Amateur UAV Pilot Exposes Texas River of Blood

Presto Vivace writes "Carlton Purvis of Security Management News reports that a tip from an amateur UAV enthusiast 'is what led Texas authorities to open a major criminal investigation into the waste practices of a Dallas meat packing plant.' The photo shows a river of blood."

Comments

Hmmm

[koan]

After reading that article I get the feeling there will be a law passed about "model aircraft" using cameras soon.

Re:Hmmm

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Hey! Kids!

Bring a straw!

Re:Hmmm

[Potor]

Restricted airspace above meatpacking plants and CAFOs?

I could see that coming.

Re:Hmmm

[baldass_newbie]

Bet you a nickel the police would need a warrant before such surveillance.
In fact, I kind of hope they do, public benefit notwithstanding.

Re:Hmmm

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It would fit a general trend...

Re:Hmmm

[__aaltlg1547]

The general rule is if it can be observed from off your property it's fair game. No warrant needed.

Re:Hmmm

[WorBlux]

Exactly and flowing water is public (state) property anyways.

Re:Hmmm

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There has been some haggling(largely unsuccessful; because what wouldn't we do to Win The War On Drugs?) about exactly how much specialized gear you are allowed to 'observe' with before it becomes surveillance in gross violation of reasonable expectations.

Thermal imaging has attracted a number of court cases: cops in vehicles or aircraft go hunting for anomalously high longwave IR emissions that suggest a building may be being used as a grow-op. It can certainly be argued that IR radiates away from your house just the same that visible light does; but it doesn't do so well under the 'what a member of the public might observe from the street' test.

I'm assuming that cheaper drones, fancy terahertz imaging technology, laser mics, and other sci-fi stuff will continue to nibble at the question of what standard, exactly, 'observation' constitutes... Is it "absolutely anything I infer without physical trespass" or does it have some relation to what the 'ordinary man' could be expected to notice?

Re:Hmmm

[element-o.p.]

Ummm...no, not exactly, at least not yet. The FAA allows the "amateur" use of drones, provided they are flown at no more than 400 feet above the ground (AGL), and if they are not used for any type of commercial activity. They are supposed to finalize rules for commercial use of drones in the National Airspace System some time this year, although I've heard rumors that the rules may be delayed a bit.

Re:Hmmm

[shutdown -p now]

All they need to do is classify any drone as "munition", then BATFA can have some fun.

Re:Hmmm

[element-o.p.]

That wasn't a joke going over my head...it was only an illegally operated amateur-operated drone!

Re:Hmmm

[MechaStreisand]

Perhaps this link is what you were thinking of (mentioned by another poster above you - credit goes to him).

Re:Hmmm

[mindcandy]

The technical arguments are here (older case) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States

At the time, the dissent was based on "through the wall" versus "off the wall". Heat (it was argued in the dissent) was "off the wall" insofar as it was passively emitted. Use of technologies that go "through the wall" (your aforementioned terahertz imaging, et.al.) would seem to run afoul even of the dissenting justices in the above case.

Re:Hmmm

[Runaway1956]

There is nothing to "like" about any of this. I'm not going to "defend" the meat packers. But, one thing I noted while watching the video, is that it is a 99 year old plant.

I'll give them just one small benefit of the doubt. It's POSSIBLE that they didn't know they were discharging blood into the creek. Old plant, old plumbing systems, plus the fact that regulations a hundred years ago were pretty lax, makes it possible that a crappy old pipe was just never dug up or disconnected.

But, the fact that the company is turning away people who are officially required to investigate the mess unless they have a search warrant suggests that they probably knew all along.

Side note from personal experience:
A couple years ago, one of our illegal aliens who grew up in some jungle village dumped a barrel of waste oil outside one of our doors. The oil was soon discovered in an ephemeral creek, and traced back to our plant. I thought my backward employers were pretty stupid - but at least they didn't block officials from the city coming in to look around, or require that they come back with search warrants.
Two lessons to be learned here. Number one, don't hire illegal aliens from jungle villages. Number two, when you do screw up, cooperate with investigators. Unless, of course, it is your policy to conduct business in an illegal manner.

Re:Hmmm

[PPH]

It would be fun to fly one over some of the forests that the conservation funds have bought up (and closed to the public). Suddenly, logging turns out to be 'wise land management'.

Re:Hmmm

[AK Marc]

You have a right to privacy that extends to angles and views that you could reasonable expect viewing from. Someone who climbs a tree to look in your window that isn't visble from the street has breached your privacy, even if the tree is across the street and not on your property (unless you routinely see others climbing the tree and knew it was a likely viewing point). So the police peering into your home from that vantage point are similarly peeping without a warrant, much like at a traffic stop, they can look in the car, but not open the doors and stick their heads in to look in the car. They already know it takes a warrant to look in a car (just looking includes sticking their head in the drivers side door that is left open and looking around, except for a small and legally defined area around the driver's seat). Warrants take too long, so instead they arrest them for anything, dangerous driving or whatever they make up, then they get hours to search the car as slowly and thoroughly as they wish, no warrant needed.

And depending on where you are, you do own the sky above your land. The land and the projection of that to the core of the earth and up to the edge of the atmosphere you own though the government gets a right of way above for planes and such, obviously.

Re:Hmmm

[NatasRevol]

You don't live in the west, do you?

You might want to look up water rights. They're often worth more than land.

Re:Hmmm

[stephanruby]

Bet you a nickel the police would need a warrant before such surveillance.

