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Did North Dakota Regulators Hide an Oil and Gas Industry Spill Larger Than Exxon Valdez?

August 27, 2019

Did North Dakota Regulators Hide an Oil and Gas Industry Spill Larger Than Exxon Valdez?

Exxon Valdez

In July 2015 workers at the Garden Creek I Gas Processing Plant, in Watford City, North Dakota, noticed a leak in a pipeline and reported a spill to the North Dakota Department of Health that remains officially listed as 10 gallons, the size of two bottled water delivery jugs.

But a whistle-blower has revealed to DeSmog the incident is actually on par with the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, which released roughly 11 million gallons of thick crude.

The Garden Creek spill “is in fact over 11 million gallons of condensate that leaked through a crack in a pipeline for over 3 years,” says the whistle-blower, who has expertise in environmental science but refused to be named or give other background information for fear of losing their job. They provided to DeSmog a document that details remediation efforts and verifies the spill’s monstrous size.

“Up to 5,500,000 gallons” of hydrocarbons have been removed from the site, the 2018 document states, “based upon an…estimate of approximately 11 million gallons released.”

Garden Creek is operated by the Oklahoma-based oil and gas service company, ONEOK Partners, and processes natural gas and natural gas liquids, also called natural gas condensate, brought to the facility via pipeline from Bakken wells.

Neither the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors coastal spills, nor the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could provide records to put the spill’s size in context, but according to available reports, if the 11-million-gallon figure is accurate, the Garden Creek spill appears to be among the largest recorded oil and gas industry spills in the history of the United States.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

News Not to Miss: Oil Train Spill, China Petrochemical Deal, Methane Leaks

June 30, 2018

News Not to Miss: Oil Train Spill, China Petrochemical Deal, Methane Leaks

It’s hard to keep up with the flood of news these days. Here’s your weekly round-up of news not to miss from DeSmog.

Justin Mikulka has been on the oil train beat for years. He’s documented how the oil boom and pipeline bottleneck in the Bakken Shale has led to more, longer, and heavier trains shuttling oil across North America and how various factors also have led to another type of boom: the literal “boom” of exploding oil trains. (In fact, train operators have given them the nickname “bomb trains.”)

This week, Mikulka writes about the latest oil train incident, this time involving a BNSF train carrying tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, across northwestern Iowa.

While it fortunately resulted in no fire or explosion, the June 22 derailment did release an estimated 230,000 gallons of oil into a flooded Iowa river.

Of particular note is the fact that the Iowa oil train crash is the first one involving the new, safer DOT-117R rail tank cars, which were supposed to improve the safety of oil trains.

China and West Virginia: A Fracking-to-Plastics Dream in Appalachia

The shale oil and gas industry, fueled by fracking, is helping pump record volumes of production in the U.S. But with all those fossil fuels flooding the market, they have to go somewhere.

That’s why the state of West Virginia is spearheading an effort to build out a massive petrochemical storage and production hub in the Ohio River Valley. In fact, last November the state signed an $83 billion deal with Chinese investors to make this fracking-to-plastics dream a reality. (For context, West Virginia’s total gross domestic product was only $76.8 billion last year.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Asia Is About To Be Hit By The “Worst Oil Tanker Spill In Decades”

January 28, 2018

Asia Is About To Be Hit By The “Worst Oil Tanker Spill In Decades”

The Sanchi disaster is even worse than many initially expected, according to a chilling new report published by Britain’s National Oceanography Centre that shows the ship’s cargo – the equivalent of nearly 1 million barrels of ultra-light crude, plus its own fuel – snaking across the East China Sea into the northern Pacific, according to a series of visualizations created by Reuters.

Sanchi

The Panama-registered vessel burst into flames after colliding with a cargo ship off the east coast of China while on its way to South Korea. The disaster, which took place in the East China Sea, is the worst oil spill since Exxon Valdez.

The Sanchi tanker and a cargo ship collided 260km (160 miles) off Shanghai on Jan. 6. Afterward, the tanker – which burned for a weekbefore exploding and sinking – then drifted south-east towards Japan.

