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

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

#151

Post by akira2501 »

sclarisse wrote: post #12
dylan604 wrote: post #3

what kind of protections does bankruptcy afford Norfolk Southern or other corp shenanigans can they pull to avoid having to do anything?

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.

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

#152

Post by award_ »

excalibur wrote: post #133
joe_the_user wrote: post #122

Why isn't the EPA offering trailers outside of town to any worried residents? News reports indicate that people seem to be being poisoned in their homes and staying because they have no other place to go. Edit: Jeesh, of course I mean "why aren't the Feds overall offering trailers". I get the impression the EPA is currently organizing the remediation but that's a side-issue, darn it.

That's FEMA's role, but otherwise that's a damn good question. Yes the company that caused the mess should rightly be on the hook for cleaning it up, but there's still a need for federal disaster assistance.

I believe that has to be requested by the state and, to my knowledge, that has not occurred.

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

#153

Post by jefftk »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #60
jefftk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't really make sense. If the company owes more in fines than it's worth, existing shareholders get nothing and the company belongs to its creditors. If it owes large amounts to the government, those claims convert into ownership too.

Rather than converting the liquid operating budget into paid fines, it converts the shares retained by the company. A company this big doesn't need to sell shares to get operating capital. This should apply to any company that does stock buybacks to inflate stock price, rather than reinvesting into their company, employees, etc.

Depending on the details, this is the same as charging a fine in money or it's worse.

Say the company is worth $1B and has 10M shares that are trading at $100 each. Now there's an accident that will lead to a $100M fine. This get priced in, the value of the company is now $900M, and the stock goes to $90/share. Whether they send $100M to the government in cash or by issuing 11M shares, either way the stock price stays at $90 and investors are equally affected.

On the other hand, if the amount of the fine is higher than the value of the company you'd much rather be a creditor than a shareholder, since in bankruptcy the stock goes to zero.

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

#154

Post by primax »

Alex3917 wrote: post #143
ncallaway wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like something that FEMA would be better prepared to do. I think FEMA should be in the role of protecting the individuals, evacuating people and providing food, water, heating and shelter. EPA should have more focus on directing the cleanup of the area, and making the area safe for residents to return to. And the railroad should be billed every penny of the costs of both.

> That seems like something that FEMA would be better prepared to do. Given that FEMA is perhaps best known for poisoning people with toxic chemicals, who would really be the audience for this? https://grist.org/politics/people-are-still-living-in-femas-...

I'd say FEMA are best known for responding to emergencies, and not poisoning people who have stayed in temporary accommodation far longer than it was intended for

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

#155

Post by s1artibartfast »

joe_the_user wrote: post #144
s1artibartfast wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the EPA has trailers or is responsible for housing people? This seems to be the role of a disaster management organization

Shouldn't it be obvious I'm speaking of the Federal Government generally? What's more important? Stopping people being harmed or getting agencies functions right?

It was not obvious to me. You clearly said one thing calling out the EPA in an thread about the EPA. How am I supposed to infer you didn't mean the EPA.

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

#156

Post by NotYourLawyer »

sp332 wrote: post #6
dylan604 wrote: post #3

what kind of protections does bankruptcy afford Norfolk Southern or other corp shenanigans can they pull to avoid having to do anything?

Well, they could spin off a new company that owns the liability. That sometimes works, although notably courts did not allow Johnson & Johnson to get away with something similar recently. Details https://www.npr.org/2022/09/19/1123567606/johnson-baby-powde... Rejection https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/business/johnson-and-johnson-...

The problem in that case was the bankruptcy filing, not the spinoff. The judge said the spun-off company wasn’t bankrupt.

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

#157

Post by jabroni_salad »

thechao wrote: post #26

Has anyone seen a good analysis on what went wrong? I found a USAToday article with a partial fragment saying that one of the wheels had a failed bearing, and this was the proximal cause of the derailment. It seems to me that (as pointed out in the article) the mean-time-to-failure increases with the length of the train; perhaps nonlinearly? I think the failure rate of bearings is proportional to the length of the tr…

They shipped the wheelset to DC for inspection but we haven't seen the report from that inspection yet. They are also going to inspect the actual site, but are waiting until the site is decontaminated.

So we might get a good ruling on the bearing in the coming weeks but based on other reports that I have read (and I quite enjoy the industrial disaster genre of podcast/video) it will probably be a year or two before the full report is complete.

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

#158

Post by jimkleiber »

dahfizz wrote: post #97
gretch wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the left usually has very weak messaging (as opposed to the right which has strong messaging but is sometimes just blatantly false). Maybe you could call voters to action by saying we need to “protect our -lands-“ (stronger ring than air or water) or even better, “protect our -people- from having to live in a toxic environment”.

I find the current situation really ironic. In my experience, conservatives care way more about the environment than anyone. They are the people who live, hunt, hike, farm, fish in the woods. The average conservative farmer/hillbilly has a much more personal connection with "the environment" than the average urban liberal. But all things environment became associated with the left, so republicans have to reject it as…

I agree with both of you. I talked with a friend about this a while back and it seemed that so much of the language about climate change focused on evoking fear of apocalypse, and overlooked so many other emotions related to the environment. I wondered what it'd look like if instead of showing photos of ducks in oil, we talked about what pristine nature looks like, feels like smells like. Crystal clear waters, creeks one can drink from, etc. Maybe the combination. Something pulling on other emotions besides just terror.

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

#159

Post by NotYourLawyer »

ccooffee wrote: post #33
sp332 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they could spin off a new company that owns the liability. That sometimes works, although notably courts did not allow Johnson & Johnson to get away with something similar recently. Details https://www.npr.org/2022/09/19/1123567606/johnson-baby-powde... Rejection https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/business/johnson-and-johnson-...

> 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.

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

#160

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

throwanem wrote: post #116
mlindner wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. There is no one in East Palestine who got sick from this. There's many derailments throughout the country and chemical spills of other sorts have happened many times.

> There is no one in East Palestine who got sick from this. You're saying this a decade or two early, don't you think? Cancer rates are a trailing indicator. I'm not going to try to address the normalization of deviance implicit in the rest of your comment, because what would be the point?

My first job (1983) was as a bench tech, at a defense contractor (microwave spy stuff/TEMPEST).

We all had these little bottles on our benches, with a funny silver lid that acted a bit like a "birdbath"[0]. You pumped it a couple of times, and the contents would come up, into a shallow bowl. You'd then take a long "Q-Tip" swab, dip it in the liquid, and use that to clean flux off the PCB you were fixing.

They also had open buckets, and people would wash entire assemblies off, in these buckets.

The liquid was trichlor[1]. We had gallons of it, sloshing around. If you got any on your hand, it made the skin turn white, and flake off. It smelled like the demon spawn of acetone and gasoline.

We were assured that it was completely benign, and not to worry our pretty little heads over it.

Let's just say that it can take some time to overcome [in]vested bias.

[0] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832673900981.html

[1] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/s...

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