BP ARCO’S LOATHSOME ENVIRONMENTAL RECORD

The horrible oil spill now ongoing in the Gulf of Mexico is the latest in a long series of environmental disasters associated with BP ARCO’s history. In 2006, the EPA named ARCO’s Texas City refinery as the nation’s top polluter. 15 refinery workers died at that plant in 2003 during a horrible explosion and OSHA ruled that known equipment problems, failure to follow established safety guidelines, and inadequate training were factors in those deaths and injuries. In November of 2002, BP was fined for spill cleanup problems with a 60,000 gallon Prudhoe Bay pipeline spill; crude oil spilled to wetlands and leaked through ice cracks to a drinking-water lake. BP West Coast was sued for $319 million by California's Southland Air Quality Management District in March of 2003 and lost. An antitrust lawsuit was filed in December of 2005 against Exxon Mobil and BP by the Alaska Gasoline Port Authority; the suit alleged that the two oil giants conspired to eliminate competition for the exploration, development and marketing of natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to markets in the United States in order to drive prices of natural gas artificially higher.

In Yerington, Nevada, BP ARCO has been continuously stonewalling environmental investigation and cleanup of the radioactive-contaminated Yerington Anaconda Mine, which is now known to be leaking uranium and activity into groundwater below the site that flows to local residents and the Yerington Paiute Tribal Reservation to the north; the lives and medical safety of those residents is threatened since they all draw their water supplies from domestic wells located in the path of water migration.

COMMENTS:

BP ARCO’s poor environmental track record is much more extensive than has been described here.  I’d like to say that BP ARCO is getting what it deserves, but the environmental damage being created in the gulf is horrendous. When the water finally settles on this calamity, I suspect that they will be sued, found criminally negligent, and will fight tooth and nail to avoid responsibility. You can bet that their lawyers are already on it and, by the way, BP ARCO spends more on its lawyers every year than it would cost to just go ahead and clean up that mine in Yerington.

TODAY’S QUERIES & ANSWERS:

Q. I think I heard someone on TV say yesterday that it takes more energy to manufacture and install one wind turbine than that turbine can produce in its lifetime? (Marty ~ Burney, CA)
A. Remember that when you drive by all of those magnificent new windmills going up on Hatchet Mountain. I have nightmares at night thinking that they represent Congress and now we’ll have Harry and Nancy and the gang blowing their hot air at us for the rest of our lives.

Q. I heard that all of the uproar about Arizona’s new immigration bill is nothing but a political plot?  (Chip ~ Chico, CA)
A. They took the language of the existing Federal Law, word for word, and adopted it as state law and now Obama and his cronies, the S.E.I.U., ACORN and A.C.L.U. are running around like the jack jackasses they are, braying that the law is unconstitutional when, if the government had done its job and kept the illegals out in the first place, we wouldn’t be having this dialog. I’m so damned tired of their crapola that I’m ready to scream. Their plan, you know, is to somehow legalize the illegals, through amnesty or otherwise, so they can vote.

Q. I hear they are trying to bar a minister, Franklin Graham, from speaking at the National Day of Prayer? (Ursula ~ Kearney, NE)
A. A Muslim group is trying to prevent the son of evangelist Billy Graham from speaking because of his anti-Islam remarks. The Pentagon previously disinvited him after Army leaders decided his comments that Islam is a "very evil and wicked religion" were a problem. I’m not sure yet whether or not the future of this country is going to entail learning how to speak Chinese or some Muslim dialect.

TODAY’S QUOTE:

“Amnesty is a big billboard, a flashing billboard, to the rest of the world that we don't really mean our immigration law.” ~ Richard Lamm

TODAY’S VIDEO: (Speaking of the Yerington Anaconda Mine which is worse, living downstream from a radioactive mine or this?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0l1HAljqSI&feature=mpt%253Atop_stories&playnext_from=TL&videos=LAu61MNc7c8&playnext=1

THE OBAMA TERRORIST TRIALS - DAY 166: