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Disaster in Gulf - The Aftermath

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Disaster in the Gulf-5-18-2011

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A House Divided

Louisianans, One Year After the Spill

By Karen Dalton-Beninato, Portraits by Stacy Revere

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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Life on the Bayou

In La., signs of regrowth seen in oiled marshes

AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
In this Friday, Aug. 6, 2010 photo, marsh that stretches to the Gulf of Mexico is seen in the Barataria Preserve, part of Jean Lafitte National Park and Reserve outside Lafitte, La., This bay that was the scene of the first startling images of oil-caked birds already has shoots of marsh grass and mangroves growing back. The marsh is healing itself.

CAIN BURDEAU and JEFFREY COLLINS
Associated Press Writers

Published: Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 9:22 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 9:29 a.m.
BARATARIA BAY, La. — Shoots of marsh grass and bushes of mangrove trees already are starting to grow back in the bay where just months ago photographers shot startling images of dying pelicans coated in oil from the massive Gulf oil spill.
More than a dozen scientists interviewed by The Associated Press say the marsh here and across the Louisiana coast is healing itself, giving them hope delicate wetlands might weather the worst offshore spill in U.S. history better than they had feared. Some marshland could be lost, but the amount appears to be small compared with what the coast loses every year through human development.
On Tuesday, a cruise through the Barataria Bay marsh revealed thin shoots growing up out of the oiled mass of grass. Elsewhere, there were still gray, dead mangrove shrubs, likely killed by the oil, but even there new green growth was coming up.
"These are areas that were black with oil," said Matt Boasso, a temporary worker with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
As crude from a blown-out BP well oozed toward the marshes after an April oil-rig explosion, experts had feared it would kill roots in marsh grass, smother the mangroves and ultimately dissolve wetlands that plant life was holding together. State, federal and BP PLC cleanup efforts were focused on preventing that from happening by burning and skimming the oil, blocking it with booms and sand berms and breaking it up with chemical dispersants.
Whether it is a triumph of cleanup work, the marshes' resiliency or both, scientists have reported regrowth of grasses, black mangrove trees and roseau cane, a lush, tall cane found in the brackish waters around the mouth of the Mississippi River. (cont)

 

 Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve update

Oil Spill Response



Trees are reflected in the waters of a canal stretching into the distance
The Barataria Preserve's bayous and canals are part of a system of waterways that connect to the Gulf of Mexico.
July 28 (date will change whenever new information is added): None of Jean Lafitte's six sites are directly in the path of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The park's Barataria Preserve is the most vulnerable site since it is linked to the Gulf of Mexico via waterways (click here for a 1791kb pdf satellite map of south Louisiana).
No oil from the spill has been observed in the preserve. Oil has fouled the shoreline of the Barataria Waterway about 12 miles south of the preserve boundary and has penetrated marshes on the north edge of Barataria Bay, about 15 miles south of the preserve. Booms are in place and cleanup is underway. Park staff continue to monitor the situation and work with experts to prepare defensive actions. When Tropical Storm Bonnie threatened south Louisiana in late July, park staff collected pre-storm baseline soil and water samples in case pre- and post-storm comparisons were needed.



Oil Spill May Spell Disaster for Atakapa Indian Tribe.



The town of Grand Bayou, Louisiana, has no streets and no cars, just water and boats. And now the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens the very existence of the Atakapa-Ishak Indians who live there. "We're facing the potential for cultural genocide," says one tribe member.

© 2010 National Geographic; videographer and field producer: Fritz Faerber

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Blog Post: Oil Spill May Spell Disaster for Atakapa Indian Tribe

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT

In the town of Grand Bayou, Lousiana, the main thoroughfare is the water.

There are no streets, no cars. Everyone gets around by boat.

Just recovered from Hurricane Katrina, the oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon well now threatens this community.

SOUNDBITE: Rosina Philippe, Atakapa-Ishak Tribe

“Well this is the Grand Bayou Village and we are a subsistence community. We have been here for centuries. And we live here. We make our living from the harvest of the waterways and this is also where we get our food that we eat.”

