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Thomas What I am Looking at

Thomas Environment

via [ Washington Post ] Dana Priest and William Arkin

via [ Frontline ]

Thomas Information Graphics

“2053″ - This is the number of nuclear explosions conducted in various parts of the globe.

Thomas Information Graphics

Thomas Adaptive Reuse

As the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster continues to unfold, the peak oil community has a “teachable moment” in which it can illuminate the reality of our energy plight. The public has had a crash course in the challenges of offshore oil, and learned a whole new vocabulary. They are more aware than ever that the days of cheap and easy oil are gone.

What they do not yet grasp are the challenges in transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables.

The Oil Drum | 195 Californias or 74 Texases to Replace Offshore Oil.

Thomas Energy

via [ NPR ] A Very Scary Light Show: The “US” Exploding H-Bombs In Space

Thomas Misc

This is why I love East Chicago (cell phone photos).

Click on image to begin slideshow.

Thomas East Chicago Portrait Series

Thomas Economics

The Other end of BP’s pipeline - From the Alberta TAR SANDS to BP’s Whiting Refinery.

via [ Democracy Now ] Indigenous Groups Lead Struggle Against Canada’s Tar Sands

Thomas Energy, Environment

via [ NWI Times ] “Volunteers from BP dig in at nature park - EAST CHICAGO SITE TAKES SHAPE WITH HELP OF REFINERY WORKERS” By Steve Zabroski

TONY V. MARTIN | THE TIMES Ty-Azia Leonard, left, and Briana Smith, both 12 and from East Chicago, on Thursday hold some of the plants used to make the garden area between Block Junior High School and Franklin Academy in East Chicago

EAST CHICAGO | An expansive nature park envisioned by Indiana Harbor students took shape Thursday through the volunteer efforts of an international group of oil workers.

“It’s all about giving something back,” Corey Webster, a heavy equipment operator at the BP refinery in Whiting, said of the annual community service projects that are a part of the event known as the BP Classic.

Fifth-grade students at Franklin Academy wanted to replace the lawn at their school with a landscaped garden of native plants and found help from the BP volunteers and the Maryland-based Wildlife Habitat Council.

“They’re playing a major role in the installation,” said Ryan Templeton, coordinator with the Wildlife Habitat Council, as summer school classes ended and successive waves of students joined in the digging and planting of echinacea, coreopsis, rudbeckia, alium, panicum and koleria.

“They’re replacing a sustainable dune-and-swale habitat that’s mostly gone now,” Templeton said. “We hope (the garden) will be established as a teaching tool.”

The BP Classic began 26 years ago as a softball challenge between workers at the then-Amoco Whiting refinery and colleagues at a similar facility in Texas City, Texas.

Heavy rains during the competition’s third year in Arkansas led to participants filling sand bags to prevent flooding at nearby farms, and the community service component was born, said John Amato, of Texas City, who has been participating for 15 years.

“We enjoy the community service,” said Pete Nichols, of Texas City, who retired in 2008 but continues with the annual event as he has for the past 18 years. “It’s people that make the company.”

“It’s like a family reunion,” Amato said. “You get together and see everyone’s kids growing up.”

The volunteers don’t just toil in the sun — today they will golf at Aberdeen Country Club in Valparaiso, and Saturday the two-dozen BP workers will join 200 others in Whiting for a 5-kilometer run to benefit the Whiting Food Pantry and the city’s new history museum.

Over the years, the classic has been held in every state in which BP operates a facility, including the province of Alberta in Canada.

The workers pay all of their own expenses and are expected to use valuable vacation days for the time away from their jobs.

“It’s a passion for many employees,” Webster said. “This is an outstanding project for us and for the students.”

This is perhaps the Grossest example of exploitation journalism I have ever read, and they are using my neighbor’s children, who live and suffer under the plume of BP, as a vehicle to fix BP’s image.

I would like to refer to a previous post. [ { BP } Live / Work Conditions ]

Thomas Environment

via [ IDEM ]

The Grand Calumet River Restoration Fund (GCRRF) was established by Trust Agreement after settlement with “Industrial Users” in the case “United States of America v. The Sanitary District of Hammond, et al., Civ. Action No. 2:93-CV-225 JM”, for the benefit of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (IDNR), the Deputy Director of IDNR’s Bureau of Water and Resource Regulation (IDNR Co-Trustee), and the Assistant Commissioner of IDEM’s Office of Environmental Response (IDEM Co-Trustee). The purpose of the Fund, as established in the Trust Agreement is to “…address and correct environmental contamination in the Area of Concern, including particularly the cleanup of contaminated sediment and the remediation and restoration of natural resource damages within the Area of Concern….and, more specifically, in and around the West Branch of the Grand Calumet River in the State of Indiana (the “Hammond Reach”).”

