Different Day, Same Shit.

Remember Freedom Industries, the fine folks who brought licorice-flavored water and all of its attendant side effects to West Virginians (and possibly folks along the Ohio River) everywhere?

Those guys are filing for bankruptcy. Turns out befouling an entire region's drinking water for the foreseeable future comes with a huge price tag and the folks behind Freedom Industries just aren't prepared to stomach the entire cost:

Freedom Industries, the company that fouled thousands of West Virginians' water with a chemical leak into the Elk River last week, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Friday.

Freedom owes $3.6 million to its top 20 unsecured creditors, according to bankruptcy documents. The company also owes more than $2.4 million in unpaid taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, and the IRS has placed at least three liens on Freedom's property, demanding payment.

The unpaid taxes date back to at least 2000, according to a lien filed in 2010.

Under the bankruptcy code, Chapter 11 permits a company to reorganize and continue operating.

The filing also puts a hold on all of the lawsuits filed against Freedom Industries. Since the leak last week, about a mile and a half upriver from West Virginia Water American's plant in Charleston, about 25 lawsuits have been filed against Freedom in Kanawha Circuit Court. The company also faces a federal lawsuit.

But that's not all:

About an hour after its bankruptcy filing, Freedom filed an emergency motion for what's called "debtor-in-possession," or DIP, financing, which would allow it to secure up to a $5 million loan to continue to function in some capacity. The loan would, according to the filing, "provide additional liquidity to [Freedom] in order to allow it to continue as a going concern."

The lender in a debtor-in-possession case generally gets first priority when it comes time for the debtor, in this case Freedom, to pay money back.

"Under the bankruptcy code, when there is DIP financing from a DIP lender, 99 percent of the time, they get priority over all the other creditors," said Bob Simon, a prominent bankruptcy lawyer with the Pittsburgh firm Reed Smith. "You're putting your money in at risk, and the debtor is not going to have a lot of options, so the bankruptcy clerk permits the DIP lender to get priority over all the other lenders."

Freedom's proposed lender is a company called WV Funding LLC. That company does not exist in West Virginia, according to business records on file with the West Virginia secretary of state. Pennsylvania's secretary of state also has no records online for it.

The DIP agreement has places to sign for Freedom Industries and for WV Funding "by Mountaineer Funding LLC."

Mountaineer Funding was incorporated with the West Virginia secretary of state on Friday. Its one listed member is J. Clifford Forrest, Freedom Industries' owner.

So the owner of Freedom Industries goes and starts a new company the same day of filing the old company's bankruptcy and files an emergency motion that effectively places the new company at the front of the line for the old company's assets in the event of a discharge. It's a slick way to have your cake, eat it and avoid any liability for cleaning up the crumbs afterwards.

And conservatives everywhere not only think this is good business, but want Americans everywhere to hoist the EPA's head on a stick and willingly accept corporate lordship. As serfs, of course. Because every company needs a bunch of serfs who are willing to die for their betters out of sense of misplaced pride and fidelity:

Though some state legislators have called for reforming the state's famously lax regulations, the general response has been to yell at the media and outsiders. The battle cry: Others don't appreciate the personal sacrifices West Virginians make to provide the nation with chemicals and coal.

It is true. Outsiders don't appreciate them and, furthermore, don't respect them. They can't understand why anyone would let absentee landowners level their mountains and bury their streams in waste. Birds don't dirty their own nests.

The hard-luck people of Appalachia deserve their reputation for physical courage and a strong work ethic. But they suffer more from servility than from bad luck. Outsiders wince when the natives angrily declare their independent spirit and then cringe before corporate polluters, however tawdry.(...)

(...)But Waggoner's most powerful "to hell with" was reserved for fellow West Virginians. These were people who bought into the idea of "constant sacrifice as an honorable condition" and who "turned that condition into a culture of perverted, twisted pride and self-righteousness, to be celebrated and defended against outsiders."

Outsiders. Creating an aura of specialness that must be protected from outside influences is how cult leaders keep their members in check. It takes a good deal of mind control to turn mass sucker-dom into a bragging point.

West Virginia is a pretty dire place, even by Appalachian standards. With Big Coal as practically the only opportunity to make a decent living and with those opportunities themselves scarce, the only thing that's often left is pride. And when all a person has is their pride...

The level of odorous chemical in West Virginians' water dropped Friday, but not enough for authorities to lift a warning to avoid drinking, cooking or bathing with it or to give a clear idea as to when things will change.

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin described the situation in nine counties Friday night as "pretty bad," both for residents being told the only thing they should do with their running water is flush their toilets and schools, restaurants, hotels and other businesses forced to close.
One bit of good news is tests on the affected water supply, which are being conducted on an hourly basis, show "the chemical level is declining."

