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[Aqizzar]

Today, a land collapse at a coal power plant in Oak Creek, Wisconsin has dumped a small hill's worth of coal slurry into Lake Michigan.  Like similar spills in Tennessee and elsewhere, this means untold amounts of arsenic, mercury, carbon compounds, and God knows what else is now floating in one of America's largest sources of fresh water.  The company has in the last couple hours put some floating line around the spill to try to contain it and is negotiating with private contractors on a clean up.

Ironically enough, it was just two weeks ago that the House of Representatives passed a bill that would remove most of the EPA's authority to control coal ash dumps, found in acres at every older coal power plant in the country, and leave responsibility both for containment and cleaning to the states.  It hasn't passed the Senate (that I know of), and I can't imagine that it will, it just provides at awkward counterpoint.  Interestingly enough, Oak Creek is in Wisconsin's 1st District, represented by none other than Paul Ryan, Republican golden child champion of privatizing Medicare and Social Security and basically eliminating every government program and department he can name.

Anyway, that's your news for the day.  Since I used to live on Lake Michigan, and I kinda have a thing about chemical spills, I'm watching this one pretty closely.  Here we go again.

If we don't make tough decisions today our children are going to have to make much, much tougher decisions tomorrow.

[Tellemurius]

Y wincousin you dickholes, I like my water clean.

[Zrk2]

Dagnabbit Wisconsin why you doo thiiiiis?

My home state seems to be developing a nasty habit of accidentally-ing huge amounts of nasty stuff into fresh water. Then again, can you really do anything about a land collapse?

Retaining wall? Anyway, I, in all my free-market glory, recommend making the idiots that put a dump next to a massive lake and then don't make sure it can't spill pay to clean up that massive lake since it was their own fault.

[Ogdibus]

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[Aqizzar]

Indeed.  I'm no architect or civil engineer, but looking at that picture of the spill, it seems to me that four stories up and fifty yards from the water line is a bad place to pile up your toxic coal sludge, without anything that looks like a wall.  Maybe put it behind the plant instead of next to it?

[Ogdibus]

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[Zrk2]

Yeah. It's shit like this that gives capitalism a bad wrap. If they were actually thinking about long term profit they would have considered the possibility of this and then put it somewhere else, at a slightly higher cost, without running the risk of having to pay for cleaning up something like this. Instead they go 'Aw, fuck it! We'll just run this for 10 years, take the profits, then sell it off and laugh at the poor bastard that buys it.'

Maybe the did it as a fire precaution?, but still, you have a really good point.

I don't think any of that is flammable, but I'm not sure.

[Ogdibus]

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[Luke_Prowler]

Well that's disconcerning, considering I live in Michigan.

Why people are so abhorent to nuclear power when this crap happens I'll never understand

 

[Urist Imiknorris]

Why people are so abhorent to nuclear power when this crap happens I'll never understand

Because NUCLEAR RADIATION POISONING CHERNOBYL OMG AAH

Basically, they bow down in fear at the power of the mighty atom of which they know naught.

[nenjin]

Damn, my grandmother has her house on Lake Michigan. Haven't swam in the lake in years but now....well, good info to know, at any rate.

[LostCosmonaut]

Besides, radiation helps you live longer and gives you cool abilities.
Everything I need to know about nuclear physics I learned from Fallout.

[Bdthemag]

Being a person who switches between living in Minnesota and Wisconsin, I am very very pissed about this. WHY IN GODS NAME WOULD YOU DUMP A LARGE HILL OF FUCKING ASH INTO A LAKE, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT IS GOING TO HAPPEN? EVEN IF YOUR TRYING TO CUT COSTS, THE PUBLIC IS GOING TO FUCKING RAGE AT THIS.

[Heron TSG]

Why people are so abhorent to nuclear power when this crap happens I'll never understand

Because NUCLEAR RADIATION POISONING CHERNOBYL OMG AAH

Basically, they bow down in fear at the power of the mighty atom of which they know naught.

Coal emissions produce more radioactivity by far than fission plants. The odds of Chernobyl happening again [EMPHASIS]WHEN A FACILITY IS PROPERLY BUILT[/EMPHASIS] is next to nothing. Fusion plants, once we break 100% efficiency (nearing it now), will have zero chance of blowing up at all. Meanwhile, in Wisconsin...

[scriver]

I don't know what to say. Things like these make me feel very hopeless and give-up-ish.