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A House Divided

Louisianans, One Year After the Spill

Following the news about the Gulf of Mexico one year after the Deepwater Horizon disaster can be like reading “A Tale of Two Places.” The ocean, the wetlands, the fish, and the birds are recovering, according to some people. Others say the mess left at the bottom of the sea by the BP blowout threatens to wreak havoc on the ocean food web for years to come. Most people, we hear, are all right. Or, we are told, some are getting sick.

Which tale is true? For many Gulf residents, especially those from Louisiana, the state hardest hit by the spill, the answer might be Both.

The choice of what to say about the BP spill reveals a tension between the private narratives Louisianans tell themselves and their families and the public narratives they share with the rest of the world. Many Louisianans express frustration at the national media’s habit of showing images of oiled birds and dead dolphins; it only depresses tourist bookings and seafood sales, they complain. Other Louisianans say the pictures of destruction are necessary, a way to hold BP accountable for its actions; there’s no use jumping on what one local wit dubbed “The Streetcar Named Denial.”

The tough decisions about how to describe the spill reflect Louisianans’ split loyalties, which are divided between the fishing culture – the heart of the state’s identity – and the oil industry, the backbone of its economy. Since the 1930s, the two have been intimately connected: Many fishermen work the rigs in the off-season, and some of the best fishing spots are found near abandoned platforms, where sea life flourishes. In Louisiana, there’s nothing odd about celebrating the annual Shrimp and Petroleum Festival.

The tension is exacerbated by the widespread resentment over BP’s settlement process. Out of the $20 billion set aside for damage claims, only $3.4 billion has been disbursed by settlement czar Kenneth Feinberg. Some fishermen have been made whole. Others have received nothing. In New Orleans, dishwashers at restaurants unaffected by the spill have received $10,000 checks. Louisianans say the system is opaque, arbitrary, and just plain unfair. There are complaints about the sudden appearance of “Spillionaires.”

Then there’s the issue of the spill’s impact on the health of shoreline communities. Residents whisper darkly about a “Gulf Plague” – odd ailments and illnesses, especially among those involved in the cleanup effort. On YouTube, there are legions of videos featuring fishermen and cleanup workers describing their health problems. Yet not until this March did federal officials decide to launch a long-range study of Gulf residents’ health. While some Louisianans warn of a coverup, others snicker at the conspiracy theories of those they’ve branded “Gulf Truthers.” The pendulum of public opinion swings between paranoia and the glib assurances of the Pollyannas. One local calls it “analysis paralysis.”

The swirl of rumors, the logjam of lawsuits, the annoyance with national reporters who parachuted into the area on April 20 and left the very next day – all of it has cooked into a gumbo of cynicism. If the feelings of Louisianans a year after BP’s disaster seem contradictory, that’s because they are. They are contradictory just like the pain of life, the pain of a place and a people that are wounded. The stories of those wounds can be hard to convey to outsiders. Which is why it’s best to let Louisianans speak for themselves.

photo of a man speaking on a dock near fishing gear

The Sportsman

As the editor of a hunting and fishing magazine called Louisiana Sportsman, Todd Masson hears often from friends, relatives, and readers who are concerned about eating Gulf seafood in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. There’s no need to worry, he tells them. “Our fish, crabs, and oysters are no less safe to eat today than they were two years ago,” he wrote recently. As for those who might have made a killing in the BP settlement process? “If you actually came out ahead, then my hat’s off to you.”

Sport fishing is an essential thread in the fabric of Louisiana’s culture. We have 40 percent of the nation’s coastal wetlands, built over millennia by the Mississippi River, and as such we are the nursery grounds for the Gulf. Our fishing is spectacular, and most weekend family gatherings involve something from our local marshes – fried, boiled, baked, or broiled. When commercial and recreational fishing was outlawed last summer in the wake of the spill, it isn’t overstating things to say that people grieved. It was like a pillar of our society had been severed.

Business is certainly down. The media presented so many misleading stories during the days of the spill that everyone in the country now has the perception that the lower fringes of Louisiana’s marsh are just dripping with crude oil. That’s obviously not the case. I had some national writers down in October, and for three days we fished the marshes all around the mouth of the Mississippi River – ground zero for spill impact – and they were absolutely astounded that we didn’t see one drop of oil.

The BP oil spill had absolutely no impact on the health of current-day seafood or the prospects for its progeny. Unrefined crude oil is a natural substance that is broken down, weathered and absorbed by nature remarkably quickly in a warm, dynamic system like that of the northern Gulf. To wit, there have been literally thousands of studies of Gulf seafood, and not one single sample has come back contaminated. After conducting these studies, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals determined a diner would have to consume nine pounds of fish, five pounds of oysters, or 63 pounds of shrimp every day for five years to reach any level of concern.

The Activist

Linda Leavitt’s Cajun roots go back to the 1700s, and though her family’s tradition of news reporting may not be as long, to Leavitt, whose parents both worked for NBC News, it feels equally strong. “My mother would say, ‘You go on down there, Linda, you get the story.’” Which she has, working as a citizen-journalist to gather photographs and video of the spill’s consequence, coordinating campaigns on Facebook, and watchdogging BP on Twitter. “You got to get the word out,” she says.

It was so sad, when you saw the oil coming over the boom, that we were so helpless engineering-wise to keep this out. That sediment can wash up with the tide, and the sad part is they know there are submerged tar mats. Hurricane season is 45 days away. That tar mat is going to wash ashore.

photo of a woman in a cypress woodland, holding an umbrella with 'save the gulf' written on it
Linda Leavitt

You can rage against the machine all you want, but the reality is you have a corporation that is incredibly negligent from a safety perspective. I’m a great believer in the truth. I’m a great believer in giving people the information so they can make the honest judgments. The more you cover it up, hide it, and whitewash it, then you get crazy-assed conspiracy theorists, everybody out there thinking the worst. That’s what happens in a closed society with closed information. That’s not the America I grew up in. I grew up in an America where information should be made public for public safety.

The dynamic with a lot of people who may be afraid to come forward and talk is fear that other people’s livelihoods are based on the oil companies and they don’t want to rock that boat, or shrimping is their livelihood, so they don’t want to rock the boat. There is a lot of that in small communities, fear of being the first one to come out and say something on the record.

Here’s the crux: There’s always been this unspoken acknowledgement between the oil industry and the fishermen, the Cajuns and other people who made their livelihoods on the water, that if something goes down, if something happens, we’ll take care of you. And that’s not happening. It’s a big disappointment.

The Philanthropist

When BP began spraying Corexit, Joannie Hughes, a single mom from Plaquemines Parish, started worrying about the rain. Could the chemical oil dispersant evaporate and return via precipitation? She had tests run, garnered some local news, then someone posted a sign on her front yard that read, “It’s not the rain water that’s going to kill you.” Frightened for her family, she decided the best she could do was to start a nonprofit, Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana, to assist out-of-work families. “I backed off, right or wrong, and continued the humanitarian part of the work, because that’s where I felt I could at least make some difference.”

Murky Waters

“A deathtrap of mucus gashing through the water like flypaper.” That’s how Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, describes the effect of the oil and gas from last summer’s disaster on the delicate marine organisms that inhabit the depths of the Gulf of Mexico.

When BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded on April 20, 2010, Joye’s research team was among the earliest on the scene and the first to report huge underwater plumes …more…

It’s been an interesting road. We knew we couldn’t clean up the oil. We knew we couldn’t stop people from drilling. What we could do is feed some families that were suffering who had not been paid. Because legitimate claims have been denied.

We’re a bunch of moms, not a million-dollar organization. We delivered to one family and she asked if another family got a box of food. She immediately called the other family to come over and split the food, so instead of one family eating for five days, two families ate for two and a half days. That’s the kind of community it is. No one can ever say people here don’t help themselves, because they do. So far CHSL has given food box deliveries to over 300 families. We’re very good shoppers.

With saltwater intrusion, we’re losing the cypress at a phenomenal rate, and that’s pre-spill. So if we don’t start restoring by planting new ones, it’s going to be gone before my grandchildren are ever out there in a pirogue.

