Deregulation & Misinformation Escalated A Major Fracking Accident That You Likely Did NOT Hear About!

I had barely heard about this since it happened, even though it seems to me that this really should have been a major, major story, with huge implications. The kind of controversial story that would have demanded major investigations, where you know heads will roll! Perhaps this should be especially true in the wake of the disaster from a fracking disaster that polluted the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of residents in West Virginia.

This, of course, is the flip side of the cure all solution of deregulation that those who advocate it conveniently sweep under the rug, and never want to talk about. And that, of course, is what they did here.

A major spill with obvious implications occurred this past summer in Ohio, with the result being quite evident: thousands of fish lay dead atop the creek, which feeds into the Ohio River.

So, what happened exactly?

There was a fire at a fracking site at Clarington, Ohio, which is in the southeastern part of the state, not far from West Virginia, which had problems earlier in the year with a similar incident that affected the drinking water of hundreds of thousands!

That, in and of itself, would be bad enough, right?

But it went much further than this! Here is how the scene of what happened next was described by Seth Shulman (in Got Science? Ohio Wake-up Call on Fracking Disclosure Laws by Seth Shulman, Senior Staff Writer, Union of Concerned Scientists - see link below):

Ohio firefighters battled the blaze for an entire week. Before they managed to fully extinguish it, the fire caused some 30 explosions that rained shrapnel over the surrounding area; 20 trucks on the site caught fire; and tens of thousands of gallons of chemicals -- including a toxic soup of diesel fuel, hydrochloric acid, and ethylene glycol -- mixed with runoff into the nearby creek, killing an estimated 70,000 fish as far as five miles downstream. State officials physically removed the decomposing remains of more than 11,000 fish and other aquatic life in their efforts to reduce the damage to the waterway.

Okay, that's worse. But it's worse than that! here is how Mariah Blake of Mother Jones (Halliburton Fracking Spill Mystery: What Chemicals Polluted an Ohio Waterway? A recent accident highlights how state fracking laws protect corporate trade secrets over public safety. —By Mariah Blake - see link below) described it:

As flames engulfed the area, trucks began exploding and thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals spilled into a tributary of the Ohio River, which supplies drinking water for millions of residents. More than 70,000 fish died. Nevertheless, it took five days for the Environmental Protection Agency and its Ohio counterpart to get a full list of the chemicals polluting the waterway. "We knew there was something toxic in the water," says an environmental official who was on the scene. "But we had no way of assessing whether it was a threat to human health or how best to protect the public."

There was a strong presence of many fracking chemicals in the water, and the result speaks for itself. Here, according to an article by Duane Nichols of frackcheckwv.com (Over 70,000 Fish & Aquatic Creatures Killed by Pollution from Ohio Frack Well Fire by DUANE NICHOLS on JULY 22, 2014 - see link below), is what happened:

Regulators counted roughly 70,000 dead fish, frogs, crayfish, salamanders and other aquatic after the accident at the Statoil Eisenbarth well pad. Environmental Protection Agency documents state tests show the presence of benzene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, toluene, and pyrene – all chemicals commonly used during well fracking.

Who was responsible? None other than your friend and mine, Halliburton! Yes, the same company that was mired in all sorts of controversy in the lead-up to the Iraq war, back when their former head, Dick Cheney, was serving as Vice-President (some cynics would suggest that he was the de facto President), and Halliburton stood to benefit from the invasion, particularly from the no-bid contracts in Iraq that were the flavor of the moment back then.

Yes, the fracking site belonged to Halliburton.

You might think that when a name like Halliburton is involved with such a disaster, it would raise some eyebrows, and make major news headlines.

Yet, you barely heard a thing about it (at least domestically), and there's a reason for that.

Halliburton has chemicals in their fracking practices that are protected as a trade secret, and so there was no real disclosure about what exactly was in them. They did disclose some of what was in there to the Ohio Department of the Environment, but that came days after the spill itself, after the "clean up" effort had seen first responders essentially washing these compounds in the creek, when instead, they should have been very aware that this was a Hazmat situation which should have required special procedures. This would have required a Hazmat plan by qualified local forces to be implemented, but that never happened, since Halliburton used the "trade secret" status to  prevent such a scenario.

The spill itself should have made major news headlines. Then, the disastrous results from Halliburton's failure to disclose the dangers of the Hazmat situation should have provoked an even more outraged response.

But it hardly qualified as a blip on the news radar screen, which should be not only shocking, but alarming, given the implications, since fracking is becoming so widespread in the United States, with no slow down in sight.

The major news channels, from which most Americans still get their news, really did not cover this story like they should have, presumably because many of the corporations that own the major networks have a vested interest in fracking.

Yet, with the extreme dangers involved in Hazmat situations, clean up crews should have proceeded with extreme caution, and protection measures for first responders, and obviously the general public, should have been implemented and followed to the letter.

That did not happen, and people were put in danger. The very people who are supposed to help the rest of us in situations like this - the first responders - were put in harm's way, and essentially, because they were not informed of the danger of the situation, they simply dumped these chemicals into a major waterway, which never should have happened!

Fracking disclosure laws protected Halliburton in this case and, again, these laws are designed to help protect major corporation like Halliburton rather than average citizens. This is the result of the "deregulation" fever, when it is allowed to go to the extreme, as it far too often is. That water that was polluted was not insignificant, and it could all too easily have affected the drinking water of the local population! Given that West Virginia, which borders Ohio, had a famous, and disastrous, similar situation just earlier this year, these should serve as a wake up call!

Instead, it was severely underreported, which is tantamount to a cover up in this case. A cover up by the very people who are supposed to tell the American people such stories that could potentially affect them, and inform them of the dangers involved. So, while Halliburton was not held accountable for putting many people in Ohio in danger, you could make the argument that the major American news media did the same with the American people as a whole!

Much debate has arisen regarding fracking, and this practice is viewed with extreme skepticism in other nations, and has even been banned in some countries!

But not here in the United States, where many people still feel that this is the freest country in the world! Many of the same people that believe that also believe that systematic deregulation is the only way to go!

I think this story speaks volumes about the results of all of that. What happened in West Virginia should have been the serious wake up call, yet this incident in Ohio was hardly reported by what many would consider the "real news" in tis country. Why do I get the sinking feeling that we are going to hear about similar stories in the future, and likely, only through the grape vine. Only through alternative news sources, blogs, or foreign news sources. And the cycle goes on and on and on! Greed is what makes America run these days, and it is clearly increasingly to the detriment of the American people.

Truly unbelievable, and despicable!






Got Science? Ohio Wake-up Call on Fracking Disclosure Laws by Seth Shulman, Senior Staff Writer, Union of Concerned Scientists  Posted: 07/31/2014 4:28 pm EDT Updated: 07/31/2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-shulman/got-science-ohio-wake-up_b_5639164.html




Halliburton Fracking Spill Mystery: What Chemicals Polluted an Ohio Waterway? A recent accident highlights how state fracking laws protect corporate trade secrets over public safety. —By Mariah Blake | Thu Jul. 24, 2014

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/halliburton-ohio-river-spill-fracking





Over 70,000 Fish & Aquatic Creatures Killed by Pollution from Ohio Frack Well Fire by DUANE NICHOLS on JULY 22, 2014

http://www.frackcheckwv.net/2014/07/22/over-70000-fish-aquatic-creatures-killed-by-pollution-from-ohio-frack-well-fire/