Cleanup under way in 462,000-gallon oil spill off Port Arthur

CNN) -- Crews removed about 46,000 gallons of oil from waters near Port Arthur, Texas, on Sunday, roughly 10 percent of the oil spilled a day earlier when a tanker collided with two barges, a U.S. Coast Guard officer said.

An estimated 462,000 gallons of crude oil leaked from barrels aboard the tanker, forcing the closure of the port in southern Texas, Petty Officer Larry Chambers told CNN. The Sabine Neches Waterway near Port Arthur also was closed. It was unclear Sunday when the port, about 100 miles east of Houston, Texas, will reopen or when crews will finish the cleanup, he said.

"We certainly want it to be done as soon as possible, but with that said, safety is the main issue," Chambers said. "We're not going to open the port until it's determined that vessels can pass through cleanly, safely and not cause any further damage."

No injuries were reported when the Exxon Mobile-chartered tanker -- the 807-foot Eagle Otome -- collided Saturday with two barges being towed by a tug boat. The tanker was carrying about 570,000 gallons of crude oil to Exxon's Beaumont refinery when it crashed, Exxon Mobile spokesman Kevin Allexon told CNN. The cause of the crash was unknown, but is under investigation, he said.

"We are very concerned about how this could have happened," Allexon said. "We are very concerned about the impact to the environment, to the community. No one wants to see this happen."

The port is primarily for industrial use, but it is not far from wetlands. None of the nearby marshes or sensitive wildlife were adversely affected, Chambers said, but one heron was "oiled." The bird was alive and undergoing treatment, he said.

An evacuation order that was imposed in a 50-block area around the port after the collision was lifted. That area was evacuated Saturday out of caution, as the tanker was carrying a type of oil containing sulfide.

Fifteen skimming vessels sailed the area recovering the oil and workers dropped more than 45,000 feet of boom -- fencing-like material -- to keep the oil from spreading, Chambers said. More than 500 people were involved in containing and cleaning the spill, said Darrell Wilson, spokesman for Malaysia-based AET Tanker Holdings, the owner of the tanker.

The biggest oil spill in U.S. history occurred in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in the Gulf of Alaska, resulting in the spill of 11 million gallons of crude.

Clearlake City Council members address conflicts in order to deal with redevelopment plan

Written by Elizabeth Larson
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
CLEARLAKE – In order to discuss business related to a proposed redevelopment plan amendment, Clearlake City Council members had to follow a series of formalities last Thursday that included declaring potential conflicts and a high card draw from a deck of cards.

Redevelopment business at the council's regular meeting on Thursday, Jan. 14, included discussion of the proposed amendment and the possible formation of a project area committee.

City Attorney Malathy Subramanian was unable to attend the meeting, so Melanie Donnelly, another attorney from the same firm of Best, Best & Krieger, sat in on the meeting to help the council work through the issues.

Donnelly helped lead the council through the discussion regarding some members' potential conflicts of interest with regard to the proposed redevelopment plan amendment, which City Administrator Dale Neiman said must be completed by this coming July 9.

She said the council needed a minimum of three members in order to have a quorum on the subject, but three council members – Mayor Judy Thein, Vice Mayor Joyce Overton and Curt Giambruno – all said they believed they had conflicts because of their homes' close proximity to the redevelopment area, and that they would realize property value improvements as a result.

Donnelly said they would need to “rehabilitate” one of those council members and allow them to sit in on the decision, which she said could be done using the legally required participation exception, which allows for a conflict of interest exception to political reform act rules.

The method for selection had to be done randomly, so Donnelly presented a deck of cards and had Overton, Giambruno and Thein each draw a card, explaining that the high card would win the draw.

Thein drew a queen, Overton a three and Giambruno a 10. That meant that Thein would stay on the dais, while Overton and Giambruno recused themselves and left the room.

Councilman Roy Simons questioned if the redevelopment agency's amendment could go through just by the council's approval, or if it needed to go to a referendum, which Simons believed it did.

Neiman disagreed. “I have a different interpretation of that.”

Councilman Chuck Leonard said the plan was amended in 1994 by the council, not a referendum.

Simons insisted that the matter needed to go to a referendum. Neiman said he'll have Subramanian provide a legal opinion.

With the quorum reestablished, the council next needed to consider if establishing a redevelopment project area committee was appropriate.

