drive thru waste
Bob Ross permalink | categories: Florida, government, news, politics, transportationby Bob Ross @ 4:06 pm
This nonsense about drilling offshore infuriates me. It won’t do a thing to lower prices, it is sure to turn clean beaches into tarball traps, and it prevents people from discussing practical ways to cut consumption.
Case in point: How many times have you driven past a fast-food or Starbucks outlet with six to 12 cars in the drive-thru queue?
If I go to one of these places, I always park, go inside, get my stuff and go. Meanwhile, the losers are still in line, with their engines running. How many gallons of gas are wasted each day by idling vehicles in these lines? I don’t know. But it just makes sense to quit the practice.
No more drive-thrus!
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June 20th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Bob is absolutely right. Plus, it sure looks as if Gov. Crist is pandering to McCain. Of course, suggesting that states should be allowed to determine if drilling is allowed off their coasts may be a safe bet for Crist. Certainly the Florida Legislature would never vote to allow drilling. Would it?
June 20th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
What basis do you have to claim that offshore drilling will turn “clean beaches in to tarball traps.” There are plenty of rigs in the Gulf, and I cannot remember there being an incident. Even during the Katrina and Rita period, there was no major spill, was there? The spills I’ve heard about always seem to involve boats.
I don’t disagree with your comments about peoples’ habits. Drive-thrus especially perplex me. But I don’t think it is productive to be a fear monger when it comes to drilling. Reducing price is one thing, but less dependence on foreign oil is another. Reduce consumption and become more self-sufficient seems to be the path we should take.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
I know that when I have a car full of my little nephews and niece, the drive thru is a major convenience, instead of unbuckling, bringint them all in well beahved, then buckling them all back in again…so please dont rid the drive thru’s…
June 20th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
In the city of San Luis Obispo, CA the drive-thrus were all closed. You can see remnants of drive-thrus on the McDonalds. They prohibited them over emissions, but it really changed the feel of the city. I thought in a good way.
Further South in CA, you are driving along the coast and what is out there? Unsightly oil rigs. I wouldn’t pay money to spend time on a beach with that as a backdrop. Sure there were people at the beach (This was near Ventura), but everyone I talked to was a local. There weren’t any tourists that day.
I love looking at industry. Call me crazy, but I could sit for hours and watch the workings at Apollo Beach. I just have no desire to go to a beach that has an obscured horizon and/or droplets staining the pristine sand. (Which that white sand is very unique to our area!)
But that’s okay. If we drill, we might save a few cents a gallon in 10 years or so.
June 21st, 2008 at 8:57 am
Though it may be impossible to legislate Americans out of fat, lazy swinedom, closing drive-thrus would be a great experiment. I have lived in a state where there were liquor store drive-thrus, making it possible to by booze without demonstrating the ability to walk straight. American splendor!
June 21st, 2008 at 10:45 am
I take back my staements on spills and hurricanes. There was a good article in the tbt yesterday that set me straight. 7 million gallons of petroleum products in the gulf after Katrina and Rita (by comparison, the Valdez let loose 11 million).
June 21st, 2008 at 10:49 am
Where offshore drilling goes, beach decay often follows
By Craig Pittman
cpittman@tampabay.com
Stephen Leatherman has seen every kind of beach in America, and he really likes the ones in Florida. The man known as Dr. Beach usually ranks them among the pretti est in America. This year he picked Pinellas County’s own Caladesi Island as No. 1.
If oil companies start drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mex ico, that’s likely to change.
“We’ve got some of the fin est, whitest sand in the world,” said Leatherman, a professor at Florida International Uni versity in Miami. “Oil doesn’t seem to go with that. … This could lower the value of our beaches.”
Leatherman has seen what offshore drilling can do to a beach. Texas beaches, for instance, “tend to be the trash can of the gulf.” Waste from the western gulf ’s wells — everything from empty oil drums to tar balls — washes up there.
Allowing drilling in the eastern gulf — a move now touted by President Bush, GOP presidential candidate John McCain and Gov. Char lie Crist — carries risks for the environment as well as for Florida’s economy.
Over the past 40 years, oil companies have drilled thou sands of wells across the western and central gulf, and there are about 3,800 offshore structures there. Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have been willing to overlook the trash and tar in exchange for cash and jobs.
But Florida’s $50 billion tourist industry depends on clean beaches. The slightest taint — say, a Red Tide bloom — can empty the hotels. That’s why in the past Florida pol iticians from both parties have been about as quick to em brace drilling as they have been to shake hands with Fidel Castro.
In the late 1990s, when Chevron proposed drilling in the gulf 25 miles south of Pensacola, the U.S. Environ mental Protection Agency warned that if there were a spill, “there is as great as a 47 percent chance that the slick would reach Florida’s coastal waters before dissipating.”
Chevron hired Florida State oceanographer Wilton Sturges to study the spill potential. Sturges said he found “that under worst-case conditions the spilled stuff could be brought ashore much faster than any response team could get there to clean it up. It is a real crapshoot about when it might happen, of course. Most bad things happen dur ing nasty weather, when the difficulties of cleanups are at their worst.”
For instance, Hurricane Katrina ripped into Louisi ana and Mississippi in 2005, destroying 115 oil platforms, significantly damaging 52 more and setting adrift 19. More than 7 million gallons of petroleum products spilled, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. By comparison, in 1989 the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons in Alaska.
Critics like Enid Sisskin of Gulf Coast Environmental Defense say they are not as concerned about oil spills as they are about routine pollution.
When the rigs first drill into the ocean floor, the crews use fluids called “drilling muds” which include toxic sub stances including barium, chromium and arsenic.
In 2002, the Mobile Press-Register tested grouper and other fish caught around Alabama’s offshore rigs. They contained so much mercury that they would not be ac ceptable for sale to the public under federal guidelines. The source: the drilling muds, which left mercury in the sea-bottom in concentrations as high as that found at Su perfund sites.
June 22nd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Good luck outlawing drive thru’s. Temple Terrace tried to eliminate any new drive thru establishments in their new downtown project at 56th and Busch. The latest plan before City Council includes at least 2 with a request from the developer to waive that requirement. Too much pressure on our major thoroughfares to allow them. They are seen as economic necessities. Look at the Starbucks on Hillsborough near 275. One of the biggest grossing Starbucks in the County, probably because of the drive through.
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:23 pm
If gas prices stay where they are (and they will) drive-throughs will be closing for lack of business. People will be choosing fuel over lattes.
July 6th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
How does drilling oil prevent people from discussing practical ways to cut consumption? News: We’re drilling oil as we speak. We’re also discussing practical ways to cut consumption as we speak.
Also, I guess you’ve never taken an economics class in your life. I suggest you learn the basics of supply and demand.