At the time, the Iranian press reported that all 32 crew members – 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis – died in the accident. The tanker was carrying 136,000 tonnes of ultra-light crude. The always-credible Chinese media claimed that no oil slick had formed.

Authorities have had trouble pinning down how big the spill is, as it changes by the day amid strong ocean currents. But concerns are growing about the potential impact to key fishing grounds and sensitive marine ecosystems off Japan and South Korea, which lie in the projected path of the oil, according to Britain’s National Oceanography Centre.

“An updated emergency ocean model simulation shows that waters polluted by the sinking Sanchi oil tanker could reach Japan within a month,” the center said a report posted on Jan. 16. “The revised simulations suggest that pollution from the spill may be distributed much further and faster than previously thought, and that larger areas of the coast may be impacted.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Five Spills, Six Months in Operation: Dakota Access Track Record Highlights Unavoidable Reality–Pipelines Leak

January 11, 2018

Sections of pipe sit at an Energy Transfer Partners LP construction site for the Sunoco Inc. Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids pipeline project near Morgantown, Pennsylvania, U.S. on Aug. 4, 2017. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has issued four notices of violation after "inadvertent" spills of drilling fluids associated with horizontal directional drilling for the project. Photographer: Charles Mostoller/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Photo: Charles Mostoller/Bloomberg News/Getty Images

FIVE SPILLS, SIX MONTHS IN OPERATION: DAKOTA ACCESS TRACK RECORD HIGHLIGHTS UNAVOIDABLE REALITY — PIPELINES LEAK

REPRESENTATIVES FROM Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, traveled to Cambridge, Iowa, in October to present a series of $20,000 checks to emergency management departments in six counties. The money was, in part, an acknowledgement of the months of anti-pipeline protests that had taxed local agencies during construction, but it was also a nod to the possibility of environmental contamination. One of the counties had pledged to use its check to purchase “HazMat operations and decontamination training/supplies.” Less than a month later, in Cambridge, the Iowa section of the Dakota Access pipeline would experience its first spill.

According to the standards of most state environmental agencies, it was a small spill that wouldn’t require much attention from emergency managers. On November 14, “excessive vibration” caused 21 gallons of crude to leak out of a crack in a weld connection at one of the pump stations, which are situated along pipelines to keep the product moving and monitor its flow. Since the leak was contained at the site, it went unreported to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, although it did make it into a federal pipeline monitoring database.

The Dakota Access pipeline leaked at least five times in 2017. The biggest was a 168-gallon leak near DAPL’s endpoint in Patoka, Illinois, on April 23. According to federal regulators, no wildlife was impacted, although soil was contaminated, requiring remediation. DAPL went into operation on June 1, along with its under-the-radar sister project, the Energy Transfer Crude Oil pipeline, a natural gas pipeline converted to carry crude. Together, the two make up the Bakken pipeline system. ETCO leaked at least three times in 2017.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

WTI Prices Surge On Keystone Spill

November 23, 2017

WTI Prices Surge On Keystone Spill

Spill

Oil prices surged on Wednesday on news that the Keystone pipeline might not restart for several weeks. The outage at the damaged pipeline ended several years of contango for WTI, pushing the benchmark into a state of backwardation for the first time since 2014.

TransCanada made a lot of headlines in the past week. The Keystone pipeline ruptured and spilled more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil in South Dakota last week, just days before TransCanada was given a greenlight for the Keystone XL in the state of Nebraska. South Dakota regulators now say that they could revoke the permit for the Keystone pipeline if it is found that the company violated the terms of its license. The spill was the third for the Keystone pipeline in less than 10 years.

“If it was knowingly operating in a fashion not allowed under the permit or if construction was done in a fashion that was not acceptable, that should cause the closure of the pipe for at least a period of time until those challenges are rectified,” said Gary Hanson, a member of the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, told Reuters.

TransCanada said on Wednesday that it could take weeks to clean up the spill and bring the pipeline back online – news that sent shockwaves through the oil market. WTI spot prices surged on the news, pushing the benchmark back up above $58 per barrel.

