Climate Sunday: Petrochemicals are Volatile You know.

For one thing, a pipeline spill occurred this week on a Crow reservation in Montana. No word if Black Eagle has anything to say about it. But 25K gallons of petroleum probably is cause for concern--it runs like a liquid to wherever there is water. They say it won't pollute water, but claim they don't know if underground aquifers are affected. I know what I would suspect.  

Gasoline is highly toxic. Unlike oil, it can evaporate, making the cleanup on the reservation potentially more straightforward as long as no water bodies are tainted by the fuel. 

"That's not saying it won't have an effect on the environment, but it's not like oil which seeps into the ground and sticks around," said Damon Hill, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. 

However, if water is involved, gasoline can be more damaging than oil, because it seeps through the ground more quickly and mixes in with water, making it harder to remove, said Carl Weimer executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, an advocacy group based in Washington state.

Here's another recent disaster:

In Lac-Megantic, Quebec, a train derailment involving petrol carrying cars.