business, its leaders are quietly starting up again under a new name, as the Gazetteexplains:

Lexycon LLC, a chemical company whose characteristics are strikingly similar to Freedom Industries, registered as a business with the West Virginia secretary of state about a month ago.
The companies share addresses and phone numbers, Lexycon was founded by a former Freedom executive and it has ties to at least two other current or former Freedom executives. …

After the Gazette emailed [Kevin Skiles and Bob Reynolds, former senior Freedom employees who now work for Lexycon,] to ask if the new company was affiliated with Freedom, the two men’s names disappeared from the Lexycon website and a new phone number was listed in their place. …

The companies’ descriptions of their businesses match, almost verbatim. …

Freedom Industries’ logo appeared on Lexycon’s exhibitor page on the Coal Prep [conference] website Wednesday afternoon.

More than 60 lawsuits have been filed against Freedom Industries over the spill, but the plaintiffs shouldn’t count on payouts because the company is quickly running through its cash by paying its high-priced lawyers (http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2014/04/16/freedoms-bankruptcy-lawyers-advisers-bill-1-9-million/).

http://grist.org/news/the-men-who-poisoned-charlestons-drinking-water-now-have-a-new-business/

Absolutely wonderful how Corporate-Americans take the fall for, shield from prosecution, pay the bills for criminal Human-Americans.

boutons_deux

05-23-2014, 02:18 PM

EPA Orders Duke Energy to Clean North Carolina Coal Ash Spill

the EPA decided (http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/A600A763AA3D1A6785257CE0006B83A7) the company must:

Perform a comprehensive assessment
Determine the location of coal ash deposits
Remove deposits along the Dan River as deemed appropriate by EPA, in consultation with the US Fish and Wildlife Service

SLIDESHOW ►
?“EPA will work with Duke Energy to ensure that cleanup at the site, and affected areas, is comprehensive based on sound scientific and ecological principles, complies with all Federal and State environmental standards, and moves as quickly as possible,” EPA Regional Administrator Heather McTeer Toney said in a statement.

“Protection of public health and safety remains a primary concern, along with the long-term ecological health of the Dan River.”

The decision will leave Duke on the hook, financially, too. The company will be required to reimburse the EPA for its time and oversight costs during the cleanup. The order also requires Duke to reimburse all past EPA response costs, along with future oversight costs in connection with the spill.

http://ecowatch.com/2014/05/22/epa-orders-duke-energy-coal-ash-spill/

but NOTHING about cleaning up ALL the Duke toxic coal ash dumps all over NC, and elsewhere.

Winehole23

07-09-2014, 11:01 AM

A federal agency has fined the company that spilled chemicals into West Virginia’s largest drinking water supply $11,000 for a pair of workplace safety violations.

The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Freedom Industries $7,000 for keeping storage tanks containing crude MCHM behind a diked wall that was not liquid tight. On Jan. 9, roughly 10,000 gallons of MCHM leaked from one of the tanks and through the riverside diked wall and left 300,000 residents without clean water for days.

OSHA also fined Freedom Industries $4,000 for failing to have standard railings on an elevated platform.

Inspectors classified both of those citations as “serious,” meaning the workplace hazards could cause an accident or illness that would most likely result in death or serious physical harm.

OSHA also issued to Freedom one “other-than-serious” citation, alleging the company did not properly label one of its chemical storage tanks at the Elk River site. OSHA said that one of the tanks — not the one that leaked on Jan. 9 — was labeled as containing glycerin, when it actually contained MCHM.
- See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20140707/GZ01/140709509/1419#sthash.DlqXvG4p.b2NUwJxV.dpuf

boutons_deux

12-06-2014, 09:03 AM

‘Thick Orange Gooey Stuff’ With Arsenic, Lead Found In River Near Duke Energy Power Plant (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/05/3600131/thick-orange-gooey-stuff/)

http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/15754107718_8618194afb_z-638x478.jpg

Contaminated waste from a retired coal plant in Rowan County, North Carolina, has been found leaking into a tributary of the second largest river in the state, environmental groups charged on Thursday.

The groups Waterkeeper Alliance, Southern Environmental Law Center, and the Yadkin Riverkeeper said they discovered extensive leaks of coal ash coming from Duke Energy’s Buck Power Plant flowing into High Rock Lake, a tributary of the Yadkin River. Though the power plant no longer actively burns coal, it is surrounded by ponds filled with more than six million tons of coal ash — a waste byproduct from coal-burning.

