Are landfills the best solution for rubbish

[zoobyshoe]

Out of my price range. If only I had a million dollars...

I was thinking about you and me, and being green, and doing this type stuff yesterday.
If you notice from an earlier post, Scandinavian countries can't get enough of this stuff. Not only for electricity, but they use otherwise wasted thermal energy to heat homes.
I think you kids down in southern Cal should compact all your waste plastic, put it on a train, and ship it up here.
We can recycle it, and heat our homes at the same time!

If you're interested in cheap home heating consider a waste oil burner. It burns the oil people drain out of their cars when they change the oil. The oil is mixed with forced air so there is extremely little soot. You get all the bad gasses, but they're invisible.

I have a cousin back east who owns an auto repair shop. He gets all the free oil he can burn and installed one of these waste oil heaters. It keeps the shop pretty warm even in winter. You could put an add in Craigslist saying you'll take people's old oil or something. Make a deal with an oil change place. After the unit is paid for there's no additional expense (well, a bit on the electric bill to run the air blower). There's a few people on youtube who made their own (not that these home made ones look too great).

I just dug out my mother's old electric skillet. I think it may be ideal for this project.

Notice the guy in your video had no luck with the electric skillet. He had to switch to the toaster oven.

Well, the trash around here has probably been collecting for years, so hopefully once it's all cleaned up, I won't have to bend over every 6 inches. It would probably take me 8 hours to harvest all the trash, on the 3/4 mile round-trip walk to the store.

Yeah, that could get tiresome even for a kid.

 

[OmCheeto]

If you're interested in cheap home heating consider a waste oil burner...

Nope. I have plenty of wood.

Notice the guy in your video had no luck with the electric skillet. He had to switch to the toaster oven.
...

Lots of good ideas, but he appears to have more money than science background.

I've got lots of sciencey stuff in my head, but no money.

Time for my nap now. Hasta mañana!

 

[mheslep]

Unregulated free markets are a poor solution to problems like this.

Where do these (unregulated free markets) exist? Public facing businesses are required by law to provide recycling containers, as just one example.
http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/recycle/commercial/
http://recycling.arlingtonva.us/business/

 

[wolram]

Here is how the Britts do it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16812103

In what critics see as yet another example of Britain "gold-plating" European regulations, the UK government has operated an escalator, raising fines on landfill every year since 1998; from £7 per tonne then, to £64 now.

What this means in practice is that councils are forfeiting millions in fines at a time when local services are already under unprecedented pressure.

Over the past year, Worcestershire County Council has been fined £6 million. That's the same as their budget for their libraries and four times what they have to spend on subsidies for local bus services.

But surely the onus should be on councils to replace this most environmentally-unfriendly method of waste disposal?

According to the Local Government Association, councils support the overall objective, but struggle to meet the increasingly demanding targets set by the UK government: to reduce the amount they send to landfill to 50% of their 1995 levels by 2013, and to 35% by 2020.

 

[edward]

Where do these (unregulated free markets) exist? Public facing businesses are required by law to provide recycling containers, as just one example.
http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/recycle/commercial/
http://recycling.arlingtonva.us/business/

I agree that there is heavy regulation in the free market. The really large companies can send lawyers and lobbyists to DC to fight the regulations, the small companies can't. As far as waste and landfills go my area has one company , Waste Management, that does 90% of the collection and they also own the only landfill.

We do need to come up with some innovation. When Waste Management opened their huge land fill, they bought the other two out and closed them down. I now have to drive 40 miles one way to dump a load of tree limbs and yard waste. A lot of what goes into that landfill could be crushed and shredded first, but it is more profitable to just dump an old couch, for instance, into that massive hole in the ground.

 

[OmCheeto]

Where do these (unregulated free markets) exist? Public facing businesses are required by law to provide recycling containers, as just one example.
http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/recycle/commercial/

Well that's an interesting statistic they mention there:

"... the commercial sector generates nearly three fourths of the solid waste in California. Furthermore, much of the commercial sector waste disposed in landfills is readily recyclable."​

Pigs!

http://recycling.arlingtonva.us/business/

Well, if they're anything like the California businesses, they should be forced to recycle.
I see that the residential rate does NOT promote recycling. Bad move Arlington!