"But we're just not sure exactly how long it's going to take before it's acceptable to lift the do-not-drink ban," the governor told CNN.

"It's caused us more problems than you could ever imagine," Jones said Friday night, pointing out people can't do things like wash their hands after going to bathroom or wash their clothes.

"... It's a prison from which we would like to be released."

When you park 35,000 gallons worth of hazardous chemicals next to a major water source, stuff like this is bound to happen. To make matters worse, there's no issuing boil orders or throwing a few Brita filters at the problem. And for a triple whammy, this steady stream of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol-tainted water is bound for the Ohio River as early as tomorrow morning.

This should be a wake-up call to anyone who thinks government regulations are an impediment to free enterprise. Some regulations are actually there for a damned good reason.

Also:

(Freedom Industries) President Gary Southern tried several times to walk away from a press conference Friday evening, saying "it has been an extremely long day," only to be called back by insistent reporters -- including one who noted how long a day it has been for all the West Virginians now without drinkable water or a full explanation as to why.

"This incident is extremely unfortunate and unanticipated," Southern said. "... This has been a very, very taxing process."

UPDATE: I wonder what Senator Joe Manchin has to say, especially in light of the following:

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who led a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency when he was Governor, issued the following statement after the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of West Virginia. As Governor, Senator Manchin filed the first lawsuit against the EPA for overreaching its authority under the Clean Water Act.

“What a great day for West Virginia. I’m pleased and gratified to hear that the federal court has ruled in favor of our state, the miners who work here and the people who depend on coal for their livelihoods – and against the EPA for overstepping its boundaries,” Senator Manchin said. “As Governor, I sued the EPA because this bureaucratic agency was taking the wrong course. I remain hopeful that this court decision will put us on the path of getting the permits that we need to provide energy and jobs not just for West Virginia, but for this entire country. Looking ahead, I will work to make sure the EPA understands that it needs to work as an ally, not an adversary.”

For the past few months, Koch Carbon, an affiliate of Koch Industries, stored tons of petroleum coke on a lot near the Detroit-Windsor Ambassador Bridge. This stuff happens to be a byproduct of the ongoing tar sands oil operations in Alberta, Canada. When it's not sitting idle on some industrial lot, the "pet coke" is usually shipped overseas as a cheap but nastier alternative to coal.

Normally, this stuff is hosed down with an epoxy to keep it from blowing everywhere. The following is what happens when the epoxy stops working.



After seeing portions of the city devolve into wastelands and crumble to bits, the average Detroiter probably thinks this is the shriveled cherry on top of a heaping shit sundae. Understandably, Detroit and Windsor residents are a bit upset over their respective cities being treated like dumps.

To top it all off, all of that pet coke was being stored without a permit:

After months of operating without one, the company responsible for Detroit’s petroleum coke piles went hunting for one Tuesday.

Detroit Bulk Storage representatives faced a city panel that will decide the issue. At times, panel members were highly skeptical of the company’s actions.

A company representative said they didn’t know they needed a permit to openly store pet coke along the Detroit River.

It’s stopped taking additional shipments of the substance — a byproduct of refining Canadian tar sands oil — until it gets one.

“Our understanding was that once we were moving toward compliance, we could continue our operations,” said Detroit Bulk Storage lawyer Terri Whitehead.

A Detroit Bulk Storage representative also insists the company is using “best practices” when it comes to handling the openly-stored piles safely.

Fantastic.

The Birmingham Water Works has a drinking water intake on Mulberry Fork along the Shepard Bend, located in southeastern Walker County, AL, just southeast of the town of Cordoba. This intakes provides drinking water to 200,000 customers.

Drummond Company, Inc. plans to open a 1,773 acre coal mine that's approximately 1,000 feet from this intake. The Alabama Department of Environmental Management, an organization that one would think would pull the plug on such things, gave the company the go-ahead after its decision was upheld by the Environmental Management Commission.

This being the great state of Alabama and all, there's no telling how much grease was put on those skids. Or if the decision was designed as a "fuck you" of sorts to the city by a well-connected Good Ol' Boy network.

The Birmingham Water Works Board is in thorough opposition to the mine, for obvious reasons. Mine effluent dumped into the river and into the intake requires more thorough filtering, translating into higher costs for BWW and its customers. A number of other groups, including the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, is also in firm opposition against the mine.

The decision for Drummond to get cracking on building the mine rests on leasing or purchasing land currently held by the University of Alabama. Without that land, chances of the mine being built become slim to none. Hopefully, this adventure in environmental disaster can grind to a halt before any serious damage is done.