Posted on 01/18/2014 1:34:39 PM PST by djf
Freedom Industries, the unfortunately named company whose chemical leak contaminated the water supply for parts of West Virginia, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday.
The company voted to pursue bankruptcy protection during a voluntary board meeting on Friday, according to WVNS-TV. The Wall Street Journal reports official company papers from the meeting estimate their debt at roughly $10 million, which does not include the impending clean-up costs and lawsuits, which will no doubt be immense.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Freedom Industries is incorporated in WV. It’s owned by a PA corporation. This a real example of astute lawyering for the despicable.
So, will this filing make paying any proceeds impossible from the up and coming class action lawsuits?
The last time this place had an inspection from either the state or federals was 1991. During that inspection, the air quality was examined, not the tanks, berm, drains, etc.
Very smart. Blame Bush.
From what I’ve read the owner set up a corporation to lend money to Freedom Industries which put the lender first to claim any money under bankruptcy. There’s nothing there for proceeds. Unless there’s a smarter lawyer out there, the plaintiffs are screwed from the git go.
The reality is that the chemical is not a toxic substance/hazardous material. There’s no way to change the law unless you have the gazillions to start inspecting lots of other stuff nationwide. WV can’t pay people what they’re worth now. Good luck affording more of them.
While it was a mess, it wasn’t a catastrophe. If anything, I’d look at the water company who didn’t know the stuff had bypassed their carbon filters. That may be an issue nationwide. If I was a terrorist that would be my take away from the incident. The water treatment plant is the weak point.
Inspect everything you want as far as chemical storage, but until every water treatment plant is instrumented to know they’ve been attacked either deliberately or accidentaly, we’re vulnerable.
Thanks for your reply. I figured that might be the case.
Most water plants would be able to handle a chemical spill. Not all water plants even have carbon filters and most water plants are only secondary systems, not tertiary. Plus as you noted the chemical is not considered hazardous, so there is no reason the water plant would even be screening/filtering for it.
Activated carbon (AC) is generally used in water treatment for removing free chlorine and / or organic compounds. Removal of organics from potable water could be to prevent common organic acids such as humic or fulvic from reacting with chlorine to form trihalomethanes (a class of known carcinogens) or, to treat waste water to remove any number of organic compounds to make the water suitable for discharge. Similar to other types of water treatment, however, AC filtration is effective for some contaminants and not effective for others. AC filtration does not remove microbes, sodium, nitrates, fluoride, and hardness. Lead and other heavy metals are removed only by a very specific type of activated carbon water treatment and this would typically only be feasible for point-of-use household filters. Activated Carbon Filters
The timing of hatred for coal is too much. No one can convince me there isn’t some laundered deal inside and payoff to leak the chemical. 0bvmmer and his commies are involved.
I mined coal in my younger years. We improved the land by surface mining the coal.
Conservatives shouldn't identify with despoiling the environment.
Wow...West Virginia is really under assault.
The issue in mind is how would a treatment plant know if a toxic substance had entered and wasn’t removed by treatment.
input and output sensors.
“...input and output sensors....”
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Sensors that sense “what”?
They wouldn’t until people started dropping dead or showing up in ER’s.
There is no such thing as sensors that ‘sense’ every contaminate.
Agreed. But water treatment plants typically monitor output for the chems they are obligated to monitor.
From GE Systems:
“Because of the many technological developments in electronics and microprocessor technology over the last decade, there is a wide range of instrumentation available to monitor water treatment systems. The following sections address the systems available to monitor conductivity. pH, corrosion rate, turbidity, dissolved oxygen. sodium, fouling, biological activity, and halogens.”
These are only a few characteristics that can be auto-sensed.
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