What a tough month for the environment. I mean it is getting to the point that I may not survive. I mean originally I was thinking that environmental problems would effect my brothers and sisters grandchildren. Then I thought maybe the kids themselves. But the way things are going what about me?

http://news.yahoo.com/rig-owner-eyes-relief-well-divert-gas-off-080328100.html

KEVIN McGILL and JANET McCONNAUGHEY 2 hours ago

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The owner of a natural gas drilling rig aflame off of Louisiana’s coast said preparations were under way for the possible drilling of a relief well to divert gas from the site and bring the well under control.

Adam Bourgoyne, a former dean of Louisiana State University’s petroleum engineering department, said such an effort is a complicated task that could take weeks to complete.

The relief well team has to figure out questions such as where to intercept the well bore and what tools will be needed. The surface team has to figure out whether it’s safe to get onto the platform, how much debris there is and how it can be removed, he said.

“Sometimes, if the well control blowout preventers are intact, they might be able to get on-site and put down enough water and so forth,” said Bourgoyne, now a consultant.

:}

More steam rising from Fukushima reactor

Camera feed shows more steam escaping from Japanese nuclear plant but officials say levels of radioactivity unchanged.

The operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan said that steam had been spotted at the battered reactor for the second time in days and disappeared in hours.

Steam was seen around the fifth floor of the building housing Reactor No 3 Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said on Tuesday.

The steam has raised concerns about the damaged reactor, but TEPCO said no significant changes occurred, including in the levels of potentially cancer-causing radioactivity the broken reactor is releasing.

Steam was spotted in the same area on Thursday last week but had disappeared by the next day without any cause known. TEPCO said it was looking at the possibility that accumulated rainwater had been the source

:}

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/quebec-train-crash-brakes_n_3574564.html

Quebec Train Crash: Employee Failed To Properly Set Brakes, Railway CEO Says

By DAVID CRARY 07/10/13

LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec — Canadian officials are now telling the families of the 30 people missing in a runaway oil train crash over the weekend that all are presumed dead.

With 20 bodies found, that would put the death toll from Saturday’s derailment and explosions at 50.

The head of the U.S. railway company whose oil train crashed into the Quebec town has blamed the engineer for failing to set the brakes properly. A fire on the train just hours before the crash is also being investigated.

Parts of the devastated town had been too hot and dangerous to enter and find bodies even days after the disaster. Some 60 had been presumed missing earlier.

:}

Go there and read. More next week.

:}

But it is all about the money now isn’t it? That would be a big YES. I imagine picking on some of the gentlest people in the world will land you in hell.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113354/energy-companies-take-advantage-amish-prohibition-lawsuits#

The Amish Are Getting Fracked Their religion prohibits lawsuits—and the energy companies know it

BY MOLLY REDDEN

It was late 2010 when a chipper agent for Kenoil, Inc., a drilling company in Eastern Ohio, drove to the nearby hamlet of Millersburg to visit Lloyd Miller. His car slithered down the hill overlooking the Millers’s home and white farm buildings, past a set of pine green drums, pipes, and gauges—a shallow oil well that Kenoil had drilled on the Millers’s property many years ago—and stopped in front of the aluminum barn where the family, who are Amish dairy farmers, lodges its horses and buggy. The agent had an unexpected business proposition for Lloyd and his wife, Edna: Kenoil wanted to lease the right to drill on the Millers’s land for shale gas. And for a lease of five years, he could offer them $10 an acre that same day.

The timing felt providential. The couple, who have several young children, were still paying off a 2006 loan they’d used to buy a small farm adjoining theirs. Gazing in the direction of his 158 acres, as he talked with me at his kitchen table in March, Miller said, “We thought, ‘Hey, that’s $1,500 we didn’t have.’” Still, he asked the agent about rumors of farmers who’d been given much larger signing bonuses in similar deals. He remembered the agent grinning dismissively as he said farms in the area were not leasing for more than what was offered. Miller, 46, considered the Kenoil well on the hill, and the years of good relations he had enjoyed with the company. “I just trusted him,” he said. The Millers signed the lease.

It was maybe two weeks, Miller figured, before they realized the enormity of what they’d done. First, their local paper, The Bargain Hunter, carried a front-page story advising farmers their land could be worth hundreds per acre to oil and gas companies. He compared notes with landowners nearby while on trips to the sale barns where farmers trade livestock, and when other farmers delivered hay for his cows. Miller is physically imposing—stout and broad-shouldered—but also painfully timid. When pressed on what his neighbors had earned, he gazed for a long time at Edna, who, with one of their daughters, was chalking the outline of a man’s pantleg onto a bolt of wool rolled out on the table. “My wife and I took turns kicking each other in the butt.” He paused for a long while. “Our ten dollars an acre compared to $1,000.”

:}

Go there and read. More next week.

:}