840,000 gallons of oil from a corroded Enbridge Energy pipeline have leaked into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River near Battle Creek this past week. More specifically, “The oil is moving from Talmadge Creek into the Kalamazoo River, which flows from near the city of Battle Creek into Lake Michigan.” Swell.

Edward Vielmetti, friend of New Orleans and lead blogger at AnnArbor.com has been doing yeoman’s work staying on top of the story and associated political foibles as it unfolds. Follow Ed on Twitter for up to the minute information. For more, I suggest you follow Canadian news on this story because a) Enbridge Energy is a Canadian company and b) there’s a certain sheen, shall we say, to the quality of FoxMSNBCNN reporting: CBC News says 3.7 million litres while CNN says 19,500 barrels. Been there, done that, right?

Some other things that ought to sound terribly familiar to Gulf Coast residents. Here’s #2: Michigan oil spill: U.S. warned Canadian company about pipeline monitoring

3) Expect the same old disheartening song and dance from the Yankee right. The Michigan Messenger reports:

State Sen. Glenn Anderson (D-Westland) has introduced legislation in the State Senate to lift a cap on costs oil companies have to pay for clean ups associated with their pipelines.

Anderson told Jack Ebling on WILS 1320 AM radio Wednesday that right now, state law caps the damages a company is liable for at $15 million.

But the Senate, which is dominated by Republicans, adjourned for a mid-summer break without acting on Anderson’s legislation.

“They chose to do nothing with it,” Anderson said. “They passed a resolution that called on officials from the federal government to the locals to do all they can. That’s nothing but talk.”

3a) Chicago’s Mayor Daley: Michigan oil spill worse than Asian carp so “Michigan better do something about the investigation, the criminal and civil investigation. Who’s paying for it, and who had the oil spill in the Kalamazoo River, because it’s flowing into Lake Michigan.” Blarghblarblar.

And 4) @Enbridge_PR “Lake Michigan is not as big as the Gulf of Mexico, but we’re gonna try to beat those filthy Brits at their own game! @bpglobalpr” Right down to the fake Twitter account.

Wake me up when it’s all over, ferchrissakes.

… The accusation traced back to a five-year-old divorce file, and even then it was all circumstantial – a nest of gibberish, as they say in the trade … and not entirely unlike the gaggle of wild charges laid by Ronald Reagan against Col. Moammar Khadafy of Libya.

The colonel was whooping it up in Tripoli last week with a fast round of bear-baiting, breast-beating and unsettling displays of what is beginning to look like a genuinely perverse sense of humor, although not everybody saw it that way.

There were those in Washington, including some prominent Democrats, who saw the colonel’s behavior as the last stages of some deep and malignant craziness that might soon cause The End Of The World. Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, a traditionally flaky liberal with credentials suggesting some kind of awful mutation with the genes of Hubert Humphrey, Billie Sol Estes and a Stalinist camel driver from South Yemen, went on national TV to say that the time had finally come for Khadafy to be put to sleep. It was a call for a political assassination. “Maybe we’re at that point in the world,” said Metzenbaum, a longtime lobbyist for Israel, “where Mr. Khadafy has to be eliminated.”

Not even Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was willing to go that far – not even after the colonel discussed his plans for destroying the US 6th Fleet and perhaps every oil well east of Gibraltar in a lengthy personal discussion with Ted Koppel on “Nightline.”

In almost the same breath, however, he assured Koppel that he was absolutely sincere about inviting Reagan to come and visit with him in his tent and hash things out like real men. Koppel responded by inviting Khadafy to the White House, for a long lunch without George Shultz, and al Qaid said, “Why not?” He has never been west of England – and only there for six months, long ago, which he spent hunkered down in some vile basement flat in Brixton – but when Koppel asked him to Washington he seemed gratified. It was an “encouraging exchange,” as they say in the diplomatic business, and some even called it a “breakthrough.”

Indeed. And so much for TV diplomacy. Within 24 hours the colonel had shifted back to his Mr. Hyde mode and was calling Reagan a Nazi pig who should be put on trial for international crimes. He reverted to his earlier assessment of the president as a “stinking rotten crusader” and an “aging third-rate actor” who is even worse than his old movies, which are shown constantly on Libyan TV.

