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This post is about diesel emissions and the EPA and I hope some find it interesting; however, the real reason I’m posting is to get a link for a hand bill so locals can read this post and see what happens in their public park while they’re at work. What if you were given permission to “roll coal” in a city park for hours and days on end in the vicinity of a children’s play area, bike path, skate park, volley ball court, pavilion with children eating lunch, horse shoe pit, dog park, and an assisted living complex, and then you were told you just contributed to the enforcement of the EPA clean air act because some students who paid money to watch your activities learned how to identify excessive smoke stack emissions. Well that’s basically the perverted logic behind my story below.
Instead of doing diesel analysis I now escort my dog Morris around town with the aid of my all terrain walker.
During Thursday May 4 and Friday May 5, 2017, I observed significant airborne pollution being intentionally emitted for a duration of several hours each day in Snow Park in the vicinity of the children’s play area, bike path, skate park, volley ball courts, pavilions with children eating lunch, the horse shoe pits, the dog park, and the assisted living complex.
A company by the name of Opacitek had set up a furnace-type incinerator with a smoke stack about 12 inches in diameter and 6 feet tall.
Several 5-gallon canisters of waste oil, diesel fuel, and possibly other unknown carcinogens were being metered into the furnace, and noxious smoke in copious quantities was coming from the smoke stack, wafting across the park, and settling out at ground level.
I was told by an Opacitek employee that training was being conducted so EPA workers would know how to identify various types and amounts of smoke stack emissions, and I was also told that this training has been going on in Snow Park for the past 15 years.
Sometimes dense black smoke was emitted like you’d see from an old-time diesel truck climbing a hill. Other times dense white smoke was emitted like you’d see following a car burning oil, and sometimes a medium dense grayish smoke was emitted.
All of the above cases caused my eyes to water and my throat and lungs to burn. I took pictures of the entire operation.
During the training on Friday May 5, I expressed my concerns to an Opacitek employee that the pollutants they were emitting cause cancer and other respiratory diseases, and in response the employee called the police. The policeman was very polite, and I had him witness the smoke wafting across the park. I pointed out to the officer that the smoke contained carcinogens and that in addition to the immediate exposure to the airborne carcinogens, the carcinogens settle out and accumulate on the grass and the surrounding park grounds where children play.
The officer agreed that doing this type of training in a public park wasn’t good and that he would express my concerns to his supervisor; however, the officer said he had no authority to shut down the training exercise. It seems to me that if a motor vehicle was driving around the park emitting even a fraction of what was coming out of the furnace smoke stack, that the officer would be empowered to cite the driver and even impound the vehicle.
During the training on Friday May 4, I encountered a fire marshal who told me he gave Opacitek permission to conduct their training in Snow Park. When I questioned his authority to do this the marshal replied that in order to do training he had the authority to burn down a house! I replied really, even in a public park? I took a picture of the marshal and walked away in disbelief.
Apparently St George officials think providing Opacitek a convenient place to conduct their training such as one with restrooms, water, electric, shade trees, and covered pavilions, is more important than protecting the health of the public.
As a PhD Electrical Engineer, it seems to me that in this age of computer simulation and sophisticated video display this training could easily be accomplished in a classroom. In any case if actual pollutants need to be emitted, this live training should absolutely not be done in a public park because children, seniors, and dogs, are especially susceptible to these types of pollutants.
Last edited by ernesteugene; 05-07-2017 at 09:53 PM.
Reason: fix links to pics
See if making you [img] tags upper case [IMG] helps. Right now they don't seem to show up in line.
It might be interesting to write a letter to the EPA to see what their response is. If you really want to take it to the next level you could write an article on this practice for the local newspaper including official local, state and federal government responses.
I'd really like the see the spin they put on it to say how in reality it's protecting the local community.
Those folks mean well, but it's not surprising. That's what happens in gov't, when decisions are made by disinterested/uninformed/agenda-driven people far away. Google Animas River spill for more EPA brilliance.
I wonder if that location was ok'd before the other facilities for kids were built? Simple bureaucratic inertia explains many ills in life.
Diesel exhaust is bad, but apparently how bad is not yet, er, settled science. Scary studies were used here in CA to pass recent diesel smog requirements for diesels. Later they were found to be somewhere between insufficiently rigorous and fabrications. When in doubt, I always say listen to your nose. Like the smell of gas; years ago it actually smelled good in light concentrations. But as soon as the MTBE went in, yikes! Nobody had to tell me that crap was nasty.
As I suspected, changing from small case img to upper case IMG doesn't matter, as ubb code is not case sensitive on this forum. So there is something else afoot. I've noticed this with EE posts in the past, where the pics often appear as links, rather than as pictures.
In the case of the photo of Eugene with the dog walker, I did not use the link in Eugene's post. Instead, I went to the picture, and found it's internet location properties, and used that link instead. In the case of the link made with all caps IMG tags, I copied the text directly from Eugene's post, so as to isolate the difference, if any, that might be derived from the capitalization of the IMG tags. Clearly, that doesn't work. So, the next test will be to take the same image, ignore Eugene's typed link, go to the image itself and pull it's location property, and then use a mix of lower case and all caps image tags, to see if that works.
And thus, as suspected, it worked. The opening tag was [img] and the closing tag was [/IMG]... mixed case in the tags, and yet the image appears. This proves that the tagging is case agnostic. Well, a minute ago it worked. Now it doesn't work. I'm not sure that Eugene WANTS his photos to appear directly in the posts now.
Mike, I bet it worked when you posted, but it isn't working now. At least that is what happened to me. I posted his image with the spaces removed, saw that it worked, then edited my post to gloat about how I fixed it, then posted the edit only to find that what worked just fine before my last edit... no longer worked after my edit.
