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Archive for July, 2010
Enbridge says no restart date for ruptured line
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 30th, 2010
Reuters: Enbridge Inc's chief executive said on Friday he was unable to say when the company would be able to restart the Michigan pipeline that ruptured earlier this week, spilling more than 800,000 gallons of oil. There was "no forward push of the oil" toward Lake Michigan by Friday, Ralph Dollhopf, the on-scene coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters. While Enbridge Chief Executive Pat Daniel said that making the pipe ready to resume operation can ...
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UNESCO declares Everglades endangered site
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 30th, 2010
Reuters: A U.N. panel has declared the Florida's Everglades to be an endangered World Heritage site due to the wetlands' continued degradation, officials said on Friday. The wetlands' water inflows have fallen by up to 60 percent and pollution has produced excess plant growth and a decline in marine species, the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization said at a meeting in Brasilia. Agricultural and urban development have been the ...
BP’s incoming boss Bob Dudley says clean-up operation may be scaled down
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 30th, 2010
Guardian: As the visible oil in the Gulf of Mexico dwindles, the incoming boss of BP has said it could be time to scale down the vast operation to clean up the damage wreaked by the company's Deepwater Horizon spill. Bob Dudley, who was named this week to replace BP's much maligned chief executive Tony Hayward, announced that the company was appointing a former head of the US federal emergency management agency, James Lee Witt, to help recover from the disaster. BP intends to attempt a "static ...
BP boss scaling back oil effort
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 30th, 2010
BBC: Incoming BP chief executive Bob Dudley: "I don't think we'll see any more oil going in to the beaches" Incoming BP chief executive Bob Dudley has said it is time to scale back some parts of the oil spill clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico. Virtually no oil has been released into the Gulf since a new cap was closed on 15 July. And skimming crews have reported only tiny quantities of oil out at sea. But Mr Dudley insisted BP's commitment to tackling the environmental ...
Pricing The Non-Human Cost Of BP Spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 30th, 2010
National Public Radio: BP has spent more than $4 billion cleaning up the oil spill. But what about the non-human cost. How much should BP pay for dead and injured animals?
Trapped glacier water threatens French Alps valley
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 30th, 2010
Reuters: A pocket of water big enough to fill 20 Olympic pools, trapped inside a glacier on Mont Blanc, could burst at any time and endanger lives in a French Alpine valley, officials said Thursday. Researchers at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) said 65,000 cubic meters of water discovered inside the Tte-Rousse glacier could explode and destroy everything in its path, including nearby villages and nearly 900 homes. Such a catastrophe happened in the area in 1892, ...
Crews Race To Clean Up Oil Spill In Michigan
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 30th, 2010
National Public Radio: Crews are working Friday in southwest Michigan to clean up as much as 1 million gallons of crude oil that spilled from a broken pipeline into the Kalamazoo River. There are concerns that the oil could reach Lake Michigan if it isn't stopped soon. Exactly when the 30-inch pipe burst is a point of contention. Residents in the little town of Marshall, Mich., say they smelled oil Sunday morning. Enbridge Energy Partners, the Canadian company that owns the pipeline, says it didn't ...
United States: Regulators Warned Enbridge About Monitoring of Pipeline Corrosion
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 30th, 2010
New York Times: The company responsible for a massive oil spill here was warned in January by federal regulators about insufficient monitoring of corrosion on the pipeline that federal officials say leaked more than one million gallons of oil into a major waterway this week. The owner of the pipeline, Enbridge Energy Partners, received several citations from federal regulators in recent years before the warning in January. Company officials said they had routinely tested the pipeline for ...
BP lawsuits over oil spill take center stage
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 30th, 2010
Reuters: More than 2,000 miles from the Gulf of Mexico shoreline, a panel of U.S. judges heard arguments from lawyers on Thursday on how piles of oil spill-related lawsuits against BP Plc should be merged. The panel, meeting in Boise, Idaho, as part of its regularly scheduled rotation among federal courts, did not immediately rule on how it would handle the mounting civil litigation brought against BP and other defendants involved in the worst offshore oil disaster in U.S. history. A ...
EARTH MEANDERS: The Rights of Earth
Posted by Water Conservation Blog on July 30th, 2010
By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk
...and All Gaias Creatures to Ecological Self-Defense
Gaia the Earth System [search] is alive and like any living entity has rights. Earth has a right to not be stripped of its vegetative skin, its flesh mined, body punctured by wells, ecosystems liquidated; and precious water, air and oceans tainted. Gaia has the right to peacefully exist and to be free of harm, violence or ecocide (to be murdered). Air, water, land and ocean ecosystems are Gaias self-regulating internal ecosystem organs. All Gaias creatures possess an equal claim upon a fair share of her bounty for continued existence. Yet Gaia has a right to prohibit at any time, using any means, any one species from over-running the biosphere and habitats shared by all.
Sadly the industrial, speculative and unsustainable capitalistic economy benefiting some humans is killing Earth. This growth machine in population, economy and inequitable consumption has established as the norm an immoral, short-sighted way of life based upon eating ecosystems and children (or at least their future) to wantonly consume and grow a bit more. If cumulative impacts of human ecosystem destruction upon Gaia continue; the Earth System dies, ...