Broken Psyches

From the New York Times:
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS — On a normal night, Hong Le, a deckhand on a fishing boat, would be miles out on the water laying nets and lines to catch tuna. Instead, he lies awake in his rented room agonizing over the money he is not sending to his wife and children in Vietnam and the delay in his longtime dream of bringing them here, apparently dashed by the oil spill.
At each day passes, Mr. Le, 58, says he feels more hopeless. “I just wait at home,” he said hollowly through an interpreter.

Beyond the environmental and economic damage, the toll of the mammoth spill in the Gulf of Mexico is being measured in hopelessness, anxiety, stress, anger, depression and even suicidal thoughts among those most affected, social workers say.
Mindful of the surge in psychological ailments after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, community groups are trying to tend to the collective psyche of fishermen like Mr. Le even as they address more immediate needs like financial aid.

When fishermen arrive to pick up emergency aid checks at the Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit group in this city’s Vietnamese-American enclave, crisis counselors from Catholic Charities are on hand to screen for signs of emotional distress and to offer help.
“Are you having trouble sleeping?” the counselors ask through interpreters. “Do you feel out of energy? Do you have thoughts that you would be better off dead?”
Most of the fishermen trooping to the center lack fluency in English or skills beyond fishing, a vocation they have passed on for generations.
“They’re very distraught,” said the deputy director of the community development corporation, Tuan Nguyen. “For a lot of people, fishing is all they know. They don’t like handouts. They’re very proud. They don’t know how tomorrow is going to be.”
Catholic Charities reported this week that of the 9,800 people the counselors had approached since May 1 in Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes, 1,593 were referred for counseling because of signs of depression.
“It’s the fear of losing everything,” said Representative Anh Cao, a Republican from New Orleans who has assembled a response team to travel along the Gulf Coast to assess constituents’ needs.

Mr. Cao said he had met two fishermen in Plaquemines Parish who told him they were contemplating suicide. While those cases are “extreme,” Mr. Cao said, they reflect how some people “are approaching a point of despair.”
Officials with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals said staff members had counseled 749 people in the last week of May and the first week of June to “mitigate” symptoms that could lead to destructive behavior.
“Most people are in disbelief,” said Dr. Tony Speier, deputy assistant secretary of the department’s office of mental health. “There’s fear not just for economic survival, but for a way of life.”

While state officials have emphasized the resiliency of Gulf Coast residents, who suffered through Hurricane Katrina and other major storms like Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008, experts say the region should brace for long-term psychological strain.
Researchers who studied the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill said coastal residents of Alaska saw a higher incidence of suicide, divorce, domestic violence and substance abuse. To this day, many are still dealing with the effects of the environmental damage, economic losses and lawsuits.
At the Center for Wellness and Mental Health in Chalmette, which opened last year to treat cases of post-traumatic stress disorder lingering from Hurricane Katrina, the staff is checking in on fishermen’s families, mining relationships that were forged when volunteers helped rebuild homes after the hurricane.
An effort is under way to invite wives to receive counseling and learn breathing techniques and other skills to cope with stress, said Joycelyn Heintz, the coordinator of the center, which was founded by the nonprofit St. Bernard Project and the Health Sciences Center at Louisiana State University.
Rachel Morris, one of the wives who has agreed to counseling, said her husband, Louis Lund Jr., 34, was a shell of his formerly joyful self.

After the oil spill grounded fishing, Mr. Lund managed to get a job cleaning the gulf waters for BP, the oil company responsible for the spill, Ms. Morris said. But he is stricken by the sight of dead fish on his cleanup outings, she said, and for the first time has started to frequent bars with other fishermen.
Mr. Lund frets over whether he will be able to pass on his trade to his children, a 13-month-old son and 10-year-old daughter, or even remain in New Orleans, where volunteers just finished rebuilding the family’s Katrina-flooded home last October.
“When I saw the oil rig explosion on television, I was, like, ‘O.K., oil rig explosion,’ ” Ms. Morris, 26, said, adding that she told herself to pray for the 11 rig workers who were killed. “Two days later it was, ‘The oil is not stopping.’ That’s when my husband went from a happy guy to a zombie consumed by the oil spill.”
She said Mr. Lund had refused to accept counseling. He has lashed out occasionally, she said, venting his anger one evening last week after waiting in line for nearly four hours at the local civic center to pick up his two-week paycheck.
Asked about his state of mind, Mr. Lund told a reporter: “If you’re not out there in it, you can’t comprehend what this is about. We’re going to be surrounded by it. You’re going to smell it right here.”

