Cause & Effect

So the usual assortment of wingnuts have been all over the place bashing DOT Secretary Pete Buttigeig, and complaining about "all that infrastructure money" not being used to fix problems and prevent such calamities.

And of course, they leave out a couple of inconvenient details: While the money has been allotted, it's not yet been distributed, and these same people have been actively trying to prevent the money from being distributed (all that debt ceiling bullshit).

But that doesn't stop them from demagoguing and propagandizing the shit out of it, because they demagogue and propagandize the shit out of everything.

It fits with a standard GOP play.

1. Prevent government from doing something
2. Bitch about how the government isn't doing something

Wanna know what caused this particular fuckup? Deregulation.

Is Donald Trump to Blame for Ohio Train Derailment?

The derailment of a 150-car train carrying hazardous material in East Palestine, Ohio, was likely more severe because the Trump administration repealed key safety legislation, according to an industry insider.

On February 3, the Norfolk Southern Railway freight train derailed at approximately 8:55 p.m. local time before catching fire near the state border with Pennsylvania.

While there were no injuries, the train included a number of cars containing vinyl chloride, a potentially explosive colorless gas, resulting in about 5,000 people being evacuated on the orders of the Ohio and Pennsylvania governors.

Rescue workers blew holes in five railway carts on February 6, allowing them to conduct a controlled burn of vinyl chloride which released toxic chemicals into the air.

Speaking to investigative news outlet The Lever, Steven Ditmeyer, a former top official at the Federal Railroad Administration, said the "severity" of the accident was likely increased by the lack of Electronically Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brakes.

Legislation was passed under President Obama that made it a legal requirement for trains carrying hazardous flammable materials to have ECP brakes, but this was rescinded in 2017 by the Trump administration.

The National Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency responsible for investigating rail accidents, told The Lever that the Ohio train that derailed was not fitted with ECP brakes.

"Would ECP brakes have reduced the severity of this accident? Yes," Ditmeyer said.

Referring to opposition from within the rail industry to fitting ECP brakes he added: "The railroads will test new features. But once they are told they have to do it...they don't want to spend the money."

Newsweek reached out to Donald Trump and the Norfolk Southern Railway for comment.

On Monday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg provided an update on the accident and an ongoing investigation into its cause.

"USDOT [Department of Transportation] has been supporting the investigation led by The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Our Federal Rail Administration and Pipelines and Hazardous Materials teams were onsite within hours of the initial incident and continue to be actively engaged," Buttigieg tweeted.

"We will look to these investigation results & based on them, use all relevant authorities to ensure accountability and continue to support safety."

Buttigieg added the federal Environmental Protection Agency remained on site, where they are monitoring indoor and outdoor air quality following the release of toxic chemicals.

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

Part 1 from The Real News Network

hat tip = FB buddy DR

The safety gizmo was found to be malfunctioning during an inspection in 1976 - the last time this site was inspected - and it was removed in 1979.

No safety inspections in very nearly 40 years. A safety valve that prob'ly would have prevented the thing from leaking for these last 4 months - but hey, we'll just go on about our bidness because the market will make any necessary corrections all in good time, and only some libtard who hates anybody trying to make a living would think anything might actually go wrong. 

This fits nicely into my take on the GOP Playbook.

1) Fuck up the EPA - cut funding, block appointments, harass in general

2) Wait for an environmental disaster

3) Point at it and say, "The EPA's all fucked up; their job-killing business-hostile regulations were supposed to make sure this didn't happen. The EPA is useless. Let's get rid of the EPA"

Today's Corporate Monster

...eating companies and shitting people.



Do the petition thing at FreePress.net

...and then Call your Congress Critter

Here We Go Again

When do we learn to stop fuckin' around with all this shit?

WV Gazette:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- More than 100,000 gallons of coal slurry poured into an eastern Kanawha County stream Tuesday in what officials were calling a "significant spill" from a Patriot Coal processing facility.

Emergency officials and environmental inspectors said roughly six miles of Fields Creek had been blackened and that a smaller amount of the slurry made it into the Kanawha River near Chesapeake.

"This has had significant, adverse environmental impact to Fields Creek and an unknown amount of impact to the Kanawha River," said Secretary Randy Huffman of the state Department of Environmental Protection. "This is a big deal, this is a significant slurry spill."

"When this much coal slurry goes into the stream, it wipes the stream out."

--and--

There was an alarm system in place to alert facility operators of the broken valve, but the alarm failed, so pumps continued to send the toxic slurry through the system. There was a secondary containment wall around the valve, but with the pumps continuing to send slurry to the broken valve, it was soon overwhelmed and the slurry overflowed the wall and made its way to the creek.

Huffman said they did not know why the alarm system failed.

--and--

For most of the day, the DEP was operating under the assumption that MCHM, the chemical that contaminated the drinking water of 300,000 West Virginians last month, was included in the spilled slurry. Huffman said that they learned late in the day that the facility had stopped using MCHM just a few weeks ago, so a different coal-cleaning chemical was involved.

Huffman said that the new chemical was polypropylene glycol, although he also referred to it as polyethylene glycol. He said that that chemical is such a small part of the slurry that they don't believe it, specifically, will have an impact.

Huffman said they had been testing for MCHM, but will now have to change their testing protocols.

Residents near the spill had complained of MCHM's telltale licorice odor, but Huffman said that the odor was from a tank of MCHM that the company was moving off site.

Oddly, in Patriot's statement the company mentioned testing for MCHM in Fields Creek.

--and--

Among other things, the 2009 OSM report found it hard, using DEP inspection reports and databases, to definitively quantify the number of blackwater spills. When spills occur, state inspectors cite companies for violating different regulations, and inspection narratives don't always explain clearly what happened, OSM said.

The lack of clear data may lead some operators to face less-serious enforcement action than they should and may hurt the DEP's ability to cite companies for a "pattern of violation," which can lead to operations being shut down and operators being blocked from receiving new permits.

OSM investigators also found that other strategies -- including settlement agreements with mine operators and federal criminal prosecution -- don't always work in stopping future blackwater spills.

"It appears that the consequences for violating the law, even when the violations are intentional, willful and blatant, are not significant enough to be a deterrent," the OSM report said.

The alarm that was supposed to tell somebody there was a problem with the valve malfunctioned (assuming it was even hooked up); the inspections to make sure the safety measures were being followed weren't happening; the coal company decided to test for a toxic chemical that they weren't using, while neglecting to mention to any-fucking-body that they were using some other toxic shit; and the mine safety guys had done practically nothing about known problems for goin' on 5 years.

So really there's no system; no protocol; not a goddamned thing in place to ensure these Noble Job Creators and their Coin-Operated Politicians aren't just fuckin' us with a wood rasp.  Isn't that pretty much it?