Category: Environment

This is deeply troubling.  And beyond sickening.  AP reports:

GULF SHORES, Ala. – Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.

Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange – and troubling – phenomena.

Fish and other wildlife are fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast. But that is not the hopeful sign it might appear to be, researchers say.

The animals’ presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily get devoured by predators.

“A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable,” said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist.

Dear Pachamama, Mother Earth, Santa Madre Tierra, Gaia, Sweet Mother, I am so sorry for what we have done and are doing to you and your creatures, our brothers and sisters, the creatures who live in and near the sea.  We don’t know how to stop the oil, and we don’t know how to save all of these beings. Please understand our remorse, our regret, our shame and accept out deepest apologies for destroying this part of this wondrous, blue pearl planet.  Please forgive us.

———————-

simulposted at The Dream Antilles

It is by now obvious that even after we stop the gentle trickle of oil that’s currently expressing itself into the Gulf of Mexico (thank you so much, BP) we are not going to be able to get that oil out of the water for some considerable length of time–and if you think it could take years, I wouldn’t bet against you.

While BP is the legally responsible party, out on the water it will be up to the Coast Guard to manage the Federal response, and to determine that BP is running things in a way that gets the work done not only correctly and safely, but, in a world of limited resources, efficiently.

Which brings us to the obvious question: can the Coast Guard manage such a complex undertaking?

While we hope they can, you need to know that the Coast Guard has been trying to manage the replacement of their fleet of ships and aircraft for about a decade now…and the results have been so stunningly bad that you and I are now the proud owners of a small flotilla of ships that can never be used, because if they go to sea, they might literally break into pieces.

It’s an awful story, and before we’re done you’ll understand why Deepwater was already an ugly word around Headquarters, years before that oil rig blew up.  

On MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann Monday night, Marine toxicologist Riki Ott alleged that British Petroleum (BP) is trying to discourage or disallow public and media from seeing some of the horrific results of their oil leak by removing oiled animal carcasses from Gulf beaches.

“Turtle watch volunteers who walk the beaches consistently every morning at 6:00 a.m., they’re saying the carcasses are disappearing”

“People who walk the beaches at night, they’ve seen little baby dolphins wash up dead, flashlights, people descend out of nowhere, carcass gone in 15 minutes.

There’s reports from offshore of massive kills on the barrier islands from fishermen who have been working on the spill response…

BP’s response has been to use metal detectors to keep and prevent the people from even taking cell phones out to photograph this.”

There have been reports in the past few days of BP hiring private security contractors to keep the public and media away from oiled beaches.

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown June 14, 2010.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a story I originally posted in March of 2007 that seems so important right now I’ve brought it back for your consideration.

Let’s begin today’s discussion with a quick thought experiment.

What is the single most important thing necessary to ensure the survival of the State of Louisiana?

Improved government administration?

More and better levees?

The success of the “Road Home” project?

I submit it is none of these.

The single most important factor determining the future of the State of Louisiana is mud.

That’s right, mud.

BP Spills Coffee

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

For more than a century, in unison, the planets’ population proclaimed, thankfully petroleum flows.  Oil powers our machines.  The refined product has helped us manufacture massive quantities of clothing, aluminum sheet, and photovoltaic (PV) solar cells.  “Plastics.”  As was professed in a popular film decades ago, “There’s a great future in plastics.” Presently, and in the past, BP understood this and much more.  The company’s Executives knew petroleum could and would provide endless profits, power, and a perpetual presence.

Dear The United Kingdom,

I just wanted to take a minute to say hello and to see how things have been for you lately, and to maybe bring you up to date on a bit of news from here.

Well, right off the bat, we hear you have a new Conservative Prime Minister and that his Party and Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems are in partnership, which I’m sure will be interesting; you probably heard that us Colonials are again having Tea Parties, which has also been very interesting.

I have a Godson who’s getting married this September, so we’re all talking about that, and I hear Graham Norton was even better than last year at hosting Eurovision, despite the fact that it’s…frankly, it’s Eurovision.

Oh, yeah…we also had a bit of an oil spill recently that you may have heard about-and hoo, boy; you should see how the Company that spilled the oil has been acting.

