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Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

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Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#131

Post by drannex »

ratsmack wrote: post #101

>At a press conference Sunday morning, DeSantis said officials are pumping out 33 million gallons of water a day from the pond, and that the water "is not radioactive," although another official added that the water is "not water we want to see leaving the site." Maybe the title needs to be changed. Edit: >Phosphogypsum is the "radioactive waste" left over from processing phosphate ore into a state that can be used f…

If DeSantis says something, it's almost always a fabrication.

The states own ecologist and wildlife managers have confirmed it is indeed quite radioactive.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#132

Post by IAmEveryone »

voisin wrote: post #33
antattack wrote: post #31

Results of a leak that happened in 1997: "amid heavy rains, a dam broke atop one of two gypsum stacks at the Mulberry Phosphates plant on State Road 60, unleashing a 56-million gallon spill of the acidic wastewater into the Alafia River. The pollution killed everything in its path for 42 miles, eventually rolling into Hillsborough Bay. The death toll included more than 1 million baitfish and shellfish and 72,900 game…

> When state officials hit the company with a multimillion-dollar fine for the damage done, it declared bankruptcy and shut down. This makes me furious. The employees and directors all go about their lives elsewhere with nary a scratch despite causing such a disaster. This is the problem with capitalism. Privatize profits, socialize losses. The only solution is to force companies to put up bonds or insurance sufficie…

No after-the-fact mechanism works against risks that take decades to materialise. Responsibility always dilutes faster than environmental toxins. Evidence is lost. Most senior decision-makers have died. Shareholders changed ten times over, etc...

That, plus misplaced optimism and time discounting combine to render even the strongest signal (i. e. the death penalty) blunt as to actually changing behaviour.

These disasters need to be stopped in the planning & licencing phase. For that, you'd need a state government that actually cares, and an EPA that isn't completely gutted every four to eight years.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#133

Post by roenxi »

voisin wrote: post #61
roenxi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel compelled, from the tone of the comment, to point this out: Limited liability isn't some surprise side effect of a corporation's legal structure, it is often right there in the name (Ltd, LLC, Pty Ltd, etc). Yes that structure lets people get away with harmful shenanigans. The system is biased towards optimism. Feature, not bug. The benefits and strengths of this have so far completely outweighed the costs to…

Limited Liability refers to the suppliers of capital, which often differ from the employees and directors that are responsible for the issues like in the article. I am fine with this since there is no moral hazard, but the parties involved / responsible should not be able to take their bonuses, click bankrupt and restart elsewhere under a new name. Society needs more protection, clearly.

You pointed at

> When state officials hit the company with a multimillion-dollar fine for the damage done, it declared bankruptcy and shut down.

That isn't employees and directors being shielded from a criminal charge. That is shareholders being shielded from costs beyond what they risked in the company. Nobody accused the employees or directors of doing anything wrong.

If the directors or employees had broken the law, they should have been prosecuted directly. The fact they weren't is evidence that people with access to the details didn't think they've done anything illegal. The state of environmental law isn't related to matters of profit and loss, or capitalism for that matter.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#134

Post by [deleted] »

leetrout wrote: post #7
horstmeyer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some more information about where those old ponds are located? Thanks!

Coal operations have slurry ponds where they store the sludge from washing the coal. And coal power plants have fly ash ponds which are bad for the environment. We’re shutting down the coal plants but these ponds will be around forever. Here is a map of ash ponds from power plants https://earthjustice.org/features/map-coal-ash-contaminated-... Here’s a link to the slurry spill I lived through with no water for days h…

[deleted]

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#135

Post by BobbyJo »

voisin wrote: post #55
BobbyJo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think people conflate 'capitalism' and 'insufficient regulation'. Capitalism is a framework that requires regulation, even more so than communism or socialism, since the regulations are what defines how the markets work.

I think “insufficient regulation” is an almost necessary byproduct of capitalism. The search for profits leads to regulatory capture in every capitalist society I am aware of. I think this is because it is easier and cheaper to do things like lobby and have a revolving door with regulators and private industry than it is to actually compete with others. Competition is hard.

It's a necessary byproduct of any system run by people, which is why relying on a framework where able is preferable. That's why the US legal system relies so heavily on precedence: creating and agreeing on new law, and reconciling it with existing law, is cumbersome and slow, so make sure no one already did the work.

The benefit of both of those things is consistency.

Completely independent problem from capitalism, and it gets worse the more involved the government is in economic activity.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#136

Post by natmaka »

ohyeshedid wrote: post #97
natmaka wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USSR government collapsed a few years after the Chernobyl disaster and didn't foot the bill of most of its costs. It now costs huge amounts of money to Belarus, which gov has nothing to do with USSR nuclear projects. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53727243 The European Union gave (and, until now, gives) huge amounts of money in order to contain the problem, for example the sarcophagus. https://time.com/525…

Both examples of socialized losses.

"Someone pays for losses" is always true.

"Socialized losses", as far as I understand it, means that the group paying for the losses is the same one as the one which is/was the beneficiary. Does someone think that EU citizens were set to benefit from the Chernobyl plant?

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#137

Post by boomboomsubban »

koheripbal wrote: post #127
boomboomsubban wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't say that capitalism caused the problems, they said that capitalism allowed the shirking of responsibility.

...which is also wrong. Because if you read the article, the insurance company footed the bill for the cleanup.

I'm going to guess the actual cost far out weighs the multimillion dollar fine levied against the company, which their insurance paid.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#138

Post by koheripbal »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #137
koheripbal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which is also wrong. Because if you read the article, the insurance company footed the bill for the cleanup.

I'm going to guess the actual cost far out weighs the multimillion dollar fine levied against the company, which their insurance paid.

And I'm going to guess your guesses are based upon your existing world view, which you are just reinforcing with no additional data.

That's how biases are formed.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#140

Post by Can_Not »

natmaka wrote: post #136
ohyeshedid wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both examples of socialized losses.

"Someone pays for losses" is always true. "Socialized losses", as far as I understand it, means that the group paying for the losses is the same one as the one which is/was the beneficiary. Does someone think that EU citizens were set to benefit from the Chernobyl plant?

The saying is usually more like "privatize the profits, socialize the loses", which is derived from "socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor".

The point of the phrase is that the people who are paying for the costs (tax payers) are not the ones who received any benefit or were going to benefit (profits, shareholders, CEOs, etc.).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_socialism

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