Khadafy also called for help in the form of a new International Brigade of volunteers to join terrorist “suicide squads” to wreak havoc all over the world, if the US attacks Libya.

Koppel had no comment and Shultz laughed all night in his office in Foggy Bottom, and Khadafy claimed he got 10,000 applications in less than 48 hours.

Who will our Hunter Thompson of 25 years from now be? Who will we read then to look back on what’s happening now in hindsight, horror interspersed with giggling fits and deja vu?

Update: It should be said that we could read HST 50 years from now and things will be the same with the names slightly changed. The man wasn’t particularly prescient, although he wrote for the ages; the reality is that America hasn’t fundamentally changed since the 1950s. As long as there is fear …

Oscar The Cat reacts to this morning's presser.

Hard-hitting journalism: “Did you feel the earthquake, Mr. President?” I am not for Geology PR at all costs, even if deep fault reactivation on the eastern continental margin is hella cool.

BP halts Gulf oil flow for first time since April. Now waiting on test and seal of the dud well and the relief well to capture all flow from the reservoir. Does anyone have a good graphic of the intended relief/capture mechanism?

Gulf’s Artificial Islands Already Failing I was under the impression that engineers had a) thought about the islands’ long-term stability – wrong, and b) figured, “We’re screwed if we do or do not. Why not give it a shot?” Coastal scientist Len Bahr, who is quoted extensively in this article, will be an environmental panelist at the Rising Tide conference in New Orleans this year.

NPR | Massey Mine Workers Disabled Safety Monitor

… an electrician deliberately disabled a methane gas monitor on a continuous mining machine because the monitor repeatedly shut down the machine. Three witnesses say the electrician was ordered by a mine supervisor to “bridge” the automatic shutoff mechanism in the monitor.

“What makes it criminal is that somebody actively takes steps to defeat the safety protection. And that should be prosecuted. You’ve put production over the safety of your employees.”

Digital Journal | Shortcuts may have led to well blow-out, BP faces record fines

An independent engineer with expertise in well failure analysis has called BP’s actions before the blowout as “horribly negligent.” Gordon Aaker, Jr, P.E., is a Failure Analysis Consultant with the firm Engineering Services, LLP, and told Committee staff it was “unheard of” not to perform a cement bond log with the single casing method.

Now, was this just a series of bad decisions by a few employees on a given project? How did these employees gain the leeway to authorize said unsafe activity without blessings from farther up the chain? Or do higher-ups not care how the job is done until a mine or rig explodes into a PR nightmare? Either approach is frightening. I hope these are questions being discussed during the (ersatz) moratorium.

Wow, Ray Nagin is the bald, black version of W. We always knew it, but it isn’t so stinkingly apparent until you’re confronted with the final bill. Um, waiter, we didn’t order all that. Too bad, it’s your lucky day to pay it.

If you come away from it thinking “Boy, am I glad I don’t live in that city,” you are blind and deaf. It is everywhere in this country and especially bad when visitors from India say, “Hey, this sounds just like home!”

Meanwhile, back at the oyster farm, they’re all dead and, as oil comes ashore, the Mississippi coast faces its largest environmental crisis since Katrina. Someone alert Haley Barbour. Oh wait, he doesn’t really care.

Southeast Asia handled the tsunami aftermath better than this.

California Drops State Rock Over Asbestos Content

Californian state senator Gloria Romero’s (D-East Los Angeles) bill (SB 624) looks to give the state mineral Serpentine the boot because some deposits contain a small amount of asbestos. Romero states, “[Serpentine] contains the deadly mineral chrysotile asbestos, a known carcinogen, exposure to which increases the risk of the cancer mesothelioma.”

Dear Senator Romero, East Los Angeles has far worse problems like its citizens being mistaken for illegals over in Arizona, not to mention crushing poverty and the fact that your state budget is now weeks overdue.