Refuse Rate (residential accounts only): $271.08 annually...​

Over the past year, Worcestershire County Council has been fined £6 million.

Well, with a population of 566,500, that comes to only £0.88/per person per month.
I'm currently paying £16.18 (24.75 usd) per month for this service!

I probably should have checked my rate structure YEARS ago, as I see I can reduce it down to £7.09 (10.85 usd) per month.
I didn't realize until just now that I'm paying for yard debris recycling. £6.31 (9.65 usd) per month. I'd been recycling this myself for 15 years!
Now I'll have to build a new compost bin. My old one was 80 ft³. I have lots of trees. I took it apart about 3 years ago, and have repurposed the wood for quite a few new projects.

But anyways, I think the system here works the best, as it provides financial incentive to recycle as much as possible.

Annual fees
City           garbage   garbage
               only      + recycle
Portland OR    $342.60   $130.20      based on my production rates
Arlington VA   $271.08   $271.08

I don't like the idea of "fines" (except when people are caught putting trash in the recycle bins. Cheaters!), as this strikes me as adversarial (This is ********* govt intrusion! 'Murka!), vs a rate structure that reflects true costs, and makes people "think" they are gaming the system to their own financial benefit. Is it any wonder that Portland is listed consistently among the top 5 US recycling cities? [ref] [another ref] [ignore the other lists, as they are stupid] And this is, once again, WITHOUT mandatory recycling.

 

[mheslep]

The really large companies can send lawyers and lobbyists to DC to fight the regulations, the small companies can't.

I observe it is generally the other way around, that large companies encourage more regulation and often author the regulation because it gives them an advantage over smaller competition as the small don't have the resources to accommodate overhead like compliance paperwork staff. A recent example in the news would be new financial regulations, which pushe up the cost of lending. One might naively think business would oppose such regulation, but the large still have access to cheap subsidized loans via means such as the thoroughly corrupt Export Import bank, which Congress just reauthorized with some Republican votes and all of the Democrats (186 yea, 1 nay) The corner baker doesn't get ExIm loans. Yes this is a lengthy description of crony capitalism.

The real threat to large companies has always been the small and nimble which change the nature of the market. The cost of regulation on the other hand can be passed on to the buyer, and is.

 

[mheslep]

Pigs!

Who? Business, or people that buy every bit of the product they make, like the computer you used to make that post.

 

[OmCheeto]

I agree that there is heavy regulation in the free market.

Does your daughter still live here in Portland? I'd be curious of her thoughts, on the change of environment.

The really large companies can send lawyers and lobbyists to DC to fight the regulations, the small companies can't. As far as waste and landfills go my area has one company , Waste Management, that does 90% of the collection and they also own the only landfill.

I think "Waste Management" is the "master" of our collection services also. More a "general contractor" type deal, as I believe we have about 40 different companies hauling our "stuff" away.

We do need to come up with some innovation. When Waste Management opened their huge land fill, they bought the other two out and closed them down. I now have to drive 40 miles one way to dump a load of tree limbs and yard waste. A lot of what goes into that landfill could be crushed and shredded first, but it is more profitable to just dump an old couch, for instance, into that massive hole in the ground.

I think our posts point out a good point: One man's trash, is another man's treasure.
I've never composted a tree branch, as I can heat my home with them!
It gets cold up here.

hmmm... google google google

Ah ha!

This would explain why I disassembled and burned the wood from my mother's broken old swivel-rocker one year, and why my dad moved to Arizona 4 decades ago.
Do you know how many times it's simply gotten up to 65°F in January up here?
Once!
In my lifetime anyways.
I ran naked around the back yard.

 

[OmCheeto]

"... the commercial sector generates nearly three fourths of the solid waste in California. Furthermore, much of the commercial sector waste disposed in landfills is readily recyclable."

Pigs!

