Baton Rouge, Louisiana: It’s rare for me to see 67-year-old Wilma Subra – chemist, MacArthur Grant ‘genius,’ grandmother of six – so worked up. But when I asked last week how things were going in the Gulf, where she’s been measuring levels of toxicity in air, water and fish long before the BP gusher began she was adamant that things are still bad out there.
“My biggest concern is that the message is ‘The oil is all gone.’ We are planning on being out in the field monitoring the wetlands, estuaries and beach areas for the impacts of the oil over the next several years,” she says, insisting that only then will we truly know about the impact on marine life, the environment and human health created by the BP mess.
But Subra’s biggest immediate concern is that the seafood coming from the Gulf may not be safe and that the federal agencies, specifically the FDA and NOAA, have cooked the books by adjusting the amount of some of the chemicals allowed in the fish they are testing … as a way to get fishermen back onto the Gulf and to restore confidence in the seafood market.
She forwarded me the criteria NOAA is using for testing, which makes it clear that its first test is smell and second for chemicals. Subra’s main concern is Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons, of which the BP crude had large percentages.
In June, says Subra, while the spill was still unfolding “the FDA, in association with NOAA, raised the acceptable levels of PAH, without providing a rationale for why.”
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
Over the weekend I premiered my new documentary film about water and man in Louisiana – “SoLa, Louisiana Water Stories” – in the belly of the beast, downtown Baton Rouge, the state’s capitol.
At the beautiful Manship Theater we drew a crowd of Louisiana’s environmental cognoscenti, from activists to lawyers, politicians to fishermen. After the screening I was joined on stage by several of the characters interviewed in the film; I hadn’t been to Louisiana in a couple months – certainly not since the BP gusher had been finally capped – and was curious to gauge their take, emotional and statistical, on the status of the mess in the Gulf.
Former head of Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality, Paul Templet, admitted he hadn’t seen signs of change in the state level, or even yet at the federal agency level in regard to oversight of the offshore oil business.
“My only sense of optimism,” he said, “lies with the courts. I think if BP is ultimately held to its promises it will be because of judges not politicians.”
There was worry among the crowd that BP may not live up to its promises of restitution – the $20 billion promised and currently being administered by Kenneth Feinberg, which many believe could grow to $100 billion, which could bankrupt the company.
Attorney Danny Becnel, Louisiana’s answer to F. Lee Bailey, from Reserve, Louisiana, filed the first suit in federal court against BP just 10 days after the spill, has since filed dozens more on behalf of fishermen, oil workers, restaurant and hotel owners and more. “The legal fights are going to go on as long as there is oil in the Gulf, which will be a long time,” he tells the crowd.
Dean Wilson, the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, who watches over the environmental health of the most biodiverse swamp in the country, says while there is no oil in the basin …yet … his biggest concern post-spill is the continued lack of political will in the state. “We’ve been able to stop a lot of local environmental problems, like the cutting of the cypress swamps, but without the support of government and legislators. I think what we saw throughout the BP spill was the same thing … a lack of political will necessary to stop big pollution.”
“I don’t think (Governor Bobby) Jindal has ever even said the word ‘environment’ out loud,” quipped Templet. Prompting a shout-out from the audience, “But we know he can say ‘berm,’ “ reference to the governor’s fervent efforts during the spill to get a too-little-too-late $400 million berm built at the mouth of the Mississippi.
“Where has Mr. Jindal gone,” someone else asked from the audience. “He was all over the TV during the spill, calling for federal help. Now he’s nowhere to be seen.” Apparently his efforts these days are focused on getting the November 30 moratorium on new drilling lifted early.
Marylee Orr, the executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, reminded a crowd that is impacted by Louisiana’s disasters first hand, whether hurricanes, oil spills or Saint’s losses, reminded that local time is now told “pre-spill and post-spill.” She guesses she did more than 400 radio, television and print interviews at the height of the spill and worked 20-hour days for more than 3 months. Is she optimistic now that the well has been capped?
“Only time will tell if we can afford optimism. The notion that is now being spread around the world that the spill is over, that the problem is over, that everything’s back to normal … is not okay. Nothing is back to normal.”
