Hawaii’s in a Sticky Situation
Bailey Wilson 8D
Summary
On September 10, 2013, the tragic molasses spill happened in Honolulu Harbor, Hawaii. The Matson company was responsible for the molasses spill that started as a fist-sized hole in a pipe. On September 9, 2013, the spill was discovered. This sticky situation is significant because more than 25,000 fish have died and there is more to come. These innocent fish are dying because the molasses is getting into their gills and clogging them up.
Six Facts
•What I find amazing about this is that the taxpayers don’t have to pay for the damage. The Matson Co. said that they would pay for it and not the taxpayers. And the customer rates are not going to be raised due to the spill.
•Officials can take care of the dead fish but cannot get rid of the molasses because it has dissolved into the salty-seawater. But overtime, bacteria will break the molasses down and the tides will bring in clean sea water.
•Grieg Steward of the University of Hawaii at Manoa says that there has been some thoughts about bubbling oxygen into the water, like you might see at Walmart or some other place you see fish in a tank.
•Steward and his lab crew were taking water samples and Steward states that, "As of our last sampling on Wednesday, oxygen levels are recovering nicely."
•The Matson Company may have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars just in fines. Matson could be penalized with $25,000 per day from the Clean Water Act.
•The Matson CEO states, “If it takes a week, a month, a year, 10 years, we’re going to be here until this is made right and we need to be comfortable that this is never going to happen again.”
Vocabulary
•Osmosis - The movement of liquids due to the differences in concentration
•Plume - A mass of material, typically a pollutant, spreading from a source
•Invertebrate - An animal that lacks a backbone
•Crustaceans - An arthropod of the large, mainly aquatic group Crustacea.
•Matson inc. - A company that provides shipping services Pacific wide.
Sentences for Vocabulary
•Diffusion - The molasses went into the water and the molasses diffused through the water and went into fish gils and killed reefs.
•Osmosis - The molasses went into reef cells and killed them.
•Plume - The Honolulu Harbor spill was a plume.
•Invertebrate - Crabs, lobsters, sea stars, etc, are all invertebrates.
•Crustaceans -Crabs, lobster, shrimp, and barnacle are all crustaceans.•Matson inc. - A company that ships mostly in the area west coast, to and from Hawaii.
Questions I Have
•What I would really like to know is where does all of that molasses come from?
•Why would Hawaii have so much as 233,000 gallons of molasses?
•Did anybody get sick from it?