Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

Well here's a surprise. The ominpotent invisible hand of the free market flips the bird to approximately one third of the residents of West Viriginia. Freedom Industries tells its creditors to take a flying leap:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Freedom Industries, the company that fouled thousands of West Virginians' water with a chemical leak last week, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today.

The company's assets and liabilities are "unknown," according to the filing. Under the bankruptcy code, Chapter 11 permits a company to reorganize and continue operating. Chapter 11 also requires all creditors to stop all collection attempts.

Freedom owes $3.66 million to its top 20 unsecured creditors, according to bankruptcy documents.

I'm pretty sure that doesn't include the many plaintiffs currently filing lawsuits over the loss of potable water for a week and counting.

Meanwhile, this is how that paragon of corporate virtue has been dealing with delivering emergency water supplies:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia American Water pulled its bulk water tankers out of service in Kanawha County Thursday evening, after complaints that the water being distributed to residents had the same odor as the chemical-tainted water from last week's Freedom Industries spill into the Elk River.

Water company spokeswoman Laura Jordan said the tankers had been filled near the plant after zero levels of the chemical "Crude MCHM" were recorded. "But to avoid any concerns," she said, "just to reassure our customers, we're filling up the tankers from another system."

Photo credit to Robert Johnson of Business Insider who tells us this is what he saw at his hotel.

The sink filled quickly and this was left behind 60 minutes later after it slowly drained.

Click over for more photos and ask yourself would you bathe in water the color of what is still standing in his bathtub? I'll be interested in seeing what they do about billing for water use after the spill.

[Big thanks to Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction for kindly linking in at Mike's Blog Roundup. (Twitter: @mjwstickings).]

What America would look like without the EPA

Pretty much like Shanghai:

For the seventh day this month, Shanghai officials have warned children and the elderly to stay inside in a city where 24 hours exposed to the off-the-charts pollution would have hazardous consequences to one’s health. Hundreds of flights and sporting events have been cancelled, while face masks and air purifiers sold out in stores. All week, the pollution level hovered at “heavily” and “severely” polluted, according to Shanghai’s Air Quality Index, at up to 31 times the recommended levels. [...]

Officials have ordered vehicles off the road to curb air pollution, so far removing roughly 30 percent.

Since that didn't work so well, Shanghai's "environmental authority took decisive action to address the frequent air-quality alerts: It adjusted standards downward to ensure that there won’t be so many.

That's pollution, not ordinary fog. Beijing doesn't usually look much better. This is your world without environmental regulations.

America's Nuclear Nightmare

The most terrifying thing I've read yet about our nuclear waste disposal problem.

There's a fire burning in Bridgeton, Missouri. It's invisible to area residents, buried deep beneath the ground in a North St. Louis County landfill. But the smoldering waste is an unavoidable presence in town, giving off a putrid odor that clouds the air miles away – an overwhelming stench described by one area woman as "rotten eggs mixed with skunk and fertilizer." Residents report smelling it at K-12 school buses, a TGI Fridays and even the operating room of a local hospital. "It smells like dead bodies," observes another local. ...

West Lake Landfill is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site that's home to some of the oldest radioactive wastes in the world. A six-foot chain-link fence surrounds the perimeter, plastered with bright yellow hazard signs that warn of the dangers within. On one corner stands a rusty gas pump. About 1,200 feet south of the radioactive EPA site, the fire at Bridgeton Landfill spreads out like hot barbeque coals. No one knows for sure what happens when an underground inferno meets a pool of atomic waste, but residents aren't eager to find out. ...

Today, West Lake's radioactive waste – all 143,000 cubic yards of it – sits on the outskirts of a former quarry with practically none of the standard safety features found in most municipal landfills. No clay liner blocks toxic leachate – or "garbage juice" – from seeping into area groundwater. No cap keeps toxic gas from dispersing into the air. This unprotected waste sits on a floodplain 1.5 miles away from the Missouri River. Eight miles downstream is a drinking water reservoir that serves 300,000 St. Louisans. Worst of all: The materials dumped in this populous metropolitan area will continue to pose a hazard for hundreds of thousands of years.

Meanwhile, "Republic Services also denies that it is dealing with a 'fire' – the company prefers the euphemism 'subsurface smoldering event.'"

This stuff is ticking time bomb. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when it explodes into an insoluble problem. Mankind will all be wanting to book that flight to Mars after that. [graphic via]

World's cleanest energy

Until it isn't. The video speaks for itself.



In other words, we're already all pretty well fcked. But it could still get a whole lot worse. Not the legacy I want to leave my progeny. [Via watergatesummer]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Why I stopped eating seafood

Used to eat a lot of fish and other seafood. These days, I won't buy the stuff unless I'm sure it's doesn't come from the Gulf Coast or anywhere within the currents that come out of it. I mean, who wants to eat this mutated seafood?

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: “Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets.”

“Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico],” she added, “They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don’t have their usual spikes … they look like they’ve been burned off by chemicals.” [...]

The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP’s disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.

And shrimp with tumors. Fish with lesions and no livers. Check out the photos at the link. Nothing stopping them from cutting off the heads and selling you the tails. Also, not reassured that BP says they've been tested and pose no danger.

Meanwhile, with the price of gas, everybody is going all "drill baby, drill" again. Won't do much good to be able to drive your car if you starve to death because the entire food chain has been poisoned.

Also, too: What Charlie said.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]