FOR NEW VIDEO FROM THE GULF, GO TO TAKEPART.COM
It will take years before we know for certain the true impact of mixing 5 million gallons of sweet Louisiana crude oil and another 1 million gallons of toxic dispersants into the complicated ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico.
Fisherman and politician George Barisch can’t wait for years.
In order to keep his life and family going, Barisch got back to fishing as soon as he possibly could. When I saw him last week he’d just pulled his boat out of Gulf waters, loaded with more than five thousand pounds of shrimp and redfish. One advantage of much of the Gulf having been off-limits to fishing for the good part of a year is that fish stocks are thriving.
Despite the haul, there are questions, which George understands better than anyone. How is the market going to recover when much of the country is still hesitant to buy Gulf seafood? And is seafood from the Gulf safe to eat?
George answers that question by grilling up a few dozen shrimp in his suburban kitchen (his Gulf-side home was wiped out by Katrina), sprinkled lightly with garlic and lemon. He’s convinced that the fish are untainted, even though he’s got dozens of friends and supporters in the environmental movement who have sworn off Gulf seafood while testing continues.
FOR NEW VIDEO FROM THE GULF, GO TO TAKEPART.COM
FOR NEW VIDEO FROM THE GULF, GO TO TAKEPART.COM
Ivor van Heerden doesn’t seek controversy, but he’s no stranger to it. In 2006, he was fired from his post at LSU after concluding that the Army Corps of Engineers was to blame for the “shoddy, shoddy engineering” missteps that cost New Orleans its levee system during Hurricane Katrina.
Since the Gulf spill began, Ivor’s spent as much time as anyone in Louisiana studying the disaster’s impact on Louisiana’s 3,000 miles of coastline.
His conclusion—that almost all the oil is gone—will rankle some; but it’s an astute point, albeit one that’s hard to swallow for fishermen and Gulf Coast residents whose lives were inalterably impacted by the spill.
Ivor would like to think all the attention paid to the Gulf due to the spill would help focus money and attention on fixing the bigger problems impacting the coast. But given his past experience with a government and bureaucracy notorious for corruption, he’s not filled with optimism.
FOR NEW VIDEO FROM THE GULF, GO TO TAKEPART.COM
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.
Finally someone has been held responsible for a sizable oil spill in Louisiana and sentenced to a jail term for the environmental degradation caused by the accident.
But it is not anyone who worked for BP, Transocean or Halliburton. Nope, it is one Randall Dantin, 46, of Marrero, Louisiana, who is going to jail for 21 months for his role in an accident on the Mississippi River that spilled 283,000 gallons of fuel oil into the river in the heart of New Orleans in July 2008.
The Gulf spilled close to 5 million gallons. To-date, no one involved in that spill has been charged with a crime.
I was in New Orleans when that 2008 accident happened, and watched as the spilled fuel oil quickly coated the river and its banks for 80 miles, all the way to Venice, LA, shutting down New Orleans access to drinking water for nearly a week.
After a two-and-a-half-year investigation by the Coast Guard, responsibility for the accident goes to a “sleep-deprived” tugboat driver who was pushing a barge loaded with oil across the river when it was errantly t-boned by a tanker coming down the Mississippi.
(For the rest of my dispatch, go to takepart.com)
A trio of news stories out of the Gulf this week remind that the more things change in the region — whether natural disaster (hurricanes), manmade screw up (oil rig explosions) or government intervention (drilling bans) — the more they stay the same.
Within weeks after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank nearly one year ago the Obama Administration banned all new deepwater drilling. The ban lasted until October 12. This week the Department of Interior announced it had approved its first new permit to drill deep in the Gulf of Mexico since the spill.
Noble Energy, a Houston-based operator, is the prizewinner, which the new Bureau of Ocean Energy, Regulation and Enforcement – the reorganized Minerals Management Service, the federal office that had cozied up to the oil industry for years — says it thoroughly vetted. Noble had begun drilling to 13,858 feet when it was halted by the spill.
The announcement was welcomed by the oil industry as its shares jumped on Wall Street. “We expect further deepwater permits to be approved in coming weeks and months based on the same process that led to the approval of this permit,” said the agency’s director Michael Bromwich.
For Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal the permit was a “good first step.” The first-term governor – who faces election this November — wants more permits granted faster. “We must quickly get to a level of issuing permits that represents a critical mass so thousands of oil and gas industry workers can get back to work fueling America again.”
It’s no surprise of course that’s Jindal’s take. As the Times pointed out this week he’s long been “cozy” with the oil industry, relationships complicated – or greased, dependent on your view — by a foundation set up by his wife the month after he was elected in 2007, the Supriva Jindal Foundation for Louisiana’s Children.
Among the biggest donors – all legal under Louisiana law – are Marathon Oil ($250,000), Israeli oil company Alon USA ($250,00), Dow Chemical ($100,000), Northrop Grumman, AT&T as well as other oil companies, insurers and construction companies.
While campaign donations are limited, donations to Mrs. Jindal’s Foundation are not.
What’s in it for the corporations, above and beyond supporting the foundation’s goal of delivering much-needed hi-tech equipment to schools in the poorest neighborhoods of Louisiana? AT&T hopes the governor will sign a law allowing it to sell cable TV rights without negotiating directly with individual parishes; Marathon was granted approval a year ago to expand the amount of oil it can refine at its Louisiana plant; Alon is seeking permit to dump more pollutants at its Krotz Spring refinery. And on and on.
Politicians using do-good foundations to (vaguely) mask corporate bribery is hardly a new tactic. PACs and political interest groups on both sides of the fence have been doing it for decades.
But in Louisiana, where corruption is a long-practiced fine art, the Jindals’ mutual interests aren’t masked at all. A picture of the governor with his wife graces the foundation’s website, his chief fundraiser is the charity’s treasurer and an employee of the governor’s office, working as an aide to Mrs. Jindal, is the contact for the foundation’s books.
While corporations continue to get their way in Louisiana, it appears many of those whose lives were impacted by last April’s oil spill will have to wait a bit longer for re-compensation.
Citing “lack of adequate documentation,” Ken Feinberg – appointed by Obama to dole out up to $20 billion of BP’s money to those whose livelihoods were affected by the spill – admitted that more than 100,000 claims currently on file might never be paid.
“Roughly 80 percent of the claims that we now have in the queue lack proof,” Feinberg said last week in Washington, admitting it was “a huge number.”
To-date his office has paid out nearly $3.6 billion, to 168,000 individuals and businesses across the Gulf, mostly emergency payments of a few thousand dollars.
Feinberg’s denials angered state governments in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, the White House … and a boatload of individuals in the region who’ve either already lost businesses or need money to jump start them. The states are appealing to the courts for redress, which means the lack of payments will certainly go on for months. Individuals are largely left holding the bag.
From its perspective, BP feels Feinberg has been “overly generous.” Any of the $20 billion not paid out goes back to BP. Meanwhile the oil company is paying Feinberg’s law firm $850,000 a month to administer the fund, which is currently being renegotiated – upwards. The lawyers are most likely happy to see the payment process drag on … and on.
A trio of events happening simultaneously this week along the Gulf coast is stirring debate:
1. The team responsible for paying out damages to Gulf spill victims is about to start writing checks to those who’ve proved they deserve it;
2. NOAA has given its blessing to reopening a 4,200-square-mile area of the Gulf of Mexico to fishing, near where the BP well exploded;
3. and chemical researchers are still trying to draw attention to what they regard as fact, that the Gulf seafood bears toxic levels that are still too high for human consumption.
Like most things in Louisiana, the three are inextricably related: In order to write checks, Ken Feinberg – charged with doling out $20 billion of BP’s cash — needs to be able, as best he can, to ascertain the long-term impacts of the spill on the region. The researcher he hired has issued a report that suggests the impacts of the spill will be less severe than anticipated, on both fish and man. Yet there is a fervent crowd of scientists and environmentalists working in the region who contend the testing being done by the government is insufficient and that the seafood is still tainted. Amid that confusion the federal government (via NOAA) feels a need open closed fishing grounds in order to get fishermen back to work and stimulate the local economies.
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
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