We are planting seedlings of cypress trees complete with nutria-resistant wire. You can plant a tree in someone’s honor, we send you a picture, GPS coordinates, and long term it helps fight erosion in our wetlands. We’re doing it all the way down in the marsh. We’re literally down there with our waders planting the trees and we love for volunteers to come down and help us plant them too.

I try to explain that we are part of that ecosystem. We haven’t been the best stewards, but we do count at least as much as the grass shrimp.

The Fisherman

Jason Adams has known only shrimping or working for the oil industry. He started fishing with his parents, he says, when “I was in diapers.” When the Macondo well blew out, Adams, a native of the bayou town of Galliano, worked briefly for BP doing cleanup work, but soon became resentful of how many jobs were going to guys from Houston. Today, he’s working as a tugboat captain. But, he says, “I’d rather fish.”

I worked it with my boat and let me tell you, I got into some of that oil with the Corexit. I thought I was going to die. Sick, can’t breathe. And the other side effect, I’m mentally sick because there’s such uncertainty. The postlarva of the white shrimp and the brown shrimp [are in danger] – once that contamination reaches the estuaries and all that, it’s a done deal. You know my little boy, sometimes he cries. He said, ‘Dad, what if I won’t be able to go shrimping anymore?’

photo of a man, thoughtful

It’s fine right now way up in the estuaries. But what’s it going to be like five years from now? The bottom line is that they sunk the oil. I don’t know how many millions of gallons of the Corexit they put in there.

I’m going to tell you what’s going to make that catastrophe – that first tropical depression. The first real southeast wind we had the other day, that’s when the oil came up on the beach.

A lot of the fishermen, it messed up their livelihoods. They can’t work, they’re sick. Their backs are against the wall right now. They tell me, ‘I won’t be able to work, but yet they want to come offer me $300,000, not for my livelihood, they’re offering me that for my life.’ The people that were in it, that got sprayed, that worked in that oil – they’re just buying their life.

Ninety percent of the people would rather be doing what they love to do. Fishermen are resilient people. You think a fisherman wants to collect money from BP and sit in his house? He’d go stir crazy. When it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood. You’re doing what you want to do.

Karen Dalton Beninato is a freelance writer from New Orleans who has covered the BP oil spill for The Huffington Post. Her website is KarenDaltonBeninato.com. A resident of New Orleans and a Bayou Lacombe Choctaw Indian, Stacy Revere’s photography can be viewed at slrevere.photoshelter.com.

This story was partially funded through micro-donations via Spot.Us


NAD metabolism in Vibrio cholerae.

NAD metabolism in Vibrio cholerae. J W Foster and C Brestel Abstract Extracts of Vibrio cholerae were assayed for various enzymatic activities associated with pyridine nucleotide cycle metabolism. The activities measured include NAD glycohydrolase, nicotinamide deamidase, nicotinamide mononucleotide deamidase, and nicotinic acid phosphoribosyltransferase. The results obtained demonstrate the existence in V. cholerae of the five-membered pyridine nucleotide cycle and the potential for a four-membered pyridine nucleotide cycle. The data presented also suggest that most of the NAD glycohydrolase in V. cholerae extracts is not directly related to cholera toxin. Full text Full text is available as a scanned copy of the original print version. Get a printable copy (PDF file) of the complete article (619K), or click on a page image below to browse page by page. Links to PubMed are also available for Selected References.

The Mississippi Coast as photographed by me on Oct. 7, 2010

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Friday, July 15, 2011

On the Bayou, BP oil spill hasn’t gone away » peoplesworld

On the Bayou, BP oil spill hasn’t gone away

crabbing2
HOPEDALE, La. - Eric Guzman carries himself like any healthy 35-year-old, but his eyes tell you he's been through what only someone much older would normally have experienced.
Guzman is captain of a Bayou shrimp boat that he takes out now only on weekends. During the week he is a union electrician at the Folger's coffee plant here. He has also worked for Lazy Boy Seafood, an outfit that buys shrimp right off the boats.
"I'm glad I have this job," he said, when our reporters caught up with him during a break outside his plant gate. "You can't support a family without a good job, and now, after the oil spill, the shrimp and oyster businesses are hurting."
Guzman, like many of the fishermen in Louisiana, started out on the water as a kid and, like many others, when they got older, fished a big part of the year and worked in the building trades the rest of the year. He is a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 130.
He says he looks forward to the weekends when he can get out on his boat, the Captain Rusty. "I've been doing it since I was 12 years old," he said.
When Hurricane Katrina hit, destroying everything he and thousands of other families had, he went to Portland, Ore., where he could continue his apprenticeship as an electrical worker.
"I didn't want to drop that," he said, "because when you get through a union apprenticeship program you have top-notch skills that you can be proud of and that you can use for the rest of your life."
But he came back to Hopedale where, together with his wife, he re-started a life "in the place that me and all my friends and family love so much."
The BP oil spill intruded on that process a little over a year ago, and Guzman had to switch from shrimper to clean-up captain for the oil giant, skimming the oil off the waters of the Gulf. He and a crew of three worked a boat that belonged to someone else. They laid booms and skimmed the oil from the surface of the water.
"BP likes for people to think that the skimming got rid of all the oil," he said. "They don't want you to think about how most of the oil went down to the bottom. We were dead set against them using those dispersants but they didn't listen and they did it anyway." He recalled the "lack of concern they had for us out there doing the dirty work on the Gulf. No one knows how we've been affected by breathing in those vapors. People don't realize that they sent planes out over the Gulf spraying dispersants, not caring about whether those of us down in the boats were getting hit."
Guzman said the shrimp business has been hurt because, even though there are shrimp that have not been contaminated by the oil, people are afraid to take the chance on buying them. Prices have dropped, despite the smaller supplies, and people are going out of business.
A bait shop operated by a shrimp boat captain interviewed by the People's World right after the spill is going out of business.
The oyster farmers, Guzman said, are really suffering. "Only now are we seeing a few signs that oysters might come back," he said. He said the oyster business was hurt by the BP spill even in areas where the water was not actually poisoned. He explained how fresh water from the Mississippi was allowed to flow into the marshes to create an outflow to keep the advancing oil offshore. "The fresh water killed a lot of life forms that require salinity to survive," he said, "including the oysters."
The recent floods in the Midwest contributed to the destruction of the oyster beds also because river water had to be diverted again into the marshes to avoid flooding downstream in New Orleans. "Just as some things were coming back, there was a new setback," he said. "As a result of those Midwest floods we actually lost oyster beds to the west, even ones that had survived the BP spill."
Guzman said he was angry with BP because "even today they have not really made people whole for their losses. Some got back percentages of their losses and some have gotten nothing."
"I see crabs with sores on the bottom of them that are not supposed to be there. I see turtles and porpoises washing up on the beech and I wonder why. I worry about the long-term effects of those vapors, but I will never give up shrimping and crabbing" said Guzman. "It's in my blood."
Photo: Brad and Johnny Held, Louisiana IBEW members out crabbing in the Gulf recently. Blake Deppe/PW

Friday, May 6, 2011

Gulf Ecosystem Restoration Task Force Creates Citizens’ Advisory Committee, Releases Restoration Priorities EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, joined by CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley, other task force members, hold official meeting today in Mobile, Ala.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson convened an official meeting of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force today in Mobile, Alabama. During the meeting, the task force created a citizens’ advisory committee to help guide the group’s efforts and released a strategy background document outlining the priorities of the ongoing gulf restoration. The meeting in Alabama furthered the task force’s ongoing commitment to supporting the conservation and restoration of resilient and healthy ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico.

Jackson proposed to establish and support a 25-member Gulf of Mexico Citizen Advisory Committee during the meeting, acknowledging the need to ensure residents and local organizations have a formal process to offer input and guidance on the work of the task force and to voice environmental concerns. The newly formed committee will hold its first official meeting later this summer.

“Since President Obama first formed this task force, our focus has been on collecting the ideas and input of gulf residents,” EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said. “We’ve made clear that restoration plans should come from the gulf to Washington, and we’re counting on the people who know these areas best to shape our work through public meetings like this one, through the Citizens’ Advisory Committee and other efforts.”

