Sandy punched a hole in the barrier island that holds the affluent borough of Mantoloking, N.J., temporarily splitting the community in two. The storm also destroyed several multimillion-dollar homes and erased the island's protective system of dunes.
Credit USGS
Storm waves and currents removed sand from a beach in Long Branch, N.J., exposing rock and concrete walls.
Credit USGS
A portion of Fire Island, N.Y., was breached during Sandy, creating a new inlet. Despite the breach, a fishing shack on nearby Pelican Island (yellow arrow) remained standing.
Credit USGS
Storm waves and surge cut across the barrier island at Mantoloking, N.J., eroding a wide beach, destroying houses and roads, and depositing sand onto the island and into the back bay.
New Jersey's most affluent community, Mantoloking, sits on a narrow barrier island 30 miles north of Long Beach. As Sandy approached, most of the residents fled inland. But Edwin C. O'Malley and his father, Edwin J. O'Malley Jr., hunkered down in their 130-year-old house.
They tied a boat to their porch and then watched the storm surge break over the dunes and flood the streets.
"Overnight that night, lying in bed, I could actually hear waves hitting the side of the house — which obviously made it more difficult to get to sleep," the younger O'Malley says.
Climate change and the environment were not major topics of the presidential campaign. And on Wednesday, President Obama said that while he believes more needs to be done to address what's happening, he won't "ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change."
Dirty water from the oil wells flows through oil-caked pipes into a settling pit where trucks vacuum off the oil. A net covers the pit to keep out birds and other wildlife. Streams of this wastewater flow through the reservation and join natural creeks and rivers.
Credit Elizabeth Shogren / NPR
More than 40 years ago, the EPA banned oil companies from releasing wastewater into the environment, but made an exception for the arid West. If livestock and wildlife can use the water, companies can release it. Cows like these grazing near a stream of waste on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming are supposedly the reason the EPA lets oil companies release their waste into the environment.
Credit Elizabeth Shogren / NPR
The EPA requires that the wastewater streams show no obvious sheen and no solid deposits. But both were visible near oil fields on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.
Credit Elizabeth Shogren / NPR
White crystal-like deposits line a streambed where this oil field water is flowing. Researchers for the tribes have also found black oozes, purple growths, dead ducklings and lifeless stretches of streams.
Credit Elizabeth Shogren / NPR
In most oil fields, the water that companies pump up with the oil gets reinjected deep underground. But the federal government allows a dozen oil fields on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming to pump streams of this wastewater onto the land.
Credit Elizabeth Shogren / NPR
Rancher Darwin Griebel says his cows need the oil field water, and his business depends on it.
Credit Elizabeth Shogren / NPR
Wes Martel, vice chairman for the Eastern Shoshone Business Council, stands near a murky gray stream full of oil field wastewater. He's concerned about the effects the wastewater has on wildlife, water quality and, since cows drink it, he wonders: "What's in your steak?"
Credit Elizabeth Shogren / NPR
Internal EPA documents released to NPR show some EPA staffers have been trying to figure out what is in the wastewater released by oil companies. There are lots of chemicals. Some leave solid residues like these white and gray mounds. Danger signs near this outflow pipe warn that poisonous gas fumes from the water can cause respiratory irritation or suffocation.
Credit Elizabeth Shogren / NPR
Dirty water from the oil wells flows through oil-caked pipes into a settling pit where trucks vacuum off the oil. A net covers the pit to keep out birds and other wildlife. Streams of this wastewater flow through the reservation and join natural creeks and rivers.
The air reeks so strongly of rotten eggs that tribal leader Wes Martel hesitates to get out of the car at an oil field on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. He already has a headache from the fumes he smelled at another oil field.
Originally published on Thu November 15, 2012 5:23 pm
You walk into a room. There are people there, cars outside, dogs, phones ring, the radio is on, somebody coughs; it's the pleasant blur of a busy world, until something, someone catches your attention. Then you lean in, the other sounds fade back, and you focus. That's how listening works — for most of us.