TransCanada said that November deliveries through the pipeline would be cut by about 85 percent, a major outage for the nearly 600,000-bpd pipeline. Phillips 66, a major refiner that purchases crude from the pipeline, said that it is expecting an outage of about four weeks.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Deepwater Horizon and our emerging ‘normal’ catastrophes

October 16, 2016

Deepwater Horizon and our emerging ‘normal’ catastrophes

While watching the recently released film “Deepwater Horizon” about the catastrophic well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that caused the largest oil spill in U.S. history, I remembered the term “fail-dangerous,” a term I first encountered in correspondence with a risk consultant for the oil and gas industry.

We’ve all heard the term “fail-safe” before. Fail-safe systems are designed to shut down benignly in case of failure. Fail-dangerous systems include airliners which don’t merely halt in place benignly when their engines fail, but crash on the ground in a ball of fire.

For fail-dangerous systems, we believe that failure is either unlikely or that the redundancy that we’ve build into the system will be sufficient to avert failure or at least minimize damage. Hence, the large amount of money spent on airline safety. This all seems very rational.

But in a highly complex technical society made up of highly complex subsystems such as the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig, we should not be so sanguine about our ability to judge risk. On the day the offshore rig blew up, executives from both oil giant BP and Transocean (which owned and operated the rig on behalf of BP) were aboard to celebrate seven years without a lost time incident, an exemplary record. They assumed that this record was the product of vigilance rather than luck.

And, contrary to what the film portrays, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was years in the making as BP and Transocean created a culture that normalized behaviors and decision-making which brought about not an unavoidable tragedy, but rather what is now termed a “normal accident”–a product of normal decisions by people who were following accepted procedures and routines.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Long-term oil spill causes fishery collapse in Newfoundland

August 16, 2016

Long-term oil spill causes fishery collapse in Newfoundland

File photo courtesy: Pixabay

File photo courtesy: Pixabay

Monday, August 15, 2016, 4:51 PM – An oil spill that has been seeping into Port au Port Bay near Shoal Port for three years has caused a once-abundant scallop fishery to “collapse”, the Canadian Press (CP) reports.

The continuous spill, which sometimes seeps in drops and other times in large amounts, has left residents concerned.

Bob Diamond of the Port au Port Bay Fishery Committee told CP the leak is man-made, and the full extent of the damage is unknown at this point.

The leak is coming from a well at one of at least a dozen abandoned exploration sites in the area that date back as far as the 1800s. There have been previous attempts to cap well pipes in places known for fishing and tourism, with the province spending $263,000 on temporary control measures in 2015, but that hasn’t stopped the oil from continuing to seep.

In May, the fishery noticed a pipe that had been capped in November had been severed, likely due to ice movement and winter weather conditions.

The exact cause of the fishery collapse has yet to be determined, but Diamond told CP it could be linked back to a number of things, “from oil polluting the environment to climate change to acidification of the waters.”

Newfoundland’s Environment Minister Perry Trimper is seeking legal advice on how to proceed. His office confirmed the presence of oil at Shoal Point.

The fishery committee is appealing to Ottawa and the province to provide more regulatory oversight and tighter restrictions on future oil and gas exploration projects.

They’re also asking for more research into what caused scallop stocks to plummet and if the pollution poses a risk to other marine life.

Source: The Canadian Press

 

Shell Oil Spill Cleanup Operation Ends As Voices Against New Gulf Drilling Grow Louder

May 19, 2016

Shell Oil Spill Cleanup Operation Ends As Voices Against New Gulf Drilling Grow Louder

Both entities stated that no environmental damage has been reported, but independent monitors from Greenpeace, Vanishing Earth and Wings Of Care question whether the size and potential impact of the spill are being downplayed.

