The Colorado River Mess

[DanStokes]

VERY true. However - in this case it makes no difference whether it was malice or ignorance. The fault is the EPA's, and they MUST clean it up according to their rules. Also, the guilty MUST be punished.

I agree, Stude. What I'm saying, having a view from the inside here, is that "punishment" may not look like you might want it to, but it WILL happen. If someone at our facility had done something this ignorant - or stupid or malicious - they would have been "put in a closet" (as we called it) where they couldn't do any more damage. The way Federal employment rules are written it's VERY hard to terminate someone's employment after they have tenure (it was 3 years when I was in that situation) but there is a lot of latitude for execs to determine work assignments, hence "the closet". If you are power-mad enough to fight your way to the top of the heap high enough to have this kind of authority, being taken out of circulation is a pretty big price to pay. We could all like to see them prosecuted but being a public servant DOES carry some protection as long as there's some kind of semi-plausible explanation.

Sorry, SBG - I don't buy your theory. This takes none of the fire out of my anger that someone operating in the name of public good pulled such a colossally ignorant maneuver. No one has gotten rich over the Love Canal incident and there's no reason to think that will happen here. And no, the property owners DIDN'T pay for the clean up - we all did (and still are). The fate of that land is still unknown but it will probably sit fallow forever, last I heard.

Dan

[pdub]

I've seen the results when a new hire got told to go run a machine that cuts rolls of paper. It's easy, just do it. No training. Big mistake.

It's a hydraulic machine, a guillotine, he'd never seen it before. A cylinder on each side pushing a big blade down. He put two little rolls on one corner of the table instead of in the center of the table and that thing was ruined. And it left all the managers talking about common sense.

Obviously sense is not all that common. Just saying, ignorance is not always a negative thing. If you don't know what you're doing, stuff happens. Which doesn't make the EPA look real good in this case.

[Deaf Bob]

In an effort to prove a person thinks they know what they are talking about, tends to prove by talking or doing they do not..
F'ing up is SO EASY to do.. If it wasn't, nobody'd do it!

[pdub]

Thanks for the sig line Bob! Yep, that's a keeper.

[SuperBuickGuy]

I've seen the results when a new hire got told to go run a machine that cuts rolls of paper. It's easy, just do it. No training. Big mistake.

It's a hydraulic machine, a guillotine, he'd never seen it before. A cylinder on each side pushing a big blade down. He put two little rolls on one corner of the table instead of in the center of the table and that thing was ruined. And it left all the managers talking about common sense.

Obviously sense is not all that common. Just saying, ignorance is not always a negative thing. If you don't know what you're doing, stuff happens. Which doesn't make the EPA look real good in this case.