[HN Gopher] EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup a...
___________________________________________________________________
EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related
to derailment
Author : Jimmc414
Score : 207 points
Date : 2023-02-21 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.epa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.epa.gov)
| hanniabu wrote:
| Based on the fact that there's thousands of superfund sites that
| are decades old, this probably won't be cleaned up any time soon
| thrashh wrote:
| Well based on the fact that
|
| - we've cleaned up 25% of sites in a system that only started
| in the 80s
|
| - the infrastructure bill in 2021 bringing back the superfund
| cleanup tax on chemical companies that expired in 1995 -- at
| double the rate
|
| - and Congress also authorizing an extra $3.5 billion 2 years
| ago just for cleanups
|
| I think it's too early to be so cynical
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I've never been sick more often than when I lived in super
| fund defending champion Mountain View during college.
| convolvatron wrote:
| i remember getting a little flyer on my doorknob. 'the soil
| here is toxic. wear shoes when walking outside. dont
| attempt to grow food. otherwise its all good. really.'
| eppp wrote:
| This is a completely broken system though. These cleanup fees
| should be paid for during the waste generation. Just being
| allowed to pollute everything and then paying out the owners
| and declaring bankruptcy leaving it to the tax system to
| clean up is nonsensical.
| blibble wrote:
| in cases like that: if the owners are still around
| (meaning: not deceased) the courts should be able to pierce
| the corporate veil and go after the directors for unlimited
| amounts
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What the courts are allowed to do, and what Judges
| regularly opt to do are extremely different sets.
| ambicapter wrote:
| What about collecting taxes on these companies while
| they're operating and then using that tax money to clean up
| any messes that may occur? Oh wait.
| grouchomarx wrote:
| Sorry that's not how this works. These organizations
| bring in a few handfuls of middle wage jobs. If they
| eventually pollute the site and move to Mexico to save
| $0.11 a unit, that's my successor's problem
| duskwuff wrote:
| > This is a completely broken system though.
|
| When "the system" is working properly, hazardous waste is
| contained and disposed of appropriately, and sites don't
| become polluted. The Superfund program exists to remediate
| situations where that system failed.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| News flash: the 1980s were 40 years ago. At this rate we'll
| all be dead before they're done.
| [deleted]
| joe_the_user wrote:
| 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.
| kunwon1 wrote:
| I have read that the governor of the state isn't requesting
| much in the way of federal assistance, and hasn't yet declared
| a state of emergency, which may or may not be a prerequisite
| for such federal action.
|
| That being said, it seems to me that the entire situation is
| being used as a political football, which makes things murky.
| What everyone seems to agree on is that the residents on the
| ground are not getting the assistance they need.
| citilife wrote:
| https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-explains-why-
| tu...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| 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?
|
| Are cleanup plans progressing or being neglected?
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| 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.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| 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
| joe_the_user wrote:
| 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?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| 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.
| ncallaway wrote:
| 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.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > 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-...
| primax wrote:
| 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
| excalibur wrote:
| 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.
| bloopernova wrote:
| The Ohio governor has not declared it a federal disaster
| area. This prevents certain aid from being used, but
| apparently FEMA is helping out.
|
| There seems to be a lot of confusion about who asked for
| what.
| pmorici wrote:
| That's not what was reported in the news. Sounds more like
| when the Ohio governor requested federal assistance he was
| given the cold shoulder.
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-admin-turns-down-
| ohio...
| excalibur wrote:
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/17/ohio-train-
| derailment...
|
| Debunked my own point along with that one. I'll take it
| :)
| award_ wrote:
| I believe that has to be requested by the state and, to my
| knowledge, that has not occurred.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| I'd like to see the head of the EPA, the transportation
| secretary, the executive team at NS, and anybody in the Biden
| administration who was involved in blocking the rail workers from
| striking move into East Palestine and live there, with their
| children.
|
| Don't want to do that because it isn't safe? Then buy these
| people all new homes. We can start the bidding at $1M per
| household.
|
| I cannot overstate the _fury_ that I feel watching this unfold.
| The people living in small midwestern towns, the type of town
| where I grew up, and where my family lives, are not disposable,
| and their lives matter exactly as much as the peoples lives who
| live on Martha 's Vinyard, or any other rich enclave.
|
| Can you imagine a tanker load of toxic chemicals spilling into
| the neighborhood around one of Biden's homes? Or on Mar A Lago?
| Do you think there would be this much feet dragging about
| cleaning it up?
|
| It is further demoralizing to watch our President on a tour of
| Ukraine, giving away _tens of billions of dollars_ to fight a
| proxy war, when we are having citizens of _this_ country lose
| their homes to an industrial disaster. No acceptable. If there is
| money to fund a proxy war, then there is money to make the people
| in East Palestine whole.
| [deleted]
| ctrlaltdylan wrote:
| I'm from the Northeast Ohio area, and also from a small town
| like East Palestine. The lack of response from Governor DeWine
| and malice to not declare a state of emergency is infuriating.
|
| This rhymes with Flink Michigan's water crisis, and Obama
| "drinking" the water in a publicity stunt:
| https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/posts-distort-facts-on-oba...
|
| Vote democrat and only see the elite placate the working class.
| Vote republican and see unions and the facade of environmental
| protections decimated even further.
|
| The fact this isn't covered in NYT or headlines on cable TV is
| insane. How is this unprecedented disaster affecting a major
| watershed not higher urgency than fucking balloons.
| dashundchen wrote:
| > The fact this isn't covered in NYT or headlines on cable TV
| is insane
|
| Seriously, where is this idea coming from? Search the NYT,
| there's been coverage of the incident almost every day since
| it happened - not just the incident and its causes, but also
| on potential environmental fallout and meta-coverage of
| journalism and conspiracies around the whole thing. Many
| times it's been the top-line headline, at least when I am
| logged in.
|
| I've seen continuous coverage on NPR, in fact the subject of
| this post is the current top headline on npr.org.
|
| Every time I've been at a relative's who watches MSNBC I hear
| it brought up at least once during news hour.
|
| My local paper a couple hundred miles away, despite thin
| coverage these days, has even had articles about what/any
| impact the fire has in our region.
|
| The only event I've seen the has had anywhere close to the
| amount of coverage is the Turkey - Syria earthquake, which is
| a global level natural disaster that's killed 46,000 people
| and counting. I think that rightfully deserves coverage as
| well.
|
| What national outlets are you following that you haven't seen
| coverage of this?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| I see you got the actual point you really wanted to make right
| at the end, however poorly.