Similar frustration was evident one morning last week at the Mary Queen of Vietnam center, where 50 people who had been waiting since as early as 4 a.m. for the doors to open around 9 a.m. suddenly began shouting, pushing and shoving one another. The commotion was soon quelled, but not the expressions of exhaustion and worry.
One of the groups hardest hit by the spill is Vietnamese fishermen, who make up a significant part of the about 12,400 commercial licensed fishermen in Louisiana (state officials had no firm estimate, but locals estimate they are as much as a third).
Having already experienced displacement — emigrating from Vietnam and in some cases losing their homes after Hurricane Katrina — they now face a crisis of epic proportions with an uncertain duration.
Interviewed in a sparsely furnished room he rents for $300 a month in a house with bars on the windows, Mr. Le said he was surviving on handouts after a lifetime of self-sufficiency.
He arrived in the United States in 1979. Nine years ago, he married on a visit home to Phan Thiet in southeastern Vietnam, assuring his wife that one day she would join him here.
Mr. Le said he used to send up to $5,000 a year to his wife and their 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter. As his family turns to other relatives for support, he is living on an initial payment of $1,200 from BP and whatever aid comes his way.
In phone conversations, his wife urges him to find a job outside the fishing industry. He applied at two Vietnamese restaurants, but neither would hire him for even the most menial work, Mr. Le said.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he murmured. “Any opportunity for work, I’ll do it.”

Devastated Louisianians

Interviews with several Southeastern Louisianians on how this BP Disaster is affecting their lives. A must watch.

Sloppy Oil Cleanup and Prostitutes

From Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland, a report from Elmers Island (very near Grand Isle) about cleanup efforts and prostitutes.

Here's an excerpt:


They're only working five sites and it's eight miles of beach. No one seems concerned about cleaning it up. The contractors are getting their money; they don't care. They've got all these people out there, but they're not accomplishing anything."

Oh, wait. Not nothing: "They've brought in prostitutes." No one knows who the "they" that brought in the pack of hookers is, but the gals have definitely arrived, and you can buy time with one for $200.


To read her whole article, Click here and enjoy.

BP and dead wildlife

From Mother Jones
Late last week, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other responders issued a tally of the animals collected as of Friday in oil-impacted regions of Alabama, Florida , Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas—dead and alive. Those stats are shocking: 444 dead birds, 222 dead sea turtles, and 24 mammals (including dolphins). I sent a request to the Unified Command office last week asking for data on wildlife collected over a normal time period, pre-oil-disaster, for comparison. I haven't received a reply.

I believe those numbers are way too low, considering a report I found last night.

Click here to read the entire Mother Jones article

Joseph Cao, my new hero!

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) on Tuesday called for BP America President Lamar McKay to resign, while Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La.) suggested BP executives' fate would have been even worse in another place and time.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

"Mr. Stearns asked Mr. McKay to resign; well, in the Asian culture we do things differently," said Cao, a Vietnamese-American who represents a New Orleans area district. "During the Samurai days, we just give you a knife and ask you to commit harakiri" - a form of Japanese ritual suicide.

BP Destroying Evidence????

Thanks to NOLAfemmes for this link

Louisiana Wildlife versus Dispersants

From the Gulf Restoration Network.



Everyone's a bit on edge here on the Gulf Coast as we enter day 56 of BP's oil drilling disaster. The known impacts to wildlife and people continue to grow, and more and more questions are gnawing at us.

What will all these dispersants in the water do? Why aren't workers being given respirators and safety equipment? How many oiled pelicans, dolphins, and whales aren't being found? Why aren't we seeing more cleanup?

"Episode 3: Wildlife in distress and dispersants" of GRN's ongoing Youtube video series Gulf Tides: Monitoring BP's Oil Drilling Disaster, features underwater images of dispersed oil, oiled brown pelicans and shots of wetlands affected by BP's crude. You'll also see interviews with locals like Clint Guidry of the Louisiana Shrimp Association and commercial fisherman Raymond "Bozo" Couture.

As GRN works to document what is happening in the Gulf, we are also pushing the government to federalize the response and mobilize more resources for cleanup activities while holding BP financially accountable.

BP's damage to the Gulf will likely take decades to understand and mitigate, and it is sadly only the most recent and acute affront to Louisiana's coastal ecosystem in the pursuit of dirty energy. Of the football field of wetlands lost in the state every 45 minutes, forty to sixty percent can be attributed to oil and gas activity

Obama's Oil Spill

What a freaking mess we're in!

