Just to be clear today in a debate Congressman Rick Nolan - see Rick Nolan For Congress - just emphatically stated he supports the Keystone XL pipeline, the Sandpiper Pipeline, Enbridge, Polymet and Sulfide Mining. He claimed that things are clearly ok with the environment because and I quote I can remember when the lakes where on fire. The following lists Enbridges pipeline spills and incidents over the last decade: * June 2012 - Enbridge shuts 345,000 bpd Athabasca pipeline after 1,400 barrels of oil were spilled near Elk Point in northeast Alberta. The line was quickly restarted after the company was able to bypass the Elk Point pump station. * March 2012 - Enbridge shuts the 318,000 bpd line 14/64 between Superior, Wisconsin, and Griffith, Indiana, after an SUV crashed into a pumping station near New Lenox, Illinois. * September 2011 - Enbridge shuts Line 26, a 25,000 bpd oil pipeline running from Berthold, North Dakota, to Steelman, Saskatchewan, for one day after about 20 barrels of oil were spilled from a pumping station at Berthold. * May 2011 - Enbridge estimates between 700 and 1,500 barrels of oil spilled from the 39,400 bpd Norman Wells pipeline south of Wrigley, Northwest Territories. * November 2010 - Throughput on the 670,000 bpd Line 6A, which feeds Midwest refineries and the key Cushing, Oklahoma, crude oil hub, reduced after a problem with a power disruption from a local utility in Lockport, Illinois. * September 2010 - Enbridge closed its 70,000 bpd Line 10, which runs from Westover, Ontario, to New York state, while the company investigated a small leak. It was quickly restarted when it was determined to be leak-free. * September 2010 - Enbridge closed Line 6A for eight days after it leaked 6,100 barrels of crude near Romeoville, Illinois. * July 2010 - Enbridge shut its 290,000-bpd Line 6B, which runs from Griffiths, Indiana, to Sarnia, Ontario, on July 26 after a rupture near Marshall, Michigan, spilled The release spilled in estimated 843,000 gallons, entered Talmadge Creek and flowed into the Kalamazoo River, a Lake Michigan tributary. Heavy rains caused the river to overtop existing dams and carried oil 35 miles downstream on the Kalamazoo River. * January 2010: An Enbridge pipeline leaked around 3,000 barrels of crude near Neche, North Dakota. Authorities ordered Enbridge to reduce pressures on the line, and in a letter to Enbridge, raised concerns over the strength of some of its pipeline seams. * November 2007: Two workers were killed after an Enbridge-operated pipeline caught fire in northern Minnesota. The same line had recently been repaired. Following the incident, which resulted in a pipeline closure, up to 20 percent of U.S. crude imports were temporarily halted. Enbridge was fined for having allowed pressure on the pipeline to exceed recommended limits. * January 2007: A spill on an Enbridge line transporting Canadian crude to Chicago leaked around 1,190 barrels in rural Wisconsin. About a month later, and further north, the pipeline spilled 2,976 barrels after a construction crew broke the line. * 2005: Enbridge spilled more than 9,825 barrels of oil in several incidents over the year, according to National Wildlife Federation data compiling spill volumes. Most oil was quickly contained by Enbridge. * June 2003: Enbridge spilled around 452 barrels in Wisconsins Nemadji River, and additional crude spilled from an Enbridge terminal was contained. * July 2002: 6,000 barrels spilled from an Enbridge pipeline into marshlands near Cohasset, Minnesota. Sources: Department of Transportation, Enbridge, spill data compiled by the National Wildlife Federation, SEC filings. That is one companys polluting alone. A company that our very own mayor Don Ness welcomed into our community with enthusiasm. They spilled oil in Superior WI and in MN in the last decade. Mr. Nolan emphatically supports this company doing more pipeline works with higher volumes of oil. Some of the pipelines will be moving a different type of oil from the Tar Sands oil Extraction project in Alberta Canada. A project so immense in intention of scale that it will deforest an area near the size of England and replace it with a toxic moonscape. Scientists have said that if the oil industry involved in the Tar Sands project extract as much oil as they intend to and it makes it to market where it goes off to get burned that the carbon volume released at that point will put us well beyond the amount in the atmosphere it takes to set into motion a change of events that involves our coasts flooding and multiple island nations going under water from sea level rises due to the polar ice caps melting from the resulting global temperature rise. Additionally south of the TarSands oil projects people and other animals are getting sick due to chemicals flowing down the Athebasca River. Sicknesses include rare types of cancers often terminal. 350.org reports that some intended Tarsands oil extraction expansion projects have been delayed due to resistance to the building of pipelines to move it, yet Mr. Nolan our congressman has claimed that nothing we can do will stop the Tarsands oil extraction because it is a Canadian project and we are in the USA. He claims our only options are how to move the oil across the country, that we cant do anything to stop its extraction. I disagree - I mean we could legislate that due to the ethical problems presented by the use of Tarsands Oils, our nation will not use or transport any Tarsands oils. Our nation has banned the use and possession of Marijuana due to a weaker argument based on perils presented by it to human health compared to the perils presented to human health by the continuation of burning fossils fuels, could a congressman find it in them to use their position to advocate the banning of the use of a more proven to be dangerous substance then Marijuana? On the subject of Polymet - this type of Mining has polluted every single place it has ever been done with the effects worse purportionate to the amount of fresh water in motion in its vicinity and Mr. Nolan is whole heartedly fighting for Polymet to do this type of Mining in northern MN. Companies similar to Polymet have a terrible track record of being involved in the clean up costs and efforts in the regions where the pollution occurs. The tendency is for people to move the profits from the company that does the damage then leave behind a bankrupt company that cant do anything to help in the clean up effort. Mr. Nolan fights for bills with names like Strategic Minerals Act that have language in them that alludes to the idea that the minerals the bill will speed up the process of being able to