By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP: BP is being vilified from the Louisiana marshlands to the White House as its leaking oil well pollutes the Gulf Coast, raising doubts about whether the company can survive the backlash.
In the pursuit of profits many companies become dysfunctional, sick with internal conflicts, with loss of direction, and furthermore make the environment in which they operate, the community they belong to, sick as well, polluting air, water and the society at large.
In a 2007 case unrelated to Cabot, an Ohio house exploded from what state regulators determined was a buildup of methane bubbling up water pipes from wells polluted by drilling operations.
The town was overcrowded, it suffered from poor housing, open sewers, overflowing cesspits, and a very poor water supply, mainly from wells polluted by infiltration.
Water is contaminated, irrigation channels are silted up, well water polluted and undrinkable.
[The Guardian] A village in Nigeria's southern delta where a drinking-water well was polluted with benzene has sued Royal Dutch Shell, the dominant oil driller in the region, for $1 billion in federal court in Detroit.
Villagers allege that one woman whose water well became polluted at the same time that seismic tests were being conducted in the area received a building renovation paid for by Chevron, and promptly stopped complaining about the issue.
We addressed the value of hydrogeological information on the assessment of the risk that an operating pumping well is polluted.
The charges could result in a maximum fine of $25,000 a day for each day the leak went unreported, and $1,000 a day for each day the well has polluted the air.
