Environmental Groups Sue Port of Seattle Over Shell’s Arctic Oil Fleet

By Reuters On March 3, 2015

Shell rigs leave Seattle in June 2012 for the company’s summer drilling campaign in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Photo: Vigor

SEATTLE, March 2 (Reuters) – A coalition of environmental groups sued the Port of Seattle on Monday to stop the lease of a terminal to Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s Arctic oil drilling fleet, arguing a proper environmental review was never conducted, court records showed.

Earthjustice, along with other groups including the Sierra Club, filed the suit in a Washington state court, alleging the drilling operation was substantially different from the terminal’s prior use, meaning an environmental review had to be done under state law.

The complaint against the port and Foss Maritime Co, which would work for Shell under the two-year lease, also alleged that officials reached the arrangement without public disclosure and that the fleet could pollute the area’s water.

“The Port shut out the public and subverted laws that are designed to foster an informed public assessment of controversial proposals like this one,” Earthjustice Managing Attorney Patti Goldman said in a statement.

Shell, Europe’s largest energy firm, is intent on restarting its Arctic drilling campaign in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea this summer. It was suspended in early 2013 following the grounding of a drilling rig.

“We have received a shoreline substantial development permit exemption from the City of Seattle for this use,” Port of Seattle spokesman Peter McGraw said in a statement, adding that officials had not yet reviewed the suit.

“The Port of Seattle believes it has complied with all necessary environmental requirements,” McGraw said.

Foss did not immediately respond to request for comment but company spokesman Paul Queary told the Puget Sound Business Journal that activity at the terminal would actually decline under the plan.

Late last year, drilling contractor Noble Corp Plc paid $12.2 million to settle felony charges by the U.S. Department of Justice related to safety, environmental and record keeping violations on vessels in Arctic waters in 2012 while working as a contractor for Shell. (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Writing by Curtis Skinner; Editing by David Holmes)
© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.

LA judge recently awarded $164,000 for the costs of removing Chinese drywall from a home and replacing the wiring, plumbing and appliances that had been ruined by the defective product.

We are keeping a close eye on several cases in federal court in Louisiana, where a judge recently awarded $164,000 for the costs of removing Chinese drywall from a home and replacing the wiring, plumbing and appliances that had been ruined by the defective product. 

This decision sent a clear signal to the manufacturers, suppliers and builders that the courts are going to impose stringent requirements for the remediation of the homes that have been affected.
 
This ruling comes weeks after a $2.6-million judgment for seven Virginia families – more than $370,000 per homeowner – against a different drywall manufacturer from China that refused to participate in the trial.

It appears that KPT, the Germany-based company that manufactured the drywall in China that was involved in the Louisiana case, is now considering the possibilities of appealing the ruling and attempting to settle with some of the builders that used its defective drywall. For the builders, settlement offers from this or other manufacturers could be enticing, as the funds would be paid upfront before the remediation work is performed. However, it appears that the repairs for each affected home are going to be costly, and relocation costs for the residents will also add significant sums.

Some construction industry experts have estimated that as many as 100,000 U.S. homes have the defective Chinese drywall, the majority of which are located in Florida and Louisiana

The Village of Elm Grove was awarded more than $315,000, including damages for the delay and additional engineering fees.

In a lawsuit involving the Village of Elm Grove in Wisconsin, the case recently concluded with the municipality winning its breach-of-contract lawsuit against the construction contractor that it retained to fix a recurring flooding problem. 

The lawsuit alleged that Michels Pipeline Construction Inc. walked off the job and created a nine-month delay in a $4.6 million tunneling project in downtown Elm Grove. The project called for installing an underground tunnel through the downtown area to divert floodwater.
 
A Waukesha County Circuit Court jury recently found in favor of Elm Grove after a seven-day jury trial. 

It concluded that the village should be awarded more than $315,000, including damages for the delay and additional engineering fees. 

Michels denied that its workers mishandled and walked off of the job, arguing that tunneling work was halted temporarily because of poor soil conditions that created a risk of tunnel collapse. 

The company also said that it encountered soil conditions that Elm Grove did not reference in its bidding documents, including boulders as large as six feet by three feet, and the soil conditions cost it at least $2.8 million more for extra labor, equipment and materials.

DEADLY FIERY CRASH WHEN A BOX VAN HITS HEAD-ON A SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EDISON TRUCK IN VISALIA, CALIFORNIA

TUESDAY, MARCH 03, 2015

VISALIA, CALIF. (KFSN) 

Visalia police are investigating a deadly crash involving a Southern California Edison utility truck. It happened near Caldwell and Akers in Visalia Tuesday afternoon.
Investigators say a Chevy box van drove through the intersection slamming head-on into the unoccupied utility truck. The collision sparked a large fire preventing witnesses from being able to save the man.
Police are working to notify family members before releasing the man's identity.

OXYGEN CYLINDER EXPLODES DURING EQUIPMENT CHECK, VIRGINIA BEACH FD

Please ensure that your oxygen cylinder is properly secured in the ems bag. When you check off the O2 cylinder, remove the cylinder from the bag to a well vented area and check the pressure and then bleed off the residual in this well vented area. Not inside the rig! Make sure that you are using a proper none sparking device to turn the cylinder on (not a steel adjustable wrench), make sure your o-ring is in place and finally, make sure that penlights and other battery operated devices are properly stowed. 

The crew of ladder 16 narrowly escape major injury and a large fire that could have burned the rig up. After checking off the ems bag, it was zipped back up and placed back in the compartment. The MRL bag was placed on top. The FF then removed the suction bag and started to check it off when fire emitted from the ems bag. The FF grabbed the bag and tossed in on the bay floor where other FF's tried to extinguish it. The relief valve was sounding and the impinging flame from the relief valve caused the cylinder to fail. Notice the breech in the cylinder wall at the shoulder of the cylinder. No one was injured in the fire or cylinder failure, but imagine the burn to the face level of a FF when the cylinder failed if it was still in the compartment. 

A preliminary investigation suggest that the ignition sequence could have been a pen light (found melted to the underside of the cylinder) and under the pen light was a adjustable wrench. The O2 somehow leaked and saturated the bag. The ems bag was replaced back in the compartment and MRL placed on top. The weight of the MRL compressed the cylinder on the penlight against the wrench.

This information is still preliminary and was put together with the help of BC Mike Gurley, BC Vance Cooper and John Lyons. We will attempt to find the cause of the oxygen leak through a couple of channels formally. As more information comes forward, we will certainly let you know. 

It is amazing that these circumstances (Dominos) can come together and cause such a terrible event---but no one was hurt this time (except for noise exposure), and damage was confined to equipment. Please check your ems gear and make sure pen lights are not floating in the bottom of the bag and that your wrench is plastic or non-sparking and that you have the regulator gasket/o-ring in place and you turn the O2 completely off. Pressurized gases including oxygen and air are dangerous and you need to handle them carefully.