News of Shell’s oil spill 90 miles south of Louisiana’s Timbalier Island came the day before the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) hosted a final week of public meetings on the Gulf Coast to give the public a chance to comment on its Five Year Plan 2017-2022 oil leasing program. Its plan calls for lease sales of 47 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas companies for offshore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Shell contracted Clean Gulf Associates and Marine Spill Response Corporation (MSRC) for the cleanup operation. MSRC, one of the companies BP used to clean up its 2010 spill, dumped the dispersant Corexit in the Gulf.

This time, “dispersant wasn’t used,” the Coast Guard told DeSmog. The Coast Guard and Shell agreed that using on-water recovery vessels and skimming would be the best oil recovery option.

Environmental scientist Wilma Subra, though pleased dispersant wasn’t used, told DeSmog, “Skimming is not a very good oil recovery option.”

Subra believes that if skimming is the best cleanup method the Coast Guard and oil companies can come up with, it shows they are no better prepared for an oil spill than they were when the BP oil disaster occurred.


Shell oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. ©2016 Jonathan Henderson

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Six Years After Deepwater Horizon: Time For Serious Action

April 20, 2016

Six Years After Deepwater Horizon: Time For Serious Action

BP oil disaster by Julie Dermansky

The cleanup crews abandoned the Gulf Coast years ago, claiming that the damage from the spill was “gone” and the media quit paying attention shortly after the wellhead was capped at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite the lack of attention paid to the Gulf region in recent years, the lasting damage of the oil spill is something that remains fresh on the minds of everyone that calls this area home.

Like most disasters that don’t involve national security issues, Americans tend to operate under the belief that once the media attention has faded the issue is resolved. They don’t understand that the victims of the spill who lost their source of income are still fighting court battles against BP, Transocean, and Halliburton.

They haven’t heard about the sea life with abnormal growths and heart defects linked to the lingering oil and dispersants that have settled on the bottom of the Gulf. And they are unaware that tar mats and tar balls are still common sights on beaches throughout the region.

Here’s a quick primer on what the Gulf Coast has gone through in the last six years for those who haven’t been paying close attention:

First, we have the real extent of the damage caused by the oil. Photojournalist and DeSmogBlog contributor Julie Dermansky captured images throughout the oil spill and cleanup process, and here are a few that really show, in detail, how bad things were along the shore:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

U.S. Not Prepared for Tar Sands Oil Spills, National Study Finds

December 12, 2015

U.S. Not Prepared for Tar Sands Oil Spills, National Study Finds

Report urges new regulations, research, and technology to respond to spills of diluted bitumen.

China Shenzhen economic development office park economy Guangdong Province

Photo courtesy Sam LaSusa
Oil gathers in a sheen near the banks of the Kalamazoo River more than a week after a spill of crude oil, including tar sands oil, from Enbridge Inc.’s Line 6B pipeline in 2010. It was the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history. Click image to enlarge.

Spills of heavy crude oil from western Canada’s tar sands are more difficult to clean up than other types of conventional oil, particularly if the spill occurs in water, a new study by a high-level committee of experts found. Moreover, current regulations governing emergency response plans for oil spills in the United States are inadequate to address spills of tar sands oil.

The study by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine confirmed what scientists, emergency responders, and conservationists knew anecdotally from a major oil spill that contaminated Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 and another spill in Mayflower, Arkansas in 2013. Tar sands crude, called diluted bitumen, becomes denser and stickier than other types of oil after it spills from a pipeline, sinking to the bottom of rivers, lakes, and estuaries and coating vegetation instead of floating on top of the water.

“[Diluted bitumen] weathers to a denser material, and it’s stickier, and that’s a problem. It’s a distinct problem that makes it different from other crude.”

–Diane McKnight,
Chair
Committee on the Effects of Diluted Bitumen on the Environment

“The long-term risk associated with the weathered bitumen is the potential for that [oil] becoming submerged and sinking into water bodies where it gets into the sediments,” Diane McKnight, chair of the committee that produced the study and a professor of engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Circle of Blue.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Amnesty International: Shell’s Claim Of Clean Up In Nigeria “Blatantly False”

November 4, 2015

Amnesty International: Shell’s Claim Of Clean Up In Nigeria “Blatantly False”

A new report from Amnesty International alleges that Royal Dutch Shell did not, in fact, clean up its oil spills in Nigeria despite company claims that the task was completed.

