re: #166 darthstar

Okay…I heard on the news this morning that the fertilizer plant posed no risk to the community and a fire, let alone an explosion, was at best a remote possibility. 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia not a risk? Stupid fuckers (and I mean the state and local officials who bought this horseshit).

Which means most likely the plant is under insured. And if it’s part of a larger conglomerate there will probably be some move fairly quickly (if not already in place) that will limit liability climbing the corporate ladder and finding larger bank accounts.

There are simply lots of cases where “it won’t happen to us” goes on for a long period of time, and then it does happen and the results wipe out years and years of previous profits (or insurance premiums if you’re the insurer.)

One company I worked for dumped off a small (but annually profitable) plant because they did the analysis and figured that a spill of material* while being transported was eventually going to happen. And that the clean-up and legal costs were going to cost the equivalent to decades of the plant’s profits. Not to mention that the plant site itself was so heavily contaminated from over a century of making coke and steel there. Some potential improvement projects had been scuttled simply due to the expense of disposing of soil from the site.

* - Coal tar, creosote, light oil, etc. extracted from coke ovens after the coke is removed. All this stuff is basically pretty nasty stuff and spilling it (especially into a water source) is going to bring the EPA onto your head like a ton of bricks.