The administration of the GCRRF was established by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) among the Commissioner of IDEM; the Director of IDNR; the IDNR Co-Trustee; the IDEM Co-Trustee; the Regional Director of Region 3 of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service; and the Regional Administrator, Region 5, United States Environmental Protection Agency. Each of these “Parties” appointed a representative to serve on a GCRRF Council, the purpose and function of which is to “….coordinate the Parties’ activities relating to the GCRRF in order to achieve the maximum environmental benefit.” The Council is authorized and directed to:

• conduct and oversee scientific and technical studies, sampling, and other activities necessary to the development and implementation of sediment remedial action plans and natural resources restoration plans; make all necessary decisions for the management and administration of funds in the GCRRF in accordance with applicable law and this MOU;
• and arrange for contracts with professional consultants as necessary to provide services to the Parties to undertake activities pursuant to this MOU and the GCRRF Trust Agreement.”

The GCRRF Council has initiated Restoration Alternatives Development and Evaluation for contaminated sediment cleanup and restoration of natural resources in the West Branch Grand Calumet River. This project was divided into 3 phases: Phase I was to compile historical information on sediment contamination and to identify data gaps necessary for alternatives development (results of this portion of the study are included in Technical Memorandum Restoration Alternatives Development and Evaluation West Branch of the Grand Calumet River Indiana, February 2002); Phase II was initiated to collect samples necessary to fill data gaps identified during Phase I - Roxana Marsh and West Branch Characterization studies were initiated (documents related to each of these studies can be accessed below); and Phase III will be the Development and Evaluation of Alternatives.

Read more…

Thomas Misc

Neda: “What are you really thinking?”

I wish I could have protected you, the innocence. Your arrival is memorizing.

Thomas Misc

Thomas Visual Culture

via [ The Atlantic ] By Richard Florida

Thomas Information Graphics

Thomas The Water I Drink

via [ Esquire ] “Biography of Usain Bolt, Mutant” By Luke Dittrich

A few months ago I posted this quote on facebook. There are Ah-ha moments and then there are moments of aw.

His top speed is such a spectacle, so phenomenal, so searing that many who witness this race, who see Bolt cross the line in 9.69 seconds, breaking his own three-month-old world record by three hundredths of a second, don’t notice, until they see the replay, what is perhaps the most salient and frightening thing about his performance: Approximately eighty meters into the race, twenty meters from the finish line, Bolt stops trying.

Thomas Misc

We all remember these ads from BP. You couldn’t miss them, they were all over the airwaves.

Thomas Energy, Environment

via [ Max Blumenthal ] IDF Releases Apparently Doctored Flotilla Audio; Press Reports As Fact

(original video - released by the IDF on May 31)

(doctored video - released on June 4)

Thomas International

via [ Post Trib ] “Rainbow-Push Leader Leads BP Spill Protest” By Christin Nance Lazerus

Photo by Stephanie Dowell/Post-Tribune

As crews struggle to contain the largest oil spill in American history in the Gulf of Mexico, critics of BP are starting to turn up the heat.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson led a group of protesters on a march outside of BP’s Whiting refinery on Wednesday afternoon to focus attention on what he says is the lax environmental enforcement that allowed the Gulf oil spill to occur — and problems closer to home.

“We need the (Environmental Protection Agency) standards enforced,” Jackson said. “At this point, businesses look at EPA fines as the cost of doing business.

“This reckless behavior is a threat to us all,” the Rainbow-PUSH leader said.

About 20 pickets walked along the busy stretch of Indianapolis Boulevard, carrying signs emblazoned with “Spill Baby Spill?,” “We Want Clean Energy,” and “Don’t Pay the Bill for the Spill.”

Jackson and Sierra Club Illinois director Jack Darin criticized BP for its $3 billion expansion of the Whiting refinery, which could see an increase the pollution due to processing oil from tar sands.

“There is a tragedy occurring right here in our midst,” Jackson said. “We all deserve the right to breathe free.”

Many of the protesters belong to Greater First Church in East Chicago.

Bishop T. Lane Grant II criticized the air and wastewater permits approved for BP by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

“There’s no plan to ensure that BP wouldn’t continue violations,” Grant said.

East Chicago resident Tanya Moss said concern about the Gulf oil spill prompted her to act.

“We want to to make sure they take every safety precaution,” Moss said. “Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for their ‘oops,’ since they wouldn’t pay for my ‘oops’.”

Darin said he hopes this critical time prompts political leaders to action on planning a cleaner energy future.

“We’re well positioned to act,” Darin said.

“We have a president who is pointing in that direction, and the House passed an energy bill. It’s one of big things on senate’s agenda this summer.

“We want a future free of oil spills.”

Thomas Environment