January 22, 2011
Unintended Consequences
Ever watch in shared sadness as some guy applies some personal initiative to change his own oil? These guys have some things in common. They are usually looking very rugged in their flannel lumberjack shirts and worn jeans, hunkered down under the front end of the victim as it rests on ramps. But that's where the similarity ends. Some of these guys actually bring old paint cans with them to catch the slushy brew as it slides out of the crankcase. Other guys are more inclined to engage in a little game of self-help by parking over the most convenient storm drain and letting the carbon-based effluent return to nature.
Orlando- Florida is widely known as the stomping ground of our Nation's retirement eligible. The rest of the country will resemble it soon enough as the vast generation of baby boomers gets squeezed through our financial system like a softball through a garden hose. Those folks down in Florida right now would sure be smiling if a Viagra truck got rinsed out into the local aquifers. Imagine the smiling hoards of sunseekers rushing to bathe in the local creek. Remember the movie Cocoon when all the old folk got happy again? Now you know.
Asbury Park- Folks that live in New Jersey tend to be drawn to large bodies of water. The Atlantic Ocean serves this purpose nicely but, sadly, it is only available for full body immersion a few months out of the year. The local pools stay open a little longer, but not much. And a shower is a poor surrogate. So the good folk of Jersey sink into a deep slump after the autumnal equinox and don't emerge until spring peaks out. A condition that could be mitigated by rinsing out the occasional Xanax truck into the Raritan River.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that a firm in the city of brotherly love, Chemical Equipment Labs, has been accused of inflicted a little self-help on the lovable city. To be specific, the firm, which is a frequent user of caustic chemical solvents and other nasty chemistry lab nightmares, was caught rinsing out chlorine trucks and emptying the remains into the Marcus Hook Creek. The article gives the Marcus Hook Creek the lofty suffix "tributary of the Delaware river", but I suspect the Marcus Hook Creek has as much to do with the mighty Delaware River as the spring running through my parents' basement.I'm not sure how many of you are personally acquainted with Marcus Hook. I'm not, so I might as well spout off about it. Here's what I know from dimly recollected book learning, loosely recalled conversations with poorly informed buddies, and news accounts of checkered integrity. Marcus Hook is to Pennsylvania as I-95 is to NJ - a vast swath of industrial wasteland highlighted by Sunoco's refinery haze and, as I recall, the remnants of the American steel industry. It's really not a very nice place to visit. And I would know, since I've never visited. But anyway, let's just say that, from an environmental standpoint, the last thing Marcus Hook is worried about is a few extra solvent rolling downstream from Philadelphia.And what better solvent than chlorine? Now the children of Marcus Hook can swim in the previously murky waters of the Marcus Hook Creek and, with any luck, the town folk can bath their drab burb and polish it to a gleaming shine! Imagine a big bald Mr. Clean towering over suburban Philly with bucket and sponge in hand scrubbing the harshest layers of grime from the Sunoco refinery. Chemical Equipment Labs got five years probation for their indiscretion. Seems to me the people of Marcus Hook should be sending them a big thank you letter and forming bucket brigades from the banks of the Marcus Hook Creek to the inner reaches of the town so the can rinse the crud.What other communities could benefit from a little corporate environmental malfeasance?