Yes, that's how police helicopter pilots fly in general, they take off in their helicopter and they shut their eyes for fear of seeing anything without a warrant.

Re:Hmmm

[TheLink]

Nowadays is it reasonable to expect viewing from Google Maps (and streetview etc)? :).
http://g.co/maps/zqf5u

Re:Hmmm

[JWSmythe]

    The other provision is, you must maintain line of sight with the aircraft. It's the same restrictions as put on remote control aircraft.

    I do recall something about needing to have manual control override. I.e., a remote control. I'm not sure if that is a FAA rule, or just a guideline for responsible behavior.

Re:Hmmm

[recharged95]

Or in actual terms by the FAA, that "the civilian user" shall follow guidelines set by a specificed industry authority, aka the AMA, which sets AGL to 400 feet.

Putting real laws in place has been in discussion with Congress for the last year (main decisions where in June of '11), but has been put off 2 times already. It keeps getting delayed.

What I see is likely restriction of autonomous flight (with the right to shoot down), and the status quo for controlled flight. Not much will change aside from full autonomous modes.

Re:Hmmm

[JWSmythe]

    Nope.

    The police do this all the time, with real aircraft.

    They'll frequently use helicopters with FLIR, to identify marajuana grow houses. They use hot lights, which require extra cooling. Some vent to the outside, which leaves an obvious odor. Others use additional air conditioning. In either case, the room is warmer than other rooms, or surrounding houses. They usually find target homes by checking for homes that use more power. That information is apparently "public record", although I've never found how to get them.

    Extra power consumption, with a hot room or plume of heat from an extra air conditioner, is enough probable cause for a warrant. They usually look for other tidbits, like flashy cars, neighbor complaints, resident utilities paid by cash or individuals with prior investigations, charges, or convictions.

    Of course, the legality varies by jurisdiction. Contact a local attorney for clarification of the laws in your area. and ... IANAL, just observant.

Re:Hmmm

[veganboyjosh]

What's the difference between a remote controlled aircraft (like a model plane) and a drone?

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Drone implies an autopilot or some autonomous system. Its an R/C plane with one of these, for example.

http://diydrones.com

Re:Hmmm

[Jeremi]

On what planet is pig blood harmful to a river?

Fertilizer runoff is a major problem in rivers.

Pig blood is essentially fertilizer.

Re:Hmmm

[Dunbal]

No, munitions are classified as "fireworks". At least Patriot missiles are.

Re:Hmmm

[darth dickinson]

    Extra power consumption, with a hot room or plume of heat from an extra air conditioner, is enough probable cause for a warrant.

Now this has me legitimately concerned. I have a home networking lab that I use to validate various network configs for training, and for customers. A rack of routers, switches, and servers pulls quite the electrical draw, and generates quite a bit of heat. Not as much as grow lights, I'd imagine, but still...

Re:Hmmm

[Dunbal]

Blood from one pig? Not at all. Blood from thousands of pigs per day, every day? You alter the whole ecosystem.

Re:Hmmm

[RMingin]

Holy shit. As soon as you look, it's immediately apparent. The creek above the plant is white where there's turbulence, and green where there isn't. At the plant, it becomes maroon. Down where that creek flows into a larger one, you can see a clear tail of the maroon water flowing into the larger green creek.

So even if they had to slap the "UAV" guy on the wrist and throw out the info, anyone looking at Google could have made an 'anonymous' complaint afterwards.

Re:Hmmm

[ozmanjusri]

No, don't!

They'll turn all sparkly and you'll have to shoot them for the good of humanity and quality television programming.

Re:Hmmm

[ozmanjusri]

So if drones are outlawed, only the drones will have drones?

Re:Hmmm

[JWSmythe]

    I learned a good bit of that from a local detective. We'd shoot the shit sometimes, and he told me a lot about work. Nothing specific to active cases, but a lot of methodology, inter-agency politics, etc. All in all, if more people had nice casual conversations with the police like we used to have, people would have more respect for the police. At least for the good ones.

    I guess the question would be, do you run 24/7, and do you have so much equipment that you require supplemental air conditioning running all the time? Is your power bill at least a couple hundred dollars higher than would be typical for a house in your area with similar square footage?

    It's possible that you'd get their attention. The police work a lot on hunches too. If you're a nice clean cut guy, living within your means, no huge cash transactions and shady personal relationships, it's doubtful you'd be checked out. I only met with a couple of those qualifications. Oh my gosh, at the time, I knew pot smokers, although I wasn't one myself. My employer (at the time) was looked at by the FBI a couple times. I was fully aware of it, and knew there was nothing to it. Oddly enough, several years later, he was brought up on drug charges, but those were related to pharmaceuticals. I didn't know about it til I ran across a news story about it.

Re:Hmmm

[JWSmythe]

AC got it right.

A UAV/drone is generally something that can fly without the assistance of a pilot.

A R/C aircraft is controlled by a pilot on the ground.

The UAV/drone in the sense of a self-controlled R/C aircraft, would be say a helicopter that will hover by itself, or an aircraft that will fly to provided waypoints, or fly home (back to you) if the R/C control is lost.

They may simply fly with a bit of computer assist, so they are easier to operate than a regular R/C aircraft, such as automatically going to straight & level flight, because the operator may simply need eyes above. It's silly for law enforcement to get 100+ hours practicing (and crashing) R/C airplanes, when they can get R/C's (drones, if you will), that will go straight up with a camera, and turn in the direction requested, to get a better view.