Rosina Philippe is Atakapa-Ishak, a Native American tribe. Like others, it is not recognized by the federal government.

For decades, the Atakapa and other native groups here have adapted to the loss of wetlands, the encroachment of the oil and gas industry, and hurricanes.

But the latest spill could be the final straw. Fishing and shrimping is at a standstill, and the oil keeps creeping into the marshes.

SOUNDBITE: Maurice Phillips, Atakapa-Ishak Tribe

“I can’t even think about leaving it. And the way the economy is, where are you going to go and live?”

The largest oil spill in U.S. history is killing wildlife, contaminating beaches and marshes, closing fishing waters and… threatening an entire way of life.

Tens of millions of gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico since the BP oil rig exploded April 20 and sank two days later.

Coastal Louisiana is closest to ground zero. Its fragile wetlands and beaches are oiled and wildlife faces possible mass die-offs.

But on top of the ecological disaster, unique cultures of the people living in Louisiana’s bayous could also vanish.

SOUNDBITE: Rosina Philippe, Atakapa-Ishak Tribe

“The oil spill has the potential to imperil all of us. We’re facing the potential for cultural genocide. “

Shrimp is a way of life here. Shrimp boats line the canals. Locals lower nets and scoop up the shrimp carried by the current.

SOUNDBITE: Maurice Phillips, Atakapa-Ishak Tribe

“I’ve been a shrimper all my life, and trapping. That’s all I ever did. We live off the land. We get all our wildlife, seafood, and everything off the land.”

Maurice Phillips has seen the ground vanish beneath his feet. Canals dug for oil and gas exploration decades ago let in saltwater that kills the marsh grasses – hurricanes wash away the soil left behind. And levees keep the nearby Mississippi River from replenishing the soil. A University of New Orleans map graphic shows how wide open water now fills areas once rich with freshwater marshes and wildlife.

Scientists say the Mississippi delta is vanishing at an alarming pace.

Matt Bethel leads a program to combine satellite and other data with the traditional ecological knowledge of Grand Bayou’s residents to try and find a way to restore some land.

SOUNDBITE: Matt Bethel, Environmental Scientist, Univ. of New Orleans

“What they are facing especially in the context of today with the oil spill and everything, they are facing their way of life being changed forever and not being able to keep doing what they love to do, which is shrimping, fishing, trapping.”

The Atakapa recently hosted visitors from Alaska. And while they are distinctive culturally, individuals at this gathering found much in common.

It might seem like they are from worlds apart, but Eskimos and the natives from Louisiana found much in common.

SOUNDBITE: Stanley Tom, Yup’ik Eskimo

“The people here are subsistence here just like in Alaska. The climate is a little warmer, but the landscape is just like my hometown. It’s just like tundra. And when we went boat riding it reminded me of my home.”

Tom and the other visitors from Alaska were attending a conference in New Orleans to focus on climate change and other threats to native communities around the world. The oil spill brought back memories of the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident.

They offered emotional support and advice to their hosts – who are used to a hard life, but fear the spill could be too much to overcome.

SOUNDBITE: Ruby Ancar, Atakapa-Ishak Tribe

“Nature, you can’t control. You can’t control a hurricane you can’t control a tornado. But when you have things that are man made: that destroys a person’s life or an entire village or an entire community, I mean, that’s uncalled for.“

The Atakapa hope the Gulf disaster will open eyes around the world to the importance of protecting the environment.

SOUNDBITE: Maurice Phillips, Atakapa-Ishak Tribe

“This land to me is like them movie stars in Beverly Hills. That’s my Beverly Hills – Grand Bayou. I love it. I love nature and I love everything about it. It’s everything God created and I love it.”




