12/28/2007, 10:52 am
News Note: Shell Oil settles pipeline spill case from 1988 for $46 million. Twenty million will go to build new water lines in Limestone Township. Another $26 million will compensate 1,500 residents.
If you follow the timeline, it goes like this. It took Shell six years to begin providing pure water for residents. It took nine years for the state and the county to sue Shell. It took 14 years for the spill to reach Wiley Creek.
One resident remembers buying his Limestone Township home four years after the break, and received no notice at all that 100,000 gallons of gasoline had seeped into the water system.
It’s hardly an inspiring story of government in action. Joe Yurgine, attorney for the plaintiff, says community leaders “tried to put a lid on what happened.”
Should local government be monitoring the environment? You bet. If anything, the Shell case demonstrates dramatically that not nearly enough is being done.
Up until the first part of 2007, county officials had a “delegation agreement” with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, empowering locally hired, trained inspectors to check on environmental problems, ranging from compost pile odors to nonpermitted dumping to spills in the river.
In fact, the inspections had been beefed up, under a better inspector, after the Illinois EPA had complained. But the county government, responding to a request by area mayors, pulled the plug on the local inspection process. Inspections would now be at the hand of the state EPA, when they might get around to it. The entire issue is still being reconsidered.
The net savings to the county treasury was $40,000.
Now, we have, in this corner, for years, opposed the massive burial of Chicago trash in this community. But whether you’re against that proposal, or for it, the recent settlement demonstrates the liability that can be incurred from environmental problems, years after a single incident.
One county offical said he believes what will eventually emerge is a system of tougher local inspections. We certainly hope so.
We need more inspections, not less; and inspecting more things; with tougher standards designed to prevent problems before they occur, or to spot them as quickly as possible. That’s a lot easier than making the payments later.
http://www.daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=410708
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