| ezfe wrote:
| For what it's worth, while we are sending billions of _value_
| to Ukraine, we 're not literally just sending cash. Many of
| these things have already been manufactured anyways, the money
| has already been spent. Might as well use it instead of
| throwing it away in another decade or two.
|
| It's the same thing with space ships. The probe development
| cost $565 million, but we're not just launching that money into
| space. We're paying _people_ and _companies_ that money to
| produce a probe, which supports our economy _and_ lets us go to
| space.
|
| note: I'm not trying to draw a comparison in mission goals
| between a rocket ship to Pluto and funding the war in Ukraine
| barbazoo wrote:
| > It is further demoralizing to watch our President on a tour
| of Ukraine, giving away tens of billions of dollars to fight a
| proxy war
|
| Because this made it sound like on this trip he gave them "tens
| of billions of dollars", that's not correct.
|
| > In his remarks alongside Zelensky, Biden said the United
| States would provide another half-billion dollars of assistance
| to Ukraine, including additional ammunition for the artillery
| systems the United States previously provided.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/20/president-bi...
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >Because this made it sound like on this trip he gave them
| "tens of billions of dollars", that's not correct.
|
| I'm sorry if you read that that way. That's now how I meant
| it.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| re: [flagged] lol, you can't criticize Democrats on HN. It's
| verboten.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Glad to see this, and if Norfolk Southern goes bankrupt, all
| assets go to the cleanup and high level execs are changed or are
| forced to pay the difference.
|
| Also, with this being in Ohio, I hope people in Ohio realize how
| valuable the EPA is and stop voting for people who want to cut
| every Gov Program except for Defense.
| xwdv wrote:
| Why would high level execs be forced to pay a difference? They
| are ultimately just employees. Does a senior software engineer
| get forced to pay a difference when a critical error results in
| damages to an end user?
| Avshalom wrote:
| software engineers? no. actual engineers?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malpractice
| it_citizen wrote:
| Unfortunately they rarely cut programs immediately. It would be
| too easy to see the consequences.
|
| Instead:
|
| 1) freeze or reduce the budget
|
| 2) put incompetent people in charge with crazy mission
| statements
|
| 3) wait a bit for the program to fail and skilled employees to
| leave
|
| 4) point at how inefficient and useless the government program
| is
|
| 5) replace it by private sector and contractors
|
| It is a classic move and not just in the US.
| piva00 wrote:
| A classic example of this strategy being used in the past
| 10-20 years outside of the US is the UK's NHS.
|
| It's been slowly crippled, putting more and more pressure in
| the system, and eventually the solution to be proposed when
| the system finally collapses through malicious
| maladministration will be to privatise it.
| the_optimist wrote:
| If this idea were completely backwards, there would be no
| way to tell the difference from what you've suggested. In
| fact, there isn't even a basic counterexample that holds
| without predominant confounding factors.
|
| In other words, unfortunately, this is theory is a non-
| falsifiable conspiracy theory.
|
| Edit: It is rather validating when poking a pet theory
| produces a negative yet non-substantive response. Sure, go
| on believing in fairies and yeti. Best of luck to your
| children.
| piva00 wrote:
| Jeremy Hunt co-authored this in 2005 [0].
|
| Look at the bits about denationalising the NHS.
|
| I'd like to see your rebuttal to this book, genuinely
| [1].
|
| Edit: also this op-ed contains some more examples of the
| process going on [2].
|
| Please, refrain from name-calling and instead point
| exactly where I'm wrong on what you so called a
| "conspiracy theory". It's a baseless comment and you
| haven't provided me anything to look further.
|
| [0] https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/e
| br.2005...
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-NHS-Easy-
| Steps/dp/178...
|
| [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/25
| /boris-...
| the_optimist wrote:
| Merely pointing out that a theory for attacking the
| system exists is not equivalent to attacking the system;
| you have to assume malicious intent. There is no way to
| differentiate merely scarce resources from supposedly
| adversarial depletion. This market is fixed. Abject
| failure is indistinguishable from success, in any form.
| You are merely saying, "I assume you are malicious,"
| which is a premise--not a conclusion. The same phenomenon
| exists with the Piven-Cloward opponents. There's no
| 'name-calling' here. The point stands on itself.
| piva00 wrote:
| To prove malicious intent without doubt would require me
| to have access to the minds of the perpetrators of a
| plan. I don't have such access, I do have access to their
| intentions through an agenda document and their further
| actions afterwards in government, such a plan would not
| be presented as malicious so I can only derive its
| intents from their agenda and actions to the results in
| reality.
|
| The results in reality is a system that has not coped
| with its usage, one such example is presented in the op-
| ed article I shared on [2] which states that McKinsey was
| commissioned to provide a report which they concluded
| there would be less need of nurses, which was false, that
| report was used to reduce the budget for nurses which as
| a result caused further reduction in force of nurses as
| they quit because of lower pay. I can only derive that
| it's malicious since the report is wrong and no action
| was taken to correct the government's actions when
| reality hit. The same op-ed links to another analysis
| with this exact question [0].
|
| > "In other words we didn't have enough nurses before to
| provide a high quality service? Ah!" said John Humphrys
| in shocked tones - as if this was a revelation the BBC's
| flagship news programme had never heard before.
|
| > But the BBC failed to ask the key question - why were
| all the warning signs about nurse shortages, ignored?
|
| > After all, NHS chiefs and ministers had been warned
| clearly for years that there would be a shortage of
| nurses, as a result of David Cameron's coalition
| government cutting training places for nurses and doctors
| from 2010 onwards. From 2010 through to 2013 the numbers
| of nursing places commissioned at universities in England
| were cut by 12.7% - resulting in 2500 fewer places. In
| 2012 experts warned that this would result in a
| "disaster" in two or three years. In all, the 2010
| cutbacks (reversed only relatively recently) meant that
| around 8000 fewer nurses were coming into the system.
|
| Can you point me to any counterpoint to this where the
| government's actions align to a non-malicious plan to
| actually help the system, as misaligned as that plan
| might be? Because every action I can find points to a
| plan where the system is put under further struggle
| without giving a good reason why it is sensible to, for
| example, train less nurses when they were advised by NHS
| chiefs and specialists they will require more. You can't
| say that ignoring your chief specialists is not
| malicious.
|
| [0] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/nhs-staff-
| shortage-s...