“This is the first decision that you have to make in order to proceed with amending the redevelopment plan,” Neiman said.

Neiman told the council that the redevelopment plan, between the housing and project funds, will generate a total of $42.2 million for the community if it's amended.

He said they couldn't meet the deadline for establishing the committee, but that it was wasn't needed because they were not planning to add use of eminent domain or expand the project area.

“Basically there's no legal requirement to create a project area committee,” Neiman said.

Simons asked why they needed the amendment. To get the $42.2 million, Neiman replied.

“How do you expect us to believe that when we've just been through two decades of total failure” in redevelopment, Simons asked.

Neiman agreed that there have been problems in the city's redevelopment history.

Simons considered a project area committee important to the whole plan, and said lack of one in the past is one of the reasons why redevelopment, in his opinion, has failed. He added that Neiman was promising them millions when the city can't even do a sidewalk project, referring to the Lakeshore Drive area.

Neiman said the $42.2 million would be generated over a 10-year period.

“I'm not against the amendment, I want you to know that,” said Simons. “I just want it to be done right, that's all.”

Neiman said he agreed with Simons.

During public comment, community member Rick Mayo asked about a $14 million bond set to take place in 2019, which Neiman's report to the council cited as revenue. Mayo asked how a bond could be considered revenue when it's really a loan.

“That's worse than fuzzy math,” Mayo said.

Neiman replied that the bond will generate revenue for the city.

Mayo, who formerly sat on the Clearlake Planning Commission, told the council that they held 100 public hearings when Wal-Mart wanted to come into the city.

He said such a public hearing process is being circumvented for the Lowe's shopping center project at the former Peace Airport property on Highway 53, for which the redevelopment agency is proposing to help fund improvements.

Mayo said that the planning commission had wanted to keep Pearce Field opened as an airport, but then Wal-Mart decided to build in the flight path.

“This whole thing should have gone through the planning commission,” said Mayo. “The council was always a last resort.”

When Estella Creel asked about the proposed bonds, Neiman said there would actually be two – one for housing, and one for the redevelopment project. He said there would be more discussion “down the road,” as the amendment began taking shape.

Creel asked why Neiman wouldn't just say he doesn't know the answers to her questions. “I know exactly what I'm doing, Estelle,” Neiman replied.


READ THE FULL STORY

NASA to Check for Unlikely Winter Survival of Mars Lander

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is visible within this enhanced-color image of the Phoenix landing site taken on Jan. 6, 2010 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
› Full image (including backshell and heatshield) and caption
PASADENA, Calif. -- Beginning Jan. 18, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter will listen for possible, though improbable, radio transmissions from the Phoenix Mars Lander, which completed five months of studying an arctic Martian site in November 2008.

The solar-powered lander operated two months longer than its three-month prime mission during summer on northern Mars before the seasonal ebb of sunshine ended its work. Since then, Phoenix's landing site has gone through autumn, winter and part of spring. The lander's hardware was not designed to survive the temperature extremes and ice-coating load of an arctic Martian winter.

In the extremely unlikely case that Phoenix survived the winter, it is expected to follow instructions programmed on its computer. If systems still operate, once its solar panels generate enough electricity to establish a positive energy balance, the lander would periodically try to communicate with any available Mars relay orbiters in an attempt to reestablish contact with Earth. During each communications attempt, the lander would alternately use each of its two radios and each of its two antennas.

Odyssey will pass over the Phoenix landing site approximately 10 times each day during three consecutive days of listening this month and two longer listening campaigns in February and March.

"We do not expect Phoenix to have survived, and therefore do not expect to hear from it. However, if Phoenix is transmitting, Odyssey will hear it," said Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We will perform a sufficient number of Odyssey contact attempts that if we don't detect a transmission from Phoenix, we can have a high degree of confidence that the lander is not active."

The amount of sunshine at Phoenix's site is currently about the same as when the lander last communicated, on Nov. 2, 2008, with the sun above the horizon about 17 hours each day. The listening attempts will continue until after the sun is above the horizon for the full 24.7 hours of the Martian day at the lander's high-latitude site. During the later attempts in February or March, Odyssey will transmit radio signals that could potentially be heard by Phoenix, as well as passively listening.

