This is the location where my face and my palm meet.
Terrorism Not Ruled Out in Eden Coal Ash Spill
Um… riiiiiight. If a eco-terrorist was going to attack Danville and the Dan River (and I can’t figure out one reason why they would), wouldn’t they use something that would actually cause damage to the environment? No… I don’t mean Dan River Mills’ chemical plant. That stopped polluting the river a long time ago. Now the Dan River is back to being polluted from lots of other things.
If I buy in to Scott’s conspiracy theory, the only eco-terrorist that would spend time attacking the river with a substance that appears to have no short-term effect at all would be Dr. Evil (from the Austin Powers series of movies) or Plankton (from SpongeBob SquarePants). This attack would be just as effective and harmless as all of their schemes that those two have pulled before. Can anybody vouch for their whereabouts on the night in question? We may be on to something here.
As stated in the title, I do know that Godzilla has not been cleared of suspicion yet and neither has the late Doris Day. If Scott’s theories are correct, we’re going to have to round up the usual suspects including that woman who sung about Chiquita Bananas while wearing a hat made of fruit and her known accomplice, Wilford Brimley.
Scott has helped us narrow the focus of the investigation down with this clue…
Neither Duke Energy nor the EPA have investigated the possibility of a rogue Duke Energy employee or a disgruntled former employee having caused the pipe breach.
Ah-HAH! We now know that it could be a rogue OR a disgruntled Duke energy employee (not a gruntled one, of course). If we find a disgruntled employee who just happens to also be rogue, they can be cut loose. They’re innocent. One last article quote before we close it out…
No law enforcement agency has considered the possibility of there being a connection between these incidents.
There’s a good reason why that hasn’t been considered. It’s totally ludicrous.
Bartender, I’ll have what Scott Brooks is having.
Bruce, I’m kind of surprised at you. You don’t find it at least slightly troubling that NO investigation has been done 10+ days into this to determine what caused the pipe to breach? I could be wrong but I don’t think the article was suggesting that this WAS a terrorist attack. I think it was pointing out how crazy it is that no effort has been made to find out how it happened. If a bridge collapses, don’t they try to rule out foul play almost right away? If a gas pipe ruptures, don’t they investigate the cause? How is this any different?
It’s pretty easy to say “oh it was an accident” and just move on without any definitive proof . Duke Energy and the EPA both admitted they still don’t know what caused this. You think that’s ok?
No. I don’t find it slightly troubling one bit. The focus was on the correct priority: stop the bleeding and minimize the damage. As for your bridge analogy, let’s pluck everyone out of the water before we go back in time. I had some fun with this but I’m serious when people throw out the word “terrorism” because that word scares stupid people.
I’m a firm believer in Occam’s Razor: The simplest solution is usually the correct one.
It’s a moron article Scott Brooks wrote.
@ richard I would say rust, would cause a steel pipe that is decades old to fail. 9 out of 10 times a bad weld causes pipe ruptures. the other times its a improperly marked pipe during a dig or boring operation.