Shell is the largest oil company to operate in the Niger Delta, with over 5,000 kilometers of pipeline and investments in over 50 oil fields. Shell’s pipelines have been responsible for 1,693 oil spills since 2007, but Amnesty International says the true number is likely much higher. Moreover, the non-profit alleges that Shell’s claims that it has cleaned up the oil spills are “blatantly false.”

Amnesty International also points the finger at the Nigerian government, which has failed to properly police the oil industry in the delta. “The quality of life of people living surrounded by oil fumes, oil encrusted soil and rivers awash with crude oil is appalling, and has been for decades,” said Stevyn Obodoekwe, the Director of Programmes for the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD), which partnered with Amnesty International on the report.

Related: OPEC Infighting Reaching Critical Levels

The report concludes that four sites in the Niger Delta “remain visibly contaminated,” areas where Shell says cleanup was completed. “This is just a cover up. If you just dig down a few metres you find oil. We just excavated, then shifted the soil away, then covered it all up again,” a contractor hired by Shell told Amnesty International.

A 2011 investigation by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) documented the contamination at Shell’s sites, prompting a promise from the Anglo-Dutch oil major to follow through on cleanup.

Shell has sought to reduce its holdings of Nigerian oil assets over the past two years, part of a divestment campaign to cut costs and raise cash. The company has moved to sell off at least four oil fields, plus a major pipeline that plagued the company.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Nexen’s Brand New, Double-Layered Pipeline Just Ruptured, Causing One of the Biggest Oil Spills Ever in Alberta

July 18, 2015

Nexen’s Brand New, Double-Layered Pipeline Just Ruptured, Causing One of the Biggest Oil Spills Ever in Alberta

A pipeline at Nexen Energy’s Long Lake oilsands facility southeast of Fort McMurray, Alberta, spilled about five million liters (32,000 barrels or some 1.32 million gallons) of emulsion, a mixture of bitumen, sand and water, Wednesday afternoon — marking one of the largest spills in Alberta history.

According to reports, the spill covered as much as 16,000 square meters (almost 4 acres). The emulsion leaked from a “feeder” pipe that connects a wellhead to a processing plant.

At a press conference Thursday, Ron Bailey, Nexen vice president of Canadian operations, said the company “sincerely apologize[d] for the impact this has caused.” He confirmed the double-layered pipeline is a part of Nexen’s new system and that the line’s emergency detection system failed to alert officials to the breach, which was discovered during a visual inspection.

At this time, the company claims to have the leak under control, according to CBC News.

Anna Mehler Paperny 

✔@amp6

Nexen’s “failsafe” system didn’t detect massive pipeline spill: http://wp.me/p2Y4rw-8SFH 

The spill comes at a particularly bad time for Canada’s premiers, who are poised to sign an agreement three years in the making to fast-track the approval process for new oil sands pipelines while weakening commitments to fight climate change, according to Mike Hudema, a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace.

“As provincial premiers talk about ways to streamline the approval process for new tar sands pipelines, we have a stark reminder of how dangerous they can be,” Hudema said in a statement. “This leak is also a good reminder that Alberta has a long way to go to address its pipeline problems and that communities have good reasons to fear having more built.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

Nexen pipeline leak in Alberta spills 5 million litres

July 17, 2015

Nexen pipeline leak in Alberta spills 5 million litres

Nexen Energy spill south of Fort McMurray covers about 16,000 square metres

One of the largest leaks in Alberta history has spilled about five million litres of emulsion from a Nexen Energy pipeline at the company’s Long Lake oilsands facility south of Fort McMurray.

The leak was discovered Wednesday afternoon.

Nexen said in a statement its emergency response plan has been activated and personnel were onsite. The leak has been stabilized, the company said.

The spill covered an area of about 16,000 square metres, mostly within the pipeline corridor, the company said. Emulsion is a mixture of bitumen, water and sand.