Supporting her was chemist Wilma Subra, who has literally been on the ground since day one of the BP gusher, measuring toxins in the air, water and fish. She is not impressed by any of the numbers and is most angered by the “spin” being put on the issue of whether Gulf seafood is good to go … or not.
“The director of NOAA stood in front of a group of fishermen last week and said, repeatedly, ‘Seafood from the Gulf is not contaminated.’ Well, I don’t think we know that for sure yet.” Her biggest concern is that the government has changed the “allowable percentages” of certain chemicals found in fish, to ensure the fisheries reopen, choosing economic incentive over environmental cautions.
“It will still be many years before we know for sure how these coastal communities are going to fare,” said Subra. “Anything else you hear is a rush to judgment.”
For the past couple decade’s scientists, and increasingly laymen, have been talking loudly about just how badly man has overfished the world’s ocean.
But statistic piled upon statistic haven’t seemed to slow our rapacious take; the World Wildlife Fund still insists that at today’s rate by 2050 every species of fish currently known, will be gone.
Maybe this will help. A brand new analysis shows how unsustainable fishing is taking food out of the mouth’s of the world’s poorest and at the same time costing the international economy somewhere between $36 and $100 billion a year.
The report by economist Rashid Sumaila, working with the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre and supported by the Pew Environment Group, suggests that well-managed fisheries may simultaneously help both the natural resource and the bottom line.
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
Yesterday, the 152nd day since the BP well first began gushing, its leaking pipeline was finally sealed for good. We hope.
The final tally was an estimated 205 million gallons of oil unexpectedly added to the Gulf of Mexico.
Left Over Boom
Yet yesterday’s news that a relief well had successfully tapped the leaking pipeline 13,000 feet below the surface five months after it was begun (the second well – remember the government “demanding it!” — was halted a few weeks ago, at 10,000 feet) was greeted around the world with little more than a yawn. Other stories now dominate the headlines ranging from Pakistani floods to fashion weeks, tea baggers to trapped miners and, in Louisiana, of course, all things Black and Gold.
But the mess in the Gulf is still a big story to many. Or it should be. Unless you believe that in retrospect BP chief Tony Hayward may have been right when he claimed back in May that the oil then spewing from the Macondo well would “be of little consequence.”
(For the rest of my dispatch, go to takepart.com)
The economy can’t be so bad that fish counters are now relying on telephone surveys and snail mail to keep track of which populations are most at risk of being overfished.
That can’t be true.
But apparently it’s so. Using a system first put in place in the 1980s, the National Marine Fisheries Service – an agency of NOAA — still relies heavily on telephone calls to individual homes of sports fishermen to help them count fish populations. But according even to local fishermen, not highly trained scientists, the system hasn’t always been that accurate and has too often led to the wrong areas being placed off limits for both recreational and commercial fishing due to fishy numbers.
Now, in North Carolina, the Fisheries Service thinks it’s come up with a more fool-proof plan to improve on the so-called “Coastal Household Telephone Survey” for counting: The U.S. Postal Service!
According to one researcher involved in the counting, the returns by mail are netting more complete data. “It’s kind of like back to the future,” Lynne Stokes told Physorg.com. He’s a professor in the Department of Statistical Science at SMU in Dallas. “The data was better and we got a higher response.”
Says who?
(For the rest of my dispatch, go to takepart.com)
While the world’s eyes were intently focused on the Gulf of Mexico and its history of deepwater drilling during the past four months, many in the U.S. oil industry turned their gaze fiercely north.
But using the BP mess as a flashing cautionary sign, the Obama administration – Ken Salazar’s Department of Interior – took advantage of all the bad press and canceled a lease sale in Alaska’s Bristol Bay and four previously scheduled leases in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas (all to Shell Oil), saying no additional leases would be offered until more scientific data was collected.
Yesterday Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell’s administration filed a lawsuit against the federal government alleging the Interior Department is illegally blocking oil-and-gas drilling in federal waters off the state’s northern coast.
Which makes me wonder if some in the oil industry might be now looking south – far south, to Antarctica – for potential undersea oil riches.
To-date, few have seriously considered drilling for oil off the coast of Antarctica, for a couple simple reasons: The treaty that governs the continent says such exploration is off-limits until at least 2041 and who wants to risk floating a $1 billion-plus rig in a sea which is also home to 20-mile long floating icebergs.
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
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