As Disasters Pile Up, Let’s Not Forget the Gulf Spill

March 18, 2011

by jonbowermaster

  1 Comment

A sinking feeling washed over me a couple nights ago while watching video of the devastation caused by last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While the oil-soaked birds and plaints of residents watching their lives and livelihoods change forever still resonate 11 months after the spill, somehow the whole scene seemed somehow … so … yesterday.

Which is horrific to admit. But think about the horrors we’ve seen since, both man made and natural disasters. Earthquakes have rocked Haiti (230,000 dead) and Chile (8.8 magnitude, decimating cities and coastline), floods in Queensland, wild fires across Russia.

Now the entire world is watching the fallout of the combo earthquake/tsunami that wreaked havoc along the coast of Japan as a potential nuclear nightmare unfolds in front of our eyes.

It is amazing how one ecologic disaster seems to follow another, quickly, sucking the public’s attention along with it. While the Gulf spill was gushing, it’s all anyone could talk about. Today the very same energy, anger and uncertainty that saw a global conversation focus on blowout preventers and containment domes has turned to failed sea walls and spent fuel rods.

Since August of last year I’ve been traveling the country screening a film we made about the environmental ills and powerful culture of Louisiana (“SoLa, Louisiana Water Stories”). The film was being finished just as the spill occurred, so includes some early video of the initial shock and anger that initially consumed Gulf residents.

The third emotion that washed over those fishermen, riggers and Gulf businesspeople? Resignation. Everyone I know along the Gulf was convinced that soon after the well was capped, the world’s eye would turn away. Which happened, to a degree.

But with the one-year anniversary of the spill approaching (April 20), there are some in Louisiana who continue to fight to keep the BP/Deepwater Horizon/TransOcean spill in the headlines.

Riki Ott is one. A community activist, commercial fisherwoman and doctor in marine toxicology, Dr. Ott essentially relocated from her Alaska home to Louisiana since the spill began, testifying anywhere and everywhere she can about the short and long-term implications of the spill. Her books about the impacts of the Exxon Valdez spill – “Oil Spill” and “Not One Drop: Promises, Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill” – have become bibles for locals intent on seeing that the Gulf spill is cleaned up as best as possible and that the people who were impacted made as whole as possible.

This Saturday, March 19, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans, Dr. Ott will be the primary speaker at the Forum for the Gulf III, organized by the folks at www.stopgulfoildisaster.org.

Like many in the Gulf region, Dr. Ott thinks there are still many unanswered questions:

*How toxic is Corexit, and what are its effects in the quantities used in the Gulf, in mixing it with oil, and in spraying it at deep-water temperatures?
*What is the truth about infection by bioengineered microbes and their mutations resulting from cultivating them in Corexit and oil?
*Should all residents of the Gulf Coast be tested for microbes and toxins?
*What are medical and legal avenues to recovery for those already affected?
*What will happen to our shrimp, crabs, oysters and fish in the future?
*What do we not know and what are BP and government not saying?

Given the nuclear power mess unfolding in Japan it’s unlikely that new nuclear plants will be built in the U.S. anytime soon, despite being favored by politicians, including the Obama administration.

Which means our dependence on fossil fuels, particularly oil, will not end.

On the same day tsunami waves were trashing Japan a second permit to drill deep in the Gulf of Mexico was granted by the Department of Interior since the moratorium was lifted. The new well will go down 6,500 feet, located about 70 miles off the southern tip of the Louisiana fishing-and-oil hub of Venice.

Politicians from both parties are encouraging more permits be granted and faster, hoping to boost domestic oil production and possibly help decrease the price of gasoline at the pump.