April 2, 2011

Fun Petrochemical-Accident Fact of the Day

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From fellow panelist Steve Lerner at the Future of the South Symposium: The Gulf Oil Spill After One Year conference this weekend:

Between 2005 and 2009 Louisiana’s 17 oil refineries reported 2,607 chemical accidents to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. That’s 10 per week. 

(Read the rest of the stats in the refinery-accident report that came from here.)

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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