Some news outlets are mixing the terms, where their "drone" is simply an R/C aircraft, frequently with a camera. It's the same ugly trend, where anything related to any sort of computer technology suddenly had "cyber" and "e-" prepended to it. Expect it to be used by the media any time a R/C aircraft is used for anything but flying around in a circle above a father/son pair on a weekend.

The media works on a 5th grade reading level, and I'm fairly sure some "journalists" have the mental function of a 10 year old.

Re:Hmmm

[Maritz]

The market with its legions of perfectly informed and conscientious consumers will sort it out, provided there is pretty much no government. Makes perfect sense really... :)

Re:Hmmm

[Maritz]

I'll give them just one small benefit of the doubt. It's POSSIBLE that they didn't know they were discharging blood into the creek. Old plant, old plumbing systems, plus the fact that regulations a hundred years ago were pretty lax, makes it possible that a crappy old pipe was just never dug up or disconnected.

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

I agree it's possible, and it's also possible that even if they did know they still wouldn't care.

Re:Hmmm

[Captain Hook]

I don't think the white upstream of the plant is turbulence, those look like sand/gravel bars in the stream to me, you can see the same structures downstream of the plant.

But you are right, even google earth clearly shows pollution changing the colour of the water and the point where it flows into a larger river and mixes in.

Re:Hmmm

[delinear]

I guess the question would be, do you run 24/7, and do you have so much equipment that you require supplemental air conditioning running all the time? Is your power bill at least a couple hundred dollars higher than would be typical for a house in your area with similar square footage?

That probably describes the computer situation of 90% of the self respecting geeks here, myself included :)

Re:Hmmm

[demonlapin]

Poor choice of words by WorBlux. The streambed is public, even if the water isn't.

Re:Hmmm

[Stuarticus]

As a Scotsman I resent this shameful waste of black pudding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

In Texas, all rivers and streams fed from rivers, are publical property. Some land owners don't like that, but as long as you are on the river or within a couple feet (don't remember exact distinace any more) or the river's shore line, you are perfectly within the rights granted by the state. Many hunters use this access to do just that - hunt.

Re:Hmmm

[Gilmoure]

You can't take the sky from me.

Re:Hmmm

[idontgno]

Two word: Bubbly Creek

Re:Hmmm

[Chris Burke]

Oh man. And here I am, the D&D geek, who always thought a Black Pudding was a horrific, semi-sentient puddle of highly acidic ooze.

Turns out the reality is much worse.

Is a UAV necessary?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Columbia+Meat&hl=en&ll=32.751275,-96.787695&spn=0.001405,0.002068&sll=32.802955,-96.769923&sspn=0.47903,0.576782&vpsrc=6&t=h&z=19

Re:Is a UAV necessary?

[icebike]

A better link: http://g.co/maps/8vdr9

No, you can't tell its blood, but you can see a color difference upstream vs downstream even in Google Maps.
The creek is generally green upstream, and dark ruddy brown below the plant.

If you zoom in closer on Google Earth you can see this color shift very well.: 32.749052 -96.789131
Also the historical imagery on Google Earth does not show this if you step back to 2009, when water levels were much higher
or 2008 when they were similarly low.

Re:Is a UAV necessary?

[Nethemas the Great]

Well, how about any of these reasons:

• Most or at least a large majority work at the plant. Rat out your employer, lose your job...
• People figured that the blood in the creek wasn't a problem, maybe even thought it was approved the by the appropriate regulating agency
• People thought that that was a shame about the creek but don't trust/want the government nosing around

Re:Is a UAV necessary?

[Svartalf]

Sorry, gotta call BS on that one. It's not the same color as the "red silt" that predominates in the area. I'm a local resident and I know that there's nothing that color in the soil or water normally to make it- that's friggin' blood or a chemical contaminant emanating from the packing plant.

Re:Is a UAV necessary?

[Svartalf]

Yep, looking at the sat imagery...there's little doubt about it. What's more of an epic fail is that a State Rep's office is right across the street. Special.

Re:Is a UAV necessary?

[countertrolling]

I color calibrate my monitor with a Huey...

For real?

Re:Is a UAV necessary?

[MaskedSlacker]

In other words, I can see this from my apartment on the opposite side of the planet. No warrant needed.

Re:Is a UAV necessary?

[Hognoxious]

Brown is not a color that CRTs or LCDs are capable of doing

Shit is brown, your post is shit and I can see it.

Re:Is a UAV necessary?

[delinear]

The giant pig-blood-and-hormone fueled pike probably scared them all away.

Re:Is a UAV necessary?

[Svartalf]

You're missing the point... The color, even with your argument, isn't possible for the area like people keep trying to dismiss. I live in the DFW area (Tagline...) and that color isn't IN the soil or typically in the streams around the Trinity. It's a chemical contaminant or blood like I said originally. Trying to paint it any other way is to be promulgating a lie for the sake of playing "devils advocate"...

Re:If libertarians had there way

[Anonymous Coward]

*their

Pollution is destruction of property, destruction of property is a civil or possibly criminal crime.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[stevens]

Not true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riparian_water_rights

Not surprising

[atari2600a]

Most slaughterhouses in the US pay no attention to federal humane slaughtering & biohazard laws, what I find most surprising is they just *threw away* the wastewater-- that stuff makes perfect additive for fertilizer!

