KCBX owned by Koch Brothers.
October 18, 2013
By Meleah Geertman's Blog
... Petroleum coke (click here) is a waste product of oil refining; refining tar sands, in turn, produces significantly more pet coke than refining lighter crudes. For example, the pet coke production at BP’s Whiting Refinery, which is undergoing a nearly $4 billion expansion to enable tar sands refining, will go from about 700,000 tons per year to over 2 million annually. All of this waste has to go somewhere – and that somewhere is in communities throughout the Midwest and elsewhere, en route to dirty power plants in the U.S. and overseas....
This is a perfect example of the crony priorities of the current majority Republican Party. They are promising bipartisan participation in their legislative priorities, but, Democratic amendments including the use only of USA steel in the pipeline are defeated.
The Republicans are paying the Koch Brothers back for their political donations.
Once the City of Chicago files lawsuits, there will be many others that will join in. This is typical of Republicans, their garbage is dumped among the most vulnerable in the USA that have no ability to fight the industrial abuse.
Update as of 3:55 p.m. EST: The Senate (click here) voted Tuesday to table two of three amendments to a pro-Keystone XL pipeline bill. A proposal from Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., to require U.S. iron and steel be used to build the pipeline failed by a vote of 54-46. Senators voted 57-42 to kill an amendment from Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., which would have mandated that all oil shipped via the Keystone XL be excluded for export. However, a third proposal from Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., passed by a vote of 94-5. The measure promotes energy efficiency in commercial and federal buildings....
July 26, 2014
By Michael Hawthorne
Escalating a fight with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a company that stores enormous mounds of petroleum coke on Chicago's Southeast Side is threatening to sue unless city officials allow the gritty piles to remain uncovered for another four years....
The Koch Brothers wants to sue Chicago regarding the city's new regulations to improve air and water quality currently making citizens ill. It is all too obvious why the Koch Brothers put their monies where they do. Democrats can't be bought.
KCBX Terminals, (click here) a firm controlled by industrialists Charles and David Koch, is pushing to delay the construction of storage sheds for two years past a 2016 deadline imposed by the Emanuel administration in response to complaints about black dust blowing into surrounding neighborhoods.
The company also wants to raise the maximum height of its piles to 45 feet rather than the 30-foot limit required under new city regulations, according to documents filed by KCBX that seek several exemptions, known as variances, from the Chicago Department of Public Health.
"If the department denies the variances, KCBX's only recourse would be to challenge the department in court," the company's lawyers wrote in an 88-page request that repeatedly describes the Emanuel rules as an "unreasonable hardship."
KCBX is in the midst of dramatically expanding its storage of petroleum coke, or petcoke, from the nearby BP refinery in Whiting and other refineries across the Midwest. State officials last year cleared the way for the company to handle up to 11 million tons a year of petcoke and coal at its sprawling open-air terminal off Burley Avenue between 108th and 111th streets....
The Democrats are not playing politics and pandering to cronies, this health risk is real and the Dems want real solutions. This is not about votes, although the morality within the actions of the Dems will draw attention by those so inclined to care for those unable to care for themselves. This is not pandering for votes. These are real lives and Koch Industries disregards their importance to this country. The Kochs don't care about the lives they impact, they care about wealth and power and more of both, at any cost.
Lisa Murkowski states it is important to bring these amendments to the Senate floor to debate. There is no debate anywhere else in the entire world regarding the CURRENT dangers of greenhouse gases, except, in the US Senate. The Republicans in the US Senate are bought and paid for. It is obvious and they threaten the global climate because of the dollars that are important to them,
Oh, what a joke. Murkowski states the USA has to be economically secure through the exploitation of fossil fuels, Is that a joke or what? Current costs of the climate crisis in the world is causing economic insecurity. Either Murkowski is completely disinterested in the truth or she can't give up the money. Her own Alaskan Native Americans have lost vast amounts of lands because of the melting. So, who does she represent, those in Alaska or those that back her voluntary corruption for the benefits of profits?
