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Chemical Transportation Risk and Safety

tschuetz
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In April 2024, Formosa Plastics Corp. USA was among 137 companies to receive the 2023 Pinnacle Award by the Union Pacific Railroad for "safe shipping of hazardous materials". The transport company honors cusotmers that "release prevention protocols, corrective action plans and have zero non-accident releases of regulated hazardous materials shipments". 

Meanwhile, journalists at the Intercept have followed how in the aftermath of the East Palestine train disaster, lobbyists have both weakened rail safety (Thakker 2023) and supported the buildout of toxic polyvinylchloride (PVC) production (Mitchell 2023, 2024). The latter includes Formosa Plastics planned expansions in Louisiana's St. James Parish.

TCEQ's 1-mile rule

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"The “1-mile rule”: Texas’ unwritten, arbitrary policy protects big polluters from citizen complaints. It’s not found anywhere in state law or the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s rules, but for years the agency has denied citizens the ability to challenge air pollution permits because they live more than a mile away." (Baddour 2023)

Diane Wilson's writing

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Throughout her 30-year career, Diane Wilson has been a prolific author, having published several books (Wilson 2005; 2011) that have been highly regarded by scholars of feminist and environmental literature (Poe 2013; Thornber 2014; Aming-Hong 2022). Wilson's book, An Unreasonable Woman (2005), has been praised by Karen Thornber (2014), an ecocritical writer who has noted that the book highlights the "global consequences of local and national behaviors" and can "work to change consciousness in the absence of public policy" (Thornber 2014, 991). Moreover, literature scholar Heidi Amin-Hong (2022) has argued that Wilson's "documentary aesthetics" demonstrate how Formosa's pollution of Vietnamese waters is part of a longer history of pollution caused by militarized projects across transpacific geographies, ranging from Vietnam to Taiwan and Texas (Aming-Hong 2022, 1). According to Amin-Hong, Wilson's use of dialogue "decenters individual authority in favor of collective knowledge gathering and communal action" (Aming-Hong 2022, 6).

Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative

tschuetz
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"[Formosa Plastics] paid $50 million in a consent decree to create the Matagorda Bay Mitigation Trust. The money is spread across environmental restoration and protection projects to mitigate the effects of decades of pollution. It also establishes the Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative to help shrimpers and fishers and oyster harvesters revitalize local seafood businesses." 

Source: https://capitalandmain.com/hellcat-big-oil-great-grandmother-is-fightin…

pece_annotation_1473741811

xiaox
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Smart autoalarm guardrail is designed for helpping people emergency contact and remind the other drivers when car accident happen in remote area. People will drive on some remote area, or late night. If car accident happens, might be no one know the accident is happen. This design is help the litigant automatically make a emergency call, and send the location through the GPS when the car is crash the guardrail. As well as, it can turn on/flash the light within the accident area to warn the other drivers. 

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xiaox
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This design could help people in an unknow emergency situation, for example, the driver pass out when the traffic accident happen, and this design can help people to save life. However, I think this concept design might be cost a lot if it is applied into real life, because it means there are lots of guardrail need to install this system, and the government also need to prepare another extra fee for repair the guardrail after every accident. 

pece_annotation_1473744151

xiaox
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Smart Guardrail is autoalrm and could be send location to the nearset emergency centre by GPS when the car crash into the guardrail. As well as the warning light within the area will be swithched on to avoid the potential sencond accident. The system is design to install into the highway guardrail, and use the circuit to make the system work. Therefore, the materials might be include electrical wire and circuit, and also plastic caution lights.