Tag Archives: water contamination

Killing A Planet

On Tuesday, the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) released the latest Living Planet report, Living Planet 2014. Published every two years, the WWF says it “gives us a picture of the changing state of global biodiversity and the pressure on the biosphere arising from human consumption of natural resources.”

This year’s report points out, as so many reports have done recently, the harm we humans are doing to the planet and the creatures who live on it. The Living Planet Index (LPI) measures more than 10,000 representative populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, and it’s declined by 52 per cent since 1970.

This means that in the last 40 years (or less than two human generations), the population of vertebrate species have dropped by over half because of us. Whether it’s us hunting them for food, or polluting and/or destroying their habitats, we’ve managed to kill off over half the animal population.

Mike Barratt, director of science and policy at WWF, said; “We have lost one half of the animal population and knowing this is driven by human consumption, this is clearly a call to arms and we must act now.” He also stated that more of the Earth must be protected from development and deforestation, and that food and energy needs to be produced sustainably.

Professor Ken Norris, director of science at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), said; “If half the animals died in London zoo next week it would be front page news. But that is happening in the great outdoors. This damage is not inevitable but a consequence of the way we choose to live.”

Another index in the report calculates humanity’s “ecological footprint”, in other words, the scale at which it is using up natural resources. As it stands, we are cutting down trees faster than they regrow, catching fish faster than the oceans and lakes can restock, pumping water from rivers and aquifers faster than rainfall can replenish them, and emitting more carbon dioxide than the forests and oceans can absorb.

The report concludes that today’s average global rate of consumption would need 1.5 planet Earths to sustain it. Four planets would be required to sustain US levels of consumption, and 2.5 Earths to match UK consumption levels.

The choice couldn’t be much clearer. We either change the way we live, or we die. We either work towards providing equal rights and opportunities for our fellow men, or we go further down the rabbit hole of income and social inequality where a very few people own everything while the rest of us fight for the scraps. We either stop destroying the earth with our wanton waste and pollution, or the earth will destroy us. And, we need to do it now.

Acid Washed

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Buenavista (Cananea) copper mine. Photo by NASA International Space Station (public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

We write a lot about spills and other environmental disasters that happen in the U.S. and Canada, but we don’t report very often on things happening south of the border. However, we ran into a story out of Mexico which, as is typical with our media, isn’t getting half the coverage it should.

On August 7, a pipe either blew out or became unseated, allowing over ten million gallons of toxic wastewater containing sulfuric acid and heavy metals to spill out of a leaching pond at the Buenavista copper mine in Cananea, Sonora – about twenty five miles south of the U.S. border near Nogales, Arizona – into the Bacanuchi River.

As seems to be the case so often in these events, the company who operates the mine (Grupo Mexico; one of the world’s largest copper producers) did not immediately notify government officials of the leak. Only after residents of the area had noticed a reddish color to the water (in some places, it was orange) and a foul smell to it did Grupo Mexico report the spill. By then, the spill had moved into the Sonora River, causing authorities to keep 88 schools closed, as well as shut off the water supply to 20,000 people in seven towns.

The mine offered to provide water to the public, but did not come close to meeting local demand. The amount supplied was barely enough for drinking requirements, and far short of the amount needed for bathing and other such essentials. iIn some places the price of a gallon of water went from $1.50 to more than $9.

This last Friday, Sonoran state authorities said that the mine is still causing pollution and the facility’s owners are blocking the work of investigators probing the accident. At a press conference, Carlos Arias, director of the state civil protection agency, said “As of this moment, the government of Sonora (state) totally breaks off any relationship with the mining company.”

Environmental issues are nothing new for Grupo Mexico. In 2009, Asarco, the American subsidiary of Grupo Mexico, paid the U.S. government $1.9 billion to settle claims for hazardous waste pollution across 19 states; a record settlement at the time. That same year, over 200 serious health hazards at the Buenavista copper processing facilities (the same facilities that had the spill we’re discussing) were reported by a Cananea occupational health and safety (OHS) team.

This whole story is too familiar to us. Once again, we see a large corporation have an accident that has turned into an environmental disaster due to the corporation’s incompetence and/or unwillingness as far as planning for and reacting to the accident goes. When are we going to say enough is enough?