What we need is a bill to teach science given that the state legislature doesn’t even know what asbestos, serpentine and serpentinite are to begin with.

From Looking For Detachment

Asbestos is not a single mineral, and in fact isn’t the name of any defined mineral at all. Asbestiform is a particular mineralogical habit that some minerals take: long fibers often in veins or masses. Asbestiform and fibrous, as crystal forms, are similar, with asbestiform being a more extreme version of fibrous.

and the Lab Lemming

There are 20 forms of serpentine, only one of which is an asbestos mineral. The very dangerous amphibole asbestos minerals specifically mentioned in the bill are completely unrelated to serpentine.

Forget all of the above and ask yourself this: How does “outlawing” serpentin(ite) prevent or cure mesothelioma?

This is what happens when science, thorough research of the issues and common sense are run over by spineless legislators as state employees head for minimum wage. They find a scaperock.

What next? Wisconsin drops galena because it contains lead and the same with limestone in Tennessee for trace amounts of arsenic. Nope, didn’t say it. Don’t give them any ideas.

Update: Sacramento Bee | California state-rock bill has serpentine agenda. It turns out that it’s not a simple case of “nanny state” but something more sinister: a jobs stimulus plan for personal injury lawyers.

Were SB 624 to become law, declaring serpentine as carcinogenic, it could widen the opportunities for lawsuits against owners of property with naturally occurring outcroppings of serpentine. And it’s become a new skirmish in the perennial war between personal injury lawyers and the business-backed Civil Justice Association of California.

The Oil Drum | BP’s Deepwater Oil Spill – Not Everything is Clearly Successful

And at that drilling speed, they should be perhaps [be] there by now, in fact this number would suggest that they might have reached it. There then still remains the delay while they run that casing, which could be some significant additional time, depending on conditions.

… The voyage of the “A Whale” to sweep up large quantities of oil has so far been inconclusive and, despite the large fleet of vessels employed for the process, only an average of 900 barrels a day is reported as having been skimmed and recovered, initially by the two companies BP relied on.

nola.com | Media, boaters could face criminal penalties by entering oil cleanup ‘safety zone’

“The safety zone has been put in place to protect members of the response effort, the installation and maintenance of oil containment boom, the operation of response equipment and protection of the environment by limiting access to and through deployed protective boom,” the news release said.

… In order to get within the 65-foot limit, media must call the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans, Edwin Stanton, to get permission.

Some reading as you go into this 234th birthday of America.

Scientists Discover Thomas Jefferson Wrote “Subjects” Before Replacing Word with “Citizens” when Drafting Declaration

Preservation scientists at the Library of Congress have discovered that Thomas Jefferson, even in the act of declaring independence from Britain, had trouble breaking free from monarchial rule.

In an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, the famous founder wrote the word “subjects,” when he referred to the American public. He then erased that word and replaced it with “citizens,” a term he used frequently throughout the final draft.

Fast Company | Video Suggests BP Literally Covering Up Oil Damage on Louisiana Beaches

There’s no question that BP has lied extensively over the past few months about the growing Gulf oil disaster. The company has bullied journalists, fudged numbers, and even deployed fake journalists to the Gulf to write about how everything is fine. Now BP may be literally trying to cover up oiled beaches by dumping sand on top of them.

WWTJD?

(Image ganked from Ian McGibboney)

Don’t you hate it when news outfits won’t just report the, uh, news and even the better ones succumb to the cute wordplay angle or feel that they have to cast current American events in a larger political light? For the love of information, does everything have to be couched in re-electability, i.e. how a given political figure’s reaction to a given issue positions them on the Upcoming Elections Risk boardgame?

Like today’s NPR Morning Edition segment on Bobby Jindal: Oil Spill Crisis Puts Jindal Back On Center Stage.  I think they played “again a rising star” three times in the lead-up. And they even put up the Messiah Bobby picture on the web edition.

Let’s see how the governor has really been doing, shall we?

NYTimes | Louisiana Wants U.S. Help, and Its Own Way

[I]nterviews with more than two dozen state and federal officials and experts suggest that Louisiana, from the earliest days of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has often disregarded its own plans and experts in favor of large-scale proposals that many say would probably have had limited effectiveness and could have even hampered the response.

