Marine Pollution Control8631 West Jefferson Avenue
Detroit, MI 48209 USA
313.849.2333 - 24/hour
11324 E Lakewood Blvd., #12 & #13
Holland, MI 49424
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Great Lakes group warns against more oil shipping
November 21, 2013
DULUTH, Minn. — A Chicago-based environmental group warned in a new report against increased shipment of petroleum products on the Great Lakes, particularly a plan to ship oil out of Superior, Wis.
A report from the Alliance for the Great Lakes said U.S. and Canadian shipping fleets and ports aren't designed for large-scale crude oil transports, and that neither government's regulatory systems are prepared to deal with increased shipments across the lakes.
An Indiana-based company that owns a Superior refinery is planning a $30 million port terminal where oil from western pipelines would be transferred onto Great Lakes tankers and barges. An official with Calumet Special Products told the Duluth News Tribune the company is pursuing state and federal permits.
Environmental Disasters Prove They Don't Heal Themselves
November 21, 2013
How many environmental disasters have occurred in your lifetime? Some of the more recent ones include the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the 2008 Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash spill -- and the list stretches back for decades. Unfortunately, many disasters like these aren't known for their swift cleanups, but for their long-lasting environmental impacts.
Just how bad are these catastrophes, after all? The infographic below from Creative Signals and Vermont Law School's Master of Environmental Law & Policy explores just how environmental disasters can affect animals, people and economies for years to come.
In start of long operation, Fukushima removes first fuel rods
November 21, 2013
TOKYO (Reuters) - The operator of Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant completed on Thursday the removal of the first fuel rods from a cooling pool high up in a badly damaged reactor building, a rare success in the often fraught battle to control the site.
The batch of 22 unused fuel assemblies, which each contain 50-70 of the fuel rods, was transferred by a trailer to a safer storage pool, the last day of a four-day operation, Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco, said in a statement.
The company must carefully pluck more than 1,500 brittle and potentially damaged assemblies from the unstable reactor No.4., the early stages of a decommissioning process following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that wrecked the site.
Anadarko Oil spill risk kept secret
November 21, 2013
Labour claims the Government has kept secret the real risk of a major oil spill at Anadarko's proposed Kaikoura drilling site.
Labour Leader David Cunliffe says documents obtained under the Official Information Act show Environment Minister Amy Adams had international research 13 months ago that shows there would be a 70 per cent probability of a `reportable incident' at the 1500m-deep Kaikoura well within a year of it opening.
BP Releases Oil Spill Cleanup Environmental Data
November 20, 2013
BP has released environmental data used in its efforts to clean up the Gulf of Mexico where its Macondo well spilled millions of barrels of oil in 2010.
Since the oil spill, federal and state agencies, as well as BP, have collected more than 2.3 million lines of water chemistry data, published yesterday in the first release.
Data released includes:
- Analytical chemistry results of water samples collected as part of more than 70 Response and Natural Resource Damage Assessment studies. Also included in the data is information on concentrations of the common chemical constituents of crude oil, such as volatile hydrocarbons, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), saturated hydrocarbons (SHC), and petroleum biomarkers.
- Information on the composition of oil released from the Macondo well and analyses of Macondo oil in various degrees of degradation, or weathering. The first dataset available in this area relates to oil obtained from the vessel Q4000.
- Oil analyses for water chemistry lab calibration. Macondo source oil was analyzed as a quality control sample by analytical laboratories along with analyses of environmental samples collected in the field. This quality control sample analysis is generally referred to as “MC252 control oil.”