How Not To Be Awakened

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TransCanada Building, Calgary. Photo by Qyd (talk · contribs) (Own work (Own photo)) CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

In case you’ve never noticed (or if you’re new here), we write a lot about pipelines. Like any other addict who knows that his or her habit is bad for their health, but continues with it anyways, we as a society are dependent on our fossil fuels. As with any other addiction, there’s an infrastructure in place for getting the product (in this case, oil and/or gas) into the hands of the addict. And, just as in the drug trade, there’s often what the military calls “collateral damage” among the residents of the area where such infrastructure is operating.

On Tuesday, we saw a prime example of this in Benton Township, Michigan. Sometime around 2 AM, a natural gas line operated by TransCanada (yes, the same company whose oil is the prime mover of the Keystone XL proposal) started leaking. This in turn led to an evacuation of residents within a one mile area of the leak – such a wonderful thing to wake up to, no?

Vic Rogers, who lives on the property where the leak occurred, described what happened; “If you ever hear lightning strike and hear the big boom afterwards that’s what it sounded like. After that it was like a train or a jet engine roar. Everything started to shake and vibrate I looked out the window and I could see this plume of black debris.”

15 hours later, the approximately 500 people who had evacuated were allowed to return home. Yesterday, TransCanada went into full damage control mode. TransCanada spokesperson Gretchen Krueger said; “Our focus right now is on the community and on people, Yesterday was responding to the event and today is responding to the community and we want to be here for them to answer those questions.” It seems to us as if we’ve heard this exact same script recited by the gas and oil companies before – I wonder if TransCanada has the walrus listed in their response plan too. But, I digress…

Pipelines leak. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when and how much. TransCanada doesn’t have a stellar record as far as safety goes, either. In late 2012, the Canadian national energy-industry regulator (NEB) announced that it was performing a major audit of TransCanada’s Canadian operations after confirming a whistleblower’s story documenting repeated violations of pipeline safety regulations.

Last summer in testimony before a Canadian Senate committee, Evan Vokes, a pipeline safety whistleblower and materials engineer, said that TransCanada “has a culture of non-compliance,” which he blamed on a “mix of politics and commercial interests that has resulted in false public claims of exceptional industry practice when the reality is that industry struggles to comply with code and regulation.” In other words, business as usual.

Accidents like this are a prime example of why Keystone XL is a bad idea. We can’t trust TransCanada to be proactive as far as the environment goes, and their safety record is lackadaisical, to put it mildly. The pipeline has no upside for America whatsoever; we’d be carrying Canadian tar sands oil down to the Gulf refineries to be processed and exported on the global market. The reduced refinery capacity brought about by the tar sand oil having priority could lead to higher gas prices here ion the US. And, the profit goes back to Canada, while we assume all the risk.

Does that sound like a good deal to you? We thought not…

Water Over The Dam – A Quick Update

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Map by the Cariboo Regional Emergency Operations Centre

A little over a month ago, a dam failed in a tailings pond at the Mount Polley mine near Likely, British Columbia. We’ve written about the breach on a couple occasions, but we haven’t written about it lately.

At the end of August, the Ministry of Environment said that elevated concentrations of copper, iron, manganese, arsenic, silver, selenium and vanadium that exceed provincial standards were found during testing near the Mount Polley mine. The Ministry also claimed that there were elevated concentrations of those metals in that area before the spill, and as long as the water wasn’t cloudy, it was supposedly safe to drink.

However, this isn’t reassuring to the people who live in the area. “We’re drinking bottled water because on the 18th, the first test done after Mount Polley, the water was really clear and on the 20th the plume was already here,” said Pohney Whitmer, who lives on Quesnel Lake. On the other hand, Steve Robertson, Imperial Metals’ vice-chairman of corporate affairs, claims that he’s been drinking it while living in Likely.

Then, there’s the strange blue film on Quesnel Lake. Marine biologist Alexandra Morton went to the site to test the water, and local residents told her about the blue film. She said that; “There’s a number of residents in the area who were concerned about it because they had touched it and it caused a drying sensation on their arms and it burned their fingers. In transferring it from my net to my jars, I got it on my fingers — and it does burn.

