A few months back, Oil Change International raised some noise about a dirty byproduct of tar sands refining, called petroleum coke...or "petcoke". This stuff is the dirtiest of the dirty -- burnt like coal, but with greater greenhouse gas and toxic emissions.
Well, just a few months later, petcoke made it to the front page of the New York Times this weekend with a story about a huge, toxic pile of this stuff on the banks of the Detroit River. This 3 story high, block long pile of petcoke has been deposited by the Koch Brothers, and the Michigan state government has yet to regulate it sufficiently. Time for that to change.
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