Miranda Carpenter
17 February 2015
Mrs. Nagle
Report #1
In today’s society there are many regulations and or laws a business must follow. Every day there are businesses that “cut corners” but there are also some businesses that are charged by the law, due to illegal practices. Two businesses/companies that have been charged with unethical and illegal practices within the past two years are ExxonMobil which is the world’s largest energy company and FedEx which is one of the world’s top carriers (Diaz-Shephard, 2013).
In 2013, Exxon Mobil Corp. was charged with dumping more than 50,000 gallons of waste water in Pennsylvania. The waste water was coming from the Marquandt well sites waste tanks, located in Pennsylvania’s Lycoming County. As Inspectors from the States Department of Environmental Protection began their unannounced investigation, they discovered that a plug had been removed from the tank which was what allowed the waste water to exit the tank onto the ground, polluting a nearby stream. Furthermore, Exxon Mobil then was ordered to remove 3,000 tons of soil as part of the clean project (Diaz-Shephard, 2013). Pennsylvania’s attorney general website Bloomberg.com stated that “natural gas wastewater may contain a number of toxins, including chlorides, barium, strontium, and aluminum”. This company was charged with five counts of unlawful conduct under the Clean Streams Law, and also charged with three counts under the Solid Waste Management Act (Kennedy, 2013). Exxon
Fox discovered an economic power system where oil and gas companies are mostly benefiting from hydraulic fracturing. The global demand for energy is increasing in recent years as a result of industrial development and population growth. With a limitation of other available fuels such as liquid fuel, natural gas become a potential solution for energy shortage. Yet, energy companies had the power to facilitate hydraulic fracturing process and caused land, water, air and health problem in the United State. Energy companies found ways to cut down the cost and fasten the drilling process. Produced waste were not stored properly, which led to chemical leaching. Nature beauty were destroyed and gas wells were built on endanger species’ habitats. Hydraulic fracturing were not under authorization and could be easily entered. No one tracked the exact number of gas wells as well as the expansion planning. In fact, energy companies drilled gases without consideration the future generation’s demands for energy sources. These activities are advantageous for gas executives, but extremely harmful for people and wildlife near contaminated area. Thus, gas companies provide the least remedy for the impacts of what they have done. They did not try to either filter the water or improve the chemical leaking. Energy companies paid little for the consequences of
The problem with unethical practices is that a company itself is not the only one will suffer from the consequence of its illegal actions. Most of the time, there are customers who get victimized by these unethical practices as they put their trust and loyalty on businesses that they have patronized for so long. At the end of the day, all they can do is file their complaints and vent out their frustrations over the betrayal they experienced from their trusted businesses, but the damage remains permanent. The once excellent relationships are forever destroyed and victimized customers always carry with them the trauma and fear that they could be fooled again in the future.
It is a fact that in Wyoming they are finding contamination in water tables as far away from fracking as forty miles. You tube videos of people igniting their tap water are numbered in the hundreds. These gas companies are poisoning our environment and destroying people’s entire way of life just to make money. Now most of us on some level are concerned about the environment, you don’t have to live in a tree and only eat organic fruits and vegetables to care about the future of earth. You just have to open your eyes and become comfortable to the fact that big corporations dictate government. These people live to make money, at all costs.
Last year alone, oil and gas companies put hundreds of millions of gallons of hydraulic fracturing fluids into the earth. Many of these fluids were found to contain harmful chemicals such as carcinogens- substances that directly cause cancer. This is why hydraulic fracking has been the topic of heated debate over the past few years. This process of drilling for natural gas has become increasingly popular over the past decade, and has in turn produced many questions about the safety of its wells and the chemicals that are used in drilling. Under current regulations, hydraulic fracking is permitted to be conducted at drilling sites that are located very close to residential areas. The chemicals used in the drilling process have been leaking out of wells, and have contaminated drinking water for some communities. In addition, it pollutes the air by putting methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Concerned about the safety of fracking, cities such as Longmont have shown great opposition to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA)’s regulations. In fact, Longmont citizens voted to put a ban on fracking within city limits in 2012. This ban has been met with retaliation from COGA, who sued the city because of the ban. If fracking isn’t allowed to be banned by cities that don’t want it, then the regulations need to change in order to make the practice both prosperous and safe for the community.
Fracking promoters say safe hydraulic fracking doesn’t threaten drinking water. They also disprove that the water used in hydraulic fracturing ends up as surface spills. There are three ways reported for waste water disposal including “injecting in permitted disposal wells in accordance with Underground Injection Control Regulations, delivered to water treatment facilities depending on permitting, and reused/recycled” (“Pioneering America’s Energy Future”). These three types of disposals are considered safe as long as agencies are regulating hydraulic fracturing companies carefully. The Oil and Gas Conservation Act makes oil and gas a state priority, allowing companies the legal right to fracture. It is harder to judge whether regulations are actually set in place when government wants to favor the creation of jobs and economic boost rather than worrying about the health of communities affected by
In December 2011, the federal Environmental Protection Agency concluded that fracking operations could be responsible for groundwater pollution.“Today’s methods make gas drilling a filthy business. You know it’s bad when nearby residents can light the water coming out of their tap on fire,” says Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. What’s causing the fire is the methane from the drilling operations. A ProPublica investigation in 2009 revealed methane contamination was widespread in drinking water in areas around fracking operations in Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania. The presence of methane in drinking water in Dimock, Pa., had become the focal point for Josh Fox’s investigative documentary, Gasland, which received an Academy Award nomination in 2011 for Outstanding Documentary; Fox also received an Emmy for non-fiction directing. Fox’s interest in fracking intensified when a natural gas company offered $100,000 for mineral rights on property his family owned in Milanville, in the extreme northeast part of Pennsylvania, about 60 miles east of Dimock.