“It feels like a jellyfish sting. It looks like oil, but it breaks up. It kind of acts like hot wax put on water; it forms this stiff film.”

To top it off, on Thursday, Imperial Metals said that nearly 25 million cubic meters of contaminated water and mine waste spilled into surrounding waterways, or about 78 per cent more than the first estimates. This includes 10.6 million cubic meters (2.8 billion gallons) of water, 7.3 million cubic meters (1.9 billion gallons) of tailings and 6.5 million cubic meters (1.7 billion gallons) of interstitial water, which is the water that sits between the crushed rock in the tailings pond.

As seems to be par for the course with recent environmental disasters, the original estimates of the spillage don’t match up with reality at all. And, like the others, we have no idea of what’s actually happening right now; not to mention the long term impacts. Summer is the dry season, and the fall rains and spring melt will almost assuredly raise the concentrations due to runoff and stirring of the sediment on the lake and river bottoms. The daily discharge from the Quesnel River, which flows from Quesnel Lake, more than triples during the spring melt. causing a “tremendous turbulent flushing effect,” says Vancouver Sun columnist Stephen Hume.

The cost to clean up the mess is unknown at the present time, but we’re pretty sure of two things; it will be a long and expensive job, and the taxpayers of British Columbia will be stuck with most of the costs. Isn’t it time we start holding these people responsible for their actions? And, isn’t it about time that we elect people who aren’t in bed with oil and mining companies? It’s up to us; they aren’t going to change unless we make them change.

Send in the Drones!

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Photo by Rakrist08 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo by Rakrist08 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Drones are the newest technology developed for the purpose of surveillance. A large part of their development was done through the military, which is funded through the American tax payers. These drones can operate far longer than humans, cost less to maintain and operate once deployed, and can focus with pin-point accuracy the details of a license plate or printing on a sheet of paper.

Our country is having a conversation about national security and privacy. Drones are being tested in metropolitan areas as a means of keeping an eye on activities of citizens.

Meanwhile, we have watched Congress defund every federal agency charged with protecting our air, water and food supply. There have been bills introduced to abolish the EPA. Minnesota’s House introduced a bill that would make EPA regulations unenforceable throughout the entire state. Our air, water, soil and food supply continue to be sacrificed for the sake of corporate profits, and no one is held accountable. The fines for violations are cheaper to pay than the cost of compliance.

You may have heard of Duke Energy, the mega-coal giant in North Carolina that was filmed pumping coal ash pond water waste directly into the Dan River – their 14th violation this month alone. Or maybe you heard about Mayflower, AR, where a 50-year old pipeline most residents were not even aware of, ruptured and flooded the town with millions of gallons of crude oil. If not, maybe you heard about the train derailments near Casselton, North Dakota; an explosive collision and loss or spilling of 400,000 gallons of crude oil.

We, the citizens of the United States, have paid for the technology that is now being used to invade our privacy instead of protect our commons. Shouldn’t we be able to demand that this technology be used to survey any corporation that operates within our borders for compliance with laws and regulations, either federal or state, that have been passed to ensure public safety?

By wabeggs (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Coal ash on water surface. Photo by wabeggs (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Imagine a drone placed to monitor every coal ash pond in existence. Any illegal dumping or pumping, as well as leaks detected by drops in the levels of the ponds would be detected.

Imagine permits for pipelines requiring installation of the high-tech developments that detect early leaking – and companies that do not comply (citing costs) are required to deposit DOUBLE the cost of the entire project plus a percentage of profits gained through the use of the pipeline into a clean-up super-fund, which the company does not get back until that pipeline has been taken permanently out of service. The only way they get it back is if the pipeline does not leak and no cleanup is ever needed. Drones would make sure cover ups are not possible.

This is not rocket science, folks (even though we pay for that too). It is common sense. It is a way to advance for the good of the people instead of the good of corporations.

Whose money paid for it?
Whose air does it protect?
Who uses the water for survival?
Whose food supply is it?

Unless that radical of a change frightens you.

Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Tag Archives: water contamination

Killing A Planet

Acid Washed

How Not To Be Awakened

Water Over The Dam – A Quick Update

Send in the Drones!