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| You might have got more traction had you provided at
| least one alternative explanation, or at least provided
| more detail as to why you believe the given explanation
| to be non-falsifiable.
|
| It seems obvious to me that it would be falsifiable by
| looking at a statement like "putting more and more
| pressure on the system" and seeing if that has actually
| been happening.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Fines need to start being paid in company stock, its the only
| thing companies are beholden to. Everything else is just a
| price to wreck havoc.
|
| The more the company purposefully puts people in danger, the
| more nationally owned they are. Especially when it comes to
| infrastructure like this.
|
| "Sorry, you've been nationalized due to your continued efforts
| in proving you cannot be trusted". Fines large enough to matter
| would arguably hurt infrastructure and safety. Start taking
| shares.
| riffic wrote:
| the federal government can step in and nationalize the
| railroad at any point as it has done in the past (woodrow
| wilson era iirc)
| ccooffee wrote:
| "Can" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I do not find
| it a credible threat, and doubt any of these companies do
| either. Perhaps one could argue that the 2008-2009 TARP
| handling of some banks or automobile manufacturers was a
| "light nationalization", as the US took control of _some_
| stock of the affected companies. (This stock was later sold
| off for a profit.) But other than that, and _maybe_ the
| creation of the TSA in 2001, there isn't a nationalization
| in my living memory.
|
| The nationalization of railroads under Wilson lasted from
| December 1917 to March 1920. During this time, operation
| (including expansion and maintenance) of all railroads was
| organized by the federal government. When the
| nationalization was repealed in 1920, the US paid rail
| companies for lost profits.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Oh I'm aware, this is more a general idea for "too big to
| fail" companies in general. Our infrastructure is rotten
| and often privatized. No one has the funds and ability to
| hold companies like this accountable except for the federal
| government.
|
| Look at Steven Donzinger. He reported on toxic spills by
| Chevron in Nicaragua that poisoned indigenous water
| supplies. Chevron hired a private prosecutor and found a
| judge in their favor to force him into house arrest(for
| over a year) for not supplying a document.
|
| Large corporations have the cards stacked in their favor.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's almost like we shouldn't allow companies to grow so
| large, and that a company being larger than most
| countries doesn't provide any benefit to the consumer.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| This is a great idea. And I like the idea of fines being X%
| shares outstanding, not X dollars as that proportionally
| penalizes shareholders for not being good corporate owners.
| It's a win in so many ways.
| gretch wrote:
| This probably doesn't do the thing you want it to do
|
| 1) if there is a demand to have something, it usually
| raises price of that thing. You could interpret this as a
| forced buyback, which may raise prices of shares (and thus
| reward bad behavior)
|
| 2) what does the govt do with the stock after it has the
| stock? It doesn't have a system for processing it, as it
| does with USD
|
| Also, why shouldn't you penalize shareholders? In the
| future they'll think twice about investing in companies
| that cut corners to juice short term gains
| shanebellone wrote:
| "Also, why shouldn't you penalize shareholders? In the
| future they'll think twice about investing in companies
| that cut corners to juice short term gains"
|
| +1
|
| Losses speak louder than words.
| mulmen wrote:
| That creates an incentive structure for regulators to fine
| valuable companies and to do no harm to their long term
| value. It's the opposite incentive structure you want in
| regulators.
| jefftk wrote:
| 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.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| 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.
| jefftk wrote:
| 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.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| It's much more complex than "EPA good".
|
| The EPA wasn't looking like they were gonna do much until the
| situation was so fucked, or at least fucked looking, that there
| were potential political brownie points to be earned crapping
| on their inaction at which point they cleaned up their act and
| did something.
|
| Environmental protection has been a very mixed bag for middle
| America over the past ~60yr. This disaster is doing anything
| but endearing the EPA to the people of Ohio or Middle America
| generally. I think at best it's a lateral move.
| irrational wrote:
| Why defense? If someone seriously attacked the USA, Ohio would
| be one of the last places they would go for. It would be the
| Democrat states like CA and NY that would be hit first. You
| would think they would be in favor of having less defense so
| those liberals in CA can be taken out.
| suresk wrote:
| There is no credible threat of invasion of the mainland US,
| even with a much smaller military, so the difference in
| threat to CA/NY vs Ohio is pretty small. And, at any rate,
| Defense budget support is more due to economic implications
| of bases/contractors in the states/districts of people in
| congress and military worship/nationalism in the US than it
| is any sort of logical assessment of threats.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I wonder if expanding our definition of defense would
| help...EPA defends the air and water and other public sources
| from things that will harm the environment and us. Literally
| has "protection" in the name. Maybe we think it's only
| protecting the "environment" and that we are separate from the
| environment.
| gretch wrote:
| 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".
| dahfizz wrote:
| 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 a matter of course.
|
| I think we need one good advertising campaign to seriously
| change people's minds. Something like, "Be a good steward
| of God's green earth". If we spoke their language, it would
| click.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| 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.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| I think you're overestimating the cost of this cleanup by 2 or
| 3 orders of magnitude. Vinyl chloride is not particularly
| toxic, has low environmental persistence, and does not
| bioaccumulate.
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| wait for the civil suits for all the animal die offs for ag
| industry, and medical bills from exposure... then tell us how
| cheap it will be. I hope they end up in Jail.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Which animal die offs? Like I said, vinyl chloride has very
| poor environmental and biological persistence. Any die off
| of livestock that was going to happen would have happened 2
| weeks ago.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| 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.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| 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 collect the data to prove it.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| 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.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Hearsay: in Germany if US vehicle kills a pig, uncle sam is
| on the line for 6 generations of what hat pig could produce
| ...
