the Koch brothers and West Virginia
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300,000 people in West Virginia are without safe drinking water due to the chemical spill near the Elk River. Company, state, and local officials apparently had no emergency response plan in place, and public officials are apparently surprised that the chemicals were stored relatively close to a major water intake. OSHA has never inspected the plant facilities, and the state EPA has not inspected it for 20 years:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/12/west-virginia-chemical-spill_n_4586123.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037&ir=Politics
The company that owns the plant, Freedom Industries, has ties to the Koch brothers. In 2008, the company was selected by Georgia-Pacific as a distributor of G-P's Talon brand mining reagents. In addition to the chemicals used in coal mining, Georgia-Pacific also makes chemicals that are used in tar sands mining:
http://www.gp-chemicals.com/Talon_Mining_Depressants
Georgia-Pacific was acquired by Koch Industries in 2005.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/11/1268990/-Freedom-Industries-Has-Ties-to-Koch-Brothers#
If you Googled "FOX News - West Virginia Oil spill", you'll get the link below:
http://www.google.com/#q=fox+news+-+west+virginia+oil+spill
Not surprisingly, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ON FOX NEWS about the West Virginia oil spill.
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But...If you Googled "FOX News-West Virginia Chemical spill" you'll get the story by Fox about the CHEMICAL spill. I did not hear about any OIL spill in West Virginia, but heard a lot about the CHEMICAL spill.
It always helps to put the correct words in the Google search. Unless you want to make a point which is not true. Nah, that wouldn't happen...would it?
TRUTH is, Fox News has the story about the West Virginia chemical spill, but don't take my word or anyone elses word for it-Google it yourself.
Sorry, but the TRUTH should matter.
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james:
You're absolutely correct, and I had the same thought later on this morning. When I looked up "FOX News - West Virginia CHEMICAL spill after I got home from work, I found the FOX actually DID have some stories about it.
That same phraseology picked up a total of 61,1000,000 hits. Not all of those, of course, are FOX News story. The fact that the story is THAT big means that FOX really isn't able to do much with it other than reporting the facts.
In my post, I also referred to the fact that Georgia Pacific (which is owned by Koch Industries) also supplied chemicals that were used to extract shale oil, which uses a process called fracking. Both I and a number of other folks on this site have already written about fracking, and you may have even seen the picture shown below:
The implication of this picture, of course, is that Haliburton INVENTED fracking, which apparently isn't the case. However, Haliburton was issued an exclusive license to develop the patent in 1949. Haliburton performed the first two commercial fracking treatments in March of 1949. A man named George Mitchell (who was NOT an employee of Haliburton) is considered to be the "father of fracking" , and he died a billionaire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mitchell
Haliburton applied for some revised patents on the process in 2003, but they were rejected by the U.S. Patent Office a decade later:
http://www.law360.com/articles/428356/halliburton-loses-appeal-over-rejected-fracking-patent
Unfortunately, it IS true that George Bush and Dick Cheney exempted fracking from the provisions of the Safe Water Drinking Act in 2005:
http://www.independentwatertesting.com/education-center/148-what-is-the-halliburton-loophole.html
The Koch brothers, of course, are heavily involved in fracking, and it's not very difficult to find any number of articles related to their involvement , including one where they claim to have INVENTED fracking:
http://www.google.com/#q=koch+industries+-+fracking
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Freedom Industries, the company that owns the tank that sprung a leak, buys chemicals from a variety of sources, including Georgia-Pacific, which is owned by the Koch brothers.
The specific chemical that leaked into the Elk River (7500 gallons) is called MCHM, which is made by a Tennessee chemical company called Eastman Chemical.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/new-owner-of-freedom-industries-must-face-fallout-of-west-virginia-chemical-spill/2014/01/17/77b1a572-7df2-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html
As luck would have it, Freedom Industries acquired a new owner on December 31, when a Pennsylvania coal mining executive named Cliff Forrest bought the company. So far, he and his parent company haven't filed for bankruptcy protection to give him temporary relief from all the lawsuits that have been filed, but it took Freedom Industries exactly one week from the date of the spill to do so. Lawsuits have also been filed against both Eastman Chemical and West Virginia American Water Company.
I wasn't able to find an ownership connection between Georgia Pacific and Eastman Chemical, so it looks like the Koch brothers dodged a bullet - this time.
If you take a closer look at Freedom Industries (details are in the link above) you'll discover that its past history is a little muddled, as well as being a little shady.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-west-virginia-chemical-company-files-for-bankruptcy-after-leak-20140118,0,3457733.story
West Virginia is fortunate to have TWO Democratic Senators (Jay Rockefeller and Joe Manchin) and a Democratic governor. Both of them introduced legislation on Friday of this week that would protect Americans from chemical spills that threaten drinking water. Called The Chemical Safety and Drinking Water Protection Act, it was co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California. who is the Senate chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Governor Earl Ray Tomblin plans to introduce similar legislation next week.
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Democrat
Colorado Springs, CO
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james:
I'm in absolute agreement with you that I am not a fan of the Koch brothers, but they are only one of several of my conservative "targets"
Today's Al Jazeera had a story this morning about environmental pollution that indirectly leads back to the Koch brothers:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/2/6/environmentalistssayncriveristoxicsoupaftercoalashspill.html
Earlier this week, tens of thousands of tons of coal ash spilled into the Dan River, endangering the drinking water of thousands of people in Virginia and North Caroline. Last week's spill was not the first incident for Duke Energy. Although there is no common ownership between Koch and Duke, both groups (who are members of ALEC) joined forces last March to kill a clean energy bill in North Caroline:
http://www.nationofchange.org/duke-energy-koch-brothers-kill-clean-energy-north-carolina-1363444259
Even more dangerous than coal ash is a substance called petroleum coke, a byproduct of refining tar sands bitumen from Canada. On the banks of the Detroit River, the Koch brothers own a huge pile of this stuff, and plan to sell if to coal plants in China. As of last spring, the pile was three stories tall and a block long. The picture in EcoNews does not show much attempt at protecting the site, so it's not hard to imagine that a modest elevation in the water level of the Detroit River (through spring floods) could endanger the drinking water of Detroit metro. As of 2010, that area had 4, 296, 250 people, and Windsor has about 1,500,000.
http://ecowatch.com/2013/05/20/koch-brothers-toxic-mountain-petroleum-coke/
At this point, the pile in Detroit is the only pile of its kind in the country, but if the Keystone XL pipeline gets approved (are you listening, Barack?) there will be others around the country.
http://www.nationofchange.org/duke-energy-koch-brothers-kill-clean-energy-north-carolina-1363444259
Much has already been written about the Keystone pipeline on this site, but if you're wondering why the Koch brothers have already spent $50,000,000 in Congress to get the thing approved, the article below will open your eyes:
http://ecowatch.com/2013/10/20/koch-brothers-100-billion-profit-keystone-xl-pipeline-built/
The Koch brothers already own 2,000,000 acres of land in Alberta, where the tar sands are located. If the United States approved the construction of the pipeline, their profit would be over $100 billion.
$100 BILLION dollars!
Due to their environmental record, and obscene profits like that number, I'm going to whack the Koch brothers every chance I get.
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