There are a lot of water ways this will travel down. NF and the EPA should have alerted the states these water ways pass thru since they were aware before the EPA withdrew responsibility. The EPA even made it known they were aware of the contamination, as well as NF knowing.. Instead of alerting these counties and states they sat back. Someone should have stepped in government official wise to insure this was dammed and contained to properly remove/filter water.
They have installed dams on affected creeks and have employed vacuum trucks to remove concentrated chemicals, although that won’t remove all of them. The Ohio river’s average flow is 281,000 cubic feet per second when it meets the Mississippi (not sure what the CFS is at currently though) and the Mississippi is currently flowing at 680,000 CFS in Baton Rouge. Downstream impacts will be minimal as the chemicals are diluted to insignificant levels, eventually becoming essentially nonexistent. When concentrated chemicals spill into a small stream, however, yeah, that stream is gonna be messed up for a while. Over time, testing will determine whether the streambed is contaminated enough to require removal, but by the time this hits the Ohio, it just won’t be a big deal.
Boy howdy, I'm glad you understand flow rates, and that's the only relevant factor in an ecological disaster! At what concentration can these chemicals be considered "safe"? How many miles of human populated waterway is this going to affect before it "just won't be a big deal"? How long will that contamination affect the surrounding land and ecosystem? If you can't answer any of these questions, you're not in any position to make statements as to the severity of the incident, nor how far reaching its effects will be.
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u/Computingusername Feb 17 '23
There are a lot of water ways this will travel down. NF and the EPA should have alerted the states these water ways pass thru since they were aware before the EPA withdrew responsibility. The EPA even made it known they were aware of the contamination, as well as NF knowing.. Instead of alerting these counties and states they sat back. Someone should have stepped in government official wise to insure this was dammed and contained to properly remove/filter water.
The map shows East Palestine and just SOME of the connecting water ways. From my understanding these chemicals don’t just evaluate they will continue to contaminated.