Mysterious Green Liquid Oozing Onto Highway Identified (usatoday.com) 74
An anonymous reader quotes the Detroit Free Press:
The mysterious, greenish-yellow liquid that ran onto a Michigan highway on Friday came from a closed electroplating business whose owner is serving a year in federal prison for operating an unlicensed hazardous waste storage facility...
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was called to investigate and determined the liquid likely was groundwater contaminated with hexavalent chromium, according to The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE)... State officials said the liquid was entering a storm sewer on I-696... Crews spent Friday night vacuuming the sewers and eventually started on the basement at Electro-Plating Services, where green liquid was found in the basement pit.
Workers were installing a pump in the basement pit to keep water levels down and "prevent more offsite migration," EGLE said.
More than 5,000 containers of hazardous chemicals had already been removed from the site, according to the article.
But state investigators have determined that there's no imminent risk to the public.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was called to investigate and determined the liquid likely was groundwater contaminated with hexavalent chromium, according to The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE)... State officials said the liquid was entering a storm sewer on I-696... Crews spent Friday night vacuuming the sewers and eventually started on the basement at Electro-Plating Services, where green liquid was found in the basement pit.
Workers were installing a pump in the basement pit to keep water levels down and "prevent more offsite migration," EGLE said.
More than 5,000 containers of hazardous chemicals had already been removed from the site, according to the article.
But state investigators have determined that there's no imminent risk to the public.
Uh, whut? (Score:5, Informative)
First they ID it as hexavalent chromium, then they say this ...
"But state investigators have determined that there's no imminent risk to the public."
OK, maybe the risk isn't imminent, but hex chromium causes cancer in the long-term, as well as birth defects and internal organ issues. This shouldn't be downplayed.
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First they ID it as hexavalent chromium, then they say this ...
"But state investigators have determined that there's no imminent risk to the public."
OK, maybe the risk isn't imminent, but hex chromium causes cancer in the long-term, as well as birth defects and internal organ issues. This shouldn't be downplayed.
Calling Erin Brockovich...
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The Green Slime movie had a great theme song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Uh, whut? (Score:1)
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Calling Erin Brockovich...
No, she specializes in causing panic to soak taxpayers for non-existent risks in exchange for half of the money. Hexavalent chromium is an actual carcinogen, her talents don't apply here.
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"determined the liquid likely was groundwater contaminated with hexavalent chromium"
That's literally in the summary.
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It's the zombie liquid so just don't die in that area.
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Everything is carcinogenic or poisonous at some concentration, you need to have decade long daily exposure to have higher risks of cancer or ingest it.
Re:Uh, whut? (Score:4, Informative)
Hexavalent chromium is carcinogenic even at very low concentrations. It's nasty stuff.
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First they ID it as hexavalent chromium, then they say this ...
"But state investigators have determined that there's no imminent risk to the public."
Hexavalent chromium spills can cause godawful preachy movies to be made:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Electroplating (Score:1)
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Yup (Score:3)
There’s no need for the EPA or environmental regulations, nosiree bob.
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There’s no need for the EPA or environmental regulations, nosiree bob.
That's what Prez. Trump keeps saying. These Socialist bastards only demand environmental legislation because they hate the innovators who keep the American economy buzzing along and want America to fail!!!
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Why don't you actually ask the orange man, retard?
Come to think of it, the coloring agents in his hair dye and makeup look suspiciously similar to hexavalent chromium salts.
More than just coincidence?
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You forgot that the Socialist bastards want to destroy the American family and take away their guns so they cannot shoot each other. There is a bit of a logical pickle there but that never stopped the Right-Wing Nuts.
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The EPA didn't stop this incident at all, even after removing containers of hazardous waste three years ago. Good job EPA.
"Oh well, at least they tried".
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You don't know how many have been "stopped" by the EPA, either. The problem here is that the EPA knew about this violator years ago, and their idea of "stopping" the problem was to move some barrels of waste that had not (yet) ruptured. Then they just threw up their hands and walked away.
Punishing the idiot for storing waste there is largely orthogonal to dealing with the remaining waste on site. Unless he's going to pay for the soil/water cleanup, someone else HAS to do it. That's the EPA's job, and th
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Re: Yup (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but states whose water flows into California could. You need federal environmental standards because water and air dont magically stop flowing at arbitrarily created state borders.