Re:Not surprising

[dbc]

Most slaughterhouses in the US pay no attention to federal humane slaughtering & biohazard laws,

Citation needed.

$10 says there's decapitated skeletons underwater

[Jmanamj]

Now someone needs to pilot a UAV into the home of the company's CEO to expose his life-prolonging Voodoo practices.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[clarkkent09]

To the extent that dumping blood into a river is harmful to others they are entitled to compensation. If you think libertarians are in favor of "liberty" to harm others, then your understanding of libertarianism is as bad as your spelling.

The Fly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you not see the Movie? Teleportation and Flies Never ends well!

General Trend (mod parent up, Informative)

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for that link. I'm not a "PETA-freak", by any stretch of the imagination, but as a photographer, and just as a citizen who believes in the 1st Amendment, those are some of the scariest links I've read since NDAA. I'm glad I don't live in any of the mentioned states, but I have certainly photographed farms without written permission (I have a fondness for pastoral scenes with hay bales). I'd gladly contribute to any effort to get these ridiculous laws thrown out as unconstitutional.

Re:General Trend (mod parent up, Informative)

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Honestly, even if you have no interest in animals, photography, or the First Amendment, those sorts of proposals should probably still make you nervous.

If the chaps who handle the most-likely-to-carry-cool-zoonotic-diseases part of your food supply are so proud of their processes that they want independently documenting them to be a felony, how good can you reasonably trust them to be?

Re:If libertarians had there way

[Anonymous Coward]

Since each typical polluter only causes a tiny amount of damage to the environment, and therefore only a small amount of damage to each individual, the recourse of individual against the collective effect of all polluters (which is non-trivial, by the way) is massively limited. Unless of course the public were to organize to protect their rights. Maybe the organization could even hold elections for leaders that would (ostensibly) represent the interests of the constituents. What do libertarians have to say about such a collective organization of individuals?

A significant overreaction

[93 Escort Wagon]

That creek is just flowing with the blood of their enemies.

It's really potent stuff.

[davidbrit2]

We made a toaster dance with it.

Re:What would be the libertarian solution?

[icebike]

Pretty sure there are regulations against polluting a stream. 1580 feet downstream of this is a navigable river.
So your huge philosophical troll-bait is moot.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[Miseph]

So if everybody owns the land, we are enslaved, but if individuals own all the land we are not... right. Freedom is slavery, up is down, libertarianism isn't batshit insane stupidity. I'm not sure how I really feel about this little game.

Whoa, whoa, WHOA...

[fahrbot-bot]

Isn't this really something for the Free Market to decide? I mean, the Government and all its "rules" - talking about public "health" and "safety" - are just going to get in the way of the Job Creators at this Dallas meat packing plant...

Not surprising

[Sponge Bath]

I can see how they can do this undetected for so long, the Trinity around Dallas is little better than an open sewer. It's nasty and smells really bad.

Take a close look at the Google images...

[Frosty Piss]

In the GOOGLE MAP where the creek joins the river, it's pretty obvious.

I'm wondering how this could have been going on for so long, long enough for Google to have images (so obviously it's not a one time or sporadic event) event, without anyone noticing, does no one boat up that river? Fish on it? No nearby land owners?

Odd...

Re:What would be the libertarian solution?

[towermac]

Don't hurt yourself too much. Pure libertarianism is about as viable as pure communism. Both have the laudable goal of freeing the common man from oppression.

I wonder if it isn't the common man's lot to always be oppressed to some extent; and money and power will always be worth, well, money and power.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[Nimey]

Also the air.

Libertarian naivete would be cute if it weren't dangerous.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[Nimey]

The organization would have to collect taxes! Theft! Socialism! Slavery!

Re:What would be the libertarian solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Under the Libertarian model, the harm done to others by this slaughterhouse will be instantly and automatically undone the moment it is recognized, mediated by completely impartial and omniscient courts and lawyers who cost nothing to hire. The slaughterhouse always has sufficient cash reserve (or at least dissolution value and insurance coverage) to compensate for all the damage it has ever caused, and the damage is always completely reversible, in direct defiance of various laws of physics and biology. Human nature is modified so that everyone recognizes their own responsibility instantly and does not try to evade it. Life is good.

Then you wake up and realize that Libertarianism is great in theory, but completely untenable in the real world.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[trout007]

Here is a great essay called, "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution" by Murray Rothbard.
http://mises.org/rothbard/lawproperty.pdf

In the libertarian theory unused property comes into ownership through homesteading which basically mean you have to start using unused land. The same theory exists with air/water pollution, noise, and radio waves.

So if an airport is build far away from people it homesteads the right to make the noise associated with running an airport. Anyone that decided to move nearby has to accept that level of noise. If people still move in then the level of noise the airport makes cannot be increased say by landing a new jet that is louder than previous aircraft. This is because it is a nuisance to the other property owners. This is the same reason an airport couldn't be built in a populated area without violating peoples property rights.

If a coal plant is built in a remote area where it's exhaust cannot be detected by surrounding property owners they have gained a right to pollute that air. If someone moves into that area they do so with the knowledge that the coal plant pollutes there. But if people move in anyway they can't sue to stop the pollution. But they can sue if the plant increases the pollution.

The same with a river. If before anyone owned property downstream on the river a meat packing plant moved there and polluted the river they would have homesteaded the right to pollute that river. That isn't very likely. There were most likely owners of property on the river before any industry. Therefore anyone that polluted the river would be violating everyone downstream property rights and they could sue for damages.You can have a class action lawsuit by all plaintiffs against a single polluter.