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| 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.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Are you talking about Ethylhexyl acrylate? Not very toxic
| outside of high dose acute exposures.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Surely you would volunteer to drink low doses in all your
| drinking water for the rest of your life then?
| xadhominemx wrote:
| If I drank private well water in east Palestine I would
| make sure that contamination was closely monitored and
| drink bottled water for a while. Drinking water from the
| tap? Yes I would do that.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Not very toxic outside of high dose acute exposures
|
| Such as when your well is contaminated...
| mushbino wrote:
| I'm really hoping the residents and rail workers realize they
| need to come together for this common cause. Unfortunately,
| busting the rail strike as both parties did only contributes to
| this problem in a major way. Nobody is coming to save us. These
| issues can only be resolved with people coming together in
| collective action.
|
| As a side note, i hope they go bankrupt and we expropriate
| them. Railroads are too important to leave largely to the
| private sector. Our rail infrastructure compared to really any
| developed nation is abysmally sad.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| Nationalize the railroads, 100%.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Considering what happened the last time the railroads were
| nationalized, I doubt that's a very good idea.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Which was what, exactly?
| jcranmer wrote:
| Essentially, the US government undermaintained the
| railroads (the modern public transit scourge of "deferred
| maintenance" practiced a hundred years ago). It ran the
| railroads with a more or less single-minded mindset to
| supplying war goods, and after the war was over, kept a
| heavy touch on the railroads which made them unable to
| adapt to the increasing competition from heavily-
| subsidized highways and airlines, which combined with the
| headache of "deferred maintenance" meant that railroads
| suffered from about 1920 to 1980. (It wasn't until the
| failure of Penn Central that things really started
| getting better.)
| kflfpfp wrote:
| [flagged]
| Meerax wrote:
| Our rail infrastructure is abysmal. Nationalizing it is
| perhaps not the way to go, but a serious change needs to
| happen. Speaking as a former Ohioan who grew up in the Ohio
| river valley.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Name a country with good rail that hasn't nationalized it
| (hint, you can't).
| yardie wrote:
| Japan privatized their railway in the early 90s. It's
| really good. This is not an endorsement of privatization
| just a counterpoint to the argument of national vs
| privatized transport systems. What it means is leadership
| and management has to be truly held accountable.
| input_sh wrote:
| Worth pointing out that a major part of why it works in
| Japan is that rail companies also own real estate around
| stations. High foot traffic allows them to charge high
| rent to stores.
| yardie wrote:
| This is also the business model for the private rail in
| Hong Kong, Singapore, and now Florida with Brightline.
|
| The Brightline model is surprising because it shouldn't
| work. Miami and Orlando aren't well thought of for there
| public transit systems. Yet, this premium intercity train
| is expanding. I'm not convinced they are profitable as a
| train, but they own the property around downtown train
| stations which is really hot right now.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Japan is well known for its excellent rail system, which
| is almost entirely privately run.
|
| For European countries your point stands.
|
| If companies in the US and Europe had the same sense of
| social duty that companies in Japan do, this wouldn't be
| an issue in the first place, though.
| johnny22 wrote:
| japan maybe? I don't know all the details of their setup
| though. I know there are multiple lines managed by
| multiple different companies though.
| a_JIT_pie wrote:
| A big reason Amtrak is so shit is due to private rail
| industry taking priority on our shitty track
| infrastructure.
| User23 wrote:
| It used to be any railroad that wanted to carry US Mail,
| so all of them, was required to hitch at least one
| passenger car onto their trains. The railroad executives
| insisted that this was so burdensome it would put them
| out of business so the law was changed. But before that
| change you could take a train to literally anywhere in
| the USA where freight trains go, which is basically
| everywhere including many small towns.
|
| E.B. White wrote a marvelous essay on the subject called
| _The Railroad_.
| braingenious wrote:
| lol at "publicly managed public infrastructure is literally
| the same thing as genocide!! Ceausescu also built roads,
| MURDERER"
| [deleted]
| linuxftw wrote:
| > Identify and clean up contaminated soil and water resources.
|
| So, the EPA isn't going to identify which soils and waters were
| contaminated? This is going to be like a pharmaceutical company
| running their own safety trials. "Nothing to see here."
| galleywest200 wrote:
| The order states that Norfolk is paying for this, but the EPA
| is supplying the contractors.
|
| > Identify and clean up contaminated soil and water resources.
|
| > Reimburse EPA for cleaning services to be offered to
| residents and businesses to provide an additional layer of
| reassurance, which will be conducted by EPA staff and
| contractors.
|
| > Attend and participate in public meetings at EPA's request
| and post information online.
|
| > Pay for EPA's costs for work performed under this order.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| The problem is that the EPA has no credibility. They demonstrably
| lied after 9/11 about the air quality in Manhattan. Maybe you
| could say that it was a necessary lie to encourage people to
| clean up, join the rescue effort, get back to work, etc. But now
| why should I trust the EPA to not lie about Palestine? All of the
| same arguments for a good lie apply. The people in charge today
| are only going to worry about the immediate short term risk, and
| definitely will not care about long term risk- by the time you
| get cancer, they will have been long out of power.
| thechao wrote:
| 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 train, but you
| can't "amortize" failure: any failed bearing would lead to a
| catastrophic error?
|
| To my mind this means that things like ECP (which have been
| removed) _might 've_ fixed the issue, but the fundamental problem
| is the train _length_ , which has been discussed (in all of its
| negatives) here, before.
|
| In that sense, the train company is directly at fault: they are
| engaging in unsafe practices in order to remain profitable, and
| the practices are fundamentally not safe-able (to make up a
| word).
| rootusrootus wrote:
| We know the bearing was on fire for 20+ miles before it
| derailed, and it passed through at least one hotbox detector in
| that condition without being detected. On average, such
| detectors are placed every 10-20 miles. The one in East
| Palestine spotted the problem but it was too late to prevent
| the derailment.
|
| Maybe a start would be to adjust regulation such that detectors
| need to be placed with higher frequency. ECP is a nice idea,
| but that's a last ditch effort and not a generalized solution.
| erentz wrote:
| Do we know it was without being detected? I got the
| impression somewhere that it was ignored because they
| frequently are for a while due to lack of sidings of adequate
| length to stop in.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The length of the siding shouldn't prevent you from using
| it. It should just require the main track to be signalled
| stopped for other traffic in either direction while you are
| occupying it during the set out procedure. If the train is
| long enough, this could be quite a long time if you have to
| dump and then rebuild working pressure in the brake system.
| orbz wrote:
| There's also the possibility that mechanical parts will
| seize up (especially in the case of overheated bearings)
| and will be unable to get moving again if you stop.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean, if attempted to apply the same logic to driving
| your car I would say you should have your license taken
| away.
|
| They can always split the train and cart off the working
| cars to a siding, and then if need be drag the sparkler
| at low speed with little risk of derailment. Or worst,
| you bring in a crane and replace the bogie on a siding.
| Or any number of actions that don't start a statewide
| emergency. Talk about normalizing deviance in name of
| profits.
| katbyte wrote:
| That is still better then a derailment of a train
| carrying toxic chemicals...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| https://homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2021/12/27/efficiency-a...
| for the general issues. Uday is writing a senior thesis on this
| topic, I believe, which should be a great read.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| 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.