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Online Mapping Tool to Track Gulf Response

The administration launched a new federal Web site,designed to be a one-stop shop for detailed near-real-time information about the response to the BP oil spill and to facilitate communication and coordination among a variety of users-from federal, state and local responders to local community leaders and the public.

here's a link: http://gomex.erma.noaa.gov/erma.html#x=-90.20599&y=29.38218&z=9&layers=3023+497+3660

The site incorporates data from the various agencies that are working together to tackle the spill-including NOAA, the Coast Guard, Fish and Wildlife Service, EPA, NASA, USGS, DHS and Gulf states-into one customizable interactive map.

United Houma Indians and the Oil Spill

Testimony of Brenda Dardar Robichaux

Principal Chief of the United Houma Nation

Before the Subcommittee On Insular Affairs Wildlife and Oceans

Our Natural Resources at Risk: The Short and Long Term Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

10-Jun-10

Good morning Chairwoman Bordallo, Ranking Member Brown and members of the Subcommittee. My name is Brenda Dardar Robichaux and I am Principal Chief of the United Houma Nation of Southeastern Louisiana. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at today’s hearing –“Our Natural Resources at Risk: The Short and Long Term Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.” We have several tribal citizens here today – Vice Principal Chief Michael Dardar, incoming Principal Chief Thomas Dardar and my father, Whitney Dardar a life-long commercial fisherman.

The United Houma Nation is an indigenous nation of approximately 17,000 citizens who currently reside along coastal, southeast Louisiana. The Houma, first encountered by LaSalle in 1682, have existed in the bayous and rivers of South central Louisiana long before Louisiana became a state and New Orleans became a French colony. Today, nearly 90% of our citizens reside in coastal Terrebonne, Lafourche, Jefferson, St. Mary, St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes. The majority live in communities which are at or below sea level.

The relationship between the Houma People and these lands is fundamental to our existence as an Indian nation. The medicines we use to prevent illnesses and heal our sick, the places our ancestors are laid to rest, the fish, shrimp, crabs and oysters our people harvest, our traditional stories and the language we speak are all tied to these lands inextricably. Without these lands, our culture and way of life that has been passed down generation to generation will be gone.

Tribal citizens have been living, hunting, fishing, shrimping, crabbing, trapping and harvesting oysters in the coastal marshes and wetlands of our communities for centuries. Our people follow the seasons. In the summer we catch shrimp, crabs and garfish. In the winter we harvest oysters and trap nutria, muskrat, and otters. This is how my father and countless other tribal citizens make their living. This lifestyle is now in jeopardy.

Houma fishermen are intimately familiar with the lakes and bayous of our region. They know the stories of how these places got their names. They know how the tides flow and the winds blow. They can predict the weather without the help of technical gadgets.

Not only are many tribal citizens both directly and indirectly dependent on the commercial fishing industry, but Houma citizens harvest palmetto in the coastal marshes for basket weaving, Spanish moss for traditional doll making and many herbs and plants for traditional medicinal remedies used by tribal traiteurs or traditional healers. All of these traditions are in danger of disappearing once the continuing flow of oil infiltrates the inner

coastal marshes and wetlands of our communities. These plants are irreplaceable and many only grow in our rich marshes.

The United Houma Nation is no stranger to dealing with adversity. In the early 1900’s Houma children were not allowed into public schools because they were Indian. Christian missionaries came into our communities in the 1930’s and established schools for Houma children. Those schools only went up to the seventh or eighth grade, the teachers were often unqualified and children were punished for speaking their language. It was not until the passage of the Civil Rights Act that the Houma children were allowed into public schools. The lack of educational opportunities resulted in many Houma People continuing the traditional ways of making a living off the land.

Another obstacle for the Houma has been obtaining recognition from the federal government. We have been recognized by the State of Louisiana but have been mired in the Federal Acknowledgment Process since 1979, a year after the system for recognition was established.. In 1985, we filed our petition; we received a negative proposed finding in 1994. The proposed finding stated that we met four of the seven criteria for acknowledgment. Subsequently, we filed our rebuttal in 1996 to demonstrate that we do meet the remaining three criteria. Nearly fifteen years after we submitted our rebuttal and over thirty years after we began the process, we still do not have a final determination. We have one of the largest petitions on file and are the largest tribe to go through the federal acknowledgment process. Despite our lack of federal recognition, the United Houma Nation continues to function as a government and provides services to tribal citizens.

