David Middleton:
The Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Thursday, arguing that the company is violating several key water regulations at one of their Boston storage and transfer locations.
The site in question — located in the Boston suburb of Everett, Massachusetts — is a sprawling, 110-acre terminal that extends to the bank of the Mystic River. The complaint alleges that the terminal has released toxic pollutants into the water for years, and that the company has failed to make improvements to the terminal to strengthen it against the risks of climate change — violating both the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
“This is a stunning example of how ExxonMobil’s climate deceit hits home, where their repeated sworn, but false, statements to regulators that this facility was prepared for climate conditions put the surrounding communities that have hosted the facility for years in danger,” Brad Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation, told ThinkProgress.
According to investigative reports published last year by both InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times, ExxonMobil’s internal scientists knewabout the role of fossil fuels in driving global warming as early as 1977, and yet publicly continued to fuel doubt about climate science.
Exxon also built oil rigs in the North Sea to withstand projected climate impacts like sea level rise and rising temperatures.
Yet the company failed to make the same structural improvements to its terminal in Massachusetts, the lawsuit claims, leaving surrounding communities at risk of toxic pollution during severe storm events or floods. According to the complaint, the Everett Terminal is especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change predicted to hit New England in the coming years: sea level rise, increased precipitation, increased magnitude and frequency of storm events, and increased magnitude and frequency of storm surges.
“All of the available modeling shows that… {blah, blah, blah}
[…]
https://youtu.be/Ji9qSuQapFY
If ExxonMobil’s storage and transfer facility is in violation of tht Clean Water Act (CWA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the EPA or Massachusetts State regulators might just have noticed it. If the regulators missed the violations, and this environmental
terroristactivist group can make their case in court, ExxonMobil will have to correct the violations and pay for any actual damages. However, the connection of this to climate change and the moronic #ExxonKnew crackhead conspiracy theory is mindbogglingly stupid.This bit of total ignorance defies description:
Exxon also built oil rigs in the North Sea to withstand projected climate impacts like sea level rise and rising temperatures.
Yet the company failed to make the same structural improvements to its terminal in Massachusetts, the lawsuit claims…
Now, I am probably going out on a limb to assume that these dimwits actually mean “oil rigs” when they say “oil rigs”… However, ExxonMobil doesn’t build oil rigs. They contract rigs from companies like Noble Drilling, who paid companies like National Oilwell to build them. Offshore drilling rigs are designed to survive the weather.
The oil rigs that drilled wells in the North Sea were capable of drilling all over the world. Half the rigs that were in the Gulf of Mexico 10 years ago have moved overseas, mostly to the Middle East and Africa. The rigs are capable of working year-round. Offshore oil rigs don’t notice 0.0035 °C per year of rising temperatures and 3 mm per year of sea level rise. However, they do notice hurricanes, which occasionally sink them.
Oil rigs are designed to operate in specific water depth ranges.
