DL Open Thread: Friday March 13, 2026

Allen Harim’s Excuse For Pollution Violations?  ‘It’s too cold.’:

The Allen Harim poultry processing facility in Harbeson was cited by DNREC for “exceeding effluent limitations of nitrogen”, meaning the site exceeded nitrogen levels permissible in the plant’s wastewater by state law.

DNREC’s violation notice, issued earlier this month, says the plant has been violating that limit since January 27th. It notes that plant staff called the violation in, and said the plant was having difficulty processing the nitrogen due to “unseasonably cold temperatures”. 

Well, yes, it was really cold.  As if we’ve never had cold temperatures in the winter before.  We’re in March now, and:

DNREC says that Allen Harim has implemented several corrective measures to reduce nitrogen levels and stabilize treatment system performance since February 6th.

As of March 10th, DNREC spokesperson told the Delaware News Journal that “”Allen Harim continues to perform corrective measures to address ongoing violations, and progress has been made. However, a return to compliance has not yet been achieved.”

Fine the bastards.

‘Do Global Oil Markets Have Trump Derangement Syndrome’?  Josh Marshall says yes.  I agree:

What’s both fascinated and confused me is the response of global oil markets to the crisis, which seems based on at least a short-term willingness to credit Trump’s public comments as having some strong relationship to reality, which of course is absurd.

The Strait or Hormuz has been effectively closed for roughly two weeks. That’s a massive disruption already baked into the next month or so of oil shipping. A few days ago, Trump and then his Secretary of Energy calmed oil markets in part by claiming that they were going to begin escorting oil tankers out of the Strait or even seize the Strait to ensure shipping. And yet, the maritime experts I’ve been following since this crisis began say that the U.S. Navy currently has no real presence in the Gulf and nowhere near the class or number of ships in the Gulf to carry out such a mission. This is a major and highly relevant fact! The location of U.S. Navy carrier groups is not a secret. So I was sort of baffled by how the U.S. news media and perhaps oil market traders aren’t connecting these pretty clear dots. If U.S. news sources report that the U.S. is going to resolve the crisis by escorting oil tankers I’d like them to mention that the U.S. doesn’t currently have any ships in the region to do anything like that.

Another example. Oil prices really settled a couple days after Trump abruptly shifted from regime change to saying the war was actually over and would be ramping down within days. Yet in the days since it’s become clear that, whatever Trump might want, it is the Iranians who are now escalating in their efforts to keep the Strait closed. And yet oil prices have only partially bounced back to their position when Trump felt he needed to say the war was done. Trump’s claims, which seem visibly out of sync with reality, look like they’re still mostly holding oil markets in place.

It still seems like global oil markets are treating Trump like a normalish president whose public statements have some connection to reality and/or U.S. government actions. Or perhaps, not terribly surprising, oil markets are managed by disproportionately Trumpy people. And they have confidence in him. The problem of course is that unlike tariffs, this isn’t something the United States can all a halt to on its own. Iran also has a say. As the cliche goes, starting wars is much easier than ending them, in large part because other people, especially the people you went to war, with get a say.

I believe that this same distorted sense of reality has kept the equities markets from melting down the way that facts suggest they should.  Not gonna stop the meltdown forever.

Four Six More Americans Killed In War.  I’m calling it–pretty soon, Trump won’t even bother making the trip to Dover to pay his respects:

All six crew members aboard a U.S. military aircraft that crashed in western Iraq are confirmed to have been killed, the U.S. military said on Friday, as rescue efforts continued for the remaining two.

A U.S. military refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq on Thursday, in an incident the military said involved another aircraft but was not the result of hostile or friendly fire.

“The circumstances of the incident are under investigation. However, the loss of the aircraft was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire,” a statement from U.S. Central Command said.

The move comes after Washington last Thursday granted a 30-day waiver to India to buy Russian crude, with Bessent also saying that it will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government “as it only authorizes transactions involving oil already stranded at sea.“

Speaking in a podcast interview released on Friday, Bessent said that it was “unfortunate” that Russia will benefit financially from this move, “but we hope that it will be [for] a micro period.”

He explained that the waiver was given as “the Russian barrels are on the water, and it is a quick source for the Indian refineries.”

To try to reduce the ‘unanticipated’ impact that Trump’s war has caused.

Welcome To The World Of AI Data Centers.  Coming soon to Delaware City unless cooler heads prevail:

As we drove through southwest Memphis, KeShaun Pearson told me to keep my window down—our destination was best tasted, not viewed. Along the way, we passed an abandoned coal plant to our right, then an active power plant to our left, equipped with enormous natural-gas turbines. Pearson, who directs the nonprofit Memphis Community Against Pollution, was bringing me to his hometown’s latest industrial megaproject.

Already, the air smelled of soot, gasoline, and asphalt. Then I felt a tickle sliding up my nostrils and down into my throat, like I was getting a cold. As we approached, I heard the rumble of cranes and trucks, and then from behind a patch of trees emerged a forest of electrical towers. Finally, I saw it—a white-walled hangar, bigger than a dozen football fields, where Elon Musk intends to build a god.

To get Colossus up and running fast, xAI built its own power plant, setting up as many as 35 natural-gas turbines—railcar-size engines that can be major sources of smog—according to imagery obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center. Pearson coughed as we drove by the facility. The scratch in my throat worsened, and I rolled up my window.

If that gas turbine reference seems familiar, here’s why.  This legislation is designed specifically to hasten the building of AI data centers by:

…incentiviz(ing) the construction and operation of a limited number of high-efficiency Combined-Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) electrical generation facilities, with an output of between 100 MW and 500 MW, by creating an Electricity Production Tax Credit (EPTC) and bonus credits. These credits would offset state corporate tax liability while facilitating the increased availability of clean, cost-effective, high-efficiency, and energy production. CCGT power plants are proven technology that can provide significant dispatchable power production to meet Delaware’s growing need for dependable energy, while promoting grid stability that will enable the integration of renewable energy generation.

It is not clean energy.  It’s the opposite of clean energy.  All R sponsors except for the General Assembly’s two sops to the construction trades: Sen. Walsh and Rep. Osienski.

What do you want to talk about?