Category: Environmental

Small government and Zika

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Florida Governor Rick Scott discuss his recent tornadoes with media in Deep Creek neighborhood of Port Charlotte.

So Rick Scott creates the bare-bones, “no such thing as climate change” government he wanted, and now he’s whining?

Amid warnings of a potential Zika “disaster” in Florida, Gov. Rick Scott on Wednesday asked President Barack Obama for an extensive list of preparedness items from the federal government to fight the dreaded virus.

In a three-page letter to the President, Scott said some of the requested items were detailed in a May 12 meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, but have not been fulfilled.

“I cannot waste any time on disappointment. Florida needs action from the federal government now,” Scott wrote.

And then he mentions the real problem:

The governor also voiced unhappiness with inaction by the Republican-controlled Congress, which “has failed to act and they are now on vacation.”

Clinton promises help for coal miners in Eastern Kentucky

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

IMG_0355

ASHLAND, Ky. — Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton promised help Monday for an area of Kentucky hit hard by job losses in the coal and steel industries. On the first day of a two-day visit to Appalachia dubbed her “Breaking Down Barriers” tour, Clinton touted her $30 billion plan to help coal workers and pledged to… Continue reading “Clinton promises help for coal miners in Eastern Kentucky” →

Good

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

I’ll update with details when I have them.

UPDATE: I read somewhere later that the D.A. is doing this as a stunt, but we’ll see.

2ND UPDATE: Here it is.

FLINT, MI – Felony and misdemeanor charges have been issued against three state and city employees in connection to the city’s water crisis.

Genesee District Court Judge Tracy Collier-Nix authorized charges, Wednesday, April 20, for Flint employee Michael Glasgow and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality employees Stephen Busch and Michael Prysby.

Glasgow is accused of tampering with evidence when he allegedly changed testing results to show there was less lead in city water than there actually was. He is also charged with willful neglect of office.

Prysby and Busch are charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy to tamper with evidence, tampering with evidence, a treatment violation of the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act and a monitoring violation of the Safe Drinking Water.

Oh boy

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

08-2015_02

I never like to read this:

A leak at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state has prompted warnings of “catastrophic” consequences, as workers attempt to clean up more than eight inches of toxic waste from one of 28 underground tanks holding radioactive materials leftover from plutonium production.

Alarms on the site began sounding on Sunday, leading workers to discover 8.4 inches of toxic waste in between the inner and outer walls of tank AY-102, which has been slowly leaking since 2011 but has never accumulated that amount of waste before.

A former tank farm worker told local media that despite statements from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that the spill does not pose a threat to public health, it should be considered a major problem.

“This is catastrophic,” the worker, Mike Geffre, who first discovered that the tank was failing in 2011, told King-TV on Monday. “This is probably the biggest event ever to happen in tank farm history. The double shell tanks were supposed to be the savior of all saviors [to hold waste safely from people and the environment].”

Flint mayor: Governor’s decision to drink Flint water ‘doesn’t impress me’

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

FIRST Robotics State Championship 2016

Flint, MI Mayor Karen Weaver was on my radio show Monday night, and I asked her about Governor Rick Snyder’s pledge to drink that city’s water for a month. COLMES: The governor of your state, Rick Snyder, said today that he was going to drink for a month, I guess to give people some comfort, what’s… Continue reading “Flint mayor: Governor’s decision to drink Flint water ‘doesn’t impress me’” →

Of course he’s not going to jail

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

I’ve said it before: These are the crimes for which I support the death penalty, because you destroy so much and put so many people at risk:

A former co-owner and officer of Freedom Industries on Monday became the fourth official from the company to avoid being sentenced to any jail time, despite playing a role in the January 2014 chemical spill that contaminated the drinking water supply for hundreds of thousands of people in the Kanawha Valley and surrounding communities. U.S. District Judge Thomas E. Johnston sentenced William E. Tis, a former Freedom director and secretary, to three years’ probation and ordered Tis to pay a $20,000 fine. Tis had pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of causing an unlawful discharge of refuse matter, and faced a statutory maximum of one year in prison.

The charges related to Freedom’s spill of MCHM and other chemicals into the Elk River just 1.5 miles upstream from West Virginia American Water’s regional drinking water intake.

As he had with three previous Freedom defendants, Johnston said that Tis was “hardly a criminal.” The judge cited the misdemeanor nature of the charge against Tis and what he said was a lack of any previous criminal record. “I never intentionally hurt anyone in my life,” Tis told the judge at Monday’s hearing. “I am sorry this happened.”

Johnston said his sentence for Tis was also based on a motion from Acting U.S. Attorney Carol Casto’s office asking for a lighter sentence based on Tis having provided “substantial assistance” to the government’s investigation of the spill and of two top Freedom officials, Gary Southern and Dennis Farrell.

TEPCO admits they lied

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

fukushima, ReachForThe Sky you lil fcker

I said so from the beginning. You could tell from the behavior of the TEPCO officials that it was much worse than they admitted:

The operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant hit by a tsunami in 2011 has admitted that it should have announced sooner that there was a nuclear meltdown at the site.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company denied the meltdown for two months.

The company now says the public declaration should have been done within days of the disaster.

Experts have long said the melting began within hours of the reactor being struck by the tsunami.

Yet another reason to hate Republicans

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

They prefer tax cuts for the wealthy to doing basic infrastructure repair, which leads to decisions like this.

Last month was South Florida’s wettest January since 1932. Because of the heavy rain, the water levels in Lake Okeechobee in central Florida rose to about a foot above what’s normal for this season. On top of that, water managers began to pump dirty water from flooded farms into the lake, adding more pollution to a body of water that already contains fertilizers and other chemicals from the state’s cattle and sugar industries. At the same time, officials began to worry that the rising lake waters would put stress on its aging dike, so they decided to drain the lake toward the east and west coasts. Some 70,000 gallons per second flowed into the St. Lucie River and the Caloosahatchee River all the way through to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. And as the toxic runoff spreads, it’s threatening sea grasses and oyster beds and is adding to harmful algae growth.

Now the tourism industry and small businesses on the coasts are worried that they’re going to see their business slump as a result of the pollution. Local politicians are calling on Governor Rick Scott to declare a state of emergency, and mayors are traveling to Washington, D.C. to demand action from Congress and the Army Corps of Engineers. And Floridians are snapping pictures of the polluted water and dead sea creatures and sharing them on social media.