Please Release Me, Let Me Go

35,274 "incidents" were reported to the National Response Center (NRC) In 2007. That's 35,274 reports of "oil, chemical, radiological, biological, and etiological discharges into the environment anywhere in the United States and its territories."

What's the NRC? They're the federal organization anyone calls when they have a spill of any kind. Manned 24/7 by the Coast Guard, they notify clean up departments, they keep statistics, they have a mediocre website.

I started randomly clicking on the incidents for last year -- they are mostly listed as "major" or "unknown" in severity.

A barge exploded in the Mississippi River in February, that created a 30ft X 30ft crude oil burning slick surrounding it. On September 11, 465,034 gallons of petroleum released from a pipeline in Kansas at 1:34 in the morning.

465,034 gallons of petroleum.

Released is a nice word, isn't it? The gas is contained in there, against it's will -- it longs to be free, into the air, the water, the atmosphere... liberate the gas!

The last one was reported on October 30, and I have been lightened for the last 3 days waiting for a new one to come up -- until I realized that these statistics were for the fiscal year which ended on Oct 30. It actually seems to have taken place on Nov.2 -- but for some reason they put it into Oct. Maybe they assumed it happened in October. Maybe they are hoping for a spill-free year...

In this "incident," 210,000-420,000 gallons of diesel oil were "released."

What the site didn't have was a tally of gallons of different substances released. I was so relieved! Now, this is, of course, the absolute impossible worst case scenario, but what if we multiplied 35,274 by the average of our two incidents -- (420,000 plus 465,000 divided by 2)

15,608,745,000
gallons of hazardous spills.

Unlikely --

But then, these are only the incidents reported to the government.

Here's the description of the last case of the year:

Occurrence Date:	30 October
Location:	Bakersfield, CA
NRC Report Number:	853453
Source:	Facility Pipeline
Material:	Diesel Oil
Severity:	Major
Quantity Discharged:	210,000-420,000 gallons
Quantity in Water:	Unknown Amount
Body of Water Affected:	Ground Water
Federal On-Scene Coordinator:	EPA Region IX
Description: On November 2, 2007 at 5:05 p.m. EDT the National Response Center received a report of a 210,000 to 420,000 gallon discharge of Diesel oil from a pipeline due to a pinhole leak on the pipeline. The incident was discovered on October 30 at 9:00 a.m. PDT in Bakersfield, California. The material was released below ground which then reached the ground water and then migrated to a monitoring well. A contractor has been hired by the company to clean up the material. The Federal On-Scene Coordinator is Environmental Protection Agency Region Nine.

The causes are varied -- but good to know we have not yet fallen victim to cyber attack.

Incident Cause	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007
Unknown	10,552	11,800	10,266	10,314	10,078	9,956	10,209	10,849
Equipment Failure	8,383	8,429	8,341	9,132	10,895	11,533	11,463	8,806
Other	6,428	7,204	7,457	6,531	3,907	3,865	3,858	3,860
Operator Error	3,459	2,885	2,305	2,889	2,997	2,684	2,908	2,885
Transport Accident	609	713	563	631	1,050	1,152	1,103	1,361
Dumping	1,523	1,494	1,265	960	806	757	863	1,004
Security Breach	0	0	0	6	264	761	924	952
Suspicious Activity	0	0	0	25	726	945	833	948
Vessel Sinking	0	0	0	0	366	655	802	835
Natural Phenomenon	472	716	497	711	685	575	804	708
Derailment	0	0	0	0	222	342	461	518
Hurricane	0	0	0	0	107	580	430	322
Criminal Intent	207	170	141	148	224	151	154	147
Over Pressuring	0	0	0	0	260	209	149	119
Explosion	21	68	46	48	47	66	91	110
Suicide	66	34	34	47	82	118	127	98
Bomb Threat	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	72
Flood	0	0	0	0	35	28	9	45
Terrorism	46	54	358	44	72	95	91	25
Tornado	0	0	0	0	5	6	17	16
Earthquake	0	4	4	2	2	9	6	7
Aircraft Diversion	0	0	0	0	4	4	0	2
Disorderly Passenger	0	0	0	3	1	0	1	1
Cyber Attack	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0
Hijacking	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0

http://www.nrc.uscg.mil/