Halliburton being sued for contamination by missile casing site

Well, I for one am glad this type of thing has come out into the light, and maybe Halliburton will be held accountable for some of its actions.

For those that don't know who Halliburton is, here is a little bit of information about the company...
en.wikipedia.org...



news.yahoo.com...

Here are some quotes concerning the lawsuit of the missile site in the original article:

Halliburton Co faces lawsuits over groundwater pollution near a now-closed facility in Oklahoma that cleaned missile casings for the U.S. Defense Department during the Cold War, the company said on Friday. Halliburton, which now specializes in oilfield services, said one of its units cleaned solid fuel from missile casings between 1965 and 1991 at a semi-rural facility on the north side of Duncan, Oklahoma. It was closed in the mid-1990s. A component of the fuel was ammonium perchlorate, a salt that is highly soluble in water. Halliburton said it had been discovered in the soil and groundwater on its site and in certain residential water wells near the property. The company said it was determining the extent of that contamination and that it had arranged to supply residents with bottled water and, if needed, a temporary water supply system

The lawsuits, filed in Oklahoma state and federal courts starting late last month, claim the plaintiffs have suffered health problems such as hypothyroidism, which is associated with exposure to perchlorate over time, the company said. According to Halliburton, the lawsuits claim it knew about the releases into groundwater of ammonium perchlorate and, in a federal lawsuit, nuclear or radioactive waste as well, and that Halliburton did not take corrective actions. But after conducting soil and groundwater sampling along with the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, Halliburton said it only found nuclear or radioactive material in soil in a discrete area on the Duncan site, and that it was not present in groundwater. "The radiological impacts from this discrete area are not believed to present any health risk for off-site exposure," Halliburton said in the filing.

Again in my opinion, it would be nice to see Halliburton pay for some of the things it has done, and perhaps this will be the beginning.

reply to post by Veritas1

There are many reasons to be aware of concerning Halliburton, but this is one of the most important reasons:

Halliburton left KBR right after that so what is the relevance?

reply to post by boncho


my mistake, i will edit that part, but thanks for pointing it out

Originally posted by Veritas1
reply to post by boncho

 

my mistake, i will edit that part, but thanks for pointing it out

The only other problem with this, is that the incident occurred so long ago. If corporations are not held to account immediately, by the time they are, there could be a completely new set of faces managing them.

Why is that of concern? In theory, people who are running corporations can move from company to company causing havoc, but by the time the companies are being prosecuted, responsible operators who are trying to manage the corp could be taking the brunt of prosecution.

Similar to a shell game. If liability doesn't rest on the operators, the corporate entity is merely a scapegoat.

reply to post by boncho

Hopefully this will lead back to some of the big original players that were guilty of this sort of thing. But I see what you're saying. Its really hard to do anything about something that happened years ago, because the damage has already been done. I can only imagine the things that haven't been uncovered yet. I suppose it all comes down to integrity and business ethics, which is something a lot of major corporations have never learned, or have thrown it by the wayside altogether in the name of "progress" and financial security.

Nothing will come of this other than maybe they will have a sub-contractor get a contract to get free millions.


I saw one polluted site in America everyone was complaining about.....A Company got a contract to "clean it up". They brought in some equipment, drilled a pipe into the ground. And left. They let the equipment sit there for a year or so.....nobody ever went there to do anything with it. Then they loaded it all up and left.

"Remediation" = somebody's going to rip you off. Once it's polluted....it's polluted.

You can't fix it.You can pretend to and get free Federal Dollars though.

Lots of Federal SuperFund sites getting pencil whipped the last 10 years.....never to be cleaned.

here's an article I posted a few months ago, after Erin Brockovich came here to have a town meeting regarding Halliburton & the contamination, with more information about the contamination

Contaminant found in Duncan Well Water

at that time, Erin Brockvich and her crony Bob Bowcock stated that they do not want to pursue legal actions, they just wanted "Halliburton to do the right thing." (funny coming from someone who made it big by suing the pants off of Pacific Gas & Electric for water contamination)

apparently, this is the highest ammonium perchlorate contamination since 1983. . . some wells had up to 30,000 parts per billion. . . If I'm not mistaken, 14 parts per billion or less is acceptable

good to see people aren't going to let Halliburton off that easily!