Please note, petroleum products are not considered hazardous substances, and are
not eligible for this program (Click "eligibility" on the reimbursement web
page.) All the other web pages refer to "oil spills and hazardous substance
releases." For political/economic reasons petroleum products are not defined as
"hazardous substances."

Rick wrote:

rock_doctor wrote:

Well this happens. Most emergency response people are very reluctant to get
involved with a clean-up unless they can clearly identify who caused the
problem. It does not cost them anything to look at it but if they start to
clean it up then they are now responsible and if they can't recover the
costs (generally in court) they get the bill.

That is not quite how it works. The federal agency involved in
coordinating the cleanup (it is in navigable waters) is empowered to
call in all the contractors required to deal with the incident. The
cleanup fund covers all the costs and the government deals with the
details of who to sue for recovery after the dust settles.

The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund was setup to avoid just the scenario
you described.

Take a look at:

http://www.epa.gov/oerrpage/superfun.../lgr/index.htm

and

http://www.epa.gov/oerrpage/superfun...nrs/nrsosc.htm

Rick

That would not do any good down here on this side of the Savannah River.
We have have at least 3 sherrifs in jail now for being the guys on
shore catching the bags. :-)

Larry W4CSC wrote:

I told the fire chief the best way to get the CG here, fast, was to
tell them we found 6 bales of pot floating in the river....(c;



On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 11:26:13 -0500, "Wim" wrote:


Hi Larry,
A good article and even better, your observations! In order to get attention
in this "new world" may be the wording of your complaint needs to be
"updated"!

Suggestion:
When you call in to 911 use the phrase;
" May be started by a " terrorist" or is it a "terrorist action/plot".

In stead of the fire dept. may be they'll send the Homeland Security Rep.
;-))
If the story was not so tragic, it might be comical in its own way ;-)
Taxes at work.
--
c ya Wim
www.cruising.ca/thousand/f-index.html


"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...
: I came home, yesterday, around noonish. I live on the waterfront of
: the Ashley River in Charleston, SC, about 9.5 miles up from the
: harbor. The Ashley River, combined with the Cooper River, join
: together in downtown Charleston to form the Atlantic Ocean.
:
: I noticed a strong smell of diesel fuel in the air, so proceeded to
: check out my diesel cars and truck for a leak. I found nothing. A
: neighbor came over to see what I was doing and said he knew where the
: smell was coming from, the river. I went down to the waterfront to
: find a fairly big oil slick covered the water out front. I called 911
: to report it, expecting a hazmat response team to find the leak and
: stop it from polluting the river. I was wrong, not for reporting it,
: but for expecting some government bureaucrats to DO something to stop
: it.
:
: The 911 operator triggered a fire truck pumper from our local city
: fire station with three firemen whos lunch was interrupted. Two of
: them were all dressed up to fight a fire, so was the truck. They
: agreed there was an oil spill in the water and told their dispatcher
: so. They called the Coast Guard and SC Department of Health and
: Environmental Control (DHEC). Our fire department has no boat or, it
: seems, hazmat team equipped for oil spills. They seemed very
: reluctant to trespass on anyone's property for fear of the lawyers, so
: the local chief arrived. One neighbor has a fuel oil tank on a small
: hill overlooking the river, but that seemed secure when the chief
: walked over to take a look.
:
: A neighbor, hearing the fire truck ruckus, walked out on his dock and
: also noticed the oil so got in his boat to ride around an look upriver
: as the tide was going out. He offered the firemen a ride with him,
: but they declined as they are not allowed to ride with mere mortals in
: private boats, again for fear of being sued, I suppose.
:
: I expected the Coast Guard to send a hazmat team in one of their fast
: motor lifeboats or rib boats to be haulin' ass upriver. This was
: another hope dashed, when two sailors, a politically-correct team of
: one male and one asian female, arrived by car from downtown. These
: were the investigators for the legal team, whos job it is to place
: blame and see how big a fine they can impose on any violators dumping
: oil into the waterways. They didn't have any hazmat materials to stop
: the oil leak if we found it, only a little plastic sieve in a plastic
: ring and a plastic oil collection bottle to gather evidence to use at
: the poor *******s trial before sentencing. It's now over an hour
: since my report. Noone, on scene, is capable of stopping an oil leak
: or soaking up oil leaking from even a canoe, much less an oil tanker.
: Not a single oil soaking pad has been exposed to the hazard.
:
: A DHEC guy arrived who talked to the sailors and firemen. A decision
: was made that the sailors were going to handle the investigation to
: get the others off the hook. Hands were shaken and the State of South
: Carolina's DHEC left without getting his hands oily. The male sailor
: took a water sample and sealed the jar while the female sailor took
: pictures on her top-of-the-line Sony Mavica SLR still camera to show
: her boss the sailor got his shoes muddy taking the sample. His shoes
: were the only oil casualty, other than the river and its inhabitants,
: in this sordid affair.
:
: Downriver from here, there is only one diesel-powered boat within 5
: miles of waterfront. It's an aging sport fisherman, that has been
: perched over the river on its electric lift for as long as any of us
: can remember. Its owner has long since abandoned deep sea fishing, or
: even cruising it up and down the river, because he's quite old and
: goes out of state a lot, leaving the once-nice boat to sit and rot in
: the hot SC sunshine, abandoned.
:
: The male sailor knows the boat. He has investigated other complaints
: of oil leakage from it many months past from other neighbors on the
: downriver side of it. He said CG had inspected its overboard
: discharge ports and found diesel fuel leaking out of it, long ago.
: The owner's son was notified because the owner was out-of-town making
: another million, I suppose, and the son and a mechanic were supposed
: to "take a look" for oil leaks in the fiberglass hull's interior. Of
: course, it seems no follow-up inspection was done to insure the
: problem was actually found and corrected.....only that all the
: required paperwork and reports were neatly typed without errors and
: filed away with the millions of other reports in some haze grey
: cabinets for future court actions. The on-scene sailors, Second Class
: Petty Officers, USCG, were going to go look, again, at the boat to see
: if that was the source of the oil slick. Noone was in a hurry to stop
: it.
:
: The North Charleston Fire Chief, alerted to the ruckus on the
: waterfront, showed up to confer with the on-scene local chief to make
: sure the department was following the book. Firemen who had turned
: the truck around to go finish lunch decided to back the truck back
: down our dead-end street for the Chief. Lunch was gonna be later then
: planned. Some firemen started in on the now-cold greasy fried
: chicken. I hoped none of it got into the river to make the oil slick
: bigger.
:
: The "chief's conference" was short as government-sponsored conferences
: go and both chief's determined they were off the hook for any cleanup,
: leaving all responsibilities to the politically-correct sailors to
: handle. The firemen all left as they had come, ready to fight that
: dumpster fire at a moment's notice. God bless 'em. We should buy 'em
: a boat and show 'em how to use it....maybe some oil pads and a little
: pump or at least some plastic sheets.
:
: The party broke up soon after the sailors headed over towards Lamb's
: Road to look at the diesel boat.....No hurry. They didn't have the
: equipment to stop the boat from leaking, anyway, in their nice car.
: You'd have to have a BOAT to go under the boat on the lift to put some
: plastic under it to catch any diesel oil leaking out of it. Well,
: Duhhhh......
:
: I suppose, by now, the son has been notified, the reports are being
: neatly typed by the hazmat typing team and all is well, again, on the
: Ashley River.....still coated with diesel fuel. The tide'll have to
: take care of the cleanup. If you live downriver, keep a sharp eye out
: and jack up the boat on your lift another foot.
:
: Thanks.
:
:





