Hidden Scourge: Exposing the Truth About Fossil Fuel Industry Spills

423 Pages·2021·32.943 MB·English

by  Kevin P. Timoney

HIDDEN
SC OURGE

H I D D E N
S C O U R G E
Exposing the Truth
about Fossil Fuel Industry Spills
KEVIN P. TIMONEY
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston (cid:129) London (cid:129) Chicago
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2021

isbn 978-0-2280-0893-4 (cloth)
isbn 978-0-2280-0894-1 (paper)
isbn 978-0-2280-1026-5 (epdf)

Legal deposit fourth quarter 2021
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to
Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press
also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the McLean Foundation
for this book.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Hidden scourge : exposing the truth about fossil fuel industry spills /
Kevin P. Timoney.
Names: Timoney, Kevin, author.
Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210231742 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210231858 |
isbn 9780228008934 (cloth) | isbn 9780228008941 (paper) | isbn
9780228010265 (epdf)
Subjects: lcsh: Oil spills—Canada, Western. | lcsh: Oil spills—West (U.S.) |
lcsh: Petroleum industry and trade—Environmental aspects—Canada,
Western. | lcsh: Petroleum industry and trade—Environmental aspects—
West (U.S.) | lcsh: Canada, Western—Environmental conditions. | lcsh:
West (U.S.)—Environmental conditions.
Classification: lcc td427.p4 t56 2021 | ddc 628.1/6833—dc23

This book was design and typeset by studio oneonone in Minion 11/14
For Abby, Anne, and Lindy, whose compasses always point true.

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue,
and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts
so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this
process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later
a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

George Orwell, “In Front of Your Nose,” Tribune, 22 March 1946

Contents
Prologue: Learn from the Past or Repeat It ix
Preface xvii

PART ONE HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
1 Covert Spills 3
2 The Data and How They Were Analyzed 17
3 An Overview of Spills 25

PART TWO THE INCIDENT AND THE AFTERMATH
4 The Effects of Spills 39
5 The Effects of Other Fossil Fuel Industry Activities 59

PART THREE REGULATORY EVIDENCE
6 Inaccurate Locations, Suspect Spill Data, and the Falcon Effect 71
7 Spill Forensics 93
8 Exploring the Unknown: Missing Spills 110
CONTENTS
PART FOUR SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE
9 Spill Effects on Soil and Water Chemistry on the Dene Tha Lands 139
10 Spill and Related Effects on the Vegetation and Flora
in Four Study Regions 145
11 Behind the Firewall: The Pace-Spyglass Oil Spill 161
12 Exposure to Contaminants at the Spill Sites 170
13 The Regulator’s Failure to Document Spill Effects on Habitat
and Wildlife 188
14 Cumulative Effects 200

viii
PART FIVE OUT OF THE RABBIT HOLE AND INTO THE LIGHT
15 Misinformation and the Metaorganization 219
16 A Captured Regulator 236
17 Conclusions: Better Sad Truths Than Happy Lies 260
18 The Way Home 274

Afterword 283
Postscript 285
Acknowledgments 289
Glossary of Concepts, Abbreviations, and Terms 291
Tables, Figures, and Plates 309
References 317
Index 343
Prologue
Learn from the Past or Repeat It
A ten-minute drive from where I grew up in Ocean County, New Jersey, the
Ciba chemical company opened a dye manufacturing plant in 1952 in Toms
River. For more than forty years, the plant known as Toms River Chemical
(trc) manufactured dyes and disposed of toxic by-products such as trichloro-
ethylene, epichlorohydrin, benzidine, and anthraquinone (Fagin 2013). The
oversight was so poor and the dumping of waste so profitable that the com-
pany, in violation of its discharge permit, even quietly expanded into the
chemical waste disposal business. In 1966, after contaminating the town’s water
supply and air and not informing the public, the company added a pipeline to
the ocean that for years disgorged chemical waste less than a kilometre offshore
of Ortley Beach. When the pipeline burst in 1984 and released contaminants
at a street intersection in Toms River, the company, then known as Ciba-Geigy,
assured local people that the pipeline carried harmless salty water that dis-
charged into the salty ocean. Actually, the pipeline carried dangerous chemical
wastes, but the pipeline leak was a minor danger. In truth, a chemical scourge
had been spreading for years, mostly invisible and therefore easy to hide.
We all knew people who worked at the chemical plant. As kids we overheard
adults recounting incidents about chemicals being dumped in the sand near
the plant or discharged into the Toms River. Our parents warned us not to
swim in the Toms River, but the warnings were not needed. We were “Pineys”
after all, rural people who lived in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. We knew