| puffoflogic wrote:
| > are waiting until the site is decontaminated
|
| Right. It's all completely harmless and there's no risk to
| any residents, but the site is also too contaminated for
| investigators to make even a very brief visit. Makes sense to
| me.
| hammock wrote:
| There are thousands of derailments every year.
|
| The bigger problem is not the derailment but the fact that they
| released and burned off the vinyl chloride in order to
| expeditiously clear the tracks and get them running again, at
| great health and environmental cost to the local community and
| even several states in the windshed to the northeast (PA, NY,
| VT)
| naasking wrote:
| > There are thousands of derailments every year. The bigger
| problem is not the derailment [...]
|
| I think that's a problem worth discussing as well. Obama
| passed legislation to upgrade trains braking systems to make
| them a lot safer, which was then weakened by lobbying, which
| was then repealed by Trump, then the rail companies spent
| billions in stock buybacks and tried to tighten the screws on
| their labour force even further for cost-cutting reasons.
|
| There are a lot of pathological behaviours that have gone
| into "thousands of derailments per year" that are worth
| discussing, and I'd say those are a lot more important than
| just this one derailment.
| tzs wrote:
| > Obama passed legislation to upgrade trains braking
| systems to make them a lot safer, which was then weakened
| by lobbying, which was then repealed by Trump
|
| I'm not sure it was political. The FAST Act, the
| legislation from 2015 that mandated that regulators require
| ECP brakes on some trains also required that the National
| Academy of Sciences produce a report on the effectiveness
| of such brakes which would then be used to review the
| regulation to see if the assumptions behind it were valid.
| The regulators then had to either publish an explanation of
| how the regulation was justified or repeal it.
|
| In 2017 the NAS report came out, and found that there
| really wasn't much evidence either way, and said they were
| unable to conclude that ECP brakes would outperform other
| types of brakes.
|
| Given that NAS report I am not at all sure that the outcome
| would have been different under a Clinton administration.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| katbyte wrote:
| Fine them millions per derailment. Increasing with each
| one.
| bombcar wrote:
| This can work but they can fight fines, or eat it as cost
| of business. Much harder to argue against a safety-
| shutdown.
| clcaev wrote:
| The rail companies are "too big to fail" since they are
| core national logistics.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >they are core national logistics
|
| If they cannot operate safely and they are essential to
| our national security, perhaps they should be
| nationalized. I bet the threat of nationalization would
| get their collective asses in gear.
| katbyte wrote:
| Then maybe they shouldn't be private companies that cut
| corners for profit putting both people and that
| logistical operation at risk.
| schiffern wrote:
| >and even several states in the windshed to the northeast
| (PA, NY, VT)
|
| My understanding is that contemporaneous weather radar[0] put
| the plume _southeast_ at the time of the burn.
|
| [0] https://www.wdtn.com/news/ohio/east-palestine-train-
| derailme...
| hammock wrote:
| That is good info, thanks for sharing.
|
| Here is the model that NOAA created - and which has not
| been officially released to the public yet: https://twitter
| .com/FalconryFinance/status/16258723275684208...
| schiffern wrote:
| Thanks, I had not seen that.
|
| On the journalism side, the source seems to be extremely
| alarmist,[0] so I doubt much skepticism was practiced
| there.
|
| On the NOAA side, it would be interesting to see the full
| set of assumptions behind this model. I would presume the
| vast majority of emissions would occur during the burn
| itself (February 6th, afternoon), but this model seems to
| assume a significant (undiminished?) outflow at midnight
| on February 8th.
|
| "Garbage in, garbage out."
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/FalconryFinance/status/1625875297
| 4837637...
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| > fact that they released and burned off the vinyl chloride
| in order to expeditiously clear the tracks and get them
| running again
|
| I was under the impression that there was risk of a Boiling
| liquid expanding vapor explosion which would have been even
| more catastrophic than the "controlled" release and burn off.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| They burned off the vinyl chloride because the combustion
| products are relatively benign, it was much safer to
| remediation personnel to ignite the chemicals in a controlled
| burn vs having them work around flammable chemicals for
| weeks, vinyl chloride is quite volatile and acute exposure to
| high concentrations of vinyl chloride vapor is dangerous, and
| they wanted to get everyone back in their homes (and yes, get
| the railroad back up and running) as quickly as safely
| permissible.
| hammock wrote:
| >the combustion products are relatively benign
|
| Who told you that? Phosgene and dioxins are "relatively
| benign"? Dioxins might more properly be called forever
| chemicals, and will contaminate the soil and water of five
| states for decades.
|
| I understand they were trying to avoid a bleve. The
| solution they chose was not based principally on minimizing
| citizen harm though
| mindslight wrote:
| I haven't seen anything concrete about dioxins coming
| from the burning of vinyl chloride. From what I've seen,
| the known dioxin problem is from the burning _PVC_ ,
| which was in bulk cars that were ignited by the
| derailment (as opposed to deliberately set on fire).
|
| FWIW Only one vinyl chloride car was listed as leaking. I
| would think the alternative was to bring in mobile pumps,
| new tanker cars, and possibly chillers. And that should
| probably be made the default standard, rather than
| defaulting to "controlled" release in an emergent
| situation.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Someone else a few days ago linked a paper that measured
| minuscule amounts of dioxins from burning vinyl chloride.
| Minuscule as in measurable, but probably not a concern.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Phosgene also has very low environmental persistence. I
| think the actual amount of dioxin created from combustion
| of vinyl chloride monomer at atmospheric pressure is very
| low. In any event, both were dispersed into the
| atmosphere at concentrations that pose(d) very little
| danger to people outside of the temporary evacuation
| zone.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| My friend from East Palestine took a video of the water
| in a creek that runs outside his house. The water is
| rainbow like an oil spill. This was yesterday. Whatever
| they combusted and dispersed, it's very much still there
| and I sure wouldn't want to be drinking that water.
| bawolff wrote:
| I mean, i imagine that whatever contamination that is, is
| separate from the combustion products that went into the
| atmosphere.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Probably a biofilm.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| If it's the same photo, a biologist weighed in on it on
| Twitter and suggested exactly that.
| hammock wrote:
| I stand corrected. They did a great job and no one in
| East Palestine is sick
| jokowueu wrote:
| All of that smoke and no one got sick ? Hard to believe
| crazygringo wrote:
| They evacuated people first.
| ballenf wrote:
| Wasn't the mandatory evacuation order only for a 1-mile
| radius?
