Old Industrial Sites Dot Our Nation.........

How effective is EPA? Here is a story about industrial sites abandoned in Indianapolis, Indiana. The conditions described are common to many major metropolitan areas in the United States. I can remember as a young inspector in Kansas City, Missouri being sent out to evaluate abandoned factories and warehouses for potential developers and entrepreneurs to see if it would be cost effective for them to utilize even part of  the huge sites. Sometimes the inspection was to investigate complaints about the buildings needing to be condemned. There were always drums of unknown products at these sites, just rusting away. It seems as if current regulations just allow these companies to walk away without any consequences..........................  

Asbestos, the continuing killer..............

By now most of us are familiar with the advantage of developed nations over undeveloped ones (also called third world nations) regarding the use of coal and carbon emissions. The argument is that the countries just now developing economically cannot afford scrubbers and "expensive" environmental regulations on hazardous/waste disposal and polluting emissions. Well, what about developed nations that sell poisonous products to these countries? These nations are selling products to undeveloped nations such as asbestos they spend millions each year to remove and eradicate from their own buildings. There are actually only two, Russia and Canada. Russia exports about 40% of the world production, Canada 10%. China is the second biggest producer besides Russia, but China is still considered a developing country. Here is the Wikepedia article about the current state of asbestos. In the Unites States, asbestos has not been mined since 2002. In 1989 EPA tried to ban it, but this was overturned in 1991 so that now small amounts of asbestos are still contained within products we buy today. The Canadian mine company outlined in this article actually ceased production in 2002 because of a slump in word demand, but as you can see, that is now SO over with..........................

The Haliburton Loophole once again rises from the surface of the cesspool........

Several weeks ago we featured a NY Times opinion piece about the Haliburton Loophole, a gift from Congress to the Bush Administration, specifically Dick Cheney, that exempted the process of hydraulic fracturing, essentially invented by Haliburton (though is is a carryover from the methods of hydraulic mining practiced for centuries), from EPA regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

While we are essentially against governmental regulations of free enterprise, it is obvious in the case of the environment that we all have to be protected, and it is also obvious that the companies and corporations seeking to make a profit have a less than stellar record of cleaning up their own messes. There is also something about the 1872 Mining Act where companies don't have to pay us, the taxpayer, anything for minerals they take from the ground that is inherently crapola in this day and age.

Now we find out that Congress (including Democrats) looked the other way when they had knowledge this was a polluting practice as they were passing this loophole! In the search for more natural gas (which is not a solution to clean energy; it comes from oil, it is a finite resource, and to even think it is some kind of permanent solution to our energy woes is pure folly. However, T. Boone Pickens thinks that it is a temporary way to get us off OPEC oil by at least 50%, so maybe temporary is not a bad word) in the Marcellus Shale fields, a massive gas deposit stretching from New York to Tennessee, new problems and concerns are surfacing............The companies involved in this blatant pollution are claiming the chemicals involved are proprietary and a trade secret, but unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us) there are vays...............

Here you can watch the catastrophic pipe failure at the Silver Eagle Refinery last November. The US Chemical Safety Board said it was due to faulty thickness testing. What do the oil companies do with those obscene profits, anyway? Strip clubs can only make so much money, you know........