Who? Business, or people

Business. 3/4 of the solid waste in California is generated by business.

that buy every bit of the product they make, like the computer you used to make that post.

Non sequitur, in my case, as I've never thrown away a computer, nor peripheral.
I have though, taken stuff to e-tronic recycling places.
My friends and I made a grand day of disassembling a Tektronix printer, as I recall.
hmmm...
pfoogle pfoogle pfoogle

Eureka!

My friends were over the other day and we removed, from my spare bedroom, and disassembled a Tektronix Phaser 540 in the back of my truck. Mostly because we wanted to know how a printer could weigh what I estimated to be about 100 lbs. A grand time was had by all.

[ref: PF!]

I absconded with a myriad of tiny screws, a multi-sided spinning mirror, and "a laser".

​

 

[Jeff Rosenbury]

Where do these (unregulated free markets) exist? Public facing businesses are required by law to provide recycling containers, as just one example.
http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/recycle/commercial/
http://recycling.arlingtonva.us/business/

A blanket requirement to "recycle" is not a free market solution. Recycling is poorly defined and poorly executed. Thus OmCheeto's factoid about ¾ of the waste coming from the regulated commercial sector seems reasonable.

A free market solution would assign economic costs more fairly, allowing businesses to come up with solutions that directly addressed real problems rather than a one size fits all solution that works poorly.

Free markets have many flaws, but they are strong at efficiently solving production problems.

 

[OmCheeto]

A blanket requirement to "recycle" is not a free market solution. Recycling is poorly defined and poorly executed. Thus OmCheeto's factoid about ¾ of the waste coming from the regulated commercial sector seems reasonable.

A free market solution would assign economic costs more fairly, allowing businesses to come up with solutions that directly addressed real problems rather than a one size fits all solution that works poorly.

Free markets have many flaws, but they are strong at efficiently solving production problems.

Hmmm... I'm not an economist, so I don't really understand what a "free market" means.
Going over the wiki entry, it appears that "free market" fits into my definition of "wacko as religion and politics".
Everyone has an opinion about what's right and wrong.

A blip just popped up on my Facebook feed, and it reminded me of this thread, as it mentioned "free market", and the commenter kind of mirrored what I've been thinking for several years.

http://usuncut.com/climate/bill-gates-only-socialism-can-save-us-from-climate-change/

Since World War II, U.S.-government R&D has defined the state of the art in almost every area.
The private sector is in general inept.

[original article: Atlantic, Nov 2015]

Since "free market", is somewhat an obtuse subject, I think I'll follow my earlier lead:

I think I'll not respond any more to "recycling is bad" posts

and not respond to it further, as it's really not a very well defined subject. To me, it's just a weasel phrase.

ps. I've been doing experiments in my oven over the last 36 hours: Roasting bell peppers to make Paprika. I know this may not seem relevant, but it is to me, as I can roast HDPE in my oven, and keep my house warm at the same time. Why turn on my heat, when I can be doing science!

 

[OmCheeto]

I think I have a love/hate relationship with Mr. Zuckerberg...

this just popped up:

Dow Co-Sponsors “Energy Bag” Pilot Program for Plastic Waste [Dow Chemical]
Collaborative effort demonstrates a recycle-to-energy alternative that diverts plastic waste from landfills
MIDLAND, Mich. - 02/17/2015

Dow, along with the Flexible Packaging Association, Republic Services, Agilyx [YAY! ], Reynolds Consumer Products and the city of Citrus Heights, Calif. joined forces during the course of 2014, to drive a collection pilot program intended to divert non-recycled plastics from landfills and to optimize their resource efficiency across the lifecycle.

Results

• Nearly 8,000 purple Energy Bags collected
• Approximately 6,000 pounds of typically non-recycled items diverted from landfills
• 512 gallons of synthetic crude oil produced from the conversion
• 30 percent citizen participation
• 78 percent of citizens said they would be likely to participate if given another chance

hmmmm...

 

[Jeff Rosenbury]

I think I have a love/hate relationship with Mr. Zuckerberg...

this just popped up:
hmmmm...

