Jet Dumping Fuel — File Photo

In preparation for an emergency return landing at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, a Delta airliner dumped fuel over Lake Allatoona — hundreds or thousands of pounds, depending on the source — for almost 40-minutes.

According to several TV stations in Atlanta, the Delta jet bound for Tokyo, Japan, had one of its four engines fail shortly after takeoff on Sunday, September 21, 2014.

In order to lessen the weight of the plane prior to the emergency landing, the pilots dumped fuel over Lake Allatoona in a vapor that could be seen by people in the vicinity below the aircraft.

Those who made the decision believed it was safer to dump the fuel on boaters, homeowners, crops and unsuspecting citizens than to try to land the airplane — with tanks that had enough fuel for a flight of almost 7,000 miles — that was too heavy.

We are told that there is no danger to anyone on the ground who might have been in the windstream of the hundreds of pounds of highly toxic jet fuel, whether by inhaling the fumes or having remnants of the poison contact skin or crops, because the plane’s altitude was high enough to prevent such problems during the 40-minute procedure over our drinking water.