Which leads me to wonder if Eugene purposely doesn't want the images to appear directly on here.
This post is about diesel emissions and the EPA and I hope some find it interesting; however, the real reason I’m posting is to get a link for a hand bill so locals can read this post and see what happens in their public park while they’re at work.
What if you were given permission to “roll coal” in a city park for hours and days on end in the vicinity of a children’s play area, bike path, skate park, volley ball court, pavilion with children eating lunch, horse shoe pit, dog park, and an assisted living complex, and then you were told you just contributed to the enforcement of the EPA clean air act because some students who paid money to watch your activities learned how to identify excessive smoke stack emissions. Well that’s basically the perverted logic behind my story below.
Instead of doing diesel analysis I now escort my dog Morris around town with the aid of my all terrain walker.
During Thursday May 4 and Friday May 5, 2017, I observed significant airborne pollution being intentionally emitted for a duration of several hours each day in Snow Park in the vicinity of the children’s play area, bike path, skate park, volley ball courts, pavilions with children eating lunch, the horse shoe pits, the dog park, and the assisted living complex.
A company by the name of Opacitek had set up a furnace-type incinerator with a smoke stack about 12 inches in diameter and 6 feet tall.
Several 5-gallon canisters of waste oil, diesel fuel, and possibly other unknown carcinogens were being metered into the furnace, and noxious smoke in copious quantities was coming from the smoke stack, wafting across the park, and settling out at ground level.
I was told by an Opacitek employee that training was being conducted so EPA workers would know how to identify various types and amounts of smoke stack emissions, and I was also told that this training has been going on in Snow Park for the past 15 years.
I watched an Opacitek employee call out a test number, make adjustments to some equipment, and the emissions from the smoke stack would change.
Sometimes dense black smoke was emitted like you’d see from an old-time diesel truck climbing a hill. Other times dense white smoke was emitted like you’d see following a car burning oil, and sometimes a medium dense grayish smoke was emitted.
All of the above cases caused my eyes to water and my throat and lungs to burn. I took pictures of the entire operation.
During the training on Friday May 5, I expressed my concerns to an Opacitek employee that the pollutants they were emitting cause cancer and other respiratory diseases, and in response the employee called the police. The policeman was very polite, and I had him witness the smoke wafting across the park. I pointed out to the officer that the smoke contained carcinogens and that in addition to the immediate exposure to the airborne carcinogens, the carcinogens settle out and accumulate on the grass and the surrounding park grounds where children play.
The officer agreed that doing this type of training in a public park wasn’t good and that he would express my concerns to his supervisor; however, the officer said he had no authority to shut down the training exercise. It seems to me that if a motor vehicle was driving around the park emitting even a fraction of what was coming out of the furnace smoke stack, that the officer would be empowered to cite the driver and even impound the vehicle.
During the training on Friday May 4, I encountered a fire marshal who told me he gave Opacitek permission to conduct their training in Snow Park. When I questioned his authority to do this the marshal replied that in order to do training he had the authority to burn down a house! I replied really, even in a public park? I took a picture of the marshal and walked away in disbelief.
Apparently St George officials think providing Opacitek a convenient place to conduct their training such as one with restrooms, water, electric, shade trees, and covered pavilions, is more important than protecting the health of the public.
As a PhD Electrical Engineer, it seems to me that in this age of computer simulation and sophisticated video display this training could easily be accomplished in a classroom. In any case if actual pollutants need to be emitted, this live training should absolutely not be done in a public park because children, seniors, and dogs, are especially susceptible to these types of pollutants.
"Smoke Stack Emissions" is not the same thing as under load conditions from a high output diesel engine. Fake Science!
An efficient large cubic inch diesel engine will of it's very nature "roll coal" initially upon application of fuel in attempting to increase RPM and apply torque. This is quickly diminished as RPMs increase and fuel trim is established.
My EPA Emissions certified diesel mechanic once told me "If she don't smoke under load, she can't make power!"
I read with interest your post, having been a graduate of the Method 9 training at least ten times - and at least three times in St. George, I thought I might respond. With all due respect, I thought I might clarify some things I thought were a little unfair in your post.
Opacitek has been certifying opacity readers for decades using the same equipment since I started taking the training around 2004. I'm having a flashback and hearing "look up, look away" for hours. In addition to St. George, they conduct training in Bountiful UT, Elko NV and maybe other places. Bountiful testing is done in a hotel parking lot in between four refineries, kinda hard to tell the difference between the test and the smell from them. And no offense to my neighbors in NV, but Elko isn't exactly the olfactory nirvana one would expect in such an isolated area. I'll grant you, the public park in St. George may not be the best place considering the proximity to the general public.
I don't know that they use waste fuel or any carcinogenic fluids, but whatever they use is to generate both black and white smoke at varying densities. I know it stinks, I've been downwind during a wind direction shift, but no one experienced the physical symptoms you describe.
Something to consider, the test officiating crew is comprised of two couples, husband and wives. The four of them have been conducting these tests for decades. If the chem's used were carcinogenic, these people would have died from cancer years ago. They are closer to the effluent than anyone during every test, I doubt these good men would expose themselves or their wives to the hazard so often and for so many years.
However I don't think the test is as hazardous as you make it sound. If an officer were to stop a vehicle in the park for "rolling coal" or intentionally spewing smog and a citation were warranted, it would be for an altered exhaust or not a vehicle not running correctly. Neither vehicle, I would suspect would be able to pass an emissions test.
I'm sorry you had a negative experience, and I hope you get feeling better.
05-07-2017, 03:52 PM