So 26,000 homes managed to produce 512 gallons of synthetic crude oil. It was a roaring success for the DOW publicity department. Media blurbs make us feel good, a laudable goal. But do they solve the problem?

Every little bit helps, but at some point we need to define success in tons of product made from recycled products per person rather than in grams. Perhaps, like in religion and politics, we need less "science" and more practicality? Sure it's not clearly rational, but the free market works for some value of the word "works".

 

[rootone]

Sure it's not clearly rational, but the free market works for some value of the word "works".

and the value of the word 'works' is at the moment equal to maximum profit (in the US and other primarily market driven countries), or minimum fines elsewhere.
This won't change until politicians see votes in changing it.

 

[Jeff Rosenbury]

and the value of the word 'works' is at the moment equal to maximum profit (in the US and other some other market driven countries), or minimum fines elsewhere.
This won't change until politicians see votes in changing it.

I agree. Yet my argument is not to change the definition of profit, but to better align profit with the public good.

I am not a believer in free markets as free markets. I acknowledge they have severe and sometimes fatal problems. I am a believer in humanity. Free markets or modified free markets are often the best solution to the problems we face. When they are not, we shouldn't use them.

(Also, our economy is no longer a free market. Large corporations are inherently anti-free market.)

 

[OmCheeto]

So 26,000 homes managed to produce 512 gallons of synthetic crude oil. It was a roaring success for the DOW publicity department. Media blurbs make us feel good, a laudable goal. But do they solve the problem?

No. But that doesn't bother me one bit.
I learned many decades ago that some problems have no "discrete" solutions.
The problem, as defined by Wolram, is "Are landfills the best solution for rubbish"
It has been noted that plastics are a major contributor of landfills.
Dow's solution to the "plastic" part of the problem, strikes me as pure genius.

Every little bit helps, but at some point we need to define success in tons of product made from recycled products per person rather than in grams. Perhaps, like in religion and politics, we need less "science" and more practicality? Sure it's not clearly rational, but the free market works for some value of the word "works".

It was an experiment. I love experiments.
If you look closely, the article mentions that the plastic recycled into fuel is that which normally goes to the landfill:

...the Energy Bag Pilot Program which demonstrated that certain plastics like juice pouches, candy wrappers and plastic dinnerware that are not easily recyclable under traditional models, can be converted into synthetic crude oil for fuel.​

.
So people are still sending their 1-6 marked plastics to be recycled conventionally.
What they've recycled into fuel probably accounts for 99.9% of my landfill destined refuse.
Were I to get "purple energy bags", I would generate ZERO* lbs of landfill refuse per year.
So, as far as I'm concerned, it's a good idea.

Btw, the cumulative 660,000,000 tons of plastic, temporarily sequestered in landfills, has a current energy value of about 324 billion dollars.
Which is about 18% more than what us colonists cumulatively spent on gasoline back in 2014.
So, we're not really talking about "grams" here.

Yes. I know. Crude oil is a bit cheaper than gasoline. But it was fun to look at non-grammy numbers. *I could hide the other 0.1% in a large tin under the back porch. Mostly old loudspeakers, with magnets. I do not know how to recycle old magnets...

 

[OmCheeto]

I agree. Yet my argument is not to change the definition of profit, but to better align profit with the public good.

I am not a believer in free markets as free markets. I acknowledge they have severe and sometimes fatal problems. I am a believer in humanity. Free markets or modified free markets are often the best solution to the problems we face. When they are not, we shouldn't use them.

(Also, our economy is no longer a free market. Large corporations are inherently anti-free market.)

I know I said I wouldn't respond to anything regarding "free market", but this is pure magic.
I have just learned, that "Free Market" is a noun, and;

A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea.​

I'm guessing it's some kind of "idea", from what I've recently read.

Ergo:

I am not a believer in ideas as ideas. I acknowledge they have severe and sometimes fatal problems. I am a believer in humanity. Ideas or modified ideas are often the best solution to the problems we face. When they are not, we shouldn't use them.

(Also, our economy is no longer an idea. Large corporations are inherently anti-idea.)