Pete Harrison, an attorney representing the groups, told ThinkProgress that the seep was initially discovered in mid-November, after reports of a quarter-mile long area of orange-colored streaks along the river bank. The groups took samples of the seep, and found that it contained high levels of pollutants such as arsenic, lead, and selenium, the groups said in a press release. Coal ash usually contains similar chemicals.

“The whole bank was just bleeding this thick orange gooey stuff,” he said.

http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/15756545569_64946dea0d_z-638x464.jpg

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/05/3600131/thick-orange-gooey-stuff/

RandomGuy

12-08-2014, 01:27 PM

Icky.

Coal ash.. the gift that keeps on giving.

boutons_deux

12-10-2014, 05:18 AM

FBI Files Charges Against President Of Company Behind West Virginia Chemical Spill (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/09/3601157/gary-southern-arrested-west-virginia-freedom-industries/)

http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/GarySouthern.jpg

The former president of the company that contaminated drinking water for 300,000 West Virginians this past January has been arrested on criminal fraud charges, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation complaint (http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Southern.pdf) unsealed Monday.

Former Freedom Industries president Gary Southern was charged with bankruptcy fraud, wire fraud, and lying under oath during the company’s bankruptcy proceedings following the massive spill (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/22/3176161/west-virginia-poverty-pollution/) — a 10,000 gallon dump of a coal-cleaning chemical called crude MCHM into the Elk River. FBI Special Agent James F. Lafferty said in a sworn affidavit that Southern, in an attempt to protect his personal fortune of nearly $8 million and shield himself from lawsuits, developed a scheme to distance himself from the company and “deflect blame” to other parties.

“Shortly after the leak and discharge of MCHM into the Elk River was discovered on January 9, 2014, Southern engaged in a pattern of deceitful behavior, which included numerous false and/or fraudulent statements about his role at Freedom, his role in the sale of Freedom to Chemstream, and his knowledge about conditions at the Etowah Facility,” the affidavit read.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/09/3601157/gary-southern-arrested-west-virginia-freedom-industries/

boutons_deux

03-25-2015, 10:45 PM

Duke Energy Says $25 Million Fine For Years Of Groundwater Pollution Is ‘Regulatory Overreach’ (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/25/3638487/duke-fights-fine/)

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/25/3638487/duke-fights-fine/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateprogress%2FlCrX+%28Cli mate+Progress%29

boutons_deux

04-24-2015, 04:58 AM

NC Suspects Duke Energy Coal Ash In Water Well Poisoning

The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources has just warned people living in Dukeville, North Carolina, and a local church, not to drink or cook with theirwell water (http://www.godanriver.com/news/coal-ash/residents-near-duke-ash-dumps-told-not-to-drink-well/article_60edfe44-e877-11e4-ac1a-f778ec2a0c55.html).

Toxic heavy metals have contaminated it, as reported by the Associated Press.

Each well location is within a quarter mile of a coal ash pond owned by Duke Energy, the nation’s largest electric company.

Duke stores more than 150 million tons of coal ash in 32 dumps at 14 power plants in North Carolina alone.

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/24/nc-suspects-duke-energy-coal-ash-water-well-poisoning/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29

boutons_deux

05-14-2015, 04:20 PM

Duke pleads guilty in federal court for coal ash crimes

Duke Energy pleaded guilty Thursday to nine violations of the federal Clean Water Act and will pay $102 million in fines and restitution for illegally discharging pollution from coal-ash dumps at five North Carolina power plants.

The plea by the nation’s largest electricity company, part of a negotiated settlement with federal prosecutors, is the result of an investigation that began in February after a pipe collapsed under a coal ash dump, coating 70 miles of the Dan River in gray sludge.

Duke has agreed to pay $68 million in fines and $34 million on environmental projects and land conservation that will benefit rivers and wetlands in North Carolina and Virginia.

Judge Malcolm Howard said this was the largest federal criminal fine in North Carolina history.

The sentencing came after prosecutors told Howard that Duke ignored repeated warnings about problems at its coal ash pits. Prosecutors said that Duke’s illegal pollution had been going back to at least 2010.

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2015/05/14/duke-pleads-guilty-in-federal-court-for-coal-ash-crimes/

If only the FBI had been spying on Duke instead of on XL protesters

boutons_deux

11-16-2015, 04:03 PM

Duke Energy is going after solar panels on churches in North Carolina now (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/12/1449143/-Duke-Energy-is-going-after-solar-panels-on-churches-in-North-Carolina-now)

Greensboro North Carolina’s residents have been outfitting their places over the past few months with new, inexpensive solar power. Duke Energy, best known for poisoning the Earth (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/15/1385076/-Duke-Energy-pleads-guilty-to-all-nine-Clean-Water-Act-violations), is not at all happy with this development and are a wealthy corporation—so it’s law time: (http://insideclimatenews.org/news/03112015/duke-energy-fine-north-carolina-third-party-solar-faith-community-church-nc-warn)

As state regulators review the controversial case, the battle lines are clearly drawn. Advocates at North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network (NC WARN) and members of Faith Community Church support policy change. Duke Energy has responded by asking regulators to impose a stiff financial penalty against NC WARN that could threaten to shut down the organization.

