{"id":2219,"date":"2013-03-11T08:35:19","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T12:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/?p=2219"},"modified":"2013-03-11T09:59:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T13:59:06","slug":"more-gunk-in-michigan-rivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/2013\/03\/11\/more-gunk-in-michigan-rivers\/","title":{"rendered":"More gunk in Michigan rivers?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo by Dan Janisse, The Windsor Star<\/p><\/div>\n

Here’s a distrubing story. You see, apparently pipeline spills are not the only way that the diluted bitumen Enbridge transports can foul Michigan rivers. Let us tell you about “petcoke.”<\/p>\n

A byproduct of the refining process, petroleum coke is a fine powder that can be burned like coal and used in other processes, like making asphalt. The Marathon refinery in Detroit– you will recall that they recently completed a multi-million dollar expansion<\/a> so that they could refine more of the dilbit Enbridge pipes to them– produces enormous piles of the stuff, which they then sell.<\/p>\n

Where does it all go?<\/p>\n

Well, a good amount of appears to be going, for the short term anyway, right down to the shores of the Detroit River. The Windsor Star<\/em> over in Canada this week ran the disturbing story of mountains of petcoke sitting unprotected by the side of the river<\/a>. From all appearances, it seems very unlikely that such a fine, powdery material would not blow or runoff or slide or otherwise leach its way into the river, along which it is piled. (The paper has since run some follow up stories<\/a>. And here’s another on some protests over the piles<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Apparently, the Michigan DEQ is now on the case. We wait anxiously to see what sort of action will be taken– but given the record of Michigan politicians and state regulations on these sorts of matters, we’re not all that confident.<\/p>\n

Oh, and by the way, when entities like the state department do those calculations to determine the carbon emissions (and climate impact) of tar sands mining, as in their recent report on Keystone XL<\/a>, the impact of burning petcoke– a far dirtier fuel than coal<\/a>, evidently– does not get included.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a distrubing story. You see, apparently pipeline spills are not the only way that the diluted bitumen Enbridge transports can foul Michigan rivers. Let us tell you about “petcoke.” A byproduct of the refining process, petroleum coke is a fine powder that can be burned like coal and used in other processes, like making […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-6b"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2219"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2222,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219\/revisions\/2222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}