In reality a libertarian system would have a much cleaner environment because anyone could sue for damages. The EPA exists to protect businesses from lawsuits. It sets a legal limit where companies can pollute to where they face no threat of lawsuit. Also they don't get sued for damages but are fined by the government which leaves the property owners that had their property damaged with no recourse.

Plain view doctrine

[mindcandy]

The Horton test applies here.

1. they would be lawfully present (it's a public waterway).
2. they lawfully accessed the evidence (saw it in plain view with the unaided eye**).
3. the incriminating nature was immediately apparent (river of blood).

** When it comes to fancy technology, the current precedent is Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001) although it was a close (5-4) decision, the premise being the police used "technology not generally available to the public".

Re:If libertarians had there way

[BetterSense]

Grandparent is being snide, but actually asks a legitimate question.

Parent mocks, but Libertarians would be perfectly fine with such an organization...as long as it was supported by voluntary contributions, by selling a product, or some other means besides taking money from people by force.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[clarkkent09]

Or by charging for a service such as contract enforcement through courts. Given that every transaction involves a contract that could be a fair amount of money, enough to finance a government as our constitution envisioned it, and it would not involve force - you would be free not to pay it, but your contract would not be enforceable in court. There are many other ways too.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[Nethemas the Great]

Hmm. Bloody Libertarians, all "we the people" and "all praise to our founding fathers, their God guided hands, and their immaculate document." What'd we do with that document? We discovered that it dealt with damn near nothing of the problems the nation was and would face. So, we amended the hell out of it because it was anything but complete and still we had/have innumerable problems as society and its issues evolve. Our history--well before we established any kind of oversight--was fraught with a great deal of problems. Limiting thing to just water ways still includes and is certainly not limited to farmers damming up streams for irrigation to the detriment of their neighbors farther down. Mercury dumped without care into waterways for the extraction of gold. Manufacturing dumping whatever waste they saw fit into waterways to the point rivers actually caught ablaze. Septic systems amounting to little better than a pipe running from the house to the river (pond, lake, etc.). Collapse of fish populations due to pollution and over fishing. The list goes on...

Re:If libertarians had there way

[ColdWetDog]

In reality a libertarian system would have a much cleaner environment because anyone could sue for damages. The EPA exists to protect businesses from lawsuits. It sets a legal limit where companies can pollute to where they face no threat of lawsuit. Also they don't get sued for damages but are fined by the government which leaves the property owners that had their property damaged with no recourse.

Right. Because I want to spend the rest of my life (and income) suing various and sundry large corporations or interests that want to pollute or otherwise disturb the environment surrounding my own property.

I like arguing with people, but not that much.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[Qzukk]

We're already seeing where things are heading this way just with water. People are pumping antifreeze up from their water wells, and the oil/gas companies pumping god knows what down there insist it isn't their fault. How do you figure out who to sue? When you can't even force the companies to tell you what they're pumping down, how can you prove that what you're pumping up came from them and not some long closed auto shop that for all anyone knows dumped barrels of whatever in the yard decades ago and it just now got down to the water table?

Why does the government have to provide water to the people of Dimock, PA? Oh wait, that's right, the government said that Cabot didn't have to fix the problem, they just had to give them some water for a few years. Imagine, if only the government hadn't been there to make Cabot do anything at all!

The air? How would you even begin to figure out who caused the pollution that gave you lung cancer? It's bad enough WITH government "regulation" where companies have to "self-report" their "accidental" benzene releases.

What a waste.

[oldmac31310]

Such a shame wasting all of that pig blood. They could have made lovely black pudding.

It all depends on who you are.

[techno-vampire]

When you're the owner of a slaughterhouse, turning a river red with blood is pollution. When your name is Moses, it's Divine Judgement.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[AK Marc]

Sue for what? Can I sue if someone expels their exhaust (CO2) onto my property? How about if they distribute it on their property, and the wind carries it to mine? Do I get to determine what I don't want on my property and force them to obey (i.e. no cigarette smoking where I can smell it)? Or do I have to run my rights past a panel of libertarians to determine whether I'm worthy of having my rights doled out by them to stop the person polluting? In general, libertarianism fails completely when it comes to pollution, especially if those most affected have no nearby land (say someone decides DDT is a good thing to saturate their land in and does so until 1000 miles away in the ocean, the concentrations get high enough to start killing turtle eggs and such. Who can sue? The closest people to the pollution don't care that much and had no loss from the DDT runoff, and the turtles don't own land, so under libertarianism, they have no rights, so who gets to sue? Or is that not pollution in libertarian speak, since another human wasn't identifiably harmed by the DDT initially released?

Re:If libertarians had there way

[AngryDeuce]

My question concerning these types of situations and the whole libertarian "pollution is a civil matter and the polluter is liable for damages" method of dealing with pollution is; What if the polluter does not have the money or assets to clean up the mess they made?

Say I buy a corporation with a plant that handles toxic chemicals. It turns out these chemicals have been leaching into the groundwater for decades. I get sued by the property owners all around me and all the people that draw off that groundwater. I go to court and fight it out. I lose the case, and now owe $5 billion dollars in damages. The corporation files bankruptcy, but that's fine with me, because I walk away scot-free.

