Fire water

A scene from Josh Fox's Gasland, a documentary on the natural gas industry, hydraulic fracturing/"Fracking", contamination of the water table, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, dead animals, illness, the environment, the EPA, and dangerous chemicals.

It debuted on HBO last night and was a horrifying look into how the natural gas industry's complete exemption from any and all environmental laws and the expansion of drilling all over the country has lead to increased water contamination and illness amongst the people living nearby. Of course the natural gas companies deny this is happening, that the hundreds of dangerous chemicals they pump into the ground in a process called hydraulic fracturing can't possibly be harming anyone, and how no one is essentially keeping an eye on this. It kind of makes you sick as you watch it over the nearly two hour running time of the film.

So, watch it or DVR it if you have a chance. Here's an interview with the director on PBS. Here's the trailer.

Chart of the day

After Canada beat the US in the Men's Hockey Gold Medal game, I bet you, like myself, had one question running through your head: I wonder what the water consumption and toilet use rates were in Canada during the game? Finally, thanks to Edmonton water utility EPCOR, we have a specific chart of when locals were dropping the kids off at the pool and making onesies in relation to the ups, downs, and, if you're an American, more downs of the hockey game that we ended up not caring about after we lost.


Truly these are the bowel movements of a nation in the thrall of hockey-mania. On the other hand we Americans just hold it until we piss ourselves after we pass out, in the streets on the way home, or we just go into the bottle we just emptied while onlookers chastise us for our lack of decorum. Who's to say which method is better.

So congrats on your gold, you can now go back to using the toilet at regular intervals like normal people. You know, after the moose herd finishes thundering through your front lawn and the mounties deliver your shipment of curling stones and syrup or whatever the hell it is your entire nation of Alaska touchers does up there.

(h/t Jables)

Don't drink the water

Hey, Americans like drinking poison, swimming in chemicals, and living near large flowing collections of carcinogens, right? Of course we do. Hell, that's why we all hate the Clean Water Act so much. Who wants old man government sticking his nose into the business of corporations and telling them that they can't tell us how much sewage we get to gloriously consume in our water?

You'll be happy to hear the great news then.

Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.
...
Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.

The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.

See there's a little dispute over language. When lawmakers originally wrote the law they used the phrase "navigable waters" to define the scope of government jurisdiction. What they meant and what regulators meant is everything from wetlands to streams to rivers. I believe the legal language was "shit you can get a fuckin' canoe into."

On the other hand the Supreme Court, in what I'm going to guess was a 5-4 ruling, thinks "navigable waters" means only a large river or a particularly big ass lake, and so help you God if that river or lake doesn't place it's ass in at least two states. Or, in other words, the Supreme Court doesn't think the Clean Water Act applies to most water. As such, regulators have had to end investigations, pull out of some states entirely, and, in what is a shocking surprise, somehow water pollution and contamination has risen because dumping poison into a stream that leads into a river is now legal. Essentially the Clean Water Act is now pretty much useless.

But don't worry, the Senate is going to pass a law that removes the "navigable" part from the law and... you know what I'm not even going to finish that sentence. They're going to attempt it, big business will shriek, Glen Beck will rant about the government stealing everyone's water, and the Democrats won't be able to get 60 votes for it.

So.... hope you like drinking soda. That's pretty much going to be the consumable beverage for a lot of areas of the country soon. On the other hand: invest in Brita water filters. I have a feeling that's going to be a boom stock. Isn't this a great country?

Drink up!

Because the health care fight is sometimes too depressing and infuriating to discuss, we here at These Bastards will move on to a lighter hearted subject that might bring a little smile to your face: you're drinking poison and you are going to DIE DIE DIE DIEDIEDIEDIE!!!! And it's legal. Further compounding the bad news, the problem spawned a thousand page and million word New York Times article. That's how much poison is in the glass of water that you aren't drinking because the office installed a Coke machine down the hall. If you weren't drinking so much high fructose corn syrup to shock your brain through another groggy morning, you'd probably be dead already.

The 35-year-old federal law regulating tap water is so out of date that the water Americans drink can pose what scientists say are serious health risks — and still be legal.

Only 91 contaminants are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used within the United States, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates. Government and independent scientists have scrutinized thousands of those chemicals in recent decades, and identified hundreds associated with a risk of cancer and other diseases at small concentrations in drinking water, according to an analysis of government records by The New York Times.

But not one chemical has been added to the list of those regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2000.

Other recent studies have found that even some chemicals regulated by that law pose risks at much smaller concentrations than previously known.

Yup, since 2004 over 64 million Americans have been exposed to water that did not meet "at least one commonly used government health guideline intended to help protect people from cancer or serious disease." Right now there is probably a tumor the size of Hervé Villechaize on your spine. I know this is largely a problem that hasn't been dealt with since 1974, but what do the phrases "no chemicals added to the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2000" and "increased cancer dangers for Americans since 2004" have in common? Our good friends in the Bush Administration. I think I know what they'd say: "The water meets the legal requirements and adding chemicals to the list would just have caused undue strain on the business community. Besides, it's not like our water is 'Yamuna River, New Dehli' bad."

And our drinking water isn't "New Delhi bad", but we might only have to wait a few years for that. On the bright side, some public health officials, like Dr. Pankaj Parekh of Los Angeles, who recognize the shortcomings of the laws and are trying to go above and beyond their duty to protect people from poison induced cancers are being thwarted... by the people they're trying to protect. I guess it is a fundamental American right to poison ourselves.

Don't worry, even though action on this is about a decade or two overdue, I'm sure our elected betters will get right on it and pass a law to fix things. I mean after all, this is something that both affects public health and the environment, so they'll probably get right on it. I mean if our government does handle two things competently it's major legislation on health care and the environment.

I think I'll go cry now.