If Odyssey does hear from Phoenix, the orbiter will attempt to lock onto the signal and gain information about the lander's status. The initial task would be to determine what capabilities Phoenix retains, information that NASA would consider in decisions about any further steps.

Mars Odyssey is managed for NASA's Science Mission Directorate by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft.

The successful Phoenix mission was led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin. International contributions came from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; the Finnish Meteorological Institute; and Imperial College, London.

Endeavor Rollout

Crews moved the space shuttle Endeavour from the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., to Launch Complex 39A on Jan. 6 in preparation for next month’s STS-130 mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

The six-hour trip for the shuttle stack — orbiter, external tank and two solid-rocket boosters — started at 4:13 a.m. EST. Endeavour is scheduled to lift off at 4:39 a.m. EST Feb. 7 for a 13-day orbital sortie to the ISS.

Commanded by U.S. Marine Corps Col. George Zamka, the six-member crew is scheduled to deliver the third and final pressurized node to the orbital outpost. Designated “Tranquility,” it will carry the long-awaited station cupola, which will give station crews a 360-degree view of their surroundings through its five windows.

The crew also will conduct three spacewalks to link Tranquility into the station cooling and data systems, help install the cupola and work on the Canadian special purpose dexterous manipulator (Dextre), which was designed to handle many of the maintenance tasks now assigned to spacewalking astronauts.

Endeavour photo: NASA

Space Station Upgraded to "the 90s"

NASA bills the International Space Station as “the most complex scientific and technological endeavor ever undertaken.”
Perhaps that is so, but its guts are so 1980s.


By ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle


That's because the 44 primary computers that do everything from guide the station around Earth at 17,000 mph to monitor for fires are powered by Intel 386 processors, first built in the mid-1980s, with a clock rate of 16 megahertz. To put that in perspective, today's processors are measured in gigahertz, a speed increase by a factor of 1,000.
Needless to say, the task of maintaining the network of computers on the station humming along is more difficult than, say, putting together a home network.

The station has components from the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe, each with their own hardware and software. Each system must “talk” to one another and crashes can be a bit more problematic than losing the Internet until a technician can arrive.

One such crash did occur in 2001, during a space shuttle mission to the station.
Of all the station's computers, the command-and-control computer, which has two back-ups, serves as the “brains” of the network. The first command-and-control computer failed, then the first back-up began operating erratically and then, finally, all three failed.

Lot of hard work

With Endeavour docked to the station, the crew re-routed its communications through the shuttle and eventually swapped another onboard computer into the command-and-control slot. It turned out to be a hard drive issue.
“That took some life off us,” admits Michael Suffredini, the station's program manager.
But since that incident the station's computers have largely functioned without incident.
“It's not darn good luck that we've had success, it's the result of a lot of hard work up front,” Suffredini said.

A lot of the hard work can be credited to a Boeing software laboratory in Clear Lake, a few miles from Johnson Space Center, that's next door to the large swimming pool where astronauts train for spacewalks.
Inside the lab there's a mock-up of the computer systems on board the station where all software is tested before it is sent to the station. Every new component that's sent up to the station is tested there first to ensure it will work smoothly in space.
“
This is basically the space station on the ground,” explained Jose Pinero, a lab manager during a recent tour.
Upgrade to the '90s

The lab is now testing a software for version 10 of the station's core programming, which is roughly analogous to an aircraft's flight computer. NASA expects to fly this software upgrade, which entails more than 700,000 lines of code, in 2011.
That's the time when NASA also intends to upgrade the station's primary computers — to basic Pentium processors. That's about a five-fold increase in processing power, with considerably more memory.
“That's smokin',” quipped Steve Cox, another manager at Boeing's lab. “We'll be all the way up to 1990s technology.”

Clear Lake Scumbag Admits Guilt

Clear Lake Man Accused of Child Sex Assault

A Clear Lake man admitted to sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl according to the Criminal Investigation Unit of the Sherburne County Sheriff's Office.

Patrick Olson, 28, was arrested at his home on Dec. 31 and booked into the Sherburne County Jail for criminal sexual conduct in the second degree.

According to Sheriff Joel Brott, the Central Minnesota Sexual Assault Center reported that the girl had been assaulted.
Investigators interviewed the girl and then arrested Olson.

Investigators said he admitted to sexual contact with the girl.
Olson remains in jail pending arraignment.