Chemical Spill

Residents Of Eight Mile, Alabama, Call For Evacuation

August 11, 2016 Julie Dermansky, www.desmogblog.com Resist! Alabama, Chemical Spill

By Julie Dermansky for Desmog - Eight years after a mercaptan spill at a Mobile Gas facility in Eight Mile, Alabama, residents still affected by the spill are fighting back. “For years we have been told there is not a problem anymore, though the smell of gas never really goes away,” Eight Mile resident Geraldine Harper told DeSmog, “and I’m sure breathing that stuff is making my health worse.” Harper was one of more than 200 people who attended a public meeting hosted by the We Matter Eight Mile Community Association at the Highpoint Baptist Church in Eight Mile on July 21, 2016.

Million-Liter Cyanide Spill In Argentina Highlights Mining Crimes

September 26, 2015 Deirdre Fulton, www.commondreams.org Educate! Argnetina, Canada, Chemical Spill, Environment, Public Health

By Deirdre Fulton in Common Dreams - Highlighting how corporate extractivism and lack of accountability is driving the destruction of Latin American communities, a Canadian mining company has now confirmed that more than one million liters of cyanide solution spilled from the Barrick Gold Veladero mine in San Juan, Argentina this month—making the spill more than four times larger than originally estimated. The Toronto-headquartered mining company initially said it had spilled just 224,000 liters of the toxic liquid, used to leach gold from processed rocks, into the Potrerillos River. On Wednesday, the corporation amended its statement (pdf) and said that in fact 1.072 million liters of a cyanide and water solution were spilled due to a failure in one of the valves in the mine's pipes.

WVA Chemical Spill Not A Freak Occurrence

June 1, 2014 Molly M. Ginty, www.inthesetimes.com Educate! Chemical Spill, Environment, toxic chemical spill, Toxic Chemicals, Water

Charleston residents are baffled— and indignant—that MCHM leached into their water so easily. (“We want answers,” read one placard at a protest at the state capitol building. “Prosecute the poisoners,” read another.) But the spill in West Virginia was not a freak occurrence. The United States sees more than its share of industrial accidents. Consider the 2008 spill of 1 billion gallons of coal-ash slurry in Kingston, Tennessee, which coated the surrounding land in a 6-foot-deep layer of sludge that cost an estimated $1.2 billion to clean up. Or the 2013 ammonium nitrate explosion at a West, Texas, fertilizer plant. That catastrophe—at a facility that federal inspectors had not visited for 27 years—injured more than 300 people and claimed 15 lives. No single government agency is responsible for tracking and verifying chemical spills, so their exact number is unknown. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) puts the figure at “thousands” each year, while Bloomberg Businessweek counted 3,885 in 2013 and CBS identified more than 6,500 in 2010.

Honoring Grassroots Environmental Heroes

April 30, 2014 Staff, www.goldmanprize.org Educate! Chemical Spill, Coal, Deforestation, Environment, Fracking, Gas, Oil

The Goldman Prize continues today with its original mission to annually honor grassroots environmental heroes from the six inhabited continental regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. The Prize recognizes individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk. Each winner receives an award of $150,000, the largest award in the world for grassroots environmentalists. The Goldman Prize views “grassroots” leaders as those involved in local efforts, where positive change is created through community or citizen participation in the issues that affect them. Through recognizing these individual leaders, the Prize seeks to inspire other ordinary people to take extraordinary actions to protect the natural world. The Prize Recipients The work of Goldman Prize recipients often focuses on protecting endangered ecosystems and species, combating destructive development projects, promoting sustainability, influencing environmental policies and striving for environmental justice. Prize recipients are often women and men from isolated villages or inner cities who chose to take great personal risks to safeguard the environment.

The Toxic Chemical Spill Crisis in West Virginia Will Happen Again. Here’s Why (video)

January 16, 2014 Dennis Trainor, Jr., www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Chemical Spill, Corporatism, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Freedom Industries, Resistance Report, Toxic Chemicals, West Virginia

When a massive chemical spill happens that contaminates the water supply and leaves over 300,00 people in West Virginia without water to drink, bathe or even brush their teeth - when a dangerous event that throws a whole area of the country into an existential crisis happens, one wants to believe that state and local officials in every part of the country are paying close attention to learn from this crisis to see to it that it be averted in their communities. I mean, there is no way that a corporation, Freedom Industries in this case, would be allowed to handle a toxic foaming agent used as part of the coal preparation processing unless their facility was in tiptop shape, unless the plant processing these toxic chemicals could have the adjective “good” ascribed to it.

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