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EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

epa.gov

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Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#211

Post by sclarisse »

akira2501 wrote: post #151
sclarisse wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that protects them is limited liability, as it does many corporations. They can only lose everything the company has, and not more. If you, random HNer, have some holdings of this railroad in your stock portfolio, they cannot come after you for millions. Thus stock ownership is safe for non-billionaires. Bankruptcy, rather — the serious kind — erases all ownership, sells the company off to new owners, and p…

The thing that really protects them is refusal to use anti-trust law to break these large uncompetetive monopolies up. A signal is when these companies begin to engage in massive stock repurchase programs.

Returning money to investors is great, whether it’s buybacks or dividends. It’s the core purpose of a company. The primary alternative is growing the bigcorps ever bigger, more powerful, and dangerous. Ever-expanding bloated conglomerates.

The good argument against buybacks is that companies tend to do it when the stock is high, and that’s bad for the shareholders.

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#212

Post by HarryHirsch »

xadhominemx wrote: post #29
HarryHirsch wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes. But there was also several tank cars of acrylic ester that were breached and whose contents are now on the way into the groundwater. Anyone whose water is from a private well is not to be envied.

Are you talking about Ethylhexyl acrylate? Not very toxic outside of high dose acute exposures.

I take you have never handled acrylic esters - the stuff smells distressing, it's likely a sensitizer, and from its reactivity it just can't be good for you.

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#213

Post by digdugdirk »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #150
digdugdirk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The medical costs alone should be an eye popping number. Its going to be interesting to see the interplay between infrastructure/healthcare/environmental regulations with this completely preventable, entirely foreseeable accident over the coming years.

What medical costs? The town has ~4000 residents. If they pay for several doctors visits and checkups, we are talking about a couple million dollars. They could cover health insurance for the entire town for a similar cost per year. Replacing the train is likely to be more expensive. The real cost will probably be environmental testing and remediation. Even if there isn't an big impact, it will take a lot of money to…

I was thinking lifetime costs. Every future case of cancer is going to be looked at and traced back, whether it's known to be directly attributable to the event or not. This is just a huge (un)natural experiment.

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#214

Post by NotYourLawyer »

cakeface wrote: post #184
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock buybacks are economically equivalent to paying dividends, but they’re less costly from a tax perspective. Are dividends also to be banned? If so, what is even the purpose of a company, and who would possibly invest in a it knowing that it can’t pay any returns?

I suspect your question is rhetorical but I, and quite a few other Marxists, would say yes. Dividends, stock buybacks and other types of profit should be banned.

lol

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#215

Post by NotYourLawyer »

akira2501 wrote: post #188
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock buybacks are economically equivalent to paying dividends, but they’re less costly from a tax perspective. Are dividends also to be banned? If so, what is even the purpose of a company, and who would possibly invest in a it knowing that it can’t pay any returns?

> Stock buybacks are economically equivalent to paying dividends Okay.. what's the chain of logic here? > but they’re less costly from a tax perspective. Sure.. but they also interfere with the "public ownership" ideal, which is the specific principle I was commenting about in the original. > Are dividends also to be banned? No.. just buybacks. I think you can still have dividends, even though there's some abstract i…

Buybacks don’t interfere with public ownership. They just boost the share price. Any member of the public who wants to remain a shareholder just… doesn’t sell his shares.

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#216

Post by ars »

thearn4 wrote: post #112
Rimintil wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than introducing FUD about the cleanup costs, why would you believe there is overstatement on the impact of the disaster? What metric has you doubting the impact statement? What are your qualifications to make this assessment?

I'm thinking about what I've read on social media (twitter, reddit, etc) about the event. The posts getting the most engagement/traction are convinced this is larger than Chernobyl. However, relevant authorities do not seem to agree with this. But I have no environmental sciences credentials to speak of.

It's more like 3 Mile Island than Chernobyl - huge fuss, little actual long term damage.

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#217

Post by fr0sty »

piva00 wrote: post #162
rootusrootus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much less than 1000 (my German is pretty rusty)? e.g. 900 vs 1100 is not really statistically different, and doesn't suggest a systemic problem. Especially given the heavy focus on shipping for the US rail network versus passengers in the EU. Tracks in the US that are used for passengers are maintained better than shipping-only tracks, for sure.

Entgleisungen would be derailments. The EU-27 transported 2,927 billion ton-kilometres of rail freight, the US ~2,200 billion ton-kilometres.

Where did you find those EU-27 numbers? I am seeing something around ~400B ton-km.

> "Rail freight activity in Europe, measured in tonne-kilometers, grew from 339 Billion tonne-km in 2003 to 398Billion tonne-km in 2019" Page 14

https://erfarail.eu/uploads/The%20European%20Rail%20Freight%...

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#218

Post by vkou »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #159
ccooffee wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before the bankruptcy filing, J&J faced costs from $3.5 billion in verdicts and settlements, including one in which 22 women were awarded a judgment of more than $2 billion, according to bankruptcy court records. Around the same time as the LTL shenanigans, on 2022-09-14 J&J announced a $5billion stock buyback[0]. It's not that J&J didn't have the money which led them to do the "Texas two-step" and push liability t…

None of this strikes me as nefarious. The point of the bankruptcy filing wasn’t to bilk creditors. It was to get them all equal payouts instead of a bunch of random jury-dependent judgment amounts.

The problem with doing something illegal is that the consequences of your actions include having to pay out a bunch of random jury-dependent judgement amounts.

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#219

Post by ilyt »

clcaev wrote: post #177
bombcar wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to put the screws to the rail companies isn’t to regulate better brakes - just have the NTSB have a policy of shutting down any line that has a derailment for months or longer. The companies will solve it themselves.

The rail companies are "too big to fail" since they are core national logistics.

They will raise prices and if other logistic will fill the gap, well, they weren't so core after all

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#220

Post by s1artibartfast »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #204
s1artibartfast wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What types of assistance would require action at a federal scale? it seems like a pretty manageable problem at the state level. It seems like there is a huge outcry that "something must be done" without really examining what that something would be or reviewing what is already being done . Do people have shelter or need it ? Do people have access to medical care or need more? Are safety tests being conducted or not?…

Money. Most states have very little funding for emergency recovery, so it's routine to use a federal emergency declaration to authorize federal funding. In general with civil emergencies, the state has the authority but the feds have the money.

How much money and to do what?
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