During the meeting, the task force also identified four key priorities for the ongoing restoration of the gulf, including enhancing community resilience, restoring and conserving habitat, restoring water quality, and replenishing and protecting living coastal and marine resources. The priorities were developed based upon input from the general public and key stakeholder groups throughout the region. The task force plans for the priorities to serve as the main restorations goals and will identify specific actions to help to achieve these goals.

The Mobile meeting was the latest in a series of meetings that the task force is holding throughout the five gulf states. Previous meetings were held in New Orleans and Pensacola. President Obama issued an executive order in October to create the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, continuing the administration’s ongoing commitment to the gulf region. The task force works to integrate federal restoration efforts with those of local stakeholders and state and tribal governments, and to facilitate accountability and support throughout the restoration process.

More information on the task force: 
http://www.epa.gov/gulfcoasttaskforce

Thursday, May 5, 2011

La. seeks larger share than other Gulf states of eventual oil spill liability reward

BATON ROUGE, La. — State officials say Louisiana was hurt more than other states by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and so should get more money than other states from companies responsible for the disaster.
Garret Graves, who leads the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, told state lawmakers Wednesday that the state opposes such funds going to the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, given that 60-90 percent of the oil spills impacts have occurred on coastal Louisiana.
"This would be the federal government literally profiting from the injury that was experienced in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast," Graves said.
Rep. Joe Harrison, a Republican from Houma, agreed.
"We incurred the majority of the damage by far," he said. "And that's why I would hope that, and I know that our Congressional delegation and also the governor and the executive committees that are involved would present the type of information that supports our position to get the largest portion of that potential fine to assist us in what I think is going to be something we're going to deal with for years to come."
Graves said that recommendations in reports by Navy Sec. Ray Mabus and the National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, established by President Barack Obama, as well as legislation by U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., would divert up to 80 percent of fines to the coastal states.
But Graves said there is well-established precedent for a second alternative: directly negotiating a settlement between local authorities and responsible parties.
In that case, up to 80 percent of fines would be spent on supplemental environmental projects to restore the environment, coast and fisheries. Graves has asked federal authorities to begin negotiations for such a settlement.
He said Louisiana would fare better by negotiating a settlement with federal agencies rather than reaching a political solution in Congress.
"One of the challenges in going through Congress is that Sen. Landrieu, Sen. Vitter, our House delegation will have to negotiate with the delegations from those other states," Graves said. "Texas has a large delegation. Florida has a large delegation."
He said a Congressional solution would also require a budget offset from the diversion to the states, which he said would be very difficult in this budget climate.
Negotiating with the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and responsible parties directly "would be a better venue for Louisiana to negotiate based on true impacts and merit, versus based upon political considerations and who has a larger delegation."
Graves says federal liability may rise to $70 billion across the responsible parties.
Alberta spill
This handout photo shows some of the spill area where about 28,000 barrels of oil leaked out of a pipeline near Peace River. The pipeline is owned by Plains All American Pipeline. (Plains All American American Pipeline photo)


         Natives say spill making kids sick 



EDMONTON - More than 28,000 barrels of leaked crude oil near Peace River is making residents in the area sick, says a First Nations chief.
Steve Noskey, Chief of the Lubicon Cree Nation, says his town of about 300 people is being enveloped by a sickening odour he believes is coming from the spill, the biggest in the province since 1975.
"When the wind shifts, the odours are carried into the community," says Noskey.
The Lubicon Cree Nation is located about 10 km east of the Plains Midstream Canada pipeline leak.
The Little Buffalo school has been closed since Friday, after students became ill with nausea, burning eyes and headaches.
Environment Minister Rob Renner says he only recently became aware that residents in the town were affected.
"We immediately installed air monitoring equipment that was on site, and I'm advised our mobile unit has additional capacity for more minute forms of air quality (and) is on route and should arrive later today," said Renner Wednesday.
He can't say for sure if the odour that's believe to be making residents sick was in fact coming from the spill, but Noskey disagrees.
"I challenge anyone from Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB), Plains or even the minister to come up to our community and have a smell for themselves," he says.
The K-12 school services about 130 students and was still closed as of Wednesday.
Noskey says he has not heard from the government or the ERCB, and isn't confident they'll do much to help his small town.
"I never do expect anything from the provincial government with respect for the native issues.  We're an aboriginal community and that's all we are," says Noskey.
The Plains pipeline is nearly half a century old and has had minor leaks in the past.
Despite the major spill, Renner says Alberta still has a good record compared to how many pipelines there are in the province.
"Our safety record is one that we should be proud of.  Sure there are incidences from time to time but I would put our record up against any others," says Renner.
NDP environment critic Rachel Notley and Liberal environment critic Laurie Blakeman both feel the spill is merely another example of an un-watchful government eye.
"It's more indication that Albertans cannot trust this government to protect the health safety and environment of Albertans," says Notley.
Blakeman goes further, saying, "This kind of an oil spill is what really frightens people about transporting oil across land or across water because this is the nightmare scenario."
Renner decided not to venture out to the spill site or the Lubicon First Nation, saying he would not have "any significant added value" if he did.
tanara.mclean@sunmedia.ca

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

More Questions Than Answers on Dispersants a Year After Gulf Spill - NYTimes.com

More Questions Than Answers on Dispersants a Year After Gulf Spill - NYTimes.com

Is oil spill responsible for illness?


Abby Tabor/Staff
Dr. Mike Robichaux talks to his patient Brandon Casanova at Ochsner St. Anne General Hospital in Raceland.
Published: Sunday, May 1, 2011 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, May 1, 2011 at 12:06 a.m.
RACELAND — Lying in a local hospital bed this week, Brandon Casanova still can’t figure out how he got there.
Nobody knows for sure what is causing the frightening catalog of symptoms that have plagued him over the last several months: seizures, abdominal pains, extreme forgetfulness, racing heartbeat and high blood sugar.
But to Dr. Mike Robichaux of Raceland, his primary-care physician since birth, Casanova’s problems are a close match to a bizarre cluster of ailments among people who say they were exposed to dispersant chemicals and other potential toxins in the oil spill last year.
His greatest fear: They’re getting worse.
Casanova, an avid saltwater fisherman, thinks he may have gotten a dose of the chemicals during a weekend at Grand Isle last September when he and his buddies fished for crabs and ate tuna. All he knows for sure is that he’s sick of being sick, and just wants to provide for his wife and young baby.
“I don’t get down and out,” said Casanova, 28, a Luling native, who was hospitalized this time with severe abdominal pain. “This has me to my breaking point.”
PLEA FOR HELP
Robichaux is an ear, nose and throat doctor based in Raceland. A former state senator and longtime activist when it comes to locals’ exposure to pollution, he contends the patterns that he’s seeing are too similar to be coincidental. continue reading here.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The outage today occurred about 6 a.m at the BP chemical plant

Ref.no.: PW-20110426-30476-USA

Situation Update No. 2
On 2011-04-27 at 17:58:46 [UTC]

Event: Power Outage
Location: USA State of Texas BP, Marathon, Valero Texas plants Texas City
Situation: A day after power failed at several refineries in Texas City, a chemical plant in the city lost electricity this morning, officials said. The outage today occurred about 6 a.m at the BP chemical plant, said Bruce Clawson, director of Texas City Emergency Management. Clawson said power was restored at the plant about two and half hours later. No shelter-in-place orders were issued during the outage, and no injuries were reported, Clawson added. BP officials could not be reached for comment. Clawson said he did not know what caused the power failure. However, he added, no explosion or fire was reported. The outage occurred about the same time a power failure hit portions of Galveston Island. About 12,000 customers reportedly lost power beginning at about 5:30 a.m., according to CenterPoint Energy. Crews were working to restore power several hours later. Today's power failures come on the heels of outages at several refineries in Texas City Tuesday. Power was lost at the BP, Valero and Marathon refineries for several hours. Utility officials have said salty residue build-up on wires and power equipment is to blame for the power losses in Galveston and Tuesday in Texas City.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

BP anniversary: Toxicity, suffering and death - Features - Al Jazeera English

BP anniversary: Toxicity, suffering and death - Features - Al Jazeera English

THE BEST >>> BP's criminal negligence exposed - Features - Al Jazeera English

BP's criminal negligence exposed - Features - Al Jazeera English

Please email your members of Congress today.

