Big Pile Of Shit Disappears

(How did I miss this story until now?)
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The Detroit River "pet coke" pile

Petroleum coke, or "pet coke", is a waste byproduct of extracting oil from Canadian tar sands at the Keystone XL site.  Pet coke is a grainy, dusty solid that is officially "safe", but contains the toxic metals selenium and vanadium, and who-knows-what-else.

Detroit had a big mountain of it 4 stories tall.  It was piling up for a year along the banks of the Detroit River.

Who put it there?  Marathon Oil.  They process Canadian tar sands into oil at their Detroit facility.

Who owns the pile of pet coke?  Koch Carbon LLC of Wichita, a.k.a. the Koch brothers.  Although pet coke is generally considered to be useless crapola, the Kochs are buying it up.  They see a market for it as a cheap, high-sulfur, dirty-burning fuel for Chinese and Indian power plants.

After taking many complaints from residents about this giant shit-pile blowing black dust all over the place, Detroit officials finally ordered Koch Carbon to remove it.  At last, it's gone.  Yay!

Where did it go?  Ohio!  To an unspecified location.  No one is exactly sure where.  The Ohio EPA says it hasn't received any notification and, in fact, none is required.  Because it's "safe", right?  Gosh, thanks, Koch brothers!

Don't be surprised to see the "Black Hills of Ohio" popping up all over the Buckeye State.  One of the many problems associated with refining tar sands into oil is that it generates so much pet coke waste.  The Marathon Oil plant in Detroit is just a small-time player.  Up in Canada, there are over 80 million tons of pet coke waste just sitting around Keystone XL, with more coming every day.  The more we process tar sands in the U.S., the more we'll create our very own shit-pile disposal problem.  Hell, just ship it all to Ohio.