Freedom Industries: other chemical is 'proprietary' About two weeks ago, a coal-processing chemical leaked into the Elk River, leaving 300,000 residents in West Virginia’s Kanawha Valley without water service. Freedom Industries owns the ruptured storage tank that leaked the chemical, known as MCHM, which is used to wash coal, and which can be dangerous if consumed. The emergency has unfolded in painful ways ever since – including contradictory messages as to who can drink water and when – but yesterday, the story took a turn for the worse. Investigators learned that another chemical was also in ruptured storage tank just upstream from West Virginia American Water’s regional drinking water intake. And what, pray tell, was this other chemical. It appears Freedom Industries doesn’t want to say too much about it.
Wait, what? Let me see if I’ve got this straight. There was something else that the company called “PPH, stripped” that also appears to have leaked from the same ruptured storage tank. And how dangerous might “PPH, stripped” be? I'm From West Virginia and I've Got Something to Say About the Chemical Spill | Eric Waggoner. My dad, a lifelong firefighter, used to teach Hazardous Materials Response and Safety classes to first responders.
The first informational point he covered at the beginning of the course was how to read the classification marks on transportation tankers -- the little diamond-shaped signs, usually mounted on the back of the tank, that announce via numerical code what kinds of chemicals are stored in those transport vehicles, and what levels and types of health risks would be associated with a spill in the case of a wreck. The first homework assignment he gave was for the firefighters to go home and stand on the main cross street in their neighborhoods and home towns for about an hour, and write down the numbers on every tag they saw pass through that intersection, then go look up the numbers. Dad said that the next week, when those students came back for class, invariably there'd be two or three groups of firefighters whose faces were white as flour.
On my way in, the rain had let up. Why This Year's Gulf Dead Zone Is Twice As Big As Last Year's. Dead Sea scrolls: In the red part, "habitats that would normally be teeming with life become, essentially, biological deserts," NOAA says. First, the good news: The annual "dead zone" that smothers much of the northern Gulf of Mexico—caused by an oxygen-sucking algae bloom mostly fed by Midwestern farm runoff—is smaller this year than scientists had expected.
In the wake of heavy spring rains, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had been projecting 2013's fish-free region of the Gulf to be at least 7,286 square miles and as large as 8,561 square miles—somewhere between the size of New Jersey on the low end to New Hampshire on the high end. Instead, NOAA announced, it has clocked in at 5,840 square miles—a bit bigger than Connecticut. It's depicted in the above graphic.
NOAA. Smaller than expected though it may be, this year's model is still more than twice as large as NOAA's targeted limit of less than 2,000 square miles. Dead zones over time NOAA. Latest Radioactive Leak at Fukushima: How Is It Different? Patrick J. Kiger In the latest crisis to strike the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) has discovered that 300 tons (nearly 72,000 gallons) of highly radioactive water has leaked from a holding tank into the ground over the past month. The development comes on top of TEPCO's admission last month that an estimated 300 tons of radioactive groundwater, which picks up small amounts of contamination when it flows through the damaged reactor buildings, has been leaking into the Pacific Ocean every day. (See related story: "Fukushima's Radioactive Water Leak: What You Should Know. ") The new storage tank leak presents a different and potentially more serious problem than the ongoing groundwater flow leaks.
A More Hazardous Leak While about two-thirds of Fukushima's storage tanks are welded steel vessels, the leaking tank is one of about 350 improvised temporary tanks that TEPCO has employed to augment its capacity. 'No Time to Waste' La. Flood Board Sues Oil Industry For Destroying Wetlands. Hide captionCanals created for navigation and oil and gas pipelines cut through the marsh off the coast of Louisiana, seen in 2010. Bloomberg via Getty Images Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost roughly as much land as makes up the state of Delaware.
"If you put the state of Delaware between New Orleans and the ocean, we wouldn't need any levees at all," says John Barry, vice president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East. "There is this large buffer of land that has disappeared, and that buffer makes New Orleans much more vulnerable to hurricanes. " Barry's board has the job of maintaining and improving the levee system that the federal government fortified after Hurricane Katrina pummeled the city in 2005. He says it will be so expensive to keep the city safe that his board decided to try to get money from the oil and gas industry to help do that. These two images show how the shape of Louisiana's coast has changed since 1932. Hide captionLouisiana coastline, 1932. West Virginia chemical spill leaves 300,000 without tap water. West Virginia chemical spill leaves 300,000 without clean water. UPDATED 9:30 p.m.