Larry W4CSC

"Very funny, Scotty! Now, BEAM ME MY CLOTHES! KIRK OUT!"


--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

wrote:

Please note, petroleum products are not considered hazardous substances, and are
not eligible for this program ...

That will come as a shock to the EPA, the USCG, and a whole stack of oil
cleanup contractors in addition to all those who have been paying into
the fund.

I don't know what you missed but read this:

http://www.rivermedia.com/consulting/er/oilfund.htm


Rick

I would have thought the proper response to the leaking boat the FIRST
time it was discovered to pollute the river, several times ago, would
have been to simply put a big sheet of plastic UNDER the boat
suspended on its lift that would catch any oil dripping or drizzling
from it and order the owner to get a mechanic to fix it. Then, once
fixed, the "plastic inspector" would come inspect that, in fact, the
damned leak had been fixed before removing the plastic catcher from
the boat and allowing it to be freed up, again........in lieu of the
lawyers and court and fines and that stuff....solving the problem on a
more permanent basis.

Refusing that in, say, 10 days, CG should have confiscated the boat to
pay for the cleanup contractor, also solving the problem.....and
giving its owner incentive to get that mechanic down here, TODAY.

Silly me. I thought someone cared about the environment. I confused
them with people trying to protect the sun from my old R-12 air
conditioner in the '73 Mercedes 220D.



Larry W4CSC

"Very funny, Scotty! Now, BEAM ME MY CLOTHES! KIRK OUT!"

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 02:54:21 GMT, Rick
wrote:

wrote:

Please note, petroleum products are not considered hazardous substances, and are
not eligible for this program ...

That will come as a shock to the EPA, the USCG, and a whole stack of oil
cleanup contractors in addition to all those who have been paying into
the fund.

It also comes as quite a shock to the Fiddler Crabs, too!



Larry W4CSC

"Very funny, Scotty! Now, BEAM ME MY CLOTHES! KIRK OUT!"

Larry W4CSC wrote:

I would have thought the proper response to the leaking boat the FIRST
time it was discovered to pollute the river, several times ago, would
have been to simply put a big sheet of plastic UNDER the boat
suspended on its lift that would catch any oil dripping or drizzling
from it and order the owner to get a mechanic to fix it.

