EDMONTON, Alberta - Birds landing in the toxic tailing ponds of tar sands operations --
and needlessly causing the industry PR headaches -- will soon be just a bad memory. A consortium of oil companies has unveiled a technology to capture any birds who get too close to the toxic ponds, and store them safely in underground aviaries. Derived from work on carbon capture and storage (carbon sequestration), the new technology uses 10-ft. diameter air intakes scattered in and around the ponds, plus powerful vacuum pumps. Any birds in the vicinity are captured safely, and are piped down into underground aviaries.
"Nothing seems to keep migratory birds away from the ponds for long, not even air canons and animatronic falcons," said William Nilly, an industry spokesperson. "With bird capture and storage, the problem individuals are captured and taken out of the game permanently, before they can get into the ponds and onto web video sites. In the long run, bird populations who pass over the ponds do not produce offspring in the wild, which prevents new generations of birds from moving along the same route and landing in the ponds."
In response to howls of protest from Greenpeace and the
Boreal Songbird Initiative over the announcement, Mr. Nilly later clarified that the capture and storage technology will be developed further:
"Next year, we will have more powerful vacuum pumps. Any bird-lovers or tree-huggers in the vicinity of our ponds will be transported into the new underground habitat together with the birds, so that they can continue to enjoy the birds in safety, away from our operations. We regret that cell phone do not work underground, and internet connections cannot be installed to protect the birds' privacy".
2 comments:
It was my understanding that this new ACS technology only worked on smaller sites, like the odd factory around Capistrano.
If I recall correctly the leading ACS engineer from San Juan who was originally hired for the Tar sands test project walked. As no reason was given, one would assume it was because of the enormity of the problem or the fact that is was just PR.
Good find.
JAWL, this post isn't a "find" -- it's a work of fiction, specifically political satire in the form of a parody (fake) news story. I was hoping that the snowballing absurdity of the content, not to mention the name of the industry person (Willy Nilly!), and the labels "...humor... parody, satire" at the bottom (spelling of last one corrected) would be indication enough.
I guess I should have known better, given how many times stories from The Onion had been taken seriously.
Please forgive me if you did realize the humorous nature of my post, and were commenting with equal measure of tongue-in-cheek.
That would explain the "new ACS technology" that you mention -- did you mean the fictional "Avian [Bird] Capture and Storage"? :-)
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