The pipeline that leaked is called a “feeder” and runs from a wellhead to the processing plant.

“All necessary steps and precautions have been taken, and Nexen will continue to utilize all its resources to protect the health and safety of our employees, contractors, the public and the environment, and to contain and clean up the spill,” the company said in the statement issued Thursday.

Peter Murchland, public affairs manager for the Alberta Energy Regulator, said officials were notified late Wednesday and had staff onsite Thursday to work with Nexen.

“My understanding is that the pipeline and pad site had been isolated and shut-in earlier today, effectively stopping the source of the release,” Murchland said

Nexen has contained the leak and started cleaning up the area, he said. There was no word on how long that might take.

“They go through a cleanup phase in accordance with the regulations set by the AER,” he said. “And we’ll have our subject-matter experts work alongside the operator, today and going forward, to make sure that safety and environmental requirements are met.”

The regulator’s staff are there to oversee the company’s cleanup efforts. Murchland said there have been no reports about any effect on wildlife. The regulator has ordered the company to implement a wildlife protection plan.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Federal Regulators Restrict Use Of Second Pipeline As Investigation Into California Oil Spill Continues

June 8, 2015

Federal Regulators Restrict Use Of Second Pipeline As Investigation Into California Oil Spill Continues

Federal regulators have ordered Plains All American to restrict usage of a second pipeline in California as preliminary results revealed extensive external corrosion issues with the pipeline that spilled more than 100,000 gallons of oil along the California coast at Refugio State Beach, including at least 21,000 gallons that poured into the Pacific Ocean.

Line 901 had metal loss ranging from 54% to 74% of the original pipe wall thickness when it burst on May 19, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which also estimated that the site of the fissure might have been as thin as 1/16th of an inch. Plains has a long history of safety and maintenance violations well above the national rate of incidents-per-mile of pipe.

The second pipeline, Line 903, transports crude oil 128 miles from Santa Barbara County to Kern County. It was found to have similar levels of corrosion, prompting the PHMSA to require Plains to operate Line 903 at reduced pressure in a corrective action order sent to the company on June 3. PHMSA also gives Plains 60 days to inspect Line 903 and “address any findings that require remedial measures.”

In the order, Jeffrey D. Wiese, Associate Administrator for Pipeline Safety at PHMSA, wrote that “continued operation of Line 901 and Line 903 without corrective measures is or would be hazardous to life, property, or the environment. Additionally… I find that a failure to issue this Order expeditiously to require immediate corrective action would result in the likelihood of serious harm to life, property, or the environment.”

California House Rep. Lois Capps and Senators Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and Ed Markey sent a letter to Greg Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of Plains, demanding more information regarding the company’s safety systems and response to the oil spill after learning of the findings that Line 901 showed signs of extensive corrosion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

Louisiana Environmental Group Warns Santa Barbara Oil Spill Cleanup Workers to Protect Their Health

June 1, 2015

Louisiana Environmental Group Warns Santa Barbara Oil Spill Cleanup Workers to Protect Their Health

An open letter from the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) and the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper advises those affected by the Santa Barbara Plains All American Pipeline spill not to participate in the clean-up effort.

“We do not want to see your citizens’, workers’, and volunteers’ health harmed in the way we have seen it damaged along our Gulf Coast after the 2010 BP oil disaster,” the letter says.

But the warning may be too late to help some like Osiris Castañeda, a father, ocean lover and filmmaking professor who cleaned up a stretch of Santa Barbara County beach with other volunteers on May 20, the day after a Plains Pipeline spilled an estimated 101,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean.

A video Castañeda produced with the Youth CineMedia Inc, documents a confrontation between the volunteers and officials who ordered them to leave or face being fined or possibly arrested. An official provided a number for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife office of spill prevention and response , which was giving out passes to volunteers, and told them without the passes they were forbidden to be on the beach. The volunteers called to get passes but, to the group’s dismay, a representative from the agency told them no volunteers were needed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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