Do you remember when Gary Southern and Carl Kennedy poisoned the waters of West Virginia? Their “Freedom Industries” chemical plant dumped toxic compounds into the rivers where folks obtained their drinking water. Were they punished? Not yet- and it’s been 5 years.
Continue reading And not a drop to drink
It’s been an interesting year. We had folks in Charleston, West Virginia banned from using water for several days. (I wrote about this as a terrorist act, because a company managed to have its toxic chemicals leak into the drinking water source. (You would think this would make folks in West Virginia demand their government do a better job of regulating chemical storage. But, they haven’t. Proof that it takes all kinds.) Or, folks in the Carolinas and even Virginia have Duke Energy pollute their waters with toxic sludge. By pumping the coal ash into the Dan River. (Again, no citizen outcry.)
Continue reading Water everywhere. But, not a drop to drink.
One of the big problems with our energy needs is that the fluctuations require us to build much larger plants to handle the peak demands. Which means that the plant cannot operate efficiently. (It is best to have any plant running at the same rate all the time.) Or, some have chosen to build a contiguous, smaller facility they can‘rev up’ to handle the peak demands. The problem with the second, smaller plant- even if it runs on natural gas- is the time it takes the facility to ramp up or down to handle those peak demands.
Continue reading So it can keep on going, and going, and going…