Saturday, March 21, 2009
Update on Oil Dumping
I received some information on the situation near the AAMCO where it appeared that oil was dumped into the sewer. The Mr. Young who posted on this site is for real. He is Korean, and English is not his first language. It does not appear that AAMCO dumped anything into the sewer. Here is an excerpt from the email I received "a local salvage hauler with a truck in very poor condition was at there shop looking for waste metal and his truck was parked at that location on the side walk and storm sewer." It is likely that the oil in the catch basin came from this poorly maintained vehicle. The AAMCO station does indeed sell its waste oil. According to the information that I received AAMCO "had approximate[ly] 500 gallons of waste oil recovered by USA Oil Refinery on 2/12/2009 at no cost to them and were paid $.35per gallon for the waste oil. Also, E and M Auto Repair Inc has a waste oil hauling contract with Mid State Oil Recovery, service was last performed by this company on 12/19/2008." When the inspector "checked inside of the storm sewer catch basin at 1001 Bladensburg Road NE" he "found it to be full of bottles and cups and a small amount of oil. The amount of oil was consistent with the amount that would be associated with a catch basin of this type in this location." A clean up at the location is being ordered. DDOE will further look into the possibility of dumping at this location.
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5 comments:
Hurray! Amoco: not guilty.
If they need a publicist for the next allegation, tell them to get in touch with me. :-)
That's AAMCO. Poor spelling makes for a lousy publicist.
And a valuable lesson about posting inflammatory anonymously-sourced info on neighborhood blogs - then sneering at the response from the slandered business owner - is learned.
Plus, I get to say "I told you so".
But that doesn't help the business owner who had his reputation (s)oiled.
Heh heh.
Ok. So the pun sucks. So sue me.
Food for though Hillman-
the investigator on the oil case opened the investigation himself...based on what he read on Frozen Tropics (I was personally told this). If I hadn't posted it here it might not have been investigated in a timely manner, and we might not have gotten a definitive answer. So really, there may be more lessons to learn here than you know. and anyone who reads the new, or the old entry on the AAMCO stuff gets to read that they were totally cleared.
And I don't believe (no rational person could) that anonymously sourced material is inherently unreliable. My personal choice not to release an individual's name is my own (unless you volunteer with the police, are a regular on the MPD 5-D listserv, or are heavily involved in community affairs in this section of Ward 5, his name would mean nothing to you), and does not somehow render the information inherently unreliable. He also provided photos, that appeared (to a layman like me, and also to him) to show oil spilled from a rolling barrel. The investigator (a professional, who deals with this kind of thing all the time) says it is consistent with a leaky truck. Cool, I'm glad we isolated the cause. Bottom line, although the original guy notified city agencies first, the only investigation that occurred was opened by the investigator himself after he read about it here. The report even cites this blog as the source. You can do a FOIA request if you want to verify that.
Inked:
You and your anonymous source posted information that was clearly meant to implicate Aamco in serious wrongdoing.
Turns out you didn't know what you were talking about. The fact that your posting the story on your blog may have contributed to the city investigating the matter doesn't change the fact that you were wrong.
Most people involved in journalism (and neighborhood-based blogging is journalism) will tell you that people remember the original allegation much more than they remember the eventual outcome clearing the accused.
I'm sorry that this Aamco isn't a trendy hipster cafe or garden shop, or perhaps a pet shop selling $10 dog biscuits shaped like famous French silent film stars, or whatever else it is the neighborhood would prefer at that site. But that's no reason to treat the owner like he's been treated.
You, Soul Searcher, and your anonymous source owe the owners of that Aamco an apology.
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