Don’t worry Iowa, the Trump Reality Regime Show most of you voted for is on this. Everything should be sorted out in no time.
the derailed oil cars were a model known as DOT117Rs, indicating they were newer or had been retrofitted to be safer and help prevent leaks in the event of an accident.
I guess they should have done better?
Fucking tar sand oil, how ugly.
Surely we can trust national and local government figures to at least make sure something fundamental like drinking water is safe.
Chillax, I-O-Way! Chuckles Grassley and Bread-Bags Ernst will get Scott Pruitt to clean it all up. While you’re waiting for that to happen (BWAHAHA!), just slather your corn with the toxic sludge instead of using butter or margarine.
Or maybe just use that extra $1.50 you got from the GOP tax-cut you wanted so fucking badly and buy yourself some bottled water. You’re gonna need it , motherfuckers. Remember, you voted to put Republicans in your state offices. But if your water systems get polluted I am sure your GOP masters will gladly piss in your mouth to quench any thirst you have.
Quick, someone call Scott Pruitt on the Batphone in his Super Soundproof Phone Booth. Do Not email - he doesn’t do emails (at least not on email servers or addresses that anyone but top industry officials are privileged to know). He will send a crack team of oil and coal industry lobbyists who are experts at environmental disaster, damage and cleanup … well, avoiding too much cleaning up or having the responsible companies pay for it. We are sorry to say, all of the real experts have left the EPA or have been sacked for insufficient loyalty.
Why exactly did they have to transport these through flooded locations? Could they not wait until the water went down to make sure the tracks were unaffected.
“It plans to drain and clean its wells and use a rural water system until testing shows its water is safe.” Because the chemicals they use to clean an oil spill are ok to drink. Maybe all the godly folks in Iowa can get together and pray the oil away…
IANAL, but just looking at the photo, there sure looks like a case for negligence on the part of BNSF. There doesn’t need to be erosion for those tracks to become unstable with that much weight pounding the tracks. The grade is water logged and between the weight of the cars and the vibrations would pretty much liquify any substrates leading to track failure and derailment. Anything to make a buck.
A sane person would think. The railroad should have been built on a bridge above the stream of water.
That just shows you that we need to back to coal. The mess is a lot easier to clean up and doesn’t pollute the water as much as tar sands (which are apparently really nasty and more prone to burn relative to the “sweeter” grades of oil).
They might have had to pay workers overtime?
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
There is this myth that living in rural areas is more healthy due to the clean air and water. Industrialized agriculture has polluted both to such an extent that you would have to be nuts to move into an area that has intensive ag. It is a long list but you can’t imagine the stench and runoff problems associated with large feedlots. Cows and pigs are not basically filthy animals but the conditions in which they are raised are terrible. I have seen feces a foot deep in some of the pens and I pity the poor animals that have to deal with that. There were two fertilizer factory disasters while I lived in Texas. One was a fire north of Bryan that would have resulted in the evacuation of over 200,000 people if the wind had been from the wrong direction. The other was the explosion that devastated downtown West. The list goes on and on.
Within minutes, the EPA determined that no violations had occurred and issued a rules update stating that spills below 250,000 gallons needn’t be reported in the future.
The WH expressed confidence that local and state authorities could handle the matter and would be able to distribute the shipment of paper towels the federal government was providing as a courtesy.
Send Pruitt and his boys up there with their plastic drinking straws. Problem solved.
Hmm do you know how many communities pull thier water from the Missouri River? St. Louis and surrounding suburbs for one. I may have to lobby my municipality to go back to using our old treatment center along the Meramec River.
Totally agree. Citizens in a rural county close to where I live successfully turned back a proposed massive factory farm for hogs. They were able to show that this type of farming would have negative impact on ground water and air quality.
Hey now how could any sane government official have the knowledge that a flash flood would undermine the footings at the crossing? It’s not like there is a team if government scientists working on why we are having unusual weather patterns these last few years. And those unusual weather patterns would bring drought and heavy rains in alternating years, who knew long term climate patterns could change over decades instead of millennium.
I don’t know much about the Missouri outside of having fished a few of its tribs. But I do know derailments can cause devastating pollution events. They’ve done it here in the East. You can put a lot of goop on a train and if it goes in the water all at once it’s pretty bad.
American Water Company is our water utility, they operate all across the country and in Hawaii. Maybe someone should ask how they are monitoring the situation.