Roughly 300,000 residents have been left without usable water after chemicals spilled into a West Virginia river Thursday. The West Virginia American Water Company has advised residents of nine state counties not to drink or bathe in their running water. Local stores have been flooded with customers looking for bottled drinking water. The leak started in Charleston, West Virginia’s capital, the county seat for Kanawha County, and the state’s largest city. Local officials became aware that something was wrong around 10 am Thursday morning, after residents called to complain of a black licorice smell in the water, according to Kanawha County director of homeland security and emergency management Dale Petry.
After consultation with the local health department and state authorities, the West Virginia American Water Company warning went out a little before 6 p.m. NewsNation with Tamron Hall, 1/10/14, 2:41 PM ET West Virginia chemical spill leaves 300,000 without clean water. BREAKING... Fukushima Crisis Escalates Tons of Radioactive Waste Released into the Pacific Causes Ocean to Boil... By Nigel J. Covington III Editor-in-Chief <National Report> Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe just minutes ago announced that an emergency at the unstable Fukushima Nuclear Plant less than an hour ago is responsible for dumping “thousands of tons of highly radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean.”
The Prime Minister said the government has sent in its own nuclear experts who are teamed with TEPCO management who are now attempting to regain control of the facility. Japan has been anything but forthright with the people of the world about the Fukushima Nuclear Plant disaster that occurred on March 11, 2011. More than two years after the event just ten days ago it was announced that a “recent incident” had resulted in 300 tonnes (300 long tons; 330 short tons) of “heavily contaminated water” being leaked from a storage tank into the ocean daily. Almost two hours after today’s incident what’s being called the “Fukushima Plume of Death” is rapidly bearing down on Hawaii.
Nigel Covington. Poisoning the Well: How the Feds Let Industry Pollute the Nation’s Underground Water Supply. A view of the dry bed of the E.V. Spence Reservoir in Robert Lee, Texas, in October 2011. Records show that environmental officials have granted more than 50 aquifer exemptions for waste disposal and uranium mining in the drought-stricken state. (Calle Richmond/Reuters) EPA records show that portions of at least 100 drinking water aquifers have been written off because exemptions have allowed them to be used as dumping grounds. "You are sacrificing these aquifers," said Mark Williams, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado and a member of a National Science Foundation team studying the effects of energy development on the environment.
"By definition, you are putting pollution into them. ... If you are looking 50 to 100 years down the road, this is not a good way to go. " As part of an investigation into the threat to water supplies [1] from underground injection of waste, ProPublica set out to identify which aquifers have been polluted. The balance is even more delicate in Colorado.
Engineers develop revolutionary nanotech water desalination membrane. Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science today announced they have developed a new reverse osmosis (RO) membrane that promises to reduce the cost of seawater desalination and wastewater reclamation. Reverse osmosis desalination uses extremely high pressure to force saline or polluted waters through the pores of a semi-permeable membrane. Water molecules under pressure pass through these pores, but salt ions and other impurities cannot, resulting in highly purified water. The new membrane, developed by civil and environmental engineering assistant professor Eric Hoek and his research team, uses a uniquely cross-linked matrix of polymers and engineered nanoparticles designed to draw in water ions but repel nearly all contaminants.
These new membranes are structured at the nanoscale to create molecular tunnels through which water flows more easily than contaminants. With these improvements, less energy is needed to pump water through the membranes. Apr 2012 Water Pollution and It’s Consequences - GlobalH2o – a clean water initiative. By Anonymous • on News • April 12th• Different reports of some UN agencies warn on increasing scarcity of water per capita in many parts of the developing countries.
This crises is happening due to population growth which has the highest rate in those countries, as well as the absence of proper sanitation systems and infrastructures. Than, there are also changes in climate, and the pollution factor that brought us were we are now. As far as water quality, the poor are still under the strongest attack: 50% of the population in developing countries are exposed to polluted water sources. Asia has the most contaminated rivers in the world, that have three times more bacteria than average human waste. Moreover, these rivers also have larger amount of heavy metals than rivers in industrialized countries. Urban areas without proper infrastructures for water and sanitation are the most dangerous environment for human survival in these countries. Danijela Lazendic.