| crazygringo wrote:
| How much larger are you suggesting it needed to be, and
| based on what?
|
| Since hot smoke travels upwards, I don't know what making
| the zone wider would have accomplished.
| jrockway wrote:
| I don't want to downplay anything that happened here, but
| if you said a train of dihydrogen monoxide derailed and
| the vapors were spreading through the community, some
| number of people would come forward claiming to be sick.
| Statistically, someone is going to wake up with a cold on
| the day of the derailment. And the brain is a very
| powerful drug, if you scare someone with a chemical
| spill, they can show symptoms regardless of whether or
| not some chemical is acting on their body.
|
| This is a risky comment to make, because it sounds like I
| am supporting NS's cleanup plan, and I'm not. I'm just
| saying that people saying they're sick doesn't mean the
| plan was executed incorrectly.
| [deleted]
| xadhominemx wrote:
| That is correct. Not a single person in East Palestine
| was hospitalized.
| mlindner wrote:
| 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.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| People's dogs and cats just up and died. Last time I
| checked humans are also mammals that breath.
| throwanem wrote:
| > 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?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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...
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| 1-1-1 Trichloroethane???
|
| Even in 1990 or so when I first came across it (also for
| cleaning PC boards), it was known to be hazardous.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yup. This was in 1983.
|
| Lots of pretty hairy stuff, in that lab. The gold-plating
| room had 50-gallon drums of cyanide.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| None of the contaminants are carcinogenic, really
| throwanem wrote:
| > Vinyl chloride is a mutagen having clastogenic effects
| which affect lymphocyte chromosomal structure.[20][22]
| Vinyl chloride is a Group 1 human carcinogen posing
| elevated risks of rare angiosarcoma, brain and lung
| tumors, and malignant haematopoeitic lymphatic
| tumors.[23] Chronic exposure leads to common forms of
| respiratory failure (emphysema, pulmonary fibrosis) and
| focused hepatotoxicity (hepatomegaly, hepatic fibrosis).
| Continuous exposure can cause CNS depression including
| euphoria and disorientation. Decreased male libido,
| miscarriage, and birth defects are known major
| reproductive defects associated with vinyl chloride.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Yes, they found elevated rates of some cancers in people
| who spent their careers in poorly ventilated vinyl
| chloride production facilities. For the sort of
| concentrations and durations we're talking about in East
| Palestine, it's not carcinogenic.
| creato wrote:
| Maybe this is out of date, but:
|
| > There is also the theoretical possibility of burning
| vinyl chloride forming dioxins which are known
| carcinogens. So far, no dioxins have been detected.
|
| https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health-and-nutrition-
| histo...
| hammock wrote:
| Have they tested for dioxins? Can you share?
| treeman79 wrote:
| https://youtu.be/L1I6eVP8QQk
|
| Rivers are filled with something that's heavier than water.
| Fish are all dying.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Same from a video a friend took yesterday, but he didn't
| even need to disturb the creek, it just had the sheen on
| top right there.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Fish are extremely sensitive and die off all the time
| from levels of contamination that don't pose much concern
| for people.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| From what I read the NTSB has not started its investigation
| because their are waiting for the train cars to finish being
| cleaned up. After that they will begin and we'll get some
| preliminary findings and eventually final report
| twobitshifter wrote:
| The hotbox detector could have seen the bearing overheating and
| been ignored, or have malfunctioned or just not been sensitive
| enough to detect the problem when the train passed. It's old
| tech that should have caught this in most cases. The even older
| tech solution would be adding a caboose on trains carrying
| hazardous materials. Maybe you don't need a caboose today but
| someone watching cameras in a cube could do the same thing.
|
| ECP does not seem like a solution, and addressing how hazardous
| chemicals are moved is something that needs to be done.
| pookha wrote:
| Apparently there are something like 1K derailments a year in the
| US? Had no idea...Seems pretty high.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/02/17/tra...
| fineIllregister wrote:
| Most derailments are completely uneventful. The train just
| barely goes off the tracks and slows to a stop, remaining
| completely upright. I've heard from people that they were on a
| passenger train that derailed and didn't even know it until the
| conductor told them.
| fr0sty wrote:
| https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/why-train-derailm...
|
| Most derailments are in train yards. Few cause injuries, fewer
| cause deaths, and only a handful involve hazardous substances.
| I don't say that to downplay the mess in OH/PA, but just to
| make sure the base-rate is understood.
|
| And if you want to compare to europe it looks like US freight
| rail volume is at least 6x as large. Also no idea if/how they
| count "fender bender" derailments in switching yards. US
| standard is >$12k in damage according to TFA.
| mlindner wrote:
| A couple months ago I watched an amateur train nerd on
| youtube cover a derailment that dumped a load of bitumin/tar
| into a river and destroyed a bridge. This kind of thing
| happens pretty commonly. No national news covered it, only a
| couple of local news stations, at least from what I could
| find on youtube/googling.
|
| It's confusing to me why this specific incident got so much
| attention.
| katbyte wrote:
| Link? That sounds like a channel I'd be interested in
|
| And this got the attention it did because it's far more
| severe then one load of tar/bitumen in a river - and far
| more toxic made potentially worse from the choice to. Burn
| it off to clear the tracks faster
| bombcar wrote:
| Probably because it was literally visible from space (one
| it was lit on fire).
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Maybe it should be confusing to you why more such harmful
| derailings are not getting as much attention
| fh973 wrote:
| Indeed... the EU has a similar network size and there it's less
| than 100:
| https://twitter.com/HerrNaumann/status/1626342809438502918
|
| Edit: less than 100 (Entgleisungen).