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[without an EPA] states whose water flows into California could [decide to dump hexavalent chromium into it].
Especially given how much water California rips off from neighboring states.
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Now there's an idea, let the red states run their own damn EPAs. When the resulting pollution starts to drift into blue states, we let them fight it out. Americans have guns for reasons....okay they aren't good reasons, but they have them.
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That was the situation prior to the establishment of the EPA. You're probably not old enough to remember the Cuyahoga River catching fire and burning for much of the summer of 1969, the final straw that forced Nixon to create the EPA. Local/state regulation doesn't work, we tried that.
Re: Yup (Score:2)
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Owner serving prison time... (Score:3)
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Re: Owner serving prison time... (Score:1)
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So they prosecute the animal for illegally storing hazardous waste and then leave the waste there whilst the polluting animal is in prison. Once prosecuted, surely they could have added to the fine, full clean up costs and cleaned the place up. I mean to say, why does that fuckers still own the facility where he committed the crime, surely it should have been confiscated to pay for clean up. They confiscate stuff based upon the suspension of drug money and leave it alone for actual prosecution for harming t
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You use assets to illegally pollute, surely those assets used to commit those crimes should be confiscated.
Under current environmental law, if you take ownership of a polluted site, you become responsible for cleaning it up. This makes the value of such a site a large negative number of dollars. Seizing it and trying to sell it would not cover any cleanup costs. No one would buy. Instead it would make the state, county, or whatever governmental division is involved liable for performing the (likely horr
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s/hands/lips/
Prison time isn't wrong, though. It should just come after he cleans it up with his mouth.
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Re: Owner serving prison time... (Score:2)
5000 barrels plus what's still there, and he got 1 year sentence?????
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The product is largely inert. You need daily exposure for decades (eg in cement) for it to be considered carcinogenic. Sure you don't want to ingest it, but it's relatively easy to dispose of properly.
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That's par for the course with the EPA. Unless they have superfund cash, they don't like soil/water remediation. At all.
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There's a good chance this area could become a superfund site, it's apparently been leaking into the ground for quite some time.
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It could, but that's besides the point. The EPA can't/won't do anything until they get some extra-organizational support. Hauling off a few barrels (okay, apparently a few thousand barrels) of waste is relatively easy to do if the barrels themselves aren't ruptured. You don't necessarily need the EPA to do that anyway . . . numerous private firms can do that, possibly for less cash. All you need is a site to receive the payload. I'll give the EPA credit for finding someplace else to store or treat the
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How many of those scientists were involved with soil/water remediation? The EPA has a job to do on the ground, and the point is that the EPA seldom actually does that job. They might show up and say, "yup, that land's polluted and leaking toxins/carcinogens into the local water table", but good luck getting them to do something about the problem.
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That's because they don't have the frelling money to **do** it. If they could levy fines and use the money for the cleanup that would be wonderful, but instead that goes back into the General Fund and cleanup funds are a budget item that conservatives in Congress love to squeeze year after year.
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What do you mean, they don't have any money? Their budget for FY 2018 was $5.655 billion. What do they do with all that money?
Re: Government, in action (Score:2)
Five and a half billion? They have literally scores of sites that could suck down that budget. At their current level of funding it would take almost a century just to finish the Superfund sites.
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Could, but curiously don't. Remember their budget is completely separate from designated Superfund sites.
The mutants are coming!!! (Score:2)
Hexavalent Chrome Causes Cancer (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Wait, what? (Score:2)
Mysterious green liquid in the basement Well, what was it *before* it melted? Didn't it say anything before it got transferred, and how come he hasn't gotten his paychecks?
Death! Death! DEATH TO ALL WHO OPPOSE US!!! (Score:2)
Death to all who oppose us! [youtube.com]
Now just imagine that was the SysAdmin where you worked...Talk about your BOFH.
If we haven't known someone who was like that at some point, it was only because we were that guy.
Reminder (Score:2)
From September 12, 2019:
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
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**Sigh**
And the Democratic Party "leadership" is still pushing Biden as their preferred candidate, possibly the only person besides Hillary Clinton who could go up against a senile orangutan and lose.
Mt. Dew (Score:1)