Renewed Concerns Over The Drift River Terminal Facility
The 2009 eruptions of Mount Redoubt renewed concerns over the safety of a nearby tank farm which holds crude oil, known as the Drift River Terminal Facility. During the earlier, 1989-90 eruptions of Redoubt, the facility was inundated and damaged by lahars. Dikes built after the 89/90 activity protected the tanks, although an aircraft hangar and runway were flooded and damaged by the flooding and related debris. In late March the US Coast Guard decided to move the millions of gallons located at the facility to prevent an ecological disaster. The plan called for then refilling the tanks with "harmless" ballast water to prevent them from being dislodged by flooding.
However, on April 5, the Coast Guard stated that filling the empty tanks with ballast water was not possible, because it would create a hazardous waste that the neither the facility nor the Coast Guard was prepared to deal with afterward. Instead, the oil was removed and the empty tanks remained vulnerable to damage from further flooding. In the meantime, oil production in Cook Inlet was suspended, because the tank farms were out of commission while Mount Redoubt remained in an eruptive state.
When the eruptions subsided, the tanks were undamaged and the facility was cleared of debris and subsequently reopened.
Read more about this topic: 2009 Mount Redoubt Eruptive Activity
Famous quotes containing the words renewed, concerns, drift, river, terminal and/or facility:
“So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”
—Bible: New Testament, 2 Corinthians 4:16.
“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Learning has been as great a Loser by being shut up in Colleges and Cells, and secluded from the World and good Company. By that Means, every Thing of what we call Belles Lettres became totally barbarous, being cultivated by Men without any Taste of Life or Manners, and without that Liberty and Facility of Thought and Expression, which can only be acquir’d by Conversation.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)