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| chmod775 wrote:
| The second row in that chart shows derailments. So 104
| derailments in 2014 and 68 derailments in 2016.
|
| That extrapolates to be in roughly the same ballpark (only
| by a factor of ~2x off) with what this sibling comment
| pointed out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886899
| hellerve wrote:
| 2 per week, i.e. roughly 100.
| [deleted]
| piva00 wrote:
| Entgleisungen would be derailments.
|
| The EU-27 transported 2,927 billion ton-kilometres of rail
| freight, the US ~2,200 billion ton-kilometres.
| fr0sty wrote:
| Some light googling gives me 390B kilometer-tonnes[1] in
| Europe and 1.6T ton-miles[2] in the US for 2019. So that is
| 6x the freight movement.
|
| The US rail network also >2x longer than Europe[3]
| (360,000km vs 151,000km).
|
| [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/198443/us-class-i-
| freigh...
|
| [3] https://www.floridarail.com/news/6-key-differences-
| between-a...
| danhor wrote:
| Cursory googling throws out various different numbers for
| the rail length with english wikipedia saying that
| they're both roughly equal size at 210 vs 220 Mm (https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...)
| with old UIC data, the German one citing the cia world
| factbook which specifies 230Mm for the European union and
| 300Mm for the US (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-
| factbook/field/railways/).
|
| I highly doubt that the US rail network is twice the size
| of the EU one by most metrics, I guess different methods
| for counting length were mixed there (e.g. how is single-
| track vs double-track counted).
|
| This is taking europe as in the EU, as anything else is
| annoying.
|
| It'd also be pretty interesting to get the frequency of
| passenger rail derailments vs freight derailments to more
| accurately compare the numbers given the high amount of
| passenger rail in EU. As a very rough idea, the first
| document I found giving any indication about the
| distribution had 2 dangerous freight derailments and 3
| dangerous passenger train derailments in germany for 2021
| (https://www.eisenbahn-
| unfalluntersuchung.de/SharedDocs/Downl... P. 16ff.).
|
| The EU also differs from the US in that that cargo trains
| are much shorter, leading to more trains needed for the
| same amount of freight cars. So the question is does the
| rate of derailments scale with the number of individual
| cars or with the number of trains?
|
| EDIT:
|
| Looking at the floridarail.com link, they say that the US
| has a broader gauge than europe. Since almost all of the
| US is standard gauge and almost all of europe is standard
| gauge or wider, this is just wrong. It's also news to me
| that europe (specifically germany) doesn't allow toxic
| chemicals to be transported over rail. The article seems
| a bit iffy.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >So the question is does the rate of derailments scale
| with the number of individual cars or with the number of
| trains?
|
| You have to take in a much larger number of factors than
| that.
|
| The railroad industry is currently pushing their new just
| in time paradigm which has been leading to attempted
| strikes in the US (Uncle Joe says no) by the railroad
| workers. The railroad operators are pushing for longer
| trains, less engineers per train, and less inspection
| time per car while also playing computerized shipping
| optimizations that put the number of 'hazards' on a train
| just below the regulated minimum number of cars so they
| don't have to declare it.
|
| It's just ironic that this incident that got national
| news happened so quickly after the railroad co's got
| their no right to strike validated. It looks like it
| could very well be their undoing.
| piva00 wrote:
| I believe this dataset per quarter [0] is more accurate,
| it adds up to some ~1.8-2b ton-kilometres for the EU-27.
|
| [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
| tristor wrote:
| >Seems pretty high.
|
| This is a similar discrepancy between the technical meaning of
| language as used in statistics, and the popular usage of
| language as the layperson understands it when they read it in
| the news as happens with the term "mass shooting".
|
| When a layperson hears "train derailment" they think of what
| happened in Ohio. When a layperson hears "mass shooting" they
| think of what happened at Uvalde.
|
| In actuality, as far as the statistics are concerned, a train
| derailment is ANY time a train has a wheel that goes off of the
| track which is not part of a planned maintenance. These are
| rarely catastrophic.
|
| In actuality, as far as the statistics are concerned, a mass
| shooting is ANY time a shooting has more than 3 victims,
| regardless of location. 99% of these are gang shootings in the
| inner city, in the 1.3% of US counties that make up 90% of all
| violent crimes. Arguably, these are always catastrophic, but
| the cause/solution/surrounding issues are vastly different than
| the popular topic.
|
| As usual, technical language used in the media is misconstrued
| and misunderstood by non-technical reporters and lay audiences.
| pionar wrote:
| We're actually at historic lows for # of derailments in the US
| over the past 30 years
| fullstop wrote:
| From what I understand a lot of those are in the rail yards and
| not at full speed.
|
| Here is a poorly made website which can generate reports on
| this:
|
| https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/que...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Goddamn I love government websites. A simple form, with clear
| and common styling, with no place I have to put my email,
| with no popup about joining a damn mailing list, with no ads,
| and when I click the submit button, the response is instant
| and a clear table that doesn't do anything stupid with
| javascript.
|
| Every time the government spends my tax dollars developing a
| web page with a form that generates reports, an angel gets
| it's wings.
| fullstop wrote:
| Yes, I like that part greatly. The text was very small,
| though, and zooming does not behave as I expect.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And yet, this boring and older system is probably more
| accessible to disabled people.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Ok now try to figure out where to change your residential
| address on the FAA's website and tell me how much you love
| it.
| ketzo wrote:
| I am also obsessed with the header image that does not even
| try to scale with width. It just stretches. Awesome
| yamtaddle wrote:
| "Wheel off track" is a derailment. Doesn't have to mean a huge
| wreck and pile-up. Can happen at low speeds. The vast majority
| aren't that big a deal.
|
| (my dad ended his career in middle-management with a railroad--
| not Norfolk, but for all I know Norfolk owns the one he worked
| for now, there was a lot of consolidation--and for a few years
| he had to travel to derailments in his region, when they
| happened, and derailments happened _somewhat often_ )
| rootusrootus wrote:
| How does this compare to Europe, or the rest of the world? I
| can spot numbers like 'every other day' in Europe, but getting
| comparables is proving difficult. Given the different nature of
| the tracks, usage, and geography, it may be difficult to draw a
| meaningful comparison anyway.
|
| I do see that the rates are broadly similar between Canada and
| the US, which is not a surprise but does suggest a correlation.
| orwin wrote:
| I could probably get the exact numbers, but nowadays probably
| less than 100/year. Diminishing every years from 2004 through
| 2014 at least.
|
| Plus we have gauges issues that the US don't, so this much
| disparity is concerning.
| colpabar wrote:
| https://archive.ph/TkRgd
| magwa101 wrote:
| [dead]
| thearn4 wrote:
| I'm finding it difficult to find objective assessments of the
| impact of what has happened in East Palestine. It seems like
| there are interests in dismissing the impacts entirely, but there
| are others that seems to want to overstate the impacts
| significantly. Does anyone else feel this way?
| Rimintil wrote:
| 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?
| thearn4 wrote:
| 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.
| ars wrote:
| It's more like 3 Mile Island than Chernobyl - huge fuss,
| little actual long term damage.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Someone would think this is larger than Chernobyl if they
| were critically uninformed on just how big and stupid
| Chernobyl was. Burning the contents of the train cars will
| destroy a lot of the dangerous chemical compounds you
| originally had. A vast amount of the danger by weight is
| gone. The biggest issue is determining the dioxin output.