Urge Your Members of Congress to Get Serious About Gulf Coast Restoration

One year after the BP oil blowout, Congress still has not passed legislation to direct BP's Clean Water Act penalties to restore the Gulf Coast and help the people, ecosystem, and economies harmed by the disaster.
Without Congressional action, these funds will simply end up in the Treasury, and the federal government will profit at the expense of Gulf Coast residents and wildlife who need support.
It's time to get serious about Gulf Coast restoration, and we need your help to make sure the BP fines are directed where they're needed most: to the Gulf Coast.
Please email your members of Congress today.

click here to take action

Just released: 30k pages of BP oil spill documents. Help us find out what we've got! | Inspiring action for a green and peaceful future

Just released: 30k pages of BP oil spill documents. Help us find out what we've got! | Inspiring action for a green and peaceful future

Deepwater Horizon victims' families

mark first anniversary of oil spill

Relatives of the 11 workers killed when BP's rig burst into flames overfly the site by helicopter while oil still washes up on beaches
Deepwater Horizon: first anniversary protest performance at Tate 
Britain
Deepwater Horizon: a protest performance called Human Cost took place at Tate Britain in London on the first anniversary of the oil spill. Photograph: Jeff Blackler/Rex Features
Relatives of some of the 11 men who died aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig are to fly over the Gulf of Mexico to mark the first anniversary of the worst offshore oil spill in US history.
On land, vigils were scheduled in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to mark the moment on the night of 20 April last year when the rig, owned by Transocean Ltd, burst into flames while drilling a well for BP.
The explosion killed 11 workers on or near the drilling floor and the rest of the crew were evacuated before, two days later, the rig sank to the seabed. The bodies of the dead were never recovered.
Over the next 85 days, 206m gallons (5m barrels) of oil – almost 20 times more than was spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster – leaked from the well. In response, the US commandeered a fleet of vessels in an effort to contain the spill, and BP spent billions of dollars to cap the well and clean up.
"I can't believe tomorrow has been one year, because it seems like everything just happened," Courtney Kemp, whose husband Roy Wyatt Kemp was killed on the rig, wrote on her Facebook page on Tuesday. "I have learned a lot of things through all of this but the most important is to live each day as if it were your last … what matters is if you truly live."
In a statement, President Barack Obama paid tribute to those killed in the blast and thanked the thousands of workers and volunteers who "worked tirelessly to mitigate the worst impacts" of the spill.
"But we also keep a watchful eye on the continuing and important work required to ensure that the Gulf coast recovers stronger than before," Obama said in the statement.
Transocean invited up to three members of each family to attend the flyover. They were expected to circle the site a few times in a helicopter, though there is no visible marker identifying where their loved ones perished. On the seabed 11 stars were imprinted on the cap of the well.
While ceremonies mark the disaster, oil is still occasionally washed up on beaches in the form of tar balls, and fishermen face an uncertain future.
Louis and Audrey Neal of Pass Christian, Mississippi, who make their living from crabbing, said it had got so bad since the spill that they face foreclosure as the bills keep piling up.
"I don't see any daylight at the end of this tunnel. I don't see any hope at all. We thought we'd see hope after a year, but there's nothing," Audrey Neal said, adding that financial difficulties were only part of the problem. "Our lives are forever changed," she said. "Our marriage, our children, it's all gotten 100% worse."
She said the couple received a $53,000 (£32,000) payment from BP early in the crisis, but that was just enough money to cover three months of debt. They have as yet received nothing from the $20bn compensation fund set up by BP, they said.
The outlook is, however, not all bleak. Traffic jams on the narrow coastal roads of Alabama, crowded seafood restaurants in Florida and families taking their holidays along the Louisiana coast attest to the fact that familiar routines are returning, albeit slowly.
"We used to fuss about that," said Ike Williams, referring to the heavy traffic heading towards Gulf Shores, Alabama, where he rents chairs and umbrellas to beachgoers. "But it was such a welcome sight."
"It seems like it is all gone," said Tyler Priest, an oil historian at the University of Houston. "People have turned their attention elsewhere. But it will play out like Exxon Valdez did. There will be 20 years of litigation."
Most scientists agree the effects "were not as severe as many had predicted", said Christopher D'Elia, dean at the school of the coast and environment at Louisiana State University. "People had said this was an ecological Armageddon, and that did not come to pass."
Biologists, however, are concerned about the spill's long-term effect on marine life.
"There are these cascading effects," D'Elia said. "It could be accumulation of toxins in the foodchain, or changes in the food web. Some species might dominate."
Accumulated oil is believed to lie on the Gulf seabed, and it still shows up as a thick black crust along miles of Louisiana's marshy shoreline. Scientists have begun to notice that the land in many places is eroding.
Confidence in Louisiana's seafood is eroding, too. "Where I'm fishing it all looks pretty much the same," said Glen Swift, a 62-year-old fisherman in Buras who works the lower Mississippi river again. But he cannot sell his fish. "The market's no good," he said.
But the BP spill has faded from the headlines, overtaken by the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, unrest in the Middle East and political clashes in Washington.
"Nationally, BP seems like a dim and distant memory," said Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian. But the accident will have long-lasting influence on environmental history, he said.

Day of remembrance for 11 killed in Deepwater Horizon explosion

Day of remembrance for 11 killed in Deepwater Horizon explosion


Cain Burdeau and Harry Weber / Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Relatives of some of the 11 men who died aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig are flying over the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, back to the epicenter of the worst offshore oil spill in the nation's history.

Meanwhile, on land, vigils were scheduled in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to mark the spill.

On the night of April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon, a rig owned by Transocean Ltd., burst into flames after drilling a well for BP PLC, killing 11 workers on or near the drilling floor. The rest of the crew evacuated, but two days later the rig toppled into the Gulf and sank to the sea floor. The bodies were never recovered.

Over the next 85 days, 206 million gallons of oil -- 19 times more than the Exxon Valdez spilled -- spewed from the well. In response, the nation commandeered the largest offshore fleet of vessels since D-Day, and BP spent billions of dollars to clean up the mess, saving itself from collapse.

"I can't believe tomorrow has been one year because it seems like everything just happened," Courtney Kemp, whose husband Roy Wyatt Kemp was killed on the rig, wrote on her Facebook page  Tuesday. "I have learned a lot of things through all of this but the most important is to live each day as if it were your last ... what matters is if you truly live."

Natalie Roshto, whose husband Shane Roshto also died on the rig, posted a message on Courtney Kemp's Facebook page on Tuesday evening: "Can't believe it's been a year.. It has brought a lot of tears and a great friendship I'm Soooo thankful for.. We are a strong force together!! Love u sista."

In a statement, President Barack Obama paid tribute to those killed in the blast and thanked the thousands of responders who "worked tirelessly to mitigate the worst impacts" of the oil spill.

"But we also keep a watchful eye on the continuing and important work required to ensure that the Gulf Coast recovers stronger than before," Obama said in the statement.

The president said significant progress has been made but the work isn't done.

Transocean invited up to three members of each family to attend the flyover. They were expected to circle the site a few times in a helicopter, though there is no visible marker identifying where their loved ones perished. At the bottom of the sea, 11 stars were imprinted on the well's final cap.

Several families said they didn't want to go on the flyover, and Transocean decided to not allow media on the flight or at a private service later in the day in Houston.

The solemn ceremonies marking the disaster underscore the delicate healing that is only now taking shape. Oil still occasionally rolls up on beaches in the form of tar balls, and fishermen face an uncertain future.

Louis and Audrey Neal of Pass Christian, Miss., who make their living from crabbing, said it's gotten so bad since the spill that they're contemplating divorce and facing foreclosure as the bills keep piling up.

"I don't see any daylight at the end of this tunnel. I don't see any hope at all. We thought we'd see hope after a year, but there's nothing," Audrey Neal said.

"We ain't making no money. There's no crabs," said Louis Neal, a lifelong crabber.

"I'm in the worst shape I've ever been in my whole damn life. I'm about to lose my whole family," he said. "I can't even pay the loans I have out there. That's how bad it's gotten."

His wife said the financial hit was only part of the past year's toll. "Our lives are forever changed," she said. "Our marriage, our children, it's all gotten 100 percent worse."