Jeff, you are one post away from being put on my "ignore" list.

-----------------
Ok to delete.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I do not know how to recycle old magnets...

Donate them to machine shops and auto repair places. They are wonderful for hanging chuck keys, hex wrenches, and other tools off drill presses and lathes and mills, or for keeping screws together. Anyone who recycles aluminum might also want one because they are an easy way to distinguish ferrous from non-ferrous metals when in doubt.

 

[zoobyshoe]

512 gallons of synthetic crude oil produced from the conversion

The question is, how much coal was used to effect the conversion and how many man hours?

 

[OmCheeto]

The question is, how much coal was used to effect the conversion and how many man hours?

Good questions. I don't have the answers.
But the answers would only be part of the solution.
As I mentioned last night, cooking plastic in my oven during the winter requires zero extra energy, as I'd have to turn on my furnace otherwise.

As far as man-hours... hmmmm...
The average adult american spends 33 hours/week watching TV.
At minimum wage, that's $5 trillion.
Perhaps you should expand on what you mean by "man hours".

I'm pretty sure I know what you mean, but the infrastructure is already there, and picking out little purple bags probably amounts to very little, in the big scheme of things.

 

[edward]

I think I have a love/hate relationship with Mr. Zuckerberg...

this just popped up:
hmmmm...

Waste Management has a recycle by mail program. For a fee they will send people boxes for various items, then just send it back and they take care of it. For $19.95 they will send people a box that will hold 4 lb. of dry cell batteries. (no lithium batteries allowed) People can just ; fill the box, send it back., and presume it doesn't end up in a land fill.

They also have very large green plastic bags for outdoor waste and construction debris. They come and pick these up with a truck fitted with a small crane.

http://www.wm.com/residential/recycle-by-mail.jsp

 

[OmCheeto]

Donate them to machine shops and auto repair places. They are wonderful for hanging chuck keys, hex wrenches, and other tools off drill presses and lathes and mills,

hmmm... Maybe I'll keep them

or for keeping screws together.

I do that when disassembling old projects.

Anyone who recycles aluminum might also want one because they are an easy way to distinguish ferrous from non-ferrous metals when in doubt.

I did that just the other day. I was trying to separate my tin can full of very old brass from steel screws, and couldn't tell them apart. I have several hundred bucky-cubes which I keep around the house, which solved the problem. They only weigh 0.45 grams a piece, so they're much easier to carry around than a 2 lb old speaker magnet.

Waste Management has a recycle by mail program.

Well, that's a novel solution, that I'd have never thought of. How far out of town to do you live? I would think a more cost effective way would be to just have selected supermarkets have recycling centers. They sell the junk, so they should be responsible for taking it back. They do that for bottles and cans around here. It's all automatic. The customer puts the cans and bottles in a machine, which reads the barcode, and then prints out a receipt once you're done. Then you take the receipt inside and get your money! I used to do this, but it's such a lucrative endeavor, that every poor person in town now does this for money. And poor people kind of creepy. As in, toothless crazy smile, halloween every day of the year, kind of creepy.

For a fee they will send people boxes for various items, then just send it back and they take care of it. For $19.95 they will send people a box that will hold 4 lb. of dry cell batteries. (no lithium batteries allowed) People can just ; fill the box, send it back., and presume it doesn't end up in a land fill.

They also have very large green plastic bags for outdoor waste and construction debris. They come and pick these up with a truck fitted with a small crane.

http://www.wm.com/residential/recycle-by-mail.jsp

That reminds me. I have dead fluorescent bulbs from as far back as when I bought my house, 26 years ago. Someone remind me in the spring to recycle them. I no longer buy fluorescent bulbs, so I think I'm done with that "era".

 

[zoobyshoe]

Good questions. I don't have the answers.
But the answers would only be part of the solution.
As I mentioned last night, cooking plastic in my oven during the winter requires zero extra energy, as I'd have to turn on my furnace otherwise.

Cooking plastic in your oven won't make oil. It just makes small pieces of plastic into larger pieces after they melt together.