"The stakes are high," said Jim Warren, executive director of NC WARN, a small nonprofit dedicated to tackling climate change by promoting renewable energy. Referring to Duke Energy, Warren said, "they certainly don't want competition."

Listen, if we know anything about Duke Energy, it’s that they are free marketeers that believe in healthy competition, fair play, and following the rules. Except all of the times that they don’t believe any of those things—which makes up what many would define as “most of the time.” Unfortunately, in this case, NC WARN may have offended the benevolent energy giant, with commercials like this:

NC WARN is pushing for exemption to North Carolina’s third-party sales restrictions because it says, besides providing the solar service, they are also providing funding and this is more than just selling electricity. Unfortunately Duke Energy, like Wyatt Earp before them, are lawmen all the way, and the law is the law.

But Duke Energy argues there is no wiggle room in the existing law, a position shared by the public staff of the Utilities commission, which makes policy recommendations to the commission but is not the same as the seven commissioners who will ultimately vote on this case.

"The law is clear in North Carolina," said company spokesman Randy Wheeless. If you want to sell power in the state, that makes you a utility and subject to all the regulations that come with that role. That’s why Duke has proposed regulators impose a $1,000 fine on NC WARN for every day its solar panels are connected to the grid. That would amount to more than $120,000.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/12/1449143/-Duke-Energy-is-going-after-solar-panels-on-churches-in-North-Carolina-now?detail=email

Typical BigCorp, preempt, destroy the competition by paying legislators.

Anybody think Repug NC legislature will support NC WARN? :lol

SpursforSix

11-16-2015, 04:35 PM

Anybody think Repug NC legislature will support NC WARN? :lol

Is this the same Duke Energy that's been in bed with the DNC?

boutons_deux

11-16-2015, 04:50 PM

House
Total to Democrats: $58,500
Total to Republicans: $156,200

Senate
Total to Democrats: $7,000
Total to Republicans: $53,000

https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2016&cmte=C00083535

SpursforSix

11-16-2015, 05:12 PM

Duke Energy To Forgive $10 Million Line Of Credit To DNCThe Democratic National Committee will not have to repay the full $10 million line of credit from Duke Energy -- the country’s largest electric power company -- used to fund the 2012 Democratic National Convention, contradicting the committee’s self-imposed prohibition on corporate funding for the Charlotte-based event.

Winehole23

12-05-2015, 03:17 AM

Donald L. Blankenship, whose leadership of the Massey Energy Company was widely criticized after 29 workers were killed in the Upper Big Branch mine in 2010, was convicted Thursday of conspiring to violate federal safety standards, becoming the most prominent American coal executive ever convicted of a crime related to mining deaths.
But in a substantial defeat for the Justice Department, the verdict, announced in Federal District Court here, exonerated Mr. Blankenship, Massey’s former chief executive, of three felony charges that could have led to a prison term of 30 years. Instead, after a long and complex trial that began on Oct. 1, jurors convicted Mr. Blankenship only of a single misdemeanor charge that carried a maximum of a year in prisonhttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/us/donald-blankenship-massey-energy-upper-big-branch-mine.html

Winehole23

12-18-2015, 12:20 PM

the corporate shell game:

On December 31, 2013 four small companies merged and one surviving corporation was formed from the merger: Freedom Industries, LLC. The three separate companies, other than Freedom Industries, which had existed independently prior to the merger, were owned solely by one man: J. Clifford Forrest. The surviving company, Freedom Industries, was owned by a single company, Chemstream, LLC. Chemstream was owned by a single man: J. Clifford Forrest. When a tank full of hazardous chemicals owned and operated by Freedom Industries exploded, causing a massive chemical spill and affecting hundreds of thousands of West Virginian residents, the company, Freedom Industries, filed for bankruptcy. In filing this petition, all lawsuits pending against the company for damages related to tort claims were halted. Thus, any one of the thousands of people who were injured from drinking the contaminated water was barred from pursuing their claims against the company in state court. Suddenly, any claim would have to be brought in bankruptcy court as part of the bankruptcy proceeding — and any potential liability determined under the purview of bankruptcy law. Compounding it’s already existing debt, the potential tort actions were likely to mean that Freedom Industries was insolvent; J. Clifford Forrest was not.