She said the couple received about $53,000 from BP early on, but that was just enough money to cover three months of debt. They haven't received a dime from an administrator handing out compensation from a $20 billion fund set up by BP, they said.

Still, it's not all so bleak.

Traffic jams on the narrow coastal roads of Alabama, crowded seafood restaurants in Florida and families vacationing along the Louisiana coast attest to the fact that familiar routines are returning, albeit slowly.

"We used to fuss about that," said Ike Williams, referring to the heavy traffic headed for the water in Gulf Shores, Ala., where he rents chairs and umbrellas to beachgoers. "But it was such a welcome sight."

Many questions still linger: Will the fishing industry recover? Will the environment bounce back completely? Will an oil-hungry public ever accept more deepwater drilling?

"It seems like it is all gone," said Tyler Priest, an oil historian at the University of Houston. "People have turned their attention elsewhere. But it will play out like Exxon Valdez did. There will be 20 years of litigation."

Most scientists agree the effects "were not as severe as many had predicted," said Christopher D'Elia, dean at the School of the Coast and Environment at Louisiana State University. "People had said this was an ecological Armageddon, and that did not come to pass."

Biologists are concerned about the spill's long-term effect on marine life.

"There are these cascading effects," D'Elia said. "It could be accumulation of toxins in the food chain, or changes in the food web. Some species might dominate."

Meanwhile, accumulated oil is believed to lie on the bottom of the Gulf, and it still shows up as a thick, gooey black crust along miles of Louisiana's marshy shoreline. Scientists have begun to notice that the land in many places is eroding.

For example, on Cat Island, a patch of land where pelicans and reddish egrets nest among the black mangroves, Associated Press photographs taken a year ago compared with those taken recently show visible loss of land and a lack of vegetation.

"Last year, those mangroves were healthy, dark green. This year they're not," said Todd Baker, a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Land is eroding on sites where the oil has killed vegetation, he said.

On a tour of the wetlands Tuesday, Robert Barham, Louisiana's wildlife secretary, showed reporters the lingering damage.

Roseau cane is growing again where it was cut away during early cleanup efforts, but Barham said the 3- to 4-foot-high stalks should be a lush green. Instead, they were pale green and brown.

"It's because of oil in the root system," Barham said. He put his hand into the dirt and pulled up mud saturated with oil. Tossing the sludge into nearby water, it released a rainbow-colored sheen.

Barham complained that BP had not done enough to clean the area. "What they've done thus far is not working."

In the remote Louisiana marsh, there's still yellow boom in  places -- not to keep oil out but to keep the tides from carrying oil to untouched areas.

Confidence in Louisiana's seafood is eroding, too.

"Where I'm fishing it all looks pretty much the same," said Glen Swift, a 62-year-old fisherman in Buras. He's catching catfish and gar in the lower Mississippi River again. That's not the problem.

"I can't sell my fish," he said. "The market's no good."

But the BP spill has faded from the headlines, overtaken by the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, unrest in the Middle East and political clashes in Washington.

"Nationally, BP seems like a dim and distant memory," said Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian. But the accident will have long-lasting influence on environmental history, he said.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)

Stories from the Gulf, one year on - CNN.com

Stories from the Gulf, one year on - CNN.com

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Last Of Gulf Closed By Spill Reopens To Fishing | Local News - Rush Radio 99.5 WRNO

Last Of Gulf Closed By Spill Reopens To Fishing | Local News - Rush Radio 99.5 WRNO

Gulf Oil Spill Surprises: 6 Things Experts Got Wrong

Gulf Oil Spill Surprises: 6 Things Experts Got Wrong

More Questions than answers one year later.

Sick fish suggest oil spill still affecting gulf - St. Petersburg Times

Sick fish suggest oil spill still affecting gulf - St. Petersburg Times

A Year After the Spill, "Unusual" Rise in Health Problems More cases of nosebleeds, coughs could be due to oil exposure.

An oil spill cleanup boat is beached by the surf.
Oil-spill cleanup workers are swamped by a wave in Orange Beach, Alabama, in 2010.
Photograph by Tyrone Turner, National Geographic




















Anne Casselman for National Geographic News Published April19,2011
Health issues that continue to plague Gulf Coast communities may be connected to the Gulf oil spill, experts say.
A year after the BP disaster, more people are reporting medical and mental health problems to nonprofits and doctors working in coastal areas.
"We're seeing patients who will come in and say my nose is bleeding all the time, my cough gets worse," said James Diaz, director of the environmental and occupational health sciences program at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans.
Itchy eyes, water eyes, nosebleeds, wheezing, sneezing, and coughing are all symptoms of exposure to crude oil, Diaz said. "We are seeing a lot of that.
"We know a lot about the acute health effects of the compounds in petroleum because it's a major industry here," he said.
And these problems have "been very very predictable."
Day and night, Marylee Orr fields calls from cleanup workers, fishers, and their wives as they connect the dots between their health and exposure to dispersants and crude oil. More than 1.8 million gallons (6.8 million liters) of dispersants—chemical agents used to break up oil—were dumped into the Gulf.
"If you look at the human health effects of the . . . dispersant, everything you read at the beginning [of] that factsheet is what I hear over the phone: chest pain, respiratory problems, dizziness, gastrointestinal problems," said Orr, executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, based in Baton Rouge.
"I would love to be able to say everything's OK and everything's recovered—but it's not that way yet."
"Unusual" Spike in Health Troubles After Spill
In the early months of the Gulf oil spill, more than 376 people in Louisiana—the majority of whom were cleanup workers—reported acute health effects typical of exposure to crude oil: headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, cough, respiratory distress, and chest pain, according to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.
By early September, more than 2,100 acute health complaints related to the spill across the Gulf and elsewhere had come in, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
A health survey of nearly a thousand coastal residents conducted by the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a health-justice nonprofit based in New Orleans, found that nearly three-quarters of those who believed they'd been exposed to crude oil experienced an "unusual increase in health symptoms."
In two other surveys of Gulf coast residents also conducted by university public health researchers and sociologists, between 35 to 60 percent of respondents reported experiencing mental stress and physical symptoms.
By August, 52,000 people were participating in the oil-spill cleanup, which was managed by a joint federal-industry response team. However the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences didn't secure funding to start a long-term study of cleanup workers' health until several months after the spill began.
"The hardest things to predict are going to be what's going to happen years and decades away," Diaz said.
"We should be looking for evidence that exposure to these chemicals is causing damage at the chemical level to enzymes and causing damage at the molecular level to DNA."
For instance, a study of cleanup workers from the 2002 Prestige oil spill in Spain found increased DNA damage, especially among those who worked along beaches. Such genetic changes can sometimes lead to cancer.
"We know the famous adage: The dose determines the poison," Diaz said.
He added he's most concerned for Gulf cleanup workers who worked offshore, where they were exposed to raining dispersant and fumes billowing off floating mats of burning crude.
Oil Spill Created Anxiety, Depression
Preliminary research has also found Gulf residents have suffered psychological trauma. Already, two spill-related suicides have occurred.
"What we're finding is that there are increases in symptoms of post-traumatic stress, generalized anxiety disorder, and of depression," said Howard Osofsky, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Louisiana State University in New Orleans.
Osofsky is currently leading a study of residents in Louisiana's four most heavily impacted parishes for the Louisiana Department of Social Services.
Calls to mental health and domestic violence hotlines in the Gulf area have increased since the spill began. Admissions to women's shelters also have risen, Osofsky noted.
The majority of people in Osofsky's surveillance area have reported tiredness; lack of energy;  trouble sleeping; headaches; pain in their arms, legs, joints; stomach pain; and other gastrointestinal symptoms.
"These are the types of symptoms that can be related to anxiety and stress, but they can be medical symptoms that can be directly related to oil [exposure] as well," he said.
The same trend is appearing in Alabama and Florida, according to a February study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Researchers compared the mental health of two Gulf communities, one in Alabama where the oil reached, and another in Florida that stayed oil-free.
"People in both communities displayed a significant amount of both anxiety and depression," said study leader Lynn Grattan, a psychiatrist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in College Park.
"But it's economic impact—rather than oil reaching shores—which disrupted psychological adjustment and led to psychological health problems."
In other words, the mental health toll of the oil spill reached beyond the population living near oiled beaches, the study found.
Gulf Residents Already Resilient to Tragedy
However, Gulf residents' ability to cope in the face of past disasters—such as hurricanes—may help them weather this storm as well, Osofsky said.
"Individuals who've been able to cope may feel that they have greater strength, almost like they're being inoculated by their experiences to have inner strength."
University of Maryland's Grattan is currently studying how resilient people adapt and manage stresses associated with the spill.
"So perhaps in future we can learn from their adaptive behaviors and help build and facilitate the coping and adaption of everyone after spills," Grattan said.
Louisiana Environmental Action Network's Orr draws strength and hope from her community.
"It's not surprising that we're seeing what we are, because we've never had anything like this before," she said. "But we're resourceful people and we're very optimistic people.
After the double whammies of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 and Gustav and Ike in 2008, "this is our third environmental disaster and, we hope, our last."

