A shell company lasted only weeks before filing bankruptcy
after polluting a West Virginia river and drinking water for 300,000 people.
No assets, no insurance, as near as I can tell.
Sabal Trail Transmission is a shell company owned by Spectra Energy
and NextEra and managed by Spectra:
what assets does it have, and what insurance has it offered
in case its pipeline corrodes and leaks
like Spectra has been fined for
or one of its compressor stations
leaks like in Pennsylvania or Maine
or
residents have to evacuate
as Spectra’s Susan Waller said would happen in case of a “true emergency”?
Who will pay for the local first responders,
or property damage,
or a polluted aquifer?
Nick Visser wrote for The Huffington Post 17 January 2014,
Freedom Industries, Company Behind West Virginia Chemical Spill, Files For Bankruptcy,
The company behind the
massive chemical spill that made
tap water unsafe for more than 300,000 West Virginians
has filed for bankruptcy, according to
documents obtained by The Huffington Post.
According to bankruptcy filings, Freedom Industries, wholly
owned by Chemstream Holdings Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
on Friday. Freedom Industries owns the storage facility responsible
for leaking up to 7,500 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (a
coal-cleaning chemical also known as crude MCHM) into West Virginia’s
Elk River.
And Freedom Industries was only formed a few weeks ago.
Steven Mufson wrote for the Washington Post (undated),
One week after W. Va. toxic spill, new owner of Freedom Industries puts firm in bankruptcy,
It took just one week for Pennsylvania coal mining executive Cliff
Forrest, the new owner of Freedom Industries, to discover that one
of the six-decade-old storage tanks he had acquired Dec. 31 was
leaking a toxic chemical into the Elk River that supplies water to
about 300,000 West Virginians….
Forrest, through another firm he owns, paid Continue reading WV polluter files bankruptcy: why should we expect better from Sabal Trail? →
Five years ago a natural gas pipeline blew up between the Florida Turnpike
and I-95, flying a 104-foot piece of 18-inch pipe through the air,
shutting down both roads, and fortunately missing a high school.
NTSB determined it was the fault of the pipeline operator,
Florida Gas Transmission Company, LLC (FGT).
FGT was
written up by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
in
NTSB/PAB-13/01 of 13 August 2013
for “Damage/Clean-up Cost: $606,360” in this 4 May 2009 incident
near Palm City, Florida:
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the accident was environmentally assisted cracking under a disbonded polyethylene coating that remained undetected by the integrity management program. Contributing to the accident was Florida Gas Transmission Company’s failure to include the pipe section that ruptured in the integrity management program. Contributing to the prolonged gas release was the pipeline controller’s inability to detect the rupture because of SCADA system limitations and the configuration of the pipeline.