extract by weakening environmental review periods for, are somehow desperately needed to aid the security of the USA yet the bills do nothing to keep the ores and the profits in the USA. The Pollution as you can guess most certainly will stay in the USA. Many of the top Superfund sites in the United States of American involve similar mining projects. Superfund sites are areas with massive amounts of pollution that cost massive amounts of money and efforts to clean. The pollution that comes from sulfide mining increases the amount of Methyl Mercury in the environment around it. Methyl mercury is a substance that once its gets into people it causes illness. In pregnant woman the presence of methyl mercury is worse for the placenta concentrates it and puts it into the baby. You heard me correct the placenta is not the perfect guardian of babies that we have been led to believe. When methyl mercury gets into a developing fetus there is guaranteed cognitive damage at any level, that is a baby will not grow up to be all it could have been for having had this substance put into it. At higher levels this substance causes severe birth defects that at there worst cause fetus to end up a contorted life form that appears to be incapable of joy, that requires a lifetime of special care including spoon feeding, bathing and reposition in its sleep to avoid bedsores and so on. People have explained this to Mr. Nolan again and again to no avail. Here in the United States it is more difficult to track the damages certain pollutants do to fetal development and reproductive health do to a lack of a birth defects monitoring program nationwide. We could do things like sample every single umbilical cord after a birth to test if for chemicals and document health of baby at birth and as it grows so that we can better understand the relationship between the chemicals mothers are exposed to and certain health problems including mental health issues and cancers. Two states have a program that collects some Data to do similar study to what I mentioned, regions where pollution have been a problem have also done that. Mr. Nolan could just as easily be using his breath, his voice and his authority to create things such as the health monitoring system I describe above as he does advocating that we introduce more pollution into our environment. In one of the Nordic countries people are recycling their waste so effectively that they are nearly out of landfills, Mr. Nolan could just as easily advocate for the USA to do this as he does for the USA to make more pollution. Jobs could exist developing and implementing technologies and infrastructure that could reduce pollution while aiding a way of life familiar to us now and Mr. Nolan could be using the same breath the same authority to advocate making those jobs as he does to support jobs poisoning people. Mr. Nolan could be advocating for us to clean up our messes before we make more, he could advocate for the development of technologies that could perhaps safely extract some ore without polluting rather then using his breadth to create the illusion of safety around technology that is guaranteed to fail, guaranteed to poison people around it. Mr. Nolan claims things are ok because the visible problem of flaming lakes is no longer existent as it was when he was younger. We know that not all problems are visible, indeed many of the worst poisons to human and other animal life are not visible. When we look at the running water in a river poisoned with Methyl mercury and other things we need not be able to see the poisons to know not to drink the water or eat the fish. We do not rely on our eyes to keep us out of the Fukishima region or the area around Chernobyl where there is radioactive waste in high enough concentrations to guarantee sickness in peoples if they go there unprotected. Are people getting this? We have a sitting Democrat Congressman trumpeting that things are ok with the environment because lakes are not on fire. Could some people comfort me by being alarmed by this please? We have a sitting congressman paving over the issue of climate change, supporting aid to the Tarsands oil extraction projects - because things are ok because the lakes are not on fire. My freaking head is going to explode at just how horrifying it is that people support this person who is either stupid, evil or both. I am terrified that so many people that I have associated with can support this guy. Rick Nolan is criminally insane. He ought to be an institution over his environmental positions. Environment is not some funny words that mean places for trees that hippies would like to keep, it means the culmination of all there is on earth that has achieved balance over millions of years of changing that somehow sustains human life - it is everything around us we depend on to survive - air, water and food all the bits of life and chemistry that make it up that have come together to give us all that we have. Every time we meddle about introducing new chemical compounds in large quantities we run the risk of throwing things off balance in a world made up of Chemicals. Currently people in the same field of study that created the math that shows us how to build bridges that stay up, that gave us what we need to make our computers work, our space ships fly, that gave us medicines that work that we depend on to to stay alive, that created the loved tv series Cosmos - you know scientists and other highly educated folk - those people those smart people are telling us we are rapidly turning the earth into a toxic shit stew inhospitable to human life in myriad of ways including creating the conditions for the planet to become so warm on average damn near everything on earth will change over the next century. Some stuff changing will be the types of trees in the northland - ok. Other stuff is just oh the coasts being underwater some island nations drowning and mass extinctions of plant and wildlife. Oh and there is this whole drought and famine thing that is becoming more and more likely with each passing day we dont alter the course of Industrial Civilization. This is the world we live in. Could we take the time to stop damn fools from being in charge that base their rating of how the environment is doing on whether or not lakes are flaming and start listening to scientists? We broke the ocean and extinguished half the wildlife on the planet in the last century, this is a reality. This is really really happening. This is not a chicken little rant. apps.seattletimes/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 00:11:41 +0000
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