More than 1.8 million gallons of Corexit dumped into Gulf Waters

An Oyster on the Seder Plate?

LAST night I put an oyster on my Seder plate.
Jason Logan

While I didn’t particularly want to put something traif atop that most kosher of dishes, this Passover falls on the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. And since BP, the leaseholder of the failed well, seems intent with its new television ads on making us forget about the spill, I felt that something drastic was in order to help us remember. Combining the memorial powers of the Seder plate with the canary-in-the-coal-mine nature of the oyster seemed a good way to keep the disaster — and BP’s promises to clean up its mess — in mind.
This past March I spent a week in Louisiana’s bays and bayous. All over the region I encountered oyster dredges full of dead, empty shells and broken oystermen with equally empty pockets. Many of the oystermen I interviewed reported that 80 percent of their beds had been killed.
Ecologically speaking, this is huge: a single oyster can filter 40 gallons of water a day, and the millions of oysters in Louisiana’s waters are one of the things that make the gulf work as an ecosystem.
True, many oysters died not from the oil directly, but rather from the consequences of a desperate attempt to counter the spill’s effects. As oil rushed shoreward last spring, Louisiana’s coastal coordinator opened gates along the Mississippi River and released millions of gallons of freshwater, hoping the surge would push the oil away. It’s hard to say whether this worked; what it definitely did do was make some coastal waters too fresh for oysters to survive. Many beds were decimated. It will take years for them to recover.
Freshwater wasn’t the only thing dumped into gulf waters to mitigate the spill: more than 1.8 million gallons of Corexit, a chemical used to break up oil slicks, transformed the floating, possibly recoverable oil into an invisible angel of death that sank and claimed not just the first born but perhaps the first million born of many gulf creatures — a considerable blow to what is arguably America’s most important fish nursery.
Indeed, oysters are just the beginning. The delayed effects of oil and Corexit will likely be seen for years. In 2012 the number of blue crabs — which many people associate with the Chesapeake Bay but in fact often come from the gulf — may significantly drop thanks to the spill. In 2013, the redfish that Paul Prudhomme famously blackened may not be there for fishermen and diners to enjoy. In 2017 we could see a considerable drop in the population of bluefin tuna, the missing adult fish having been killed as fragile larvae in 2010.
And even if by some miracle there is no significant decline in the gulf’s sea life, its harvest might still suffer from a sullied reputation. In a recent poll of 18 national restaurant chains released by Greater New Orleans Inc., an economic development organization, found that only 19 percent of those restaurants’ customers held a favorable view of gulf seafood in 2010, compared with 75 percent in 2004.
Oystermen weren’t the only ones affected by the spill, of course. But while BP has compensated waiters and hairdressers for work lost during last summer’s ruined tourist season, most oystermen told me that aside from an emergency payment last fall, they have yet to see compensation that approaches the value of their lost oysters.
Fortunately for BP, it can take decades for the aftereffects of an event of this scale to appear. And it will be a long time before the Natural Resources Damage Assessment, put in place to determine BP’s true liability, will be made fully public with any sort of conclusion about the company’s liability.
Although I put an oyster on the Seder plate, you might want to find a less controversial way to mark the disaster. If you’re having a second Seder tonight and want a non-traif symbol, consider putting a small dish of oil next to your glass of wine. After you’ve dipped your finger in your wine to count out the 10 plagues that brought down Egypt’s tyrannical pharaoh, dip your finger in the oil and dab out an 11th plague.
In so doing remember that in A.D. 2010, the Jewish year 5770, humanity damaged a valuable, nourishing ecosystem to maintain the tyranny of oil. Until we throw off that tyranny, we will mark many more plagues in the years to come.
Paul Greenberg is the author of “Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food.”

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Weeklong Schedule from Sierra Club for the First Anniversary of the Oilspill Disaster

As the One Year Memorial of the BP Oil Disaster approaches, the Sierra Club is working with numerous community leaders and groups to remember the eleven lives lost and memorialize the community and environmental tragedies  over the last year.

We hope you can join us at some of these events in New Orleans & Grand Isle, Louisiana and Biloxi, Mississippi.


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2011

(7:00 - 8:00am)

Join us for a Sunrise Gathering: A Call for Restoration, Reflection and Renewal

Wednesday, April 20, 2011
7:00 -- 8:00 am
Amphitheatre Across from Jackson Square
Decatur Street, New Orleans, Louisiana

Join Gulf Coast residents, faith and community leaders, and the Sierra Club to memorialize the eleven lives lost and bring national attention to the urgent recovery needs still facing Gulf communities.

The event will conclude with a candle-lit moment of silence to honor the eleven lives lost, the damage our Gulf resources have endured, and the tragedies that have been unleashed on the lives, livelihoods, and health of our Gulf families, friends, and neighbors.

For More Information, Please Contact:
Jordan Macha, 504.861.4835, jordan.macha@sierraclub.org

...

(10:00-11:00am)

Gulf Coast Press Conference

Community members from across southeast Louisiana will gather at the Federal Building in New Orleans to pressure our Congressional leaders to act now and implement the Oil Spill Commission's recommendations and provide funding for ecosystem restoration and recovery.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011
10:00 - 11:00
Gulf Coast Leadership Summit -- Riverside Hilton Hotel
2 Poydras Street, New Orleans

...

(10:30 - 11:30)

Biloxi, Mississippi: Mississippians Memorialize BP's Oil Disaster

Mississippi residents will gather together to remember the workers who lost their lives, share stories about how this tragedy has affected them, and speak with one voice to tell our leaders that now is the time for action to make the Gulf coast and it communities whole once again and prevent future oil disasters.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011
10:30 - 11:30
Lighthouse Fishing Dock, north end of Lee Street, Biloxi, MS (just north of the intersection of Bayview Avenue and Lee Street)

For More Information, Contact Louie Miller: 601-624-350 or Louie.Miller@sierraclub.org

...

(4:00-8:00pm)

Grand Isle: One Year Memorial - Sunset Gathering

Community members will be remembering the eleven men who were lost, reflecting on the grave impact on the people and environment of the Gulf coast, and calling for additional actions to help build a better future for Grand Isle.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011
4:00 - 8:00pm
Grand Isle Medical Center followed by a sunset walk on Grand Isle Beach
108 Willow Lane, Grand Isle, LA

For More Information, FACEBOOK "Resurrection of the Gulf"

...

(7:00-11:00pm)

Harmony for Health Benefit

We invite you to join us and become a valuable sponsor in providing support for regional efforts to help those who are in need of medical assistance as a result of the BP oil spill. The Harmony for Health benefit at the House of Blues will be broadcast live on WWOZ.

A number of artists from music and film will be featured including Brad Pitt, Voices of the Wetlands, James Carville, Anderson Cooper, Frances Beinecke President of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Robin Mann President of the Sierra Club, Captain Paul Watson founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and star of Whale Wars, Dr Ira Leifer Chief Mission Coordinating Scientist for NASA Gulf Mission, Bonny Schumacher (NASA/JPL) Founder Wings of Care, Stuart Smith, Daryl Hannah, Dr. Riki Ott, and special guests.

April 20, 2011 -- 7:00 - 11:00
New Orleans House of Blues
225 Decatur St, New Orleans

For more information, please go to http://harmony-for-health.org/events_hob.htm

...

(7:30 - 11:30pm)

Taking Back Our Gulf

Gulf coast musicians are gathering at the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to address the long-term health and environmental impacts to the region.

