The Big Wobble - THE WORLD IS CHANGING, LORD HELP US

Photo King County
A major emergency at one of the region's largest wastewater treatment plants is dumping millions of gallons of untreated raw sewage into Puget Sound, officials said.
King County spokeswoman Monica Van der Vieren told KOMO Newsradio that an equipment failure at 2 a.m. Thursday at the West Point Treatment Plant near Discovery Park was the immediate cause. "We had an equipment shutdown that's at the end of the chain in the process, it is responsible for getting all the treated wastewater out to Puget Sound," she said.
"So when that happened, we had to bypass the plant, otherwise it backs up into the plant and can destroy or damage equipment."
She said the raw wastewater was gushing into the Sound through an outfall three-quarters of a mile from shore at a depth of 240 feet.
The pipes pump out about 440 million gallons in a 24-hour period, of which 10-20 percent is untreated sewage.
Late Thursday afternoon, the county said managers are using the regional treatment system to divert as much flow as possible from West Point Treatment Plant,.
Crews will be working around the clock but there is not estimate when normal operations will return to West Point.
Van der Vieren described the equipment malfunction and sewage overflow as a "major emergency" and that crews are scrambling to get the problem fixed.
The cause of the equipment failure remains under investigation.
It happened during the overnight heavy rains, which coincided with a very high tide.
"The plant is designed to handle the type of storms we have," she said.
"This equipment is really critical when we have high tides to get the treated wastewater out to the Sound, and we have extremely high tides and very high flows, but we don't know at this time what happened with the equipment."
Van der Vieren said signs will be posted at Discovery Park warning people to stay away from the water for at least two days, which is how long it takes bacteria from the untreated sewage to die off. "We do recommend that they not go fishing during that period of time," she said.
It is unknown how long the untreated sewage will continue to be dumped into the Sound.
King County health officials are monitoring the situation.
West Point Treatment Plant treats wastewater from homes and businesses in Seattle, Shoreline, north Lake Washington, north King County and parts of south Snohomish County.
A smaller sewer overflow also was reported into Lake Washington from the Medina Pump Station, which was overwhelmed by large volumes of heavy rain that exceeded the capacity of the pump station.
King County officials said in a prepared statement that the overflow would continue there, at NE 8th Street and 81st Avenue Northeast, until rains subside.
People are advised to avoid contact with water in Lake Washington near that site.

Just last month an alarming report was issued by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce enabling fishing communities in the US to seek disaster relief assistance after alarming decreases in fish and crab supplies along the West-coast of the US.
The  area covers Alaska to California and is extraordinary in the fact that the Secretary of Commerce has now openly admitted that marine life are dying in incredible numbers due to unusual ocean and climate conditions.


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Photo NDTV.com
Sent in by Dr. Carol Rosin
An absolute disaster has struck New Zealand as around 400 whales have been found thrashing tales in distress and stranded on a beach as New Zealanders rush to help
As dawn approached the extent of the carnage became clear as more than 400 whales had swum aground along a remote New Zealand beach. About 275 of the pilot whales were already dead.
Within hours, hundreds of farmers, tourists and teenagers were racing to keep the surviving 140 or so whales alive in one of the worst whale stranding’s in the nation's history.



Photo NDTV.com
A witness described the horror, "You could hear the sounds of splashing, of blowholes being cleared, of sighing," she said. "The young ones were the worst. Crying is the only way to describe it."  The adult and baby whale carcasses were strewn three or four deep in places for hundreds of yards, often rolled over on the sand with their tail fins still aloft.
Volunteer rescue group Project Jonah said a total of 416 whales had stranded. When high tide came, volunteers managed to refloat about 50 the surviving whales while the other 80 or 90 remained beached. The volunteers then formed a human chain in the water to try to stop the creatures from swimming back and stranding themselves again.
Farewell Spit, a sliver of sand that arches like a hook into the Tasman Sea, seems to confuse whales and has been the site of previous mass stranding’s.

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of whale stranding’s in the world, and Friday's event is the nations third-biggest recorded stranding. The largest was in 1918, when about 1,000 pilot whales came ashore on the Chatham Islands. In 1985 about 450 whales stranded in Auckland. 




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• Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan is now leaking radiation at record levels.
  
• radiation levels could be many time higher than the 530 Sieverts per hour already recorded in other parts of the site 
  
• 300 tons of radioactive water leaking into the Pacific every day
  
• TEPCO announced it expected to take at least $300 billion and four decades to fix
  
• Small amounts of radiation are now being detected of the coast of Oregon and California
  

It has been revealed radiation levels inside the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan is now leaking radiation at record levels.
And experts believe melted fuel is leaking inside the plant almost daily causing radiation levels high enough to kill people and knock out robots with just brief exposure.
Experts said the radiation levels - as high as 530 Sieverts per hour - are now the highest they've been since 2011 when a tsunami hit the coastal reactor.
"To put this in very simple terms, four Sieverts can kill a handful of people," he explained.
The latest readings are now posing a serious challenge as officials prepare to dismantle the facility.
There is much speculation that radiation levels could be many time higher than the 530 Sieverts per hour already recorded in other parts of the site where robots have yet to reach.
These are unimaginable radiation levels; a robot was sent in and lasted less than hour before radiation took it out, it found a 6ft gaping hole which will somehow have to be patched.
Small amounts of radiation are now being detected of the coast of Oregon and California.  The problem is with 300 tons of radioactive water leaking into the Pacific every day, what is that doing to the Pacific Ocean?"

TEPCO announced it expected to take at least $300 billion and four decades to fix the problem; can we dare imagine what state the Pacific Ocean will be in 40 years if radiation is washing up on the West Coast of America now, less than 6 years after the disaster?




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