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vincentML -> RE: Oil Spill in Arkansas and the Press (4/20/2013 6:32:01 PM)
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It was a sizable news event in early April. Major coverage here But it has been quiet of late. I did see something about it on TV a few nights ago. Maybe other news stories have pushed it aside. It is a god awful mess for those poor folk.
And this from The LA Times on April 12th
The images from Mayflower, Ark., after a March 29 oil spill were particularly repulsive: A river of black goo running through yards and down the street of a subdivision, and hundreds of workers arriving to clean up an industrial mess in a peaceful burg.
But the Exxon Mobil pipeline spill, initially estimated to have released at least 157,000 gallons of crude oil and driven more than 20 families from their homes, represents only a fraction of the regular oil losses from the huge network of pipelines stretching across the United States.
Between 2008 and 2012, U.S. pipelines spilled an average of more than 3.1 million gallons of hazardous liquids per year, according to data from the Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the nation's pipeline regulator. Those spills -- most commonly caused by corrosion and equipment failure -- caused at least $1.5 billion in property damage altogether.
In 2010, a historic inland spill of 819,000 gallons of diluted bitumen -- a kind of oil from the tar sands in Alberta -- shut down the Kalamazoo River for miles after a pipeline break in Marshall, Mich. Enbridge Inc., a Canadian pipeline company, ended up buying 150 homes from locals too unsettled by the disaster to return. That spill was overshadowed by the cataclysmic BP Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, also in 2010.
The Mayflower spill, much smaller by comparison, has nonetheless spurred action from the Arkansas attorney general, who this week used a subpoena to compel Exxon Mobil to turn over 12,587 pages of documents, five CDs of data and 200 blueprint-sized diagrams related to the company's Pegasus Pipeline and its spill.
Not sure if the Federal Govt has lent a hand. Do you know?
I met a pipeline welder from Alberta who told me "If man can build it, Nature can break it."
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