Located in coastal Louisiana, our communities face special challenges. We have long lived with hurricanes, and over the years, we have become efficient in preparing for and recovering from them. Within the last five years, we have dealt with four major hurricanes – Katrina and Rita in 2005 and Ike and Gustav in 2008 – and, though these storms presented incredible challenges, we have made significant progress in recovering and getting our lives back. The Tribe established a hurricane relief center where tribal citizens can receive cleaning supplies, food, clothing and other essential items. We coordinated hundreds of volunteers to help clean and rebuild homes. Through our own efforts, we have been able to get tribal citizens back on their feet and some back into their homes.

While it takes time to recover from hurricanes, even after these huge storms, our people were able to resume their lives and our fishermen have gone back to work. Because most of the Houma communities exist outside of hurricane protection levees, they are at constant risk from normal tidal flooding and from tropical storm and hurricane surges. With each hurricane, some tribal members move outside the tribal communities to areas less prone to flooding. Many cannot afford the insurance to rebuild.

Now, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster presents us with perhaps the greatest challenge in our history as we are at risk of losing the heart of our culture – our homelands. It is without question that the oil spill will affect the estuaries within which the Houma tribal fishermen make their living. As the oil enters our coastal marshes the wetland vegetation will be killed. This prevents fish, shrimp, crabs and oysters from reproducing because these marshes are where these species spawn and receive protection from natural predators. In addition, these marshes are home to already diminishing wetland mammals such as mink, otter and muskrat.

Once the vegetation is dead, mud plains poisoned with oil will become open water, thereby eliminating critical habitat. Not only will this spill change the environment we live in, but our land loss will be critically accelerated, dwarfing the impacts of Katrina and the other recent hurricanes. This spill will have far-reaching effects that will compromise the economic, environmental and mental health of all of southeast Louisiana. For the Houmas, it also looms as a death threat to our culture as we know it.

Our tribal citizens are deeply concerned about the short and long term impacts of this oil spill. Growing up I never knew we were considered poor by government standards because we had a rich culture, were surrounded by abundant natural resources, and always had fresh food on the table. I grew up eating fish, shrimp, crabs, oysters, ducks and rabbits. Providing our families with meals based on fresh seafood and game may no longer be an option, which means putting food on the table will be difficult for some of our people.

But seafood is more than just a major source of food for our tribal citizens. Working in the seafood industry is also a major source of employment. During shrimp season, my father says it is like Christmas every morning. I fear that he may not have another Christmas. While some tribal fishermen have received checks from BP, these do not replace what they have temporarily and maybe even permanently lost. The Tribe is also concerned about those making a living in related professions such as net makers, seafood distributors, restaurant owners and others. With a limited education through no fault of their own, many tribal citizens do not have options for alternative employment. How will they support themselves and their families once the checks stop.? The answer we do not know.

We are concerned that waste produced by the spill clean up (used booms, pads, etc.) will find its way into disposal sites in our tribal areas, in particular our Grand Bois community. Grand Bois is located adjacent to an open pit oilfield waste disposal site in Lafourche parish. The 1980 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) defined any wastes that are generated during the exploration and production of petroleum, which will include any wastes generated in the clean up of this spill, as non-hazardous. Neither the crude oil nor any dispersants used in responding to this disaster are regulated as hazardous waste. Although these materials are hazardous by nature, they can be “landfarmed” in Grand Bois and other communities as “Non-Hazardous Oilfield Waste” or NOW. We do not want these materials disposed of in our communities, and we would respectfully request that this law be changed to protect all US citizens from exposure to these harmful chemicals. The citizens of Grand Bois as well as the thousands of citizens who live near oilfield waste disposal sites can testify to the toxic effects of these supposedly non-hazardous materials.

Most worrisome is the fact that we are now in hurricane season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts between 14 and 23 named storms this year and between 3 and 7 major hurricanes. The entire United Houma Nation along the Louisiana coast is completely vulnerable to widespread inundation by oil-contaminated waters. Some of our communities have been totally excluded in parish and Army Corps of Engineers levee protection systems, and many communities have very little and/or compromised protection.

A tropical storm or hurricane coming ashore west of Louisiana before the oil flow is capped and existing surface and subsurface oil cleaned up will flood these communities with an oily waste storm surge, similar to the Murphy Oil incident in St. Bernard Parish during Hurricane

Katrina. Residents’ homesteads had to be purchased by Murphy Oil. These properties and homes are uninhabitable to this day. A minimal tropical storm or even a simple strong summer storm during high tide will be disastrous to our communities. Our citizens are now very concerned that if they are required to evacuate, they may never be able to return to their homes. Such a very possible scenario will equate to thousands of Houmas being permanently displaced.