Freedom Industries then filed a motion that, if granted, would enable the company to secure a $5 million loan to assist in its reorganization during the bankruptcy process. This means that unlike a company who chooses liquidation over reorganization, the company will continue to run its current operations . In addition, it would provide for the maintenance of those operations by the incumbent management to remain in place: the company will not change hands. Freedom saw its motion granted and a lender secured. This lender was, indeed, a secured lender, and as such would be the very first creditor to be repaid when Freedom begins the bankruptcy process of repaying its creditors. The lender secured by Freedom Industries was a company named WV Funding LLC. WV Funding is wholly owned by another company, Mountaineering Funding LLC. Mountaineer Funding, the sole owner of WV Funding, was owned by one man: J. Clifford Forrest.

In an effort to demystify the current set of affairs: the “lender” company was owned by the very same man who owned the company that owns the very company who is now his debtor. In short, the lender is lending to himself — or, rather, the debtor is becoming indebted to himself. In repaying debts owed by his now-insolvent company, he then is allowed to prioritize repayment of the post-petition loan he made to himself.

While this may sound utterly absurd, it is in fact the very set of circumstances which occurred earlier this year in the city of Charleston, West Virginia. This sort of corporation restructuring is part of a much larger trend in this country.[7] (https://medium.com/@madeleinedoux/how-american-corporate-law-has-limited-corporate-liability-into-oblivion-c984007bd551#_ftn7) Apparent exposure to tort liability through the doctrine known as “piercing of the corporate veil” has led to widespread reorganization of firms. This reorganization, in conjunction with courts’ already limited use of the doctrine, has effectively declawed the doctrine as a legal device — a legal device once conceived to prevent corporations from abusing the corporate form or exploiting its limited liability status. This behavior is creating a system of corporate law in which the notion of tort liability itself is slowly disappearing: there is liability in the abstract but a failure within the system to actually enforce money judgments.[8] (https://medium.com/@madeleinedoux/how-american-corporate-law-has-limited-corporate-liability-into-oblivion-c984007bd551#_ftn8) When control parties create legal structures that render potential defendants judgment-proof, they assure that in the event of major torts, those who foot the bill will be the victims, the most blameless and most injured parties.[9] (https://medium.com/@madeleinedoux/how-american-corporate-law-has-limited-corporate-liability-into-oblivion-c984007bd551#_ftn9)

https://medium.com/@madeleinedoux/how-american-corporate-law-has-limited-corporate-liability-into-oblivion-c984007bd551#.2z3ldraku

Winehole23

12-18-2015, 12:26 PM

In considering the law’s role in this behavior, there is a simply framework: “[l]aw, ultimately, works by threatening force or other sanctions on those who refuse to follow its norms”.[10] (https://medium.com/@madeleinedoux/how-american-corporate-law-has-limited-corporate-liability-into-oblivion-c984007bd551#_ftn10) Large firms are able to reorganize into smaller, subsidiary corporations and purposefully undercapitalize these smaller firms in order exploit the so-called “defining characteristic” of the corporate form: its ability to limit liability to itself.[11] (https://medium.com/@madeleinedoux/how-american-corporate-law-has-limited-corporate-liability-into-oblivion-c984007bd551#_ftn11) To be sure, this behavior is most evident in hazardous industries. Simply put: the greater the ability of a firm to avoid tort liability, the greater the incentive to invest in such industries.[12] (https://medium.com/@madeleinedoux/how-american-corporate-law-has-limited-corporate-liability-into-oblivion-c984007bd551#_ftn12) Thus, the present legal environment creates incentives to invest in hazardous industries by redistributing the cost of torts from the corporation to the tort victim.[13] (https://medium.com/@madeleinedoux/how-american-corporate-law-has-limited-corporate-liability-into-oblivion-c984007bd551#_ftn13)

boutons_deux

01-11-2016, 05:13 PM

North Carolina Coal Ash Victims Blast State for Downgrading Duke Energy Dumpsite Risks

After tens of thousands of tons of coal ash and millions of gallons of contaminated water spilled into the Dan River from a waste impoundment at a Duke Energy power plant in North Carolina in 2014, the legislature passed the Coal Ash Management Act requiring the state environmental agency to issue risk ratings for all of the company's coal ash impoundments by the end of 2015 to help set cleanup priorities.

According to a draft report made public last month (http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article50267110.html), the Department of Environmental Quality's professional staff determined that 19 of Duke's 32 coal ash ponds pose a high risk to North Carolina communities, meaning that under the law they'd have to be excavated and the wet ash dried and moved to safer lined landfills by August 2019.

