Alaska Pipeline

Just saw on CNN some drunk shot a hole in the Alaska pipeline. So far 300,000 gallons of oil has spilled.
Unbeleiveable.

Hey Paul,
we had yellowstone pipe line through our reservation,,it leaked and spilled continuosly,both from natural occurances and manmade things like gunshots,,,the last spill was the end of it ,,My husband who does haz mat cleaning was first on the scene he videoed and shot picture of it,,nasty polluted a mountain stream that it never should of been close to it the water carried the jet fuel it was carrying downstream for miles before it was found by a rancher,,the whole that caused the leakage turned out to be from old age and was several holes the size of pin heads,,,,,it was put in before the people here realized the impact it could have on our envirement,,it is now no more,,,as in ,,they are still in the middle of a major lawsuit,,along with the contract was breeched ,,they have not found an area that will allow them to re route it yet,,,
Guess my point being that this is stupidity at its best shooting it,,but in our area we have also witnessed the carelessnes of the companies for not taking proper care of their pipelines causeing alot of enviremental damage as well,,,

Another critical target for some nutcase terriost

Serenity...because of my natural-born love for the Earth and our environment I'd like to hear more about this if you care to post an update sometime. Not a very happy situation there. (Nor is it in alaska Paulgrow...any idea how far up the pipeline it was? Canada? Upper States? Alaska?)

Now I am not trying to be a smart A##. I really do want to know this. When it comes to oil, how can something that comes out of the ground be bad when it is spilled back on the ground? Now I know the immediate repercussions is that animals get caught up in it and it kills them. Very bad. I also know that it's not good in the water. I would not want to drink it. These things are not good. But what does it actually hurt as far as the ground? I could never quit grasp this. I've been told that even in the water like ocean spills that it filters out and everything goes back to normal. Now don't flame me I do care about the environment. These are just questions I have.

Crude oil indeed is a complex organic compound and is naturally broken down when exposed to the environment. Some of the refined compounds derived from crude are long lived and dangerous to plant and animal life (benzene,toluene and perchloroethylene for a few examples). I think that the emotional and political agendas and corporate laxity in response to emergencies (spills) keeps common sense from creating and implementing good solutions to this problem. Our modern lifestyles are DEPENDENT on the use of petroleum products so we need to find ways to live with them.