Yesterday one of Pennyslvania's many fracking wells exploded in Greene County, about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh.
Click LIKE if you agree: it's time to invest in energy that doesn't ignite, explode, leak, spill, or poison. All of the above is not an option.
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TOOTHLESS: Last November, the same Patriot Coal facility that was responsible for yesterday's huge coal slurry spill in West Virginia - was only fined a measly $663 for discharging black water into a stream. Experts are now pointing to WV's often lax environmental rules as a contributing factor to these horrible accidents. http://ow.ly/tyELi
In addition to piddly fines, a report from the US Office of Surface Mining also found that after a spill, WV's inspections don't always clearly explain what happened, making it very difficult to cite companies for patterns of violation. As a result, companies have no real incentive to stop polluting - even when they get caught, it's merely a slap on the wrist.
Click SHARE or LIKE if you think West Virginia's lawmakers need to get tough on polluters for the sake of their own citizens! TELL US>> Do you think your own state's environmental rules are too strict or not strict enough?
Bales were set up to block coal slurry from flowing down Fields Creek in West Virginia after a spill Tuesday.
On Tuesday, a malfunctioning valve in an eight-inch pipeline operated by
the Patriot Coal Corp. 16 miles south of Charleston, West Virginia,
sent what one state official called a "significant" amount of toxic coal
slurry into a local creek. Another official, however, said
of the spill, "I don't think there's really anything to it. It turned
out to be much of nothing." Later in the day, it was announced that as
much as 108,000 gallons of the stuff had leaked. Even in the lax
regulatory atmosphere of West Virginia, that's a bit more than a "much
of nothing."
The eastern Kanawha County spill occurred in a six-mile stretch of
Fields Creek, which runs into the Kanawha River. An unknown amount of
the slurry reached the Kanawha, but it could be seen up to half a mile
from where the creek and river connect. Unlike the 10,000-gallon spill
of a coal-cleaning chemical from a storage tank last month into the Elk
River, this one didn't reach drinking water supplies. Of humans, that
is. The nearest intake for drinking water on the Kanawha is 95 miles
away.At the Charleston Gazette, Ken Ward Jr. and David Gutman reported:
"This has had significant, adverse environmental impact to Fields Creek and an unknown amount of impact to the Kanawha River," said Secretary Randy Huffman of the state Department of Environmental Protection. "This is a big deal, this is a significant slurry spill." "When this much coal slurry goes into the stream, it wipes the stream out. [...]Please read more about the spill below the fold.
There was an alarm system in place to alert facility operators of the broken valve, but the alarm failed, so pumps continued to send the toxic slurry through the system. There was a secondary containment wall around the valve, but with the pumps continuing to send slurry to the broken valve, it was soon overwhelmed and the slurry overflowed the wall and made its way to the creek.
Coal slurry is a combination of liquid and solid waste from the coal
mining and preparation process. Slurry typically contains toxic metals
such as manganese and selenium. Although it was first reported that the
Crude MCHM, the chemical that was spilled January 9, was included in
Tuesday's slurry spill, a Patriot Corp. official said late Tuesday that
the company switched to another cleaning chemical, polypropylene glycol
or polyethylene glycol, several weeks ago. The slurry contained a very
small proportion of that, he said.
The worst coal slurry disaster occurred 42 years ago this month in West Virginia's Buffalo Creek Hollow when 132 million gallons of the stuff burst from a series of dams and killed 118 people, making another 4,000 homeless.
The Gazette reported that Tuesday's spill is the third reported slurry incident at Patriot's Kanawha Eagle operation since 2010. Last November, a spill resulted in a $663 fine. In October 2010, the company was assessed a $22,400 fine.
The DEP's Huffman told the reporters that these fines aren't enough to deter companies:
The worst coal slurry disaster occurred 42 years ago this month in West Virginia's Buffalo Creek Hollow when 132 million gallons of the stuff burst from a series of dams and killed 118 people, making another 4,000 homeless.
The Gazette reported that Tuesday's spill is the third reported slurry incident at Patriot's Kanawha Eagle operation since 2010. Last November, a spill resulted in a $663 fine. In October 2010, the company was assessed a $22,400 fine.
The DEP's Huffman told the reporters that these fines aren't enough to deter companies:
"A some point companies will just pay. We have to do more than that, we can't just send them a bill and say you have to pay this to continue operating, there have to be fundamental changes made at a facility that's had multiple incidents," Huffman said. "Maybe there needs to be a top down review of all their processes. Maybe there's a cultural change within that company that needs to take place that has more of an emphasis on safety, environmental controls, things like that."Unless it's just chatter to distract the media, Huffman's comment seems to reflect a different attitude at DEP than has been the case there for years. The department has repeatedly ignored federal recommendations for major changes in state oversight of coal-related operations since 2008. In one of the recommendations four years ago from the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, the OSM stated, "It appears that the consequences for violating the law, even when the violations are intentional, willful and blatant, are not significant enough to be a deterrent." No kidding.
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