So, who ends up on the hook cleaning up the contamination? My corporation went the way of Enron, so it's not me or my corporation. Wouldn't the public then be on the hook for cleaning up the mess? What measures would the public be able to take in order to prevent a similar situation from happening again? Libertarians generally don't want regulations that would prevent this type of behavior before it occurs, so how do we actually prevent something like this from happening? Once it's happened, it's too late. We've all been drinking the poison, bathing in it, washing our clothes in it...

I've been reading about different environmental disasters here in the United States lately, things like Love Canal, Times Beach, Missouri, and the Valley of the Drums, and I wonder how the libertarian principles would have corrected those situations. The Superfund law gives the EPA the power to identify and work towards cleaning these sites up, but most libertarians I talk to think the EPA should be abolished due to the whole "regulations" thing. That being said, if we get rid of the EPA, how would sites like this be handled, and who would pay for it?

I'm not trying to be facetious; this is an honest question, because, while I totally agree with some tenets of libertarianism, such as legalization of drugs and ending the nation-building all over the world bullshit, I don't see how the free market alone could deal with situations like these. These problems, due to their severity, seem to extend beyond the ability of any one private entity to deal with. The people living around these areas certainly couldn't have done anything about it, these sites cost billions to clean up, and there's over a thousand Superfund sites in the U.S., as of November, 2010.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[dragonsomnolent]

Dude, China, communist? Sorry it's free market there, for quite a while. Totalitarian regime, sure, but in communism there is no private ownership of much of anything (a la Cuba). Buddy of mine just spend 2 years over there helping set up an American company to open plants there. It's complex, but essentially they had to buy stock in an existing Chinese (privately owned) company, and after a while were allowed to buy it completely. Sure, there were some tight regulations regarding the transfer of money and who owned what throughout the course of the buyout, but they were private businesses, doing business. China isn't very communist

Re:If libertarians had there way

[trout007]

I think you may be confusing libertarianism with anarchism. Libertarian philosophy recognizes the need for a government to provide courts and police. The main purpose of these is to protect you liberty and property rights.

You could sue for anything but you have to prove damages. I may not be a handsome man but if you sue me in court you would have to prove damages to a jury.

Antifreeze?

[pipelayerification]

I did a little looking around and can't find any instance of anyone pumping antifreeze up from their well. Perhaps you could provide a citation. When I read the panicked articles about hydraulic fracturing and its possible side affects I notice lots rhetoric and very few facts. If you know anything about geology you will recognize that it would be almost impossible for contamination to reach the ground water being consumed by humans from the depths that gas companies are working at. Their have been instances of faulty drilling techniques being employed (bad casing cement seals) that have allowed drilling fluids to leak up the well bore and into surface waters. On the other hand, there has never been a documented case of fraccing causing contamination to consumable ground water to my knowledge. As for methane in the wells, the gas of any individual well is easily 'fingerprinted' with a gas chromatograph. If the gas coming out of a water well has the same makeup as the gas coming out of a nearby gas well then contamination is a given (doesn't happen very often, can only find about 15 cases out of 10s of thousands of gas and oil wells and it is usually pinned on faulty cement around well casing not fraccing). Methane is a naturally occurring substance (from decomposition) and is present to some extent in almost all water wells. Sometimes people aren't even aware of its presence until something makes them think to look (such as a gas company deciding to drill a well near their home).

Re:Antifreeze?

[Qzukk]

I did a little looking around and can't find any instance of anyone pumping antifreeze up from their well.

Try harder:

glycols, including ethylene glycol

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/dimock-pennsylvania-epa-_n_1217422.html

Their have been instances of faulty drilling techniques being employed (bad casing cement seals) that have allowed drilling fluids to leak up the well bore and into surface waters.

This was apparently found to be the case for Cabot's wells in Dimock: http://www.lhup.edu/rmyers3/marcellus.htm (among others).

Re:Antifreeze?

[Genda]

It won't help, browsers are so smart they conform to your search habits so this twit will only see the kind of mind-numbing tripe that has already stunted his perception of reality. Have him go to the LIBRARY, and use an unpolluted search environment. Then look up the purely insane laws that Dick Chaney got shoved through for his fracking buddies at Halliburton. Better yet, go get the HBO emmy award winning documentary on fracking "Gasland". There are people out there who have no problem crashing your economy to get wealthy, what makes you think there aren't people who will poison your water for the same reason?

I have a profound confusion for folks who think that government is evil, but corporation and business are magically devoid of human frailty. Human beings are amazing, on the one hand they are loving, compassionate, generous and noble. On the other hand they are some of the lowest scum sucking primates with a pulse. This would suggest that all human enterprise requires some level of monitoring, management and regulation, to prevent what is worst in people from crapping all over the scenery and one another. That goes for governments, and you better believe that goes for corporations. We need to build a strong cage of regulation with the room and freedom to grow and thrive, but HARSH penalties for committing wanton acts of abuse on people or the environment. Why is this not obvious?

3rd world nation

[WindBourne]

Why is America becoming more and more like a 3rd world nation?

Re:3rd world nation

[DigiShaman]

We're not. In fact, America has improved progressively with each passing generation. It's your own perception that has changed. That's because newer surveillance and reporting technologies illuminate wrongdoing in ways normally you haven't been accustomed to before.

As people, we respond more to visual stimuli regardless of the fact worse has been reported before in just words alone.

Re:3rd world nation

[WindBourne]

I worked at Monfort's beet in the 80's, and at Northern Pumps hereford farms in the 70's (contrary to some opinions, Americans LIKE to work). What do you want to know about slaughter houses? Allowing the blood to run like this is NOT normal. In fact, even back then, the companies were not allowed to simply drain this off. And in Monforts, we found numerous uses for it, including blutworst, BAPs, etc.

