bushgang member Mativa refinery & their dirty deeds

http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1329/is_5_28/ai_107897302


SHORTLY AFTER 4:30 P.M. ON MONDAY, April 14, 2003, the power went out at the Motiva refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. The massive plant shut down instantly and, as is common when something goes wrong at a refinery, the "product" in the pipes--tens of thousands of pounds of highly pressurized liquids and gases-was released through the smokestacks. In this particular incident, 256,653 pounds of toxic chemicals were hurled into the air over the next 24 hours.

"That refinery was blowing hot," says Hilton Kelley, the tall, sturdy, 42-year-old founder of a local group called the Community In-Power Development Association. "And that cloud of poison hung over us until, I'd guess, 10 or 11 that night."

It wasn't the first such incident, or "upset," at the 3,800-acre plant, a century-old, grime-stained industrial giant that glowers above Port Arthur's pancake-flat landscape. Motiva had experienced seven in just the previous 11 weeks, and the record of Port Arthur's other refineries wasn't much better; during one six-month period last year, barely a day went by without a toxic accident of some kind.

-snip-

These days, Kelley patrols his old neighborhood in his 1995 Buick LeSabre, carrying the environmental activist's low-tech equivalent of a James Bond gizmo--a "bucket-style" air monitor, literally a white five-gallon plastic bucket that pumps samples of air into sealable plastic bags. Kelley uses it to make "grabs" of polluted air during refinery upsets, then ships those samples to a private lab. "The refineries' attitude has always been, 'If you catch us, we'll pay the fine--if you don't catch us, so much the better,'" Kelley says. "So I decided to be the guy who started catching them."
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Kelley was a Hollywood stunt man until he visited his home in Port Arthur and saw how Mativa was killing his neighbors

would you live or work in Port Arthur? I wouldn't want to even drive through it.

on edit: forgot to mention that there are more articles on Mativa at www.democrats.com

from the public conscience by this little tidbit:

<snip>

Why did the administration opt for such a sweeping revision? Part of the answer may lie with Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, which for much of 2001 met in secret to draw up a plan for expanding the nation's energy output. Representatives from power companies and refineries, the industries most affected by New Source Review, made contact with the task force dozens of times. A private memo to the task force from one of the nation's largest electricity producers, Southern Company--which contributed a total of $2.4 million to Republican candidates and the GOP between 1999 and 2002--warned that the EPA's "extreme" use of New Source Review "threatens the safe, reliable, and efficient operation of energy production facilities across the country." Industry leaders also hired former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour and RNC chairman-to-be Marc Racicot to plead their case before the Cheney panel. In May 2001, the group issued a report recommending that the EPA review "the impact of on investment" in utility and refinery expansion.

Nineteen months later, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman released the New Source Review rules, characterizing the changes as a way to encourage plants to modernize and improve air quality. But according to some of the EPA's own calculations, the effect could well be the opposite. Under the new rules, for example, plants " can use their two worst-polluting years of the past decade as a baseline for future emissions--an approach that, critics note, effectively rewards the dirtiest plants. According to one EPA memo, that change alone would allow 50 percent of all the nation's industrial plants to expand without being forced to clean up. The rules, notes Becker of the air-quality officials' group, also create a major new loophole for plants that release toxic chemicals during "upsets" such as the one at Port Arthur's Motiva. "If you are an attorney for industry and you can't find ways to escape New Source Review," he says, "shame on you."

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This article in itself should be, to a moral, rational thinking, responsible human being enough to justify the Supreme Court in making the decision into releasing the Cheney energy papers. But we all know that there is no morality, no rational thought, no responsibility except to the republican party, in the current Court. I am worried that there are only two things that can happen to our country. 1.) Democracy will whither and die a painful death (as it has been during the past 3+ years) or 2.) A horrible and bloody revolution will have to take place to overthrow the corrupt politicians that are killing us slowly but surely.

Both of these scenarios scare the hell out of me. But unless drastic changes occur shortly, starting in the next election, what else is there? We used to be THE example of what a country could be, what a country should be. Now we can barely hold our heads up in front of the world. The current administration, which was not even a legally elected, lies without shame and with complete immunity. Hell, if one lie doesn't work, then throw out another and see if it will fly.

They govern in secrecy, and that was absolutely what the Founding Fathers of this country did everything they could to prevent. Somehow the truth that we are the government got perverted and became the personal possession of big business and corrupt politicians.

I think it was Will Durant that once said that the average life of any great empire was 200 years. I sincerely pray that we can prove this not to be the case.