I was asking about how much coal was used to make that 512 gallons of oil from waste plastic. That's a number that absolutely must be pinned down (not necessarily by you, but by someone) to see if this scheme is actually better than putting the plastic in landfills.

As far as man-hours... hmmmm...
The average adult american spends 33 hours/week watching TV.
At minimum wage, that's $5 trillion.
Perhaps you should expand on what you mean by "man hours".

I'm pretty sure I know what you mean, but the infrastructure is already there, and picking out little purple bags probably amounts to very little, in the big scheme of things.

A one-off volunteer effort is one thing, but a sustained effort to keep plastic out of landfills is probably going to require paying people.

My thoughts at this point involve selling the resulting oil back to plastics manufacturers. You'd think oil made from plastic ought to be readily convertible back to plastic, but I'm not sure this is the case. The result of plastic pyrolysis seems to be A.) gasoline B.)kerosene and C.)lubricating grade oil. Separating those requires distillation. It's just not clear to me what plastic oil is good for.

 

[Jeff Rosenbury]

Cooking plastic in your oven won't make oil. It just makes small pieces of plastic into larger pieces after they melt together.

I was asking about how much coal was used to make that 512 gallons of oil from waste plastic. That's a number that absolutely must be pinned down (not necessarily by you, but by someone) to see if this scheme is actually better than putting the plastic in landfills.

A one-off volunteer effort is one thing, but a sustained effort to keep plastic out of landfills is probably going to require paying people.

My thoughts at this point involve selling the resulting oil back to plastics manufacturers. You'd think oil made from plastic ought to be readily convertible back to plastic, but I'm not sure this is the case. The result of plastic pyrolysis seems to be A.) gasoline B.)kerosene and C.)lubricating grade oil. Separating those requires distillation. It's just not clear to me what plastic oil is good for.

I agree with you.

Another thing to consider is how much waste is produced by the process. I assume some of the plastic oil can be burned to fuel the process, but it's a question of how much. So what's left over and how dangerous is it?

For example, suppose the process required a catalyst and leaked small amounts of dangerous PCBs or such? Lots of hydrocarbon chains are both stable and poisonous/mutagens. So reducing 10 tons of plastic might leave 5 tons of oil and 5 tons of waste of varying degrees of toxicity. Or it might leave 9 tons of oil and 1 ton of stable waste. The numbers matter.

And the idea that people should just volunteer to do this sort of thing is offensive to me. Workers deserve to be paid. Offering free workers to help out rich corporations (who should be paying for their mess) undercuts wages and helps the rich get richer and the poor suffer. I'm getting a little tired of subsidizing the rich while poor people die of pollution. (About 30,000 Americans die each year due to coal pollution: China -- I shudder.)

 

[mheslep]

I'm getting a little tired of subsidizing the rich while poor people die of pollution. (About 30,000 Americans die each year due to coal pollution: China -- I shudder.)

Coal fired electric plant emissions are responsible for thousands of early deaths in the US, but I don't know that air pollution distinguishes between rich and poor here.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Coal fired electric plant emissions are responsible for thousands of early deaths in the US, but I don't know that air pollution distinguishes between rich and poor here.

As I mentioned earlier, coal pollutes twice: once when you burn it and once when you mine it.

The cost of human life due to the mining process is pretty much extracted exclusively from the low income people who both live near, and work for, the mines:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2693168/

Appalachia is being destroyed by the mining process known as "mountain top removal."

The long-standing concerns over the impact of the mines on the environment and human health have intensified in recent years with the advent of mountaintop mining. Begun in the 1970s, MTM, also called surface mining, escalated in the 1990s as a cheaper way to access the energy-rich bituminous coal beds lying beneath the Appalachian mountain forests. After a forest is cleared, explosives are used to blast away mountain peaks to expose seams of coal within. Debris from the blasts is deposited in the nearby valleys. Seen from above, MTM looks like brown rash splotches on a green body.

MTM is incredibly efficient. It also may be making people sick. A study of 403 counties in central Appalachia found that those with MTM have higher rates of cancers of the colon, liver, lung and cervix, as well as leukemia, compared with counties without mining. Cancer-related deaths were also more common in the MTM counties.