As Black Mess Nears Marshland, Distraught Fishermen Drop Booms


Commentary by Mike Di Paola
June 10 (Bloomberg) -- Early this week, I toured the marshlands near Louisiana’s Barataria Bay, a precious ecosystem that provides breeding grounds for area marine life.
The worst oil spill in U.S. history has shut down most fishing around here and canceled the shrimp season. Now it’s threatening that ecosystem.
So instead of hauling nets, local shrimpers, crabbers and fishermen are out on Barataria Bay in the temporary employ of BP Plc subcontractor DRC Emergency Services. They’re laying oil- absorbing boom lines to keep the black mess away from the marshlands.
“The marshes two miles south of where we’re at are the actual nurseries where the spawning happens for the shrimp, crab, pogies, snails -- it’s a whole food chain,” says Raymond Griffin, owner of Griffin Fishing Lodge.
Griffin reckons he lost $40,000 in June in canceled fishing trips. He’s making up some of the losses by hiring out boats to the subcontractor, whose personnel are also filling his lodge. He’d much prefer that they were fishermen.
Mike Roberts is among the newly unemployed, his 34-foot shrimp boat idle at the dock. On the day I visited, he got a call from the subcontractor, who will hire his boat for $1,500 a day, probably to haul supplies between here and Grand Isle, 38 miles south, where thick crude has already hit the shorelines.
“I am just so angry,” says Roberts’s partner, Tracy Kuhns of Louisiana Bayoukeeper, an affiliate of the international Waterkeeper Alliance that works to protect waterways. “The only choice these guys have is go work on that spill and risk their health -- or not be able to pay their bills.” Kuhns is concerned about the men handling oil and breathing fumes and smoke from burn-offs.
Delivering Meals
My marshlands tour started when I joined a crew delivering meals to the shrimpers laying boom lines. We took a boat to the back of Boutte’s Bayou Restaurant in Lafitte, loaded 180 dinners of spaghetti and fish, then chugged south, toward Hackberry Bay.
It’s hard to believe that nature has coexisted with oil and gas production for so many decades here. Oak and cypress trees laced with Spanish moss line the shores. In one of them a bald eagle has found purchase. White egrets feed in the shallows while nasty green flies feed on us.
We delivered the meals to several drop-off points around the bays, where shrimp boats are stacked with absorbent booms. Miles of the stuff has been laid on the water in recent days, with a plan to collect and dispose of it eventually, probably by incineration.
“You never know what the end result is going to be really, but so far BP has done everything they said they would do,” Griffin says.
BP’s $5,000
The company has been paying out $5,000 to those who can show their livelihood has been disrupted by the spill, and it promises to compensate businesses like Griffin’s for future losses.
At the same time, BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward has drawn fire for his verbal gaffes, including: “There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do, you know. I’d like my life back.” That did not go over well with local fishermen, whose lives have been turned upside down.
“I’m in total confusion,” says John Hickman, a shrimp man who quit school in the sixth grade to follow generational footsteps into the trade. “I have no way of knowing where my life is going.”
Hickman, 49, is the father of three and grandfather of ten. He has put $70,000 into his 32-foot boat, and pays $430 a month on its note and $3,000 a year in insurance, among other expenses. “I don’t know whether to pay off the boat,” he says.
Charities’ $100
He and others around Barataria must survive on the scant relief found in $100 food vouchers distributed by Catholic Charities, the recent recipient of $1 million from BP. Anxiety and dread is everywhere.
“It’s going to be bad, but how bad?” he wonders.
The people of Barataria have survived some hellacious storms in recent years, but everyone I speak with agrees that this new disaster is a different order of crisis.
“Everybody comes together in the community to help each other,” says Kuhns, recalling the onslaughts of Katrina, Ike and other killer storms. “You live with it; you rebuild. But this is something we have no control over, and we may not be able to repair it -- not in our lifetimes, anyway.”
(Mike Di Paola writes on preservation and the environment for Muse, the arts and culture section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Mike Di Paola at mdipaola@nyc.rr.com.
Last Updated: June 10, 2010 00:01 EDT



Fishing boats sit on Hackberry Bay. The crews are now laying oil-boom lines. Photographer: Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg
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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