Who will poison drinking water, kill people and our ecosystem and get away with it. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/20...al-grand-jury-probe-of-denr.html#.UyifB-29LCQ Call me a hippie, a tree hugger, whatever you want. This is some bullshit, and EVERY SINGLE CORPORATION ALLOWED TO DO THIS WILL IN A HEARTBEAT. Please don't be fooled, these fuckers would put arsenic in baby food if it made them money and they could do it. You would think Southerners, who love the lakes and streams we live off of would stop at nothing to protect them. As Ronnie Van Zandt said, I can see the concrete slowly creepin, lord take me and mine before that comes.
THis is a HUGE disaster her in NC. A quote from Duke is that "Consumers will pay for the spill clean up." Was not well received, but who else? Just terrible. I live in what is called an electric city. For some reason, morons, about 40 years ago decided to form a group of 15 or so cities and create a coop of some sort. THey buy electicity from a source, then sell to the town. Our rates are 40 - 50% above those in the county, just a mile or so away. Anyway, I think Duke was about to buy all the cities out of this nonsense as part of a merger. Well, needless to say, that has gone by the waysaid, so they hit me from both sides. Duke Sux
They are also pumping toxic coal pond water into some other river in North Carolina. Not just the Dan River, or whatever River it is that was severely contaminated. So, a guy and his attorney started going up a river I can't remember what the name of this river is, and people from Duke Energy and the Sheriff's office showed up on the river to stop them from traveling up the river to take samples. It seems regulators and even the Governor of North Carolina has been covering up for Duke Energy.
In most cases, it is cheaper for corporations to pollute, plead guilty and pay the fine than it is to retrofit and be environmentally responsible. Bottom line drives these decisions which, makes responsibility a pretty hard sell.
And the bottom line funds the lobbyists and the PAC contributions that bribe our politicians to support them instead of their constituents.
You are right Red. I remember when there was a yellow pall in the sky over Baton Rouge the smog was so bad. The EPA clean air laws cleaned it up and that was a government regulation that was needed. I was just beginning to sell equipment to the plants along the Mississippi, watched the clean up and saw the benefits. The chemical industry is held to pretty tight standards yet still are doing well. I don't know why the coal companies and power companies that use coal are held to such a standard. There can be debate about what the standards should be but they should be enforced.
Zakley. Look at BP the serial polluter. One might think their multiple licenses to drill in the gulf would have been pulled, but they never were... Lobbyist+energy = top of the food chain.
Cap and Trade will do it. It worked to get rid of acid rain and will work to get rid of carbon pollution, too. It's already working in Europe. But the industry lobbyists are fighting it hard and the GOP is fighting it as well, seeing it as a "tax".
This is where my liberal nature gets torn apart. 1. Corporations cannot be trusted to do what's right. 2. Regulators are easily bought off or offered jobs with the corporations. It's a lose lose unless there are harsher penalties for both.
