Fossil Fuel use is a threat to every form of life.
Honolulu Harbor Oil Tanks
A National Academy of Science
Study, conducted at the request of U.S. Congress, analyzed energy-induced
health impacts. “Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of EnergyProduction and Use” (2010) found that in the U.S. 20,000 people die prematurely each year from
fossil fuel air pollution, and that U.S. health impacts cost $120 billion/year.
The study excluded health impacts associated with global warming; burning oil
for trains, ships and planes; coal mining; and coal byproducts dumped into
streams and rivers.
Waiau Oil Spill
A Chevron pipeline ruptured
on May 14, 1996, discharging 41,000 gallons of No. 6 bunker fuel oil into
Waiawa Stream adjacent to HECO’s Waiau Power Plant.
Being slightly heavier than
fresh water, the oil slowly sank through the Waiawa Stream water table,
contaminating life forms along its spread and descent.
Being slightly lighter than
salt water, when it reached Pearl Harbor, the oil slowly rose through the water
column once again killing life forms.
Pools of submerged oil
contaminated the ten acre Waiawa Marsh, a restricted wildlife area and home to
the state's four endangered species of water birds, the Hawaiian stilt, coot,
duck, and the moor hen.
Oil covered approximately
90,000,000 square feet of open water in Pearl Harbor during the first six days
after the spill.
Areas impacted included
freshwater and saltwater wetlands, shorelines and intertidal areas including
mangroves, mudflats, rocky shorelines, sandy beaches, riprap, seawalls and
piers.
Regulators estimated that
77,965 linear feet of intertidal habitat was oiled.
The clean-up resulted in the
repeated, episodic high-pressure washing of the Pearl Harbor shoreline, which
destabilized and eroded shoreline soils. The shoreline continued to emit an oil
sheen for more than a month.
This pollution had a
devastating impact on egg, larval, juvenile and adult stages of recreationally
and commercially valuable finfish, invertebrates, green turtles, and birds.
Initially federal and state
regulators estimated that the habitat would take ten years to recover, but
later revised estimates upwards to fifteen to twenty years.
Rainforest Biofuel
Palm Oil is principally
produced in one area of the world: Indonesia and Malaysia. Just a few years ago
Indonesia and Malaysia accounted for 88% of world production and 91% of world
trade in palm oil.
The Wall Street Journal ran a
front page lead story on the palm oil scandal.
Wild fires were being set in
Borneo to clear land for logging and planting of palm oil plantations.
Huge releases of greenhouse
gases were being emitted from burning peat soil. In the late 1990s Indonesia
was briefly the #1 greenhouse gas emitter in the world.
The Wall Street Journal
article also pointed out the environmental destruction, the loss of ecosystems,
the displacement of native peoples, and the man made cloud which shrouded the
region.
Under international pressure,
the palm oil industry adopted 39 weak standards.
Hawaiian Electric Company
(HECO) proposed importing palm oil from producers who adhered to just six of
these standards as long as the producer was working towards “no child
labor” and working towards “free, prior and informed consent” of native peoples
at the particular plantation where the biofuel would come from, regardless of
what the producers did on their other plantations.
Borneo is the third largest
island in the world with an area of 287,000 square miles. Borneo is divided three ways: 73 percent is
Indonesian, 26 percent is Malaysian and one percent is the sovereign country of
Brunei.
The Borneo rainforest is 140
million years old, making it one of the oldest rainforests in the world. There
are about 15,000 species of flowering
plants, 3,000 species of trees, 221 species of terrestrial mammals, 420
species of resident birds, and 440 freshwater fish species.
The Borneo rainforest is
one of the few remaining natural
habitats for the endangered
orangutan. It is an important refuge for many endemic forest
species, including the Borneo
elephant, the eastern Sumatran rhinoceros, the Bornean clouded leopard, the Hose's palm civet and the dayak
fruit bat.
Borneo has significant cave
systems. Clearwater Cave has one of the world's longest underground
rivers. Deer
Cave is home to over three million bats, with guano accumulated
to over 330 feet deep.