Business Law helps to give a basis for right and wrong, beyond morality; therefore, it is an important consideration when deciding whether a business practice or decision is ethical. A company who is cutting corners to skirt regulations would be unethical. The discussion case on Chipotle using illegal immigrant workers for cheap labor would be an example of this. The company verified employees by obtaining documentation which met the minimum requirements of the law, but they did not have systems in place to verify that the documentation was valid, and they turned a blind eye to cases where false documentation had been presented. This made the company’s decision to not implement verification systems unethical. Knowing the laws and regulations
One of the major drawbacks with fracking is due to the cause of widespread hazardous pollution within waterways surrounding the sites. The steel casings cannot guarantee prevention of chemical leakage dispersing into the adjacent soil holding tons of ground water. This is the same water that makes its way into our wells, and finally into our mouths. Furthermore, more than half of the wastewater used in the fracking process is flowed directly into a ready-made reservoir pits that sit in wait for evaporation. This wastewater gradually sinks into the ground, for the evaporation takes quite some time. The health risks posed by this dangerously hazardous output of pollution into our drinking water and nearby waterways is widely felt. Water quickly turns to metallic mush, goes black, and even becomes flammable in other cases. Fracking is upsetting the way of life for so many out there and yet they still refuse to answer for these wrongdoings. Mike Markham is forced to venture into town to buy his water supply due to his well water being deemed unfit for consumption (“GasLand”). Jeff and Wranda Locker’s washer was flooded with black water not soon after a fracking site began drilling. They placed faith in the energy company when they supplied them with a reverse osmosis water treatment system that was supposed to filter out the chemicals. However, later they found out that the system didn’t remove glycol ethers which damages brain cells and may well be the cause of Wranda’s fading
It has been proven that important water wells across the nation have been polluted with chemicals deriving from fracking drills. “Each well uses between two and five million gallons of locally-sourced fresh water which will be permanently contaminated by ground contaminants and toxic chemicals contained in the fracking fluid.”(cleanwateraction.org). It is impossible for us to live without fresh water. The water used in fracking destroys the environment. “The millions of gallons of water used in fracking operations not only strain water resources, but end up as vast amounts of contaminated wastewater. Fracking has been reported as a suspect in polluted drinking water around the country. And methane -- a potent climate change pollutant -- leaks rampantly throughout the extraction, processing, and distribution of oil and gas.”(nrdc.org). Besides hampering water consumption to communities, the pollution destroys all related environments, including the atmosphere, which is affected by the evaporated fumes. However, according to geologist Gary Lash of the State University of New York at Fredonia, it is not possible for the fracking fluid to seep through the rocks and into the water. That is not the case since there are multiple documented cases of
In your first reply, I have to agree with you that there are some business’ that are not honest and unethical because they feel that is the only way to be competitive but those types of companies do not last long and/or struggle for many years with damage control with their reputation. I worked at a company once that did everything unethically and it caused so much stress on everyone in the organization, specifically for our customer. Unfortunately, this company is still in business but has gone thru many structural reorganizations trying to correct their corrupt environment. They have created a dreadful reputation for themselves in the aviation industry amongst suppliers, workforce, customers, and other business’. It may not
natural water sources, and or other water supplies are “contaminated due to fracking” EPA states
Arguments have also been made regarding whether or not fracking plays a significant role in water pollution. According to a study done by the EPA in the Pavilion gas field in central Wyoming, there were several abandoned gas and oil pits found that must have contributed to the pollution in the area. However they also found traces of water pollution in wells 1,000 feet underground that could not have been caused by the gas and oil pits. The EPA concluded that the groundwater contamination found at very far depths had to have been caused by fracking (Lutsgarten 3). This may be so, but several companies are looking for better ways to store the wastewater and maybe figure out how to store the water that is stuck in the ground possibly contaminating
I agree that compliance with government regulations is sometimes burdensome for small business owners, but if there were no such things as laws in place it would be chaotic. Of course it would be awesome to not pay taxes because there would not even be a government to make up the rules and the regulations, but in order to even have a fair competition between businesses, protect consumer and employee rights, and protect property, enforce all agreements and contracts made, and allow for bankruptcy when things take a bad turn, there need to be laws (Hatten, 2012). How much protection we want changes over time and what we want in society. It is very hard for small business owners though, because they are constantly dealing and trying to keep up with all the laws and requirements. The wording of a lot of these laws and regulations is easy to misunderstand and can be puzzling.
Water quality is another aspect that should be taken into consideration. The process of fracking requires three to eight million gallons of water per well (NYC Environmental Protection, 2017). The water is needed to help break the rock deep underground and release natural gas. Wastewater is generated though the fracking process, and requires specific treatment and disposal methods. One process of disposal involves injecting the wastewater deep into the ground (NYC Environmental Protection, 2017). If disposed inadequately, there are chances that the wastewater could leak back into the surface, along with heavy metals, radium isotopes and other waste, with the possibility of leaking into groundwater and surface water sources (Zucker, 2017). In the case of New York City, the Catskill-Delaware watersheds lay on top of the Marcellus shale. This watershed is the source of drinking water for 9 million New York City residents (Eaton, 2013). When
In the present world business plays an important role in every sphere of life. Business determines one’s life style, standard of living, education and even cultural standard. So to lead a bette-r life we need to understand