02-17-2013, 05:08 AM
I apologized to Pele the other day. When I first came to Hilo, the first impression was why was it so run down looking? Then I started noticing the sides of buildings like Office Max with big black streaks going down, the corroded look of Liliuokalani park, and like many people, having only associated it with the effects of the active volcano, putting a lot more SO2 in the atmosphere, mixing with H2O to make acid rain. The black streaks must have been volcanic ash.
Now, with the recent EPA violations issued to the Hilo and Puna Diesel-Electric Power Plants for excessive SO2 emission violations, looking at the smoke stacks, vintage 1940's design before the word smog was in the vernacular, made me realize all the excessive corrosion around here doesn't come from Pele and the salt air, it comes from Big Oil. That isn't volcanic ash, it's dirty black soot accumulating from the smokestacks.
There are thousands of tons of SO2 being pumped into the virtual bubbles over Hilo and Puna. HELCO is in a bind (not as big as Oahu HECO) because the EPA is making new standards the law, not just something nice to do, and not grandfathered, to meet emission requirements. Hawaiian Electric have to get their smokestacks upgraded or replaced. The diesel-electric plants were mechanical marvels for their time. They are running and nobody notices because there's almost nothing visible coming out of the stack and the diesels are super quiet. But they are from a time where nobody had even heard of pollution. Modern stacks now have scrubbers to reclaim emissions so very little gets out into the air, only they are very expensive, in the tens of millions. That is why the refineries are shutting down, it will be too costly to meet the new EPA requirements. A lot of people have to be scrambling in the background.
So, the people of Puna have spoken and declared they prefer living under a huge blanket of massively verifiable SO2 rather than try to survive barely measurable levels of H2S, which are now being associated with longevity. The point isn't coal, oil, natural gas. It is: STOP. BURNING. NOW. PERIOD. How difficult is that to understand?
"It was a majority decision to descend into the Dark Ages. Don't worry, be happy, bang on da drum all day!"
Now, with the recent EPA violations issued to the Hilo and Puna Diesel-Electric Power Plants for excessive SO2 emission violations, looking at the smoke stacks, vintage 1940's design before the word smog was in the vernacular, made me realize all the excessive corrosion around here doesn't come from Pele and the salt air, it comes from Big Oil. That isn't volcanic ash, it's dirty black soot accumulating from the smokestacks.
There are thousands of tons of SO2 being pumped into the virtual bubbles over Hilo and Puna. HELCO is in a bind (not as big as Oahu HECO) because the EPA is making new standards the law, not just something nice to do, and not grandfathered, to meet emission requirements. Hawaiian Electric have to get their smokestacks upgraded or replaced. The diesel-electric plants were mechanical marvels for their time. They are running and nobody notices because there's almost nothing visible coming out of the stack and the diesels are super quiet. But they are from a time where nobody had even heard of pollution. Modern stacks now have scrubbers to reclaim emissions so very little gets out into the air, only they are very expensive, in the tens of millions. That is why the refineries are shutting down, it will be too costly to meet the new EPA requirements. A lot of people have to be scrambling in the background.
So, the people of Puna have spoken and declared they prefer living under a huge blanket of massively verifiable SO2 rather than try to survive barely measurable levels of H2S, which are now being associated with longevity. The point isn't coal, oil, natural gas. It is: STOP. BURNING. NOW. PERIOD. How difficult is that to understand?
"It was a majority decision to descend into the Dark Ages. Don't worry, be happy, bang on da drum all day!"
*Japanese tourist on bus through Pahoa, "Is this still America?*