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So-Called ‘Failsafe’ Pipeline Leak Detection System Failed in Massive Alberta Tar Sands Spill
7/20/2015
By the time a contractor spotted a burst in the wall of an Alberta tar sands pipeline on July 15, a spill was already well underway. In a public apology on Friday, the pipeline’s owner, Nexen Energy, announced the spill was contained, but the cause, and the length of time it had been spilling, was still unknown. Thirty-one thousand barrels (roughly 1.3 million gallons) of bitumen, water and sand had spilled—a greater volume than even the 2010 Kalamazoo River spill in Michigan, still the largest land spill in the U.S.
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Monsanto, BP, Veolia Fund Toxic Waste Cleanup
July 16th, 2015
Monsanto, BP and Veolia will pay to clean up toxic waste — including Agent Orange derivatives, dioxins and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) — at a former quarry in South Wales, the Guardian reports.
Monsanto, BP and Veolia will pay to clean up toxic waste — including Agent Orange derivatives, dioxins and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) — at a former quarry in South Wales, the Guardian reports.
The newspaper says the agreement ends a 50-year ordeal that began with a Monsanto plant dumping thousands of tons of chemical and industrial waste into the quarry in the 1960s and ’70s. BP also dumped waste at the site, and Veolia acquired the contractors that originally disposed Monsanto’s waste.
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New Study Shows that Oil from Surface-Spill Slicks Can Sink to Sea Floor
A first of its kind study that modeled oil slick weathering over time in a laboratory setting provides evidence that evaporation combined with sinking of the heavy components of surface-spill slicks can explain the presence of oil on the sea floor. This critical proof-of-concept addresses the ongoing controversy regarding the large amounts of oil found at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and will impact future oil slick modeling and clean-up strategies. The study is published in Environmental Engineering Science, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Environmental Engineering Science
Christopher Clayton Stevens, Louis Thibodeaux, Edward Overton, et al., Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, used laboratory-scale and mathematical modeling methods to show that after a certain amount of evaporation had taken place and the slick reached a critical density and it's buoyancy relative to the water changed. Droplets comprising heavy oil residues then formed underneath the slick, broke away, and sank to the sea floor.
Reckoning With Oil Spills
Experts learn from Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon to plan for future accidents
July 13, 2015 - Five years ago this week, engineers capped the leaking Macondo well 1,500 meters below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, effectively ending the largest marine oil spill in U.S. history. The Gulf spill started three months earlier, when the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil rig exploded into fire—an accident that killed 11 workers—and then sank into the sea. During the 86 days of the spill, 4.9 million barrels of oil and 200,000 metric tons of hydrocarbon gas spewed into the Gulf.
Earlier this month, BP, the principal developer of the oil field, announced a proposed $18.7 billion settlement with federal and state authorities for environmental and economic damage related to the spill. The deal would bring the total that the company will spend on the spill to more than $40 billion.
The DWH spill came two decades after the second-largest spill in the U.S., when the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and released 260,000 bbl of crude into the water there. The area’s cold, rocky beaches and larger ecosystem still show vestiges of the spill.
Oceans Can’t Take Any more: Researchers Fear Fundamental Change
July 3rd, 2015Our oceans need an immediate and substantial reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. If that doesn’t happen, we could see far-reaching and largely irreversible impacts on marine ecosystems, which would especially be felt in developing countries. That’s the conclusion of a new review study published today in the journal Science. In the study, the research team from the Ocean 2015 initiative assesses the latest findings on the risks that climate change poses for our oceans, and demonstrates how fundamentally marine ecosystems are likely to change if human beings continue to produce just as much greenhouse gases as before.
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