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Gosh, It's Never Dull Living Within Miles of Coal Plants, Nuclear Reactors, and Refineries...

And these are only examples of incidents that are publicly reported :

May 18 :
Across the river, nuclear reactor shut down after air line leak

May 17 :
Explosion rocks Sunoco chemical refinery near Claymont; evacuations averted

May 16 :
Delaware City Valero Refinery Releases Sulfur Dioxide Due to Equipment Failure

May 10 :
Delaware City Valero Refinery Releases Hydrogen Sulfide - Cause Unknown

April 15 :
Wilmington has big (coal fly ash +) sludge problem
"The collapse of a long-troubled sewage sludge recycling program could double Wilmington's disposal costs to as much as $4 million yearly as early as December, officials told a City Council committee Tuesday.

State regulators recently ordered the city and a subcontractor to plan for cleanup and monitoring of the current recycling site, near the plant at I-495 and East 12th Street. As much as a million tons of sludge -- mixed with power-plant coal ash, incinerator ash and other industrial castoffs -- have accumulated at the property and could be classified as industrial waste if no takers for the "stabilized sewage sludge" are found."
April 27 :
Nuclear plant in New Jersey (Oyster Creek), oldest in the U.S., closes (again) as equipment fails (again)

Februrary 2 :
Oyster Creek nuclear plant remains shut down amid fire investigation

The Delaware City Valero refinery's releases are an almost daily occurrence :

ViewN13478VALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERY, 4550 WRANGLE HILL ROAD DELAWARE CITYSULFUR DIOXIDEY5/16/2009 7:57:00 AMVALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERYFinal
ViewN13470VALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERY, 4550 WRANGLE HILL ROAD DELAWARE CITYHYDROGEN SULFIDEY5/10/2009 3:22:00 PMVALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERYFinal
ViewY134674550 WRANGLE HILL RD DELAWARE CITY, DE 19706HYDROGEN SULFIDEY5/9/2009 9:50:00 AMVALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERYFinal
ViewY134714550 WRANGLE HILL RD DELAWARE CITY, DE 19706 SULFUR DIOXIDEY5/8/2009 8:40:00 PMVALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERYFinal
ViewY134644550 WRANGLE HILL RD DELAWARE CITY, DE 19706HYDROGEN SULFIDEY5/8/2009 11:13:00 AMVALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERYFinal
ViewY13461VALERO DELAWRE CITY REFINERY 4550 WRANGLE HILL ROAD, DELAWARE CITY, DELAWAREBENZENE Y5/7/2009 10:16:00 AMVALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERYFinal
ViewY13460VALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERY, 4550 WRANGLE HILL ROAD, DELAWARE CITY, DELAWAREHYDROGEN SULFIDEY5/7/2009 10:14:00 AMVALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERYFinal
ViewY134594550 WRANGLE HILL RD DELAWARE CITY, DE 19706BUTANEN5/6/2009 4:06:00 PMVALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERYFinal
ViewY134574550 WRANGLE HILL RD DELAWARE CITY, DE 19706HYDROGEN SULFIDEY5/6/2009 10:27:00 AMVALERO DELAWARE CITY REFINERYFinal











Many of these are just (even bigger) accidents waiting to happen.

Comments

a most peculiar nature said…
I live less than 5 miles from the Sunoco refinery, so we had quite a scare last night.

I'm probably going to end up growing a third eye one of these days with all the stuff that is out there.
May 18, 2009 at 3:47 PM
Brian Shields said…
I was driving past the Indian River Power Plant to make a delivery yesterday, and all I could think of was that I was delivering into the heart of a cancer cluster, that a quarter of a mile to my left was a coal fly ash pit that was constantly eroding and allowing fly ash into the Indian River Bay, and the trainloads of coal leading into the plant were soon to be burned for the sake of our gluttony for electricity.

One 5 minute drive reminded me of the whole cycle.

Than I get back to the store and I see that the water from the town system has turned their wash rags straight green-grey, to the point where soaking them in the washing machine with 2 cups of bleach doesn't even make a dent on the color.

I see that the sink, which only holds rinse water without chemicals, has a ring of this yellow gunk all around the stainless steel tank, which gunks up my steel wool pad like scrubbing a frying pan of burned scrambled eggs.

The state of Delaware's environment is sad.
May 19, 2009 at 11:26 AM
Tyler Nixon said…
Agreed, Brian. The environment is one thing that should be a libertarian issue.

There should be no freedom to pollute the air, water, and ground we all have to share with each other and pass to future generations.

Property is an artifice that should never be license to damage and destroy the very environment we all must share.

Polluting and damaging it is an act of both individual and collective harm that cannot be defended by laissez faire economic notions.
May 19, 2009 at 1:43 PM
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