Kind of tough with a 130 foot crabber.

Silly me. I thought someone cared about the environment.

It does seem to be a variable ethic. I have seen the oil spill nazis go
berserk at the Valdez oil terminal when, literally, a single drop of
hydraulic oil from an assist tug created a tiny circle of sheen on
mirror calm water alongside the dock.

At the same time the water at the city dock across the way was literally
rainbowed with bilge oil and runoff from hydraulic leaks on the
recreational and fishing boats. Not a soul was bothered by the sheen on
the water in that area.

I am not a tree hugging anti oil, anti boating, luddite environmentalist
by any means but I would like to see some balance in how the pollution
nazis respond. On ships we are getting gray hair worrying about losing
our licenses or getting jailed over putting a half ounce in the water
due to an accident or mechanical failure while thousands of little
one-gallon spills that are not newsworthy enough to attract politicians
and ecofascists are simply ignored as were the spills you and I described.

Part of the problem is the insane position taken by the enforcers. They
say "spill a drop and die - fail to report a spill and rot in jail -
report a spill and lose your job or go bankrupt - all the while they
will not provide places to easily dispose of oil waste, do not respond
to small spills at all, or when they do show up, automatically assume a
cop/criminal relationship no matter what the circumstance of the spill.

It has made for an adversarial relationship between those who might
however innocently put oil in the water and those in a position to
quickly and economically remove that oil. People are afraid to call for
help for fear of financial disaster ... who wants to lose their house or
be fined tens of thousands of dollars for a single stupid mistake? No
one does and that translates into thousands of small spills that go
unreported and untreated. I believe those spills are cumulatively more
dangerous and do more damage to the environment than most of the spills
that are large enough to attract news cameras and politicians.

Rick

x-no-archive:yes wrote:

Please note, petroleum products are not considered hazardous substances, and are
not eligible for this program (Click "eligibility" on the reimbursement web
page.) All the other web pages refer to "oil spills and hazardous substance
releases." For political/economic reasons petroleum products are not defined as
"hazardous substances."

The reason that they are not coded as hazardous is that if they were
everyone would have to have a hazardous permit to drive their cars.
Also the folks that recycle the oil used in cars would have to have a
hazardous waste permit to collect it and drive it to the disposal
site. If they had to do that, they might not be willing to act as a
collection site. If there are no collection sites, then people will
go back to dumping the used oil in the storm drains.

Classifying something has hazardous or non-hazardous doesn't always
have a lot to do with whether it actually IS hazardous. If you look
at some pesticides they will list the ingredients and then say - 98%
inert. That's because the labeling of pesticides is covered under
FIFRA (Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act) which says
that anything that's not an insecticide or whatever doesn't count. So
you have butane or propane propellant or methylene chloride as a
carrier and they are labeled inert.

Rick wrote:

rock_doctor wrote:

Well this happens. Most emergency response people are very reluctant to get
involved with a clean-up unless they can clearly identify who caused the
problem. It does not cost them anything to look at it but if they start to
clean it up then they are now responsible and if they can't recover the
costs (generally in court) they get the bill.

That is not quite how it works. The federal agency involved in
coordinating the cleanup (it is in navigable waters) is empowered to
call in all the contractors required to deal with the incident. The
cleanup fund covers all the costs and the government deals with the
details of who to sue for recovery after the dust settles.

The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund was setup to avoid just the scenario
you described.

Take a look at:

http://www.epa.gov/oerrpage/superfun.../lgr/index.htm

and

http://www.epa.gov/oerrpage/superfun...nrs/nrsosc.htm

Rick

grandma Rosalie

X-No-Archive: yes




"Rosalie B." wrote in message
...

Hi, to set the no archive x-header command you have to type:

x-no-archive: yes (and then leave at least 3 blank lines before your post,
as i have done above)

I use to do this but realized so few servers acknowledge the x-header
commands I stopped but I though I would let you know how to do it. :-)

Mark

x-no-archive:yes



"rock_doctor" wrote:

X-No-Archive: yes

Does the capitalization make a difference? I don't type it each time
- it is automatically added to the headers by my mail program.


"Rosalie B." wrote in message
.. .

Hi, to set the no archive x-header command you have to type:

x-no-archive: yes (and then leave at least 3 blank lines before your post,
as i have done above)

I use to do this but realized so few servers acknowledge the x-header
commands I stopped but I though I would let you know how to do it. :-)

Thank you - I did not realize that the spaces were necessary. I agree
it is probably a lost cause.


grandma Rosalie

S/V RosalieAnn, Leonardtown, MD
CSY 44 WO #156
http://home.mindspring.com/~gmbeasley/id2.html

X-No-Archive: yes




"Rosalie B." wrote in message
...
Thank you - I did not realize that the spaces were necessary. I agree
it is probably a lost cause.

My pleasure, it is a great idea...

mark