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/07/31/cancer-epidemic-central-appalachia-354857.html

Strangely, that Newsweek article doesn't even mention the huge toxic coal sludge ponds that are leaking all kinds of pollutants into the ground. The mining companies are not required to do anything about these ponds. When they deplete the coal in a given mountain, they spread a little dirt around, throw some grass seed on it and move on, leaving the sludge ponds in place as is.

In 2000 one of these ponds broke through into old mineshafts below and came out the entrances of the mines, polluting waterways for miles around. The amount of sludge spilled was estimated to be 25 to 30 times greater than the amount of oil spilled by the Exon Valdez. Yet, for reasons not clear to me, this sludge spill is unknown to the average American. I never heard of it until last month. Somehow, coal related pollution is just not given the same press as oil and nuclear pollution. I have no clue why not.
From a contemporary story:

So far, more than 100 miles of creeks, streams, and rivers have been affected, despite attempts by federal and state crews to contain the spreading mess. No human injuries have been reported, but the smothering sludge has been deadly to wildlife.

About 250 million gallons of the creeping goo, known as coal slurry, leaked from a Martin County Coal Corp. waste containment pond on Oct. 11 in Inez, Ky., about 140 miles east of Lexington, and has been inching through streams and rivers. The polluting glop meandered from the mine into creeks, then down the Big Sandy River and into the Ohio River last Friday.

“It’s a big mess, just as bad as if you had a big oil spill,” says Fred Stroud, on-scene coordinator with the Environmental Protection Agency’s emergency response team.

In the wake of the spill, the federal government announced a wide-ranging review of 653 coal-waste dams across the country. But officials are stumped about how to prevent the sludge from contaminating additional waterways in the Southeast.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95285&page=1

 

[Jeff Rosenbury]

Coal fired electric plant emissions are responsible for thousands of early deaths in the US, but I don't know that air pollution distinguishes between rich and poor here.

I wonder how many of the uber-rich live down wind of coal power plants? While many have their homes of record in New York, they seem to spend more time in places like Aspen or Disney World.

I don't blame them for that. I would avoid toxic smoke if I could. Yet I believe everyone matters, not just those on the Riviera. Workers in particular have a right to some of what they produce. There's an ugly name for expecting people to work for free.

Free market capitalism works. And it works best when there's a balance between owners, management, and labor. But for the past 30 years or so, there have been huge gains in worker productivity while workers real compensation was stagnant (or worse). IMO, government policies like expecting people to "volunteer" (It's not volunteering when it's mandatory.) to work for free are a big reason.

 

[Evo]

IMO, government policies like expecting people to "volunteer" (It's not volunteering when it's mandatory.) to work for free are a big reason.

You've lost me here. Government policies to work for free where? At your place of work?

 

[russ_watters]

I'm getting a little tired of subsidizing the rich while poor people die of pollution...

[separate post]

I wonder how many of the uber-rich live down wind of coal power plants? While many have their homes of record in New York, they seem to spend more time in places like Aspen or Disney World.

You switched from "rich" to "uber rich", which is probably a factor of 100 difference in income and population and you said "I wonder", which means you really have no idea. So, basically this is free-form idle speculation, right?

IE, a lot of pretty rich actors really do live in the LA area and rich tech workers in the San Francisco area, and the cities in and around those are 6 of the top 10 most polluted in the country:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...04/30/the-10-most-polluted-cities-in-the-u-s/

A lot of that is pollution from driving - Maseratis burn a lot of gas.

(About 30,000 Americans die each year due to coal pollution

I can't blame you too much for that number because it used to be true, but it is pretty far out of date today.

See:
"Our 2004 study showed that power plant impacts exceeded 24,000 deaths a year, but by 2010 that had been reduced to roughly 13,000 deaths due to the impact that state and federal actions were beginning to have...
This latest report [2014] finds that over 7,500 deaths each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. power plants. "
http://www.catf.us/fossil/problems/power_plants/