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from the nothing-to-see-here-read-the-summary dept.
A toxic onslaught from the nation's petrochemical hub was largely overshadowed by the record-shattering deluge of Hurricane Harvey as residents and first responders struggled to save lives and property.
More than a half-year after floodwaters swamped America's fourth-largest city, the extent of this environmental assault is beginning to surface, while questions about the long-term consequences for human health remain unanswered.
[...] In all, reporters catalogued more than 100 Harvey-related toxic releases—on land, in water and in the air. Most were never publicized, and in the case of two of the biggest ones, the extent or potential toxicity of the releases was initially understated.
Hurricane Harvey's toxic impact deeper than public told
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Saturday March 24 2018, @04:57PM (4 children)
I had to stop reading the article, it was too painful.
Sickening.
The clear message from the article was: there was insufficient Texas government demand for information about hazardous spills. Especially that Exxon didn't bother to give information should not have been acceptable.
There was insufficient Texas government oversight and monitoring of unreported spills. Only when there were visible explosions was it impossible for petrochemical companies to conceal their problems.
The government declared:
which means (I think) that the Texas taxpayer will pay for the cleanup and the increase in cancer cases over the coming decades.
Actually I interpreted those sentences as that nobody had foreseen a pollution event of this scale and nature, and therefore the companies involved would have to be forgiven for not succeeding in containment.
Maybe they should have moved those industries further inland then, away from a hurricane zone in the Gulf of Mexico?
And most of all: the article didn't mention at all how the petrochemical industry in Houston was *prepared* for calamities, what kind of emergency procedures they had, if they followed them, were the companies successfull in preventing even worse spills?
There's only bad news in TFA, not a single good news story of "chemical company X managed to shut down their aniline [wikipedia.org] factory a week before the hurricane and proudly declared they had no spills, as was tested and verified and documented publicly by the independent Texan government tests after the disaster".
Why didn't Texans vote for the Green Party in the 2016 elections? I don't understand what is wrong with you people. I really don't. Don't you care about your children's safety?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:06PM
Because the Greens are in favor of a government that works for people and not corporations. Also, it's Texas, so they're pretty much dedicated to being backwards minded and generally backwater. Most of the damage to Houston would never have happened had the houses been somewhere other than the flood plains. Even just setting them up a few feet would have made a significant difference in some areas.
There's a reason why in less backward minded parts of the country, we don't let people build in the flood plains any more.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Saturday March 24 2018, @09:29PM (2 children)
It seems to me that what that really means is that the sociopaths who run those companies were told they have free rein to dump as much as they like during the hurricane, just make it look like the hurricane had something to do with it and there won't be any consequences.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday March 25 2018, @11:05AM (1 child)
Yeah, I actually thought that as well, but I thought it was too paranoid a scenario to write down :-)
Imagine you are the director of a chemical factory in Houston Texas.
Imagine you have a chemical waste storage for the PCB and dioxin containing byproducts of your factory.
You have to send it to a specialized expensive destruction company, but you might as well wait until profits are up a bit, or the laws change.
Fast forward 20 years
(1) Now you have a ginormous tank with 20 years of this waste doing nothing but slowly rusting the waste silo and costing money. All previous directors shoved the problem forward in time. Profits are down and the environmental laws have become stricter and the destruction company asks for much more money than 20 years ago (no competition anymore from the cheap one that was run by the local maffia).
(2) Suddenly out of the blue, Hurricane Harvey is passing straight over your industrial terrain! Shock! Horror!
(3) ????
(4) An Act of God made your chemical waste disappear from the location that you have responsibility for!
(5) Profit!!!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Taibhsear on Monday March 26 2018, @05:21PM
That would be illegal. The chemical factory would likely be considered a "Large Quantity Generator." There are regulations for how long you can store waste or hazardous products.
https://www.epa.gov/hwgenerators/categories-hazardous-waste-generators [epa.gov]