Military Oil Spills
The Navy’s Red Hill facility is
leaking into the ground near or over the aquifer.
The 20-mile Petroleum, Oils
and Lubricants pipeline connected the Air Force`s Wakakalaua Fuel Storage Annex
in Wahiawa and Kipapa Gulch Fuel Storage Annex in Waipio with Hickam Air Force
Base.
Over a half century
timeframe, 18 billion gallons went up, and 14 billion gallons came down. The
system is empty. The remaining 4 billion gallons leaked, evaporated, was stolen
and/or was an accounting error.
More Oil Spills
Dead oiled birds and tar
balls came ashore at Kauai's Barking Sands, Polihale, Nukoli, Fujii, and Kipu
Kai beaches in September 1998. The U.S. Coast Guard determined through chemical
analysis, that the oil was from a Tesoro hose failure between the Barbers Point
shore at the oil/chemical tanker OVERSEAS NEW YORK.
Exxon Houston spilled about
117,000 gallons of oil in March, 1989, threatening beaches on the island of
Oahu. Exxon sought to shift damages. Exxon lost in district court, at the Ninth
Circuit in 1995, and before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996.
Another Tesoro Leak at
Barber`s Point occurred in 2001 involving the oil/chemical tanker
OVERSEAS CHICAGO.
While in route from Barbers
Point to Ulsan, South Korea, the U.S. tank vessel SS OMI YUKON suffered major
explosions and fires in the starboard fuel oil storage tanks and engine room.
The Coast Guard determined that the 1986 accident had two causes:
“contamination of the vessel's bunkers with flush oil during bunkering through
a subsea pipeline and the absence of a flame screen in the after starboard fuel
oil tank vent.”
The Hawaiian Patriot was
carrying 99,000 of oil from Indonesia to Honolulu. During February 23-24, 1977,
the tanker leaked 50,000 tons of oil, caught fire, exploded, burned for hours,
and then sank. The oil plume occurred 300 miles west of Hawaii and moved away
from the islands. By contrast the Exxon Valdez had only 35,000 tons of oil (11
million gallons or 257,000 barrels).
AES Coal Plant, Campbell Industrial Park
Coal
HC&S burned bagasse to
generate power for its needs. HC&S wanted to sell surplus power to MECO but
MECO needed steady output (firm power). So HC&S added 40,000 tons of coal
per year to their bagasse, and sold electricity to MECO as “renewable energy.”
Cane burning and ccoal-bagasse air pollution impacted Maui communities.
Puna Geothermal Ventures
Geothermal
Tropical
Storm Iselle devastated Puna on
the night of Thursday, August 7, 2014.
Puna
Pono Alliance described the chain of events.
Puna Geothermal Ventures (PGV)
and Hawaii Electric Light Company (HELCO) made a commercial decision to keep
PGV operating during Tropical Storm Iselle.
It was plainly foreseeable
that the storm would damage trees and HELCO transmission lines, as it did, and
that PGV would need to shut down on an emergency basis, as it did, and that
complications of the storm situation would interfere with any response to the
upset condition, as they did.
In fact, electric service was
seriously disrupted around much of the Island as storm damage brought down
trees and branches and disrupted utility infrastructure on a wide scale. Even
ordinary rain storms have caused such damage on a smaller scale.
Civil Defense gave an alert
for community members to evacuate if they felt symptoms from PGV's hydrogen
sulfide release and dispatched the hazardous materials response team to PGV.
Storm damage to trees and
utility lines made the roads dangerous and impassable for the attempted HazMat
response, and they turned back before reaching the site. The same conditions
made it dangerous and impossible for residents feeling symptoms from PGV's H2S
release to evacuate from their homes.
The County but not the State
reacted to community concerns and passed geothermal-based health-related
ordinances. The 2016 State Legislature proposed stripping the county`s ability
to enact health ordinances related to geothermal emissions.
# # #
No comments:
Post a Comment