Who: Dr. John (Malcom Rebennack), Drew Landry, Shannon McNally, Michael Juan Nunez, The Treater Band, Grey Hawk, Fi Yi Yi, and other talented musicians

Wednesday, April 20, 2011
7:30 - 12:00
Tipitina's French Quarter
233 N. Peters Street, New Orleans

For Ticket Information, visit: www.tipitinas.com or FACEBOOK: Taking Back Our Gulf

...

APRIL 23, 2011

The Resurrection of the Gulf: A Day of Action and Hope

Join us as we proclaim the Resurrection of the Gulf with a day of family friendly fun, music, food, information and action.

Grand Isle residents will address elected officials, the media, and the nation by presenting four pressing questions about the health, environmental, and economic impacts of the spill, and the restoration process, an information and resource fair, and music by Smashing Blonde.

Saturday, 23 April, 2011
10:00am - 9:00pm
Pirate Island Daiquiri, La Hwy. 1, Grand Isle, LA

For more information, please contact Karen Hopkins at grandislekaren@yahoo.com or Devin Martin at devin.martin@sierraclub.org


WE HOPE TO SEE YOU OUT AT SOME OF THESE EVENTS!

Thanks for all you do for the Gulf Coast.

In Solidarity,
Jordan

To adjust your Sierra Club email preferences, please reply to this email with a description of your wishes. Thank you.

Sierra Club 85 Second St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA  94105

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

From a post on July 7, 2010

A year Later...

Shine a Light: A Year After the Spill, Building on Momentum

Shine a Light: A Year After the Spill, Building on Momentum
A year ago, more than 1,000 miles of coast felt the devastating impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  It damaged an environment that already had endured a long legacy of deterioration and challenges.

But as with many of life’s disasters, St Augustine had it right: Ex Malo Bonum, there is no bad thing that doesn’t result in some good.

“The oil disaster, though truly tragic, gave us a chance to raise awareness,” says Michelle Erenberg, special projects coordinator with the Gulf Restoration Network. “We were able to build on the frustration of the communities and the residents who felt the real impact of this disaster and begin to make some positive changes.”

One of the things GRN built was a strong coalition that began working on the many issues facing the Gulf and its residents. A group consisting of 119 individuals representing 53 diverse organizations collaboratively drafted a unified action plan for the recovery of the Gulf of Mexico. 

Next Wednesday, the anniversary of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the plan will be officially released. It outlines specific demands of Congress, the Obama administration, and federal agencies regarding community recovery, coastal restoration, public health and marine ecosystem recovery.

The announcement is just one of the many events planned for the oil spill memorial.

Erenberg, always passionate about environmental issues, earned a master's in public administration from the University of New Orleans.

“After graduation, I couldn’t find a job here working on the environment,” she says. “So, I moved to California, the Mecca for environmental issues, but after Katrina I knew I had to come back. Homesickness hit me hard.”

She’s happy to be back in New Orleans and loves her current job. GRN provides technical support and mentoring to grassroots groups and keeps its members and the public aware of national and regional issues of importance to the Gulf. It works on such issues as water quality, wetlands, sustainable fisheries, smart energy, hurricane rebuilding and species-at-risk.

Last year, through her work with GRN, Michelle was an integral part of the community response to the BP oil drilling disaster. She organized the coordinated Gulf Recovery Campaign. Today, she continues to serve coastal communities, build coalitions, educate the public and motivate volunteers.

After a year, the spill seems to be forgotten, but it surely isn’t gone. The reality is that the oil and the toxic dispersant – Corexit – continue to have real impacts on the region. The people and environment of the Gulf are still struggling.

Michelle believes next week’s memorial will once again bring focus to all that still needs to be done to restore the Gulf.

“I enjoy the challenge of my job,” she says. “It takes immense energy to build and continue momentum, but when it works, it really works, and it is so satisfying.”

Courthouse News Service

Courthouse News Service

Locals air worries on spill's health effects | HoumaToday.com

Locals air worries on spill's health effects | HoumaToday.com

Damage from oil spill lingers a year later


IOL pic feb bp oil spill bird
Associated Press
Kenneth Feinberg, the independent administrator of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, believes the effects of the BP oil spill will have dissipated by 2012.
New Orleans - The worst maritime oil spill in history began nearly a year ago with a drop in pressure in a poorly drilled well deep in the Gulf of Mexico. It hasn't really ended even though BP's runaway well was eventually capped 87 days later.
As crews in Japan struggle to contain a nuclear meltdown at a poorly maintained plant in Fukushima, the April 20 anniversary of the BP spill is a stark reminder of the high costs of our energy needs and the far-reaching consequences of cutting corners on safety.
The massive explosion killed 11 workers and sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, unleashing a leak that spewed 206 million gallons of oil before it was finally contained.
Hundreds of miles of fragile coastal wetlands and beaches were contaminated, a third the Gulf's rich US waters were closed to fishing, and the economic costs have reached into the tens of billions.
Months of uncertainty caused deep emotional trauma for the fishermen and coastal residents who feared their way of life was being destroyed. More than 130,000 of them are still trying to push their compensation claims through a clogged system.
“They could give me $500 million and it wouldn't be enough,” said Dean Blanchard, who used to handle as much as 500,000 pounds (226,800 kilograms) of shrimp a day at his Grand Isle, Louisiana
dock.
“It's not the money, it's your life's work. It's what I love, it's what I did my whole life and they just came along and blindsided me.”
Favourable winds and currents, the location of the well - some 50 miles (80 kilometres) off the coast of Louisiana - and about two million gallons of chemical dispersants kept the bulk of the oil from reaching shore.
That protected fragile coastal wetlands, white sandy beaches and millions of nesting birds from the intense damage seen in Alaska after the Exxon Valdez ran aground and 11 million gallons of oil spilled from its cracked hull in 1989.
Yet the damage is certainly not negligible, nor is it over:
crews are still actively cleaning 235 miles (380 kilometres) of coastline and plan to return to around 300 more miles (480
kilometres) once tourism and nesting season is over.
It's also not clear what impact the oily chemical soup which spread through hundreds of miles of Gulf waters will have on its fish, shrimp, dolphins and other marine creatures.
“The outstanding question is did we save something in the short-term to extend a problem in the long-term,” said Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
“We just don't have enough information to say one way or another.”
The spill also exposed the industry's shocking lack of preparedness, weak safety culture and dangerously lax government oversight.
“This disaster was almost the inevitable result of years of industry and government complacency and lack of attention to safety,” a presidential commission tasked with investigating the spill concluded.
“As drilling pushes into ever deeper and riskier waters where more of America's oil lies, only systemic reforms of both government and industry will prevent a similar, future disaster,” co-chair William Reilly said when the commission released its recommendations in January.
President Barack Obama imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling five weeks into the spill as BP's efforts to contain the leak 5,000 feet (1.5 kilometres) below the surface failed, flow estimates rose sharply and the political fallout intensified.
The Interior Department restructured its operations - finally separating safety and environmental enforcement from permitting and revenue generating functions - but still lacks the expertise and the funding to properly oversee the increasingly complex offshore industry.
The moratorium was lifted in October after new safety regulations were established and the first deepwater drilling permit was issued on February 28. Activity is just now picking up, with the tenth permit issued on Friday. - Sapa-AFP

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Event type: Biological Hazard Date / time [UTC]: 05/04/2011 - 08:48:35

Situation Update No. 3
On 10.04.2011 at 13:50 GMT+2

Scientists are baffled by the continuing numbers of dead baby bottlenose dolphins washing up on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. 406 dolphins were found either stranded or dead between February 2010 and April 2011, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to designate the deaths as an “unusual mortality event” (UME). The agency defines such events as a stranding incident that is unexpected or involves great losses of any marine mammal population. Blair Mase, the agency's marine mammal investigations coordinator, told CNN: “This is quite a complex event and requires a lot of analysis.” Mase said NOAA is working with several agencies to determine not only why the dolphins are turning up dead in such large numbers but also why the mammals are so young. “These were mostly very young dolphins, either pre-term, neonatal or very young and less than 115 centimeters,” Mase said. A number of factors could be at play including harmful algal blooms, infectious diseases, water temperatures, environmental changes, and human impacts. “The Gulf of Mexico is no stranger to unusual mortality events,” Mase noted.

