| Senate Republicans continue to fall all over themselves on behalf of big oil, the banks and the powerful special interest groups. All voted NO for extended unemployment benefits for the jobless but the GOP blindly stood by its moneyed sugar daddies and against the people by voting NO to financial reform and a jobs bill.
It should be glaringly obvious and apparent to all that the Republican Party has been on a mission to block, obstruct and bring down the Obama Administration and its agenda. No Republican lawmaker is in the least bit concerned that the economy and the American people will suffer in the process.
Meanwhile, back here in Oilsville, aka Houston, TX:
It's not just the beach getting oiled.
Rick Perry and the oil boys in Houston will not be pleased with today's report from The Houston Chronicle either.
Perry and other protectors of the oil industry will not want the people to know where all of the spilled oil will be stored. Especially when the storage will be planted in the backyard of the Houston area.
BP's massive slick on the Gulf is showing up in Texas, and not only as tar balls on the beach.
Some of BP's spilled oil and other waste is making its way to the state for permanent disposal in underground salt domes and injection wells. Texas, home to large numbers of environmental services companies, refineries and oil salvage operators, is among the states recycling or disposing of oily refuse collected during cleanup efforts, according to state officials and BP documents.
But what kind of waste is coming in, how it is being processed and the details of its disposal are something of a mystery. BP and most of its contractors are unwilling or unable to disclose details, and government agencies offer competing or incomplete accounts of what's going where.
Tracking the tons of waste generated by one of the biggest environmental messes the country's ever dealt with isn't easy, but how it's being handled could be important in assessing potential effects on the health and safety of nearby communities.
Below is one reason why Rick Perry has recently attacked the EPA. Perry's insistence that the big federal government is messing with Texas business is nothing but disingenuous and distracting spin BS. Perry does not want the EPA to mess with BP and its contractors. It is all about profit, baby, profit.
Last week the EPA issued new directives to BP about how it should manage recovered oil waste. The directives include guidelines about how to inform communities about the waste being brought to their towns and requirements to provide access to waste facilities and detailed tracking reports.
Some coastal residents worry that spill waste being brought to nearby landfills might be toxic, and environmentalists are raising concerns that waste being disposed in deep underground wells, like those in Texas, could compromise drinking water.
The new guidelines call for more sampling and analysis of waste and for results to be made public.
Made public? This is a nightmare for the merchants of secrecy. Residents, no doubt, will be screaming at the top of their lungs. I will be included among them.
The plan identified several Houston-area facilities, including BP's own Texas City refinery and other sites in the area. The sites are approved for liquid wastes of salvageable hydrocarbons, exploration and production waste, crude oil and spill cleanup waste, according to BP's plan. Solid wastes are being taken to landfills along the Gulf coast in affected states.
Texas City? I am sure the residents there are tickled pink about that.
Rick Perry and his oil boys do not want us to know that the worst of the worst will come to the Houston area.
For example, the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the disposal of oil and gas waste, said BP notified the commission it would send to Texas up to 140,000 barrels of unused drilling mud and waste water generated from washing out vessel storage compartments. The nonhazardous liquid waste would be contained in a disposal well in Liberty County, a commission spokeswoman said.
But Patrick Correges, a spokesman with the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, characterized it quite differently. "Some of the heaviest stuff goes over to you all," Correges said. "We don't have the facilities in this state permitted to manage that."
He could not say with certainty what the waste is, only that it needed to be pumped into the ground. As of the end of May, 55,000 barrels of oily waste water had been transferred to barges bound for Port Arthur, where Newpark Resources has a processing facility and injection wells, Correges said.
"They're Not Talking."
Newpark, a publicly traded company based in The Woodlands and listed on BP's waste management plan as a contractor, declined to answer questions about its work with BP. According to the Newpark website, it operates a 50-acre injection well facility in Big Hill and a 400-acre well site near Beaumont.
United Environmental Services in Baytown , which is also listed on BP's plan, said it couldn't respond to questions last week but confirmed it was receiving oil waste from the Gulf.
A separate company, Trinity Storage Services, which is not listed on the BP waste disposal plan, said it received about 30,000 barrels of drilling mud that BP had planned to use in its failed effort to plug the well using a procedure called a top kill.
Trinity will pump the mud into the company's underground salt cave in Liberty County, said co-owner Ray Welch. "It never comes back," he said. "We put it in a salt cavern, and it stays there forever."
It will stay in the salt cavern forever? We've heard this song before. We've seen the movie more than once. There would never be a financial melt down like the one we saw in 2008. The financial market, according to Dick Cheney, would regulate itself. Nor would there ever be an oil disaster of the magnitude of that of BP in the Gulf of Mexico today. W. and Cheney's oil boys would regulate themselves. Just like the late CEO of Enron, Ken Lay, regulated the crashed and burned Enron.
Forever in this context is nothing more than a very cynical pipe dream. Forever is a trojan horse of a fairy tale that will deliver a horror show.
The people in the Houston/Galveston areas are the ones that will have to pray for miracles now. |