Book Review: Leighninger, Jr., Robert D. Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal. 1st ed. 1 vol. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007.

(crossposted at Orange and Firedoglake)

(Inscription found on the Claremont, California post office)

So, I receive this from Sen. Leahy today, as follows:

Dear …….

Figuratively speaking, what BP has done to the communities and ecology of the Gulf Coast is downright criminal.

Eleven workers lost their lives in the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. Countless more have lost their livelihoods. The environmental devastation to marine life and coastal wetlands is unfathomable.

Yet under current law, if a jury finds BP criminally negligent, the company would not necessarily have to pay any restitution to the victims of the spill — not even to the families of rig-workers who perished or to the fishermen put out of work. Furthermore, criminal penalties are currently too lenient to adequately deter corporate wrongdoers from authorizing risky schemes that damage the environment.

That’s why this week I introduced the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) to make restitution for violations of the Clean Water Act mandatory and increase criminal sentences for violators.

Urge your members of Congress to support the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) to start treating preventable environmental catastrophes as serious criminal acts.

This legislation takes important steps towards deterring criminal conduct that leads to environmental and economic catastrophe.

Too often, big oil companies treat criminal fines and penalties as a mere cost of doing business. But passing ECEA would change all that, sentencing corporate wrongdoers to serious prison time and mandating restitution payments be made to the victims of corporate malfeasance.

So please, take a moment to support this important legislation by clicking here.

I fully support lifting the miniscule $75 million liability cap on corporations responsible for environmental disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill, but I believe we must also go further to treat such acts as serious crimes against our communities, our economy, and our environment.

If you agree, please support the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) today.

Thank you for taking action to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable and ensure something like this never happens again.

Sincerely,

Patrick Leahy

Let’s see, Maybe the NYTimes will help …

Last week, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, tried to bring a small group of journalists with him on a trip he was taking through the gulf on a Coast Guard vessel. Mr. Nelson’s office said the Coast Guard agreed to accommodate the reporters and camera operators. But at about 10 p.m. on the evening before the trip, someone from the Department of Homeland Security’s legislative affairs office called the senator’s office to tell them that no journalists would be allowed.

“They said it was the Department of Homeland Security’s response-wide policy not to allow elected officials and media on the same ‘federal asset,'” said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman for the senator.

[…]

Capt. Ron LaBrec, a Coast Guard spokesman, said that about a week into the cleanup response, the Coast Guard started enforcing a policy that prohibits news media from accompanying candidates for public office on visits to government facilities, “to help manage the large number of requests for media embeds and visits by elected officials.”

Reason 10) Elected officials and Media on the same ‘federal asset,’ are not allowed.

Reason 9) Easier to manage requests for ‘media embeds’ and visits by elected officials.

Hot off the Presses …

Scoop: Gulf well may be gushing 25,000 to 30,000 barrels

By Joel Achenbach, washingtonpost.com — June 10, 2010; 4:00 PM ET

Just filed to the web some new figures we obtained this afternoon from the federal government that suggest the Deepwater Horizon well is gushing more oil than previously estimated.

The Flow Rate Technical Group has about five subgroups, and the one that is looking at the video of the leak, the so-called plume team,

has come up with an estimate of 20,000 to 40,000 barrels a day,

with the most likely range being 25,000 to 30,000 barrels.

The team had earlier estimated the flow at 12,000 to 25,000 barrels.

Photographer Rich Matthews takes a closer look at oil

Journalist dives into Gulf, can only see oil

It takes 30 minutes to clean off after diving into ocean 40 miles from shore

By RICH MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer June 9, 2010

Eeewwwh!!   WHAT was he thinking!

Hope you have a De-tox tank, handy, Rich Matthews — you’re going to need it!

Photo Credit: June 7, 2010 photo, APTN photographer Rich Matthews takes a closer look at oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, in the Gulf of Mexico south of Venice, La.. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

View related Photos

APTN photographer Rich Matthews takes a closer look at oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, in the Gulf of Mexico south of Venice, La.. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

MSNBC – Updated: 5:54 a.m. ET June 9, 2010

but wait this intrepid Reporter goes deeper …

Invictus (Unconquered)

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

—William Ernest Henley

A favorite poem of Nelson Mandela