|
| With a nuclear fire that is not the case. When things go
| out of control you make even more radioactive stuff, and
| you can't even clean up the mess in the first place without
| dying and killing all of the equipment that is working on
| it. It is just an unimaginable disaster that most of us
| can't fully comprehend.
| ng12 wrote:
| I think the overt issue is that both state and fed gov
| completely bungled their response. Their absurd, stubborn
| silence, even after the issue has been lighting up social
| media for a week, gives the impression they know it's
| deadly but don't care -- whether or not that's the truth.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| That is the "conspiracy" non-conspiracy minded people
| like myself agree they bungled their response but that
| just confirms my long held position that the government
| is completely incompetent and we look to them for
| guidance, or solutions to a given problem at our own
| peril.
|
| As the famous axiom goes... "Government: If you think you
| have problems now, wait until you see our solutions."
|
| Their bungling of the response is completely predictable,
| extending a long long history of bungled responses to
| emergencies. Of course the predicable reaction to this
| bungling is not to simply acknowledge the reality of
| government incompetence, no.. it will be as it always is
| a mix of not enough money, not enough power, and
| capitalism / lack of regulation that will be to blame.
| Government agencies are always pure as the driven snow,
| and with out fault
|
| Government is always measured by their intentions, never
| their results.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Eh, the problem here is you're taking 'government' as a
| single entity, but it's not at all.
|
| If it were up to the singular 'government' there would
| have been better brakes on the trains and the company
| would have been following the law on transporting the
| chemicals. All the issues at hand were well known about
| for years.
|
| The problem here is very little government but instead
| for profit corporations going "How can I squeeze more
| blood out of this penny" and look for ways to get out of
| the regulations that prevent disasters in the first
| place.
|
| Really no one does a 'great' job of dealing with
| disasters, hence why they are disasters. The best
| regulations/forms of government prevent the damned
| disaster based on the inevitable outcome of human greed
| in the first place.
| Rimintil wrote:
| > I'm thinking about what I've read on social media
| (twitter, reddit, etc) about the event.
|
| Social media is social media. It requires critical thinking
| skills to navigate what you can trust versus what you
| cannot. I would have put this point in your GP, though. The
| GP otherwise reads like it has an agenda.
|
| > relevant authorities do not seem to agree with this.
|
| They're (probably) a more reliable source than social
| media, so I'd have to refer to the relevant authorities.
|
| Social media (likely) isn't out there gathering soil
| samples, air quality metrics, and water quality metrics in
| a uniform or scientific method that would qualify 'social
| media' to make a judgement call about the impact of the
| disaster.
| max937 wrote:
| I feel the same way. Are the people who stay in East Palestine
| gonna develop serious health issues or not?
| noahtallen wrote:
| I think part of the problem is that a really thorough
| investigation from the NTSB (https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-
| releases/Pages/NR20230214.as...) will by definition not be
| quick. We'll definitely get answers, but it will take time. As
| a result, we have an information gap which is quickly filled
| with tons of speculation.
|
| I think it's fair to be concerned until we know that the impact
| was somehow limited. Toxic fumes and spills are incredibly
| dangerous. Not just deadly in the short term, they can cause
| severe long-term health problems. It's not like the
| spillage/smoke just simply disappears, so it's good to be
| concerned about them until there's proof the impact is minor.
| dylan604 wrote:
| what kind of protections does bankruptcy afford Norfolk Southern
| or other corp shenanigans can they pull to avoid having to do
| anything?
| sp332 wrote:
| 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-...
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| The problem in that case was the bankruptcy filing, not the
| spinoff. The judge said the spun-off company wasn't bankrupt.
| ccooffee wrote:
| > 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 to their soon-to-declare-bankruptcy
| LTL subsidiary. They just wanted to line their pockets with
| the money instead. Isn't that pleasant.
|
| [0] https://www.jnj.com/:~:text=NEW%20BRUNSWICK,%20N.J.,%20Se
| pt.....
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| 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.
| JamesCoyne wrote:
| Litigator of the year https://twitter.com/AmericanLawyer/stat
| us/159510343722973593...
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Bankruptcy protects the corporate entity, but not shareholder
| equity.
|
| That is, shareholders can lose all equity claims. But that
| doesn't mean destroying the business. It can be sold off to new
| shareholders and then sale proceeds used to make creditors
| whole.
| colpabar wrote:
| They could always just not do it. The release says that if this
| happens, the gov will do it instead and "compel" NS to pay them
| triple the cost, but I don't really see that happening, given
| that they just "compelled" the rail workers union to not strike
| against them.
|
| I'm hopeful that they will just clean it up, but this is a
| massive corporation owned by hedge funds we're talking about.
| The rules don't apply to them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm assuming this will be a future super fund type of site
| sclarisse wrote:
| 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 pays outstanding debts
| with the proceeds, in order of priority. This tends to result
| in more paid debts than an uncontrolled shutdown; fewer people
| want to buy a stopped business and it can't make much money.
| akira2501 wrote:
| 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.
| sclarisse wrote:
| 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.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| 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?
| cakeface wrote:
| 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.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| lol
| terr-dav wrote:
| My issue is with the concentrated control of where the
| surplus value goes, I see the existence of dividends &
| stock buybacks as more of a side-effect of the system
| than a core-problem.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > 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 idea that they're
| equivalent.
|
| > If so, what is even the purpose of a company
|
| The question is.. "what even is the purpose of public
| ownership." If you want to operate privately, I believe
| all of these questions become moot.
|
| > and who would possibly invest in a it knowing that it
| can't pay any returns?
|
| The public. Which is what we want. Or, again, stay
| private.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| 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.
| triceratops wrote:
| If buybacks and dividends are the same thing, then why
| even allow both to exist? Just eliminate buybacks and
| enjoy the higher tax revenue. And maybe also accompany it
| with a tax cut on dividends to even things out slightly.
| We want companies to become more efficient and increase
| productivity, but we also want society to benefit from
| that in the form of higher tax revenue. Eliminating
| buybacks accomplishes both.
|
| Buybacks juice earnings per share. Stock valuation uses
| P/E ratio as an input. Meaning buybacks
| disproportionately benefit upper management, whose
| compensation is tied to the stock price. There's a
| principal agent problem here. Management may elect to do
| a buyback even if it's not in the company's best
| interest. Dividends don't have that problem.
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