We have a special concern for the effects of this disaster on our youth. In early May, the tribe held a tribal youth leadership conference. Participants were asked about their concerns for the future and nearly all of them mentioned the oil spill. They are concerned that they will not be able to carry on the traditions of our people.

As a result of our lack of federal acknowledgment, we do not receive services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs or any other agency that require federal recognition status. When a disaster hits, federal resources are filtered to federally recognized tribes. Although sympathetic to our needs, their hands are tied in providing financial assistance to the United Houma Nation that suffers the greatest impacts of these disasters. A final determination on our petition was due over 10 years ago. We have dealt with countless hurricanes during that time and now this massive oil spill. We most certainly could have used additional resources that would be available to federally recognized tribes and need them now more than ever. In this case of the oil spill, we have been contacted by the U.S. Department of Interior, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We plan to continue discussions with these departments and are hopeful that sufficient resources will be made available to the United Houma Nation.

Because of the enormous scope of this disaster, our tribal leadership must make tremendous efforts to ensure that our members receive timely and accurate information about its ongoing environmental and health impacts. Due to limited educational opportunities in the past, many of our tribal elders lack the skills needed to read and understand written notices or effectively use the Internet to gather information. Many of our communities are isolated, and there is limited if any monitoring of environmental conditions in them. Our tribe will require resources to collect data on air, water, and soil quality and to provide the special outreach efforts our tribal citizens will need to respond effectively to changing conditions.

The Houma are a strong, very independent, and resilient people. We have seen small canals turn into large bayous; we have watched hundreds of acres of wetlands wash away; we have seen freshwater bayous turn into saltwater; we have seen our traditional medicines disappear; we have seen tribal members move out of our communities due to constant flooding; we have seen our lands taken from us because our people were not taught to read and write and we have spent 30 years in the federal acknowledgment process without a final determination. Throughout it all, we have done what was necessary to survive.

This oil spill presents a major challenge to our existence as a tribe. Therefore, I ask that you please support our efforts to bring resources to the United Houma Nation to preserve our way of life for current and future generations.

 

New Bayou Liberty Bridge open soon

Ending a 30-year saga that included a public outcry, a court injunction and "Save Our Bridge" bumper

The bridge will also have a nine-foot clearance, so that smaller boats can pass underneath, said John Housey, project manager for Coastal Bridge Co. of Baton Rouge.

"We hope to have it open before school starts," he said.
That's welcome news to Bayou Liberty residents, whose wait for a new bridge has spanned decades.

The drama began in the early 1980s, when the state declared the wooden, hand-cranked bridge built in 1941 a marine hazard and sought to replace it with a vertical lift span that would have towered 80 feet high above the serene bayou community.

"It wouldn't have looked good, also people with sail boats going up the bayou wouldn't have been able to pass under it because it wasn't tall enough," said Armand L. "Junior" Pichon, an area resident and member of the Save Our Bridge movement that formed in response to the state's plan.

Residents eventually won a court fight over the matter and obtained an injunction against the vertical bridge, and the state put in a metal-decked pontoon bridge as a "temporary" solution. That bridge, which often had to be closed due to problems with water levels and broken cables, was a constant headache for both residents and state officials.

"A lot of people didn't like the pontoon bridge because they were scared of it," Pichon said.

Approving plans for the new $6.3 million bridge in 2007, the state Department of Transportation and Development began construction about a year later. Workers last month demolished the pontoon bridge, which now lies in a pile of rusted metal and wood nearby. It will be returned to DOTD later this summer, Housey said.

The new bridge has been open as a single-lane crossing since last year, but officials closed the bridge to traffic for three days this week to install the final hydraulic piping and test the operational sequence--the mechanical gates, steel barriers, and locking mechanisms--which is used to open and close the hydraulic system.

Housey said workers will close the bridge for another few days later this summer to conduct another round of tests before completing construction, and finish work connecting the approach to the existing roadway.

Pichon, who lives on Dave Pichon Road, still has fond memories of the old bridge, an "engineering marvel" which could be opened by inserting a pin and hand-cranking the bridge open for traffic.

Nonetheless, he says he's moved on.

"It'll be good when they get it finished. I'm glad to hear that it'll be done soon," he said