CBS | Gulf Coast Governors Leaving National Guard Idle

But nearly two months after the governor requested – and the Department of Defense approved the use of 6,000 Louisiana National Guard troops – only a fraction – 1,053 – have actually been deployed by Jindal to fight the spill.

Businessweek | La. gov’s budget vetoes hit his political foes

Coastal parish lawmakers argued local communities can’t afford to float [$24.9 million] for response efforts and wait for reimbursement.

“The local governments are crying for financial help, and apparently the governor’s decided to let them go cry to BP and let the chips fall where they may,” [Louisiana House Speaker Jim] Tucker said Monday.

Sensuous Curmudgeon | As the Gulf Gushes, Jindal & Creationists Pray

The only thing that surprises us is how such a misfortune could have occurred at all — and to Louisiana of all places. Surely, with the concentrated spiritual power of that state’s creationist population, they should have have been immune to this kind of thing.

And now, Jeffrey with the wrap-up: “I never said Bobby Jindal isn’t full of shit. Only said that his full-of-shitness was briefly loud enough to draw attention to the fact that others were also full of shit. But in the end, it’s important to remember that Bobby Jindal is pretty damned full of shit too.”

In other words: Now, you listen here, he’s not the messiah. In fact, he’s a very naughty boy. Now go away!

The current drilling moratorium is a joke, alright? Not in theory, but in practice.

1) It takes six months for “the commission to determine how to prevent this from ever happening again?” Arbitrary duration and a poorly-stated goal. The way to prevent this from happening again is known. But it’s going to take a lot more than six months, given the pace at which the federal government moves, to enforce and measure real behavior change that should come from within a given company, set up a verifiable and analyzable flow of data between the company and the MMS, remove the conflicts of interest between energy companies and the MMS and revamp the regulatory agency in any lasting fashion.

2) Not all oil companies are the same. Other players will already have increased safety measures in a hurry. Even if they have not, what is going to happen in six months to change standard operating procedure? What are we doing to address the smaller leakers? If the goal here is “to prevent this from happening again,” can we get a guarantee that this oil spill or even a smaller version of it will never happen again IN SIX MONTHS TIME?

3) I guarantee you that someone has done a tremendous amount of market research on behalf of the government that by the six-month mark, the public will have softened its stance on drilling enough for things to go back to business as usual. It’s a nice round we’ve-all-done-enough-penance number.

Yes, you heard me right earlier. The way to prevent this from happening again is known. There are folks opposed to and for offshore drilling who say that we can never prevent a recurrence and therefore we should stop drilling or continue to drill, respectively. But, this was no mere accident. An accident happens when you follow all the rules of the road and external, heretofore-unknown circumstances conspire against you. In this case, the driver didn’t have the seatbelt on, the tires were under-inflated, the brakes were non-operational but no one had bothered to check them and the car was driven anyway even after passengers expressed concern and asked for the handover of keys. (Hey, if folks in the industry are going to liken this ongoing disaster to a car accident or plane crash, you can bet I will run miles with the metaphor.) So, this much is absolutely preventable.

What about the rest? As commenter Blair, who incidentally is a rocket scientist, said in a comment to a previous post, “It costs to do fault tree analysis and establish contingency plans, but the cost of NOT planning is getting too high. I worry that governments are reactive in nature and will never get ahead of the situation. Government CAN require industry to have plans in place before they proceed with potentially risky activity.” You cannot prevent lightning from striking the collection ship thus halting oil recovery for a while. That is a legitimate accident. But to not anticipate and not plan for any critical component of the operation failing due to human oversight or act of god, even and especially in the recovery phase, shows that neither BP nor the government has learned philosophically much from the initial disaster and it’s going to take a lot more than six months and a drilling moratorium to fix systemic breakdown.

Fire away.

Update: Oil gushing at spill site after vent damaged; cap removed after robotic sub hits vent

We need a moratorium on whomever is running this outfit. NOW.