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BigChem has tainted everything with their
Studies Link DDT, other Environmental Toxins to Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_EVO_20140210
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. And some bills showed hundreds of gallons of water use that homeowners claimed as impossible even with the flushing, given how cir spect 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.
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 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_campaig n=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29
BigChem has tainted everything with their
Studies Link DDT, other Environmental Toxins to Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_EVO_20140210
BREAKING: Pipe Break At Coal Facility Contaminates West Virginia Waterway
A coal preparation facility spilled an unknown quan y of coal slurry into a creek in Kanawha County, W.V. Tuesday morning, according to West Virginia officials.
As the Charleston Gazette reports, the spill occurred at Patriot Coal’s Kanawha Eagle operation, which is located near Fields Creek. The operation is near Winifrede, WV — southeast of Charleston, the state’s capitol and site of last month’s major 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 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 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 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 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, 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/201...-slurry-spill/
Clean Coal! The Green Solution!
Last edited by boutons_deux; 02-11-2014 at 02:06 PM.
West Virginia Water Nightmare: Private Testing Finds Coal Chemical In 40 Percent Of 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 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 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, 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/201...hemical-homes/
Shocker.
The companies that scream the loudest about how onerous environmental regulations are, tend to be the ones that cut the most corners in safety of toxic waste, and can have the nastiest impacts when things go wrong.
Just imagine how bad the cluster in the OP would have been if the chemical had been odorless/tasteless and even moderately toxic or carcinogenic. People only really caught on because of the taste of the chemical that got spilled.
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 ing over of the poor faction in the GOP, and the poor faction going along because they think they are "free-marketeers".
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'
"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.
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/
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 ac ulated 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 ac ulating 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/201...ring-wildlife/
What was a water pipe doing, running under a chemical waste pond?
Who's stupid idea was that?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/t...-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.
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?
the question is what was Duke Energy doing putting hazmat lake over a storm water pipe?
Last edited by boutons_deux; 02-19-2014 at 02:49 PM.
the company who built the waste pit, presumably. the pipe preexisted the pond, i think.
Either way, it was the local permitting process that is to blame.
Probably. See precious post.
you want the Duke off the hook and blame regulatory agencies for its carelessness, clearly.
Can't have facts fall outside the preferred narrative.
on the contrary, RG, any given set of facts can be twisted to suit the purpose.
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.
State and local regulators turn a blind eye to shenanigans, until someone s 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?
Clearly the local regulators were too close to the business. WC making a good argument for federal oversight.
yep
That's what I was saying you said. I stated your position accurately.
Why are you upset?
If you say so.WC is crying crocodile tears over the fact that regulation was neither so stringent nor so effective as to prevent the accident.
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