Much sensitivity surrounding marine life has come about since last year’s BP oil disaster that spewed millions of barrels of crude oil in the Gulf waters. As recently as two weeks ago, scientists documented a dead dolphin with oil on its remains, said Mase. Since the start of the oil spill on April 20, 2010, a total of 15 bottlenose dolphins have been found with either confirmed or suspected oil on their carcasses. Nine oiled dolphins have been found since the gushing oil well was capped. But of those nine, one was found with oil that did not match that of samples from the Deepwater Horizon. Mase said the dolphin deaths could be completely unrelated to the oil spill. “Even though they have oil on them, it may not be the cause of death,” she said. “We want to look at the gamut of all the possibilities.”

Scientists are also concerned over the number of sea turtles that are being stranded. Similar to the dolphin deaths , an abnormally high number of turtles have also been found floating close to shore or washed up along the Gulf coast shores. “The vast majority of these are dead, with states in moderate to severe decomposition,” Barbara Schroeder, NOAA Fisheries national sea turtle coordinator, told CNN's Vivian Kuo. The majority of the turtles found have been Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles, but some have been loggerheads, which along with the Kemp’s are endangered. “Since January 1st, we've had just under 100 strandings,” said Schroeder. “About 87 of those have been documented since the middle of March.”

Necropsies were performed on about a third of the turtles, Schroeder said. Seven of them showed indications that they had been in accidents with watercrafts, while another displayed injuries consistent with being caught on a hook. The others appeared to have died by drowning near the bottom of the Gulf, either from forced submergence or an acute toxic event. Tissue samples from both turtles and dolphins are being documented due to the civil and criminal litigation ongoing with BP, according to Dr. Teri Rowles, a coordinator with NOAA Fisheries Stranding Program. “We are looking at what is the impact of the oil spill and the response activities to the oil spill event, and what impact they had on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem,” said Rowles. “We did not say that the dolphins have died because of the oil, just that they have come back with oil on them.”

Guardians of the Gulf- Dedicated to the Long Term Recovery of the Gulf

Guardians of the Gulf

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Emotional Toll From Oilspills via The NYT

Oil Spills May Leave More Emotional Than Physical Scars, Study Finds

NEW ORLEANS — In a review of past oil spills as well as the available data from last year’s BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, doctors found that adverse health effects from oil and chemical exposure are less likely than behavioral and mental health issues to pose significant long-term risks for most gulf residents.
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
After the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year, people gathered in Boothville, La., to get registered to help with the cleanup.

Related

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
In the aftermath of the gulf spill, a sea turtle surfaced to feed on contaminated muck.
However, they acknowledged the lingering uncertainty about the true impact of last year’s spill and said the federal government’s delay in studying the spill’s health effects would hinder the ability to understand them with accuracy.
The review, published online Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, considers the various risks posed by the spill, including contaminants from crude oil and dispersant, as well as how effects may differ depending on a person’s exposure during the spill. With several qualifications, mostly relating to a lack of available data, the authors found that the likelihood of serious long-term problems from components of the oil is low for residents and onshore cleanup workers.
The authors did, however, raise concerns about those who cleaned up the oil offshore and were exposed to it at its freshest. “There have been few studies of longer term health consequences” in this population of workers, the authors said. There is also little data assessing the effect of oil spill exposure on children.
William Sawyer, a toxicologist who has been monitoring the effects of the spill along the coast, said he welcomed a review of the data, but pointed out limitations in comparing this spill to previous ones.
“The intensity of exposure as well as the duration of exposure in this scenario, due to its ongoing release as opposed to an acute oil spill, are different,” Dr. Sawyer said.
“We may find that we have a higher percentage of long-term effects than published in the other studies.”
Concerns about possible fallout have not gone away and are still frequently heard along the coast. Though there are isolated reports of severe symptoms, complaints of milder problems, like headaches, are more common.
Some of the symptoms people are reporting, including headaches, pains and insomnia, are also associated with stress and anxiety, said one of the review’s authors, Dr. Howard J. Osofsky, chairman of the psychiatry department at Louisiana State University’s medical school. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 had already left many along the gulf with higher rates of depression and post-traumatic stress.
Dr. Osofsky also emphasized the worries that came with so much uncertainty, pointing out that even 10 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill some Alaskans had not fully resumed their normal livelihoods.
Isolating the spill’s direct health effects is complicated because the gulf states already have significant health problems, the authors say, pointing out that Louisiana ranks near the top among states in death rates from cancer and cardiovascular disease.
This difficulty is compounded by the delay in starting rigorous studies. This year, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences announced the beginning of a 10-year study of the health of cleanup workers and volunteers that according to the review was not financed until six months after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.
That delay will be costly, the authors of the review say, as certain health markers fade over time and more persistent effects “are likely to be confounded by other types of exposures.” The lack of baseline data on workers will make it even more difficult to draw definitive conclusions.
“Not only are we not prepared to handle the amount of crude that was spilled into the gulf and not prepared to handle the environmental impact, but clearly the human health impacts are not being addressed,” said Wilma Subra, a chemist who provides technical assistance to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.
Dr. Bernard Goldstein, one of the authors of the review and a professor at the department of environmental and occupational health at the University of Pittsburgh, was also quick to criticize the government on the topic of dispersant.
Dr. Goldstein did not fault the government for the usage of the dispersant, Corexit, but for allowing its ingredients to remain a secret for so long under the Toxic Substances Control Act. This confidentiality, which the dispersant’s manufacturer waived after weeks of resistance, contributed to the profound anxiety among workers and Gulf Coast residents.
The proprietary ingredient in Corexit turned out to be a commonly used stool softener and, according to the article, human exposure during the spill was trivial. But, Dr. Goldstein said, the fear of Corexit’s effects probably led to some of the mental and behavioral health problems, even if the dispersant itself did not.
“Here you’ve contributed to what to me are the major health effects, which are the psychosocial effects and the disruptions to the community,” he said. “You’ve contributed to this to keep something secret for which we’re not going to see direct human health effects.”

Review Finds Coast Guard Was Unprepared for BP Spill - NYTimes.com

Review Finds Coast Guard Was Unprepared for BP Spill - NYTimes.com

Fukushima is now the radioactive Deepwater Horizon of the Pacific

Fukushima is now the radioactive Deepwater Horizon of the Pacific

(NaturalNews) With its massive, ongoing release of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean, Fukushima has become the Deepwater Horizon of the Pacific. As finally admitted by Japanese authorities, Fukushima is releasing massive quantities of radioactive material into the ocean on an ongoing basis.

This highly contaminated water (7.5 million times) being released today is just the beginning: At least 200 tons of water are being poured onto Reactor No 2 every day, and that extremely radioactive water is, of course, ultimately getting dumped directly into the ocean.

If you do the math, that's 48,000 gallons of highly radioactive water being flushed into the Pacific Ocean each and every day.

Remember the video of the dark, cloudy oil gushing out of the hole in the ocean floor underneath BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig? Now imagine an invisible cloud that's far more deadly because it's radioactive! That's essentially what we have now with Fukushima.

The seafood is somehow still safe to eat, we're told

Not surprisingly, the fish being caught off the coast of Japan are already showing high levels of radioactive contamination. (And remember, they all told us that the seafood would be perfectly safe!)

So-called "sand lance" fish are now being detected with 4,080 becquerels of iodine-131 per kilogram. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/w...)

Japan was quick to announce new levels of allowable radiation in fish that make up to 2,000 becquerels of iodine-131 legal. This official limit will no doubt be rapidly adjusted upward as more and more radiation contaminates the oceans. Before long, we'll all be eating fish with a hundred thousand becquerels of iodine-131, and the government will say it's somehow actually good for you!
read entire story

AJ video

For all of us living along the Gulf Coast, did you have the worse "sinus infection" of your life this past winter? I sure did. My ears still hurt. Doctor looks at them and sees nothing there causing my ear pain. WHOA, then I came across this video. I am adding a comments box right below this. Please add how you are feeling if you are in any of the Gulf Coast area affected by the BP OILSPILL. Thank you! Leesa