So, what part of my comment was wrong? America is increasingly becoming like a 3rd world nation. We HAD the PREMIER food inspection system in the world. Then in the mid-80's, it was gutted by reagan. Now, have citizens dying because of that decisions by the American neo-cons.

Re:3rd world nation

[Hatta]

Another issue is that of culture. How many parents are involved in their child's life today compared to a post WW2 family? I content that family values have dropped which is at the root of our youth crime rate. It basically has led us into a destructive positive feed-back cycle from a cultural standpoint.

If the loss of family values are responsible for the youth crime rate, we need to divest ourselves of family values as quickly as possible. The trend in youth crime has been decreasing since the mid 90s.

The really funny part is that you just committed the same error you accused me of making. That is, mistaking your own increased perception of a problem for an actual increase in incidence. In both cases if you care to dig up data you'll see that I'm right.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[ChrisMaple]

Oceans are pretty big, and an ocean wouldn't be owned by a single entity, any more than a whole continent is (I'm not counting governments, I mean property owners). Furthermore, certain aspects of areas might be owned: shipping rights, fishing rights, mining rights. If an adjoiner's polluted water is killing fish in the area where I have fishing rights, I sue him.

Food is valuable, and fish is high quality food. The economic power of a large, well-organized fishing company should be enough to force a polluter to behave better.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[AngryDeuce]

Well, two of those disasters I mentioned, Love Canal and Valley of the Drums, were what led to the Superfund bill that gave the EPA the authority to deal with those issues. Prior to that it was pretty much up in the air, and the severity of those disasters and the problems in dealing with those issues were the driving motivations for that bill. The third, Times Beach, was an ongoing case that occurred before the Superfund bill but was not dealt with until after.

At any rate, it seems to me that there have not been any disasters near the scope of the three cases I mentioned since that time (outside of some oil spills, but there are regulations in place dealing with cleanup). Not to say that there hasn't been pollution or environmental issues, obviously, but most companies aren't throwing drums of toxic waste around, either. Maybe they're related, maybe they're not.

I'll grant that regulating industry isn't as easy as allowing the justice system to just react on a case by case basis individually, but that solution has it's problems as well. For instance, what about people of limited means that can't necessarily afford to shoulder the burden of suing a multibillion dollar company in civil court? It's not like we're talking one homeowner suing his neighbor. Simply being a large enough company and having the resources to drag a court case out for years and years would mean that the average Joe is going to have a hard time fighting this case. After all, it's a civil matter, so you've pretty much got to hope there's a lawyer out there willing to take your case for a cut of the potential settlement. Depending on the resources of the Defendant, many lawyers would probably elect not to take the case at all based purely on the fact that they do not want to invest the time and energy into a case that they may possibly lose. It seems to me that this would ultimately have a sort of chilling effect on these lawsuits being brought to court at all.

What about the resultant complexity of 50 different states worth of legal precedent in lieu of a federal regulation? If I win a case in Florida against a company that polluted the groundwater with benzene, does that mean that a company in Texas can technically dump benzene since the precedent only applies in Florida state law? Are we going to have to basically litigate every possible type of pollution in all 50 states to replace the EPA? And how does that deal with pollutants that cross state lines? Say in Texas you can dump benzene, benzene travels down river and ends up in Oklahoma, where dumping benzene is illegal. Am I going to jail? Am I liable for the pollution in Oklahoma if it originated in Texas where the law hadn't gotten around to ruling on whether dumping benzene was a liability to me? Or is Oklahoma going to have to sue Texas itself, who in turn will then have to sue me?

As for encouraging lobbying, I consider that a non-issue as I think that direct lobbying should be totally prohibited anyway. It's nothing but bribery with another name. Yeah, I know, anyone can petition the government, yadda yadda yadda....I don't believe that our Founding Father's would have intended for the law to allow people to give our representatives cash rewards in exchange for voting a certain way. It certainly doesn't seem like an idea they would have supported based on what I've read of some of their writings, but I admit that I do not know for certain, obviously. Either way, I find it abhorrent.

I also consider the China argument a non-issue as well. If they wish to live in a polluted hell-hole that is their right (although I suspect the vast majority of Chinese citizens aren't given the choice in the first place, so there's that), but it seems to me that most people here don't want that, and we have a choice. Is the economy more important than clean air, water, and earth? I admit, there may be some regulations that are considered a little extreme, and I fully support going through regulations line by line and getting rid of the stupid shi

Re:If libertarians had there way

[ppanon]

All of that doesn't matter if it takes 10 years for the problem to be detected, proven, and lain at your door. By that time you can make out like a bandit, and wind up living off an untouchable multi-million dollar bank account sunning yourself in the Caymans or Barbados.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[ppanon]

Really, you know that many well-organized fishing companies with deep-enough pockets to take on BP in a decade-long lawsuit with multi-million dollar lawyer's fees when their source of income just got wiped out?

Re:If libertarians had there way

[Maritz]

Maybe I could buy the space that the planet is going to pass through..? Then I'd temporarily own everything on the planet, or at least be due some rent.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[Tim4444]

We see in practice that this sort of damage is extremely difficult to prove, takes years to resolve in court, and is too easily written off as part of the 'cost of doing business' in most cases. In the meantime the damage is still being done to the environment and to the health of the people living in it. In West Virginia, many people affected by the coal industry are dying before they see any resolution in court. If you have acid rain falling on your head, how do you know which of the thousands of factories are responsible? Does everyone affected by the acid rain have to sew every factory operator. In such a system, the only people who win are the lawyers.