But on New Year's Eve, DEQ officially released the report (http://portal.ncdenr.org/c/journal/view_article_content?groupId=4711509&articleId=27252181) for public comment - and it listed only eight ponds as high risk. Of the rest, 12 were determined to be of intermediate risk, meaning they must be closed by 2024. Another eight were designated as low-intermediate risk and four as low risk, meaning they could be capped in place and left to leak pollution into groundwater supplies indefinitely.

"Appalled and confused" was how the Alliance of Carolinians Together (ACT) Against Coal Ash, (http://actagainstcoalash.nccoalash.org/) a coalition formed last year (http://www.southernstudies.org/2015/09/nc-communities-facing-coal-ash-dangers-unite-for-a.html) by North Carolina residents affected by Duke Energy's power plant pollution, described its reaction to DEQ's decision to downgrade the risk ratings. The group says all 32 sites should be considered high priority since all of them are leaking pollution to the environment and in some places even contaminating drinking water supplies.

"DEQ changing our priority from high to low-intermediate is just wrong," said Debra Baker, an activist with the group who lives within 100 feet of Duke's GG Allen plant in Belmont, North Carolina. The plant is located on Lake Wylie, a drinking water source for Rock Hill, South Carolina, and other nearby communities. "DEQ says they did not have enough information from Duke Energy, but they have had several months. Now, we are still living on bottled water, waiting for this mess to be cleaned up."

DEQ claims the draft report didn't contain the most up-to-date information, and Secretary Donald van der Vaart criticized the Southern Environmental Law Center for releasing it to the public. The nonprofit has been embroiled in a years-long legal fight with the state to force cleanup of Duke's coal ash pollution.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34361-north-carolina-coal-ash-victims-blast-state-for-downgrading-duke-energy-dumpsite-risks

Repug misgovernance, typical slave state bullshit

boutons_deux

08-10-2016, 10:45 AM

Toxicologist on cancer warnings: NC acted despite science

Officials in North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory's administration are telling a string of misleading half-truths about the safety of well water near Duke Energy coal ash pits containing a cancer-causing chemical and are responsible for any resulting fear and confusion, a state toxicologist said after being attacked by state officials.

Toxicologist Ken Rudo comments came in a statement issued through his attorney a day after North Carolina's state public health director Dr. Randall Williams and Department of Environmental Quality Assistant Secretary Tom Reeder on Tuesday blamed Rudo for sowing fear about dangerous chemicals near Duke Energy sites with "questionable and inconsistent scientific conclusions."

The high-ranking state environmental and health officials targeted Rudo individually as the creator of a too-severe standard for the presence of hexavalent chromium (http://phys.org/tags/hexavalent+chromium/) in groundwater.

The standard—a one chance in a million that people drinking contaminated water could develop cancer over a lifetime—was set by the state agencies before warning letters were issued last year to about 330 neighbors of Duke Energy coal sites. Officials this year decided that standard was too high. Williams and Reeder declared the water safe to drink in a March letter to well owners.

Rudo said in a statement first provided to The Associated Press that the cancer standard was set as required by a state law passed after the third-largest spill of toxic coal ash (http://phys.org/tags/coal+ash/) in U.S. history burst from a Duke Energy coal-ash pit in 2014. The law also launched groundwater testing for hexavalent chromium and other contaminants around all 14 of the company's North Carolina coal-burning plants, something that wasn't required previously.

The state Department of Health and Human Services, where Rudo has worked for nearly 30 years, initially applied a far looser standard—a level for public water supplies set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the 1990s and required by a 2008 state law, Rudo said.

But state law dictated a one-in-a-million cancer risk, so that's what health and environmental agencies calculated and eventually agreed upon, Rudo said. State agencies were required to follow the law, Rudo said, and he checked the calculations setting the stricter standard with federal health authorities based on the latest studies of cancer risk.

"This consensus, regarding what health protective values to use to protect the well water of the NC residents adjacent to the coal ash ponds, and how to communicate these to folks, was what Dr. Rudo followed," the scientist's statement said, "based on specific instructions from his superiors at DHHS."

But if the 2015 standard for hexavalent chromium were applied evenly, it would mean North Carolinians who depend on the 900,000 wells in the state would be urged against using it, Williams and Reeder said Tuesday.

Rudo said that's what the science shows.

"Dr. Rudo's request to extend this protection to all well water was denied, and is still denied," the statement said.

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-toxicologist-cancer-nc-science.html

NC Repugs, ex-Duke McCrory, and Duke Energy $$$ inevitably causing cancer in NC citizens, for profit.