What's needed is a system that prevents the damage from being done in the first place. You could certainly argue that court awarded damages could be made high enough to deter bad practices, but that would just encourage frivolous lawsuits and every more acrimony about "environmental activists" undermining profits.

Just to play devil's advocate, if Libertarians really believe the courts could address environmental abuse, why aren't they supporting reforms to the existing court system? It seems to me that every time an issue like this comes up they're almost invariably on the side of pollutersm railing against 'activist judges' and 'environMENTALists.' They give me little hope that such a system would work any better in the great Libertarian utopia.

I'd like to offer an example of responsible environmental protection. I went on a whale watching cruise out of Boston a couple years back and they mentioned that shipping lanes had recently been rerouted to bypass whale feeding areas. Research showed that the whales only gather in certain areas. Rerouting the shipping lanes is yet another case of 'big' government and environmentalists interfering in business, but the fact is that fewer ships hitting whales means less damage to vessels and fewer disruptions to shipping. It's a win-win: safer whales and smoother more effective business operations. This sort of win-win arrangement could never have happened if someone had to go to the courts and try to prove damage. Who's the victim that could even present the lawsuit in this case? Businesses would never make the change on their own - even if the shipping lanes were managed privately - because no company or trade association would ever justify the cost of an "environmental study" to determine the best routes. Maybe they'd do it to pay lip service to good stewardships or as part of a "green" pr campaign, but never because they actually intend to do it properly or take the results seriously.

The fact is that for many years the US had a very Libertarian approach to the environment and many other areas. Regulation and other government interferance only came about because under those laissez-faire policies we had the biggest abuse of the environment the Nation has ever seen. The existing systems have done far better and the question should be how to make them better, not whether or not we should return to an era of policies that clearly didn't work. In some cases, the current system has motivated individual landowners to implement environmental solutions themselves. There was a case a while back of ranchers setting up turtle crossings under roads to keep the government from stepping in and marking the lands as protected. If individuals can solve the problem better than the government - show what they've done and allow independent confirmation of the results - then so much the better for everyone. You can't tell me though that the same results would have been acheived with a glut of lawsuits and fines.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[KozmoStevnNaut]

In the libertarian theory unused property comes into ownership through homesteading which basically mean you have to start using unused land. The same theory exists with air/water pollution, noise, and radio waves.

So let me get this straight, if I use ALL of the available radio spectrum before anyone else has a chance, by default I will have the right to use it as I see fit and no one can do anything about it?

And you don't see any problems with this "first come, first serve, fuck everyone else" philosophy?

Re:If libertarians had there way

[delinear]

If songbirds and bats can't afford to hire lawyers individually, they'd have to get together and raise a class action, obviously.

20 minute response + 2 months of... what?

[chrissigler]

It's kind of a side note, but according to TFA...

the pilot said investigators were dispatched within 20 minutes, starting a two-month investigation that led to the execution of a search warrant on Thursday

So, people were there within 20 minutes, but it took two months to investigate. What exactly took two months? Red tape?

1. Step 1: Arrive at creek.
2. Step 2: See creek is red.
3. Step 3: Walk up the creek.
4. Step 4: Arrive at meat packing plant.
5. Step 5: Have a beer.

I'm not sure how winding that creek is, but I could see it possibly taking two hours, not two months.

Re:If libertarians had there way

[KevinIsOwn]

Because.. yeah.. none of this stuff can be farmed out to other people.

What a brilliant idea! We could all get together and pay a small fee for a group of people to go after those polluters. It needs a good name though... How about the Environmental Protection Agency? That sounds like a good name. And we could pay for it out of our tax dollars so there are no free riders! Perfect!

Re:If libertarians had there way

[MarkvW]

To the extent that dumping blood into a river is harmful to others they are entitled to compensation. If you think libertarians are in favor of "liberty" to harm others, then your understanding of libertarianism is as bad as your spelling.

So the libertarians would entitle the victim to "compensation?" What about regulation to prevent the crap in the first place?

I want a government that will protect me from noxious substances.

Water laws are extremely complex.

[Medievalist]

Most Eastern US states use some form of riparian law, which is what you are referring to. Groundwater is public property and may not be owned by individuals, although ownership and regulatory powers are split by the high and low water marks (local cops have police rights between those two points in some cases, go figure). In my state I personally can own the land under my creek because it's not a navigable watercourse, my property line extends completely past it, and I'm living in one of the original 13 colonies. I cannot own the water itself and I cannot appreciably change the character of the water except by using it to nourish animals living physically on my land or by harnessing it for industrial power (which changes the speed and temperature by withdrawing energy). I can dump blood in it if I want, but not enough to turn it red or make it taste funny on anyone else's property.

However, most Western US states are decidedly NOT using Eastern-style riparian law, and people literally murder each other over ownership of "water rights" - which are assigned on a first-come first-serve basis by the government, in a way that is intended to favor wealthy landowners and large corporations, because in the USA capital investment is required to efficiently exploit scarce resources, and water is a scarce resource in the western US. In the West you absolutely can withdraw water and use it up if you own the right to do so by "prior apportionment".

Wikipedia has a somewhat half-assed discussion here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riparian_water_rights#United_States

Sorry about the run-on sentences.