Dave Matthews Band - Too Much

DON'T OPEN THE FISHERIES

From a recent post at Huffington Post, superwoman and marine biologist Riki Ott pens an article:
"Seafood Safety and Politics Don't Mix: Opening of Gulf Fisheries at Odds With Evidence of Harm"

Here's a heartbreaking excerpt:

"Eight days after returning home from his Gulf oil-spill response job, Jason Brashears has flashbacks of a scene that he witnessed one day in Lake Ponchartrain, Louisiana: Thousands of fish gasping at the surface in a sea of foamy oil and dispersant.

Brashears spent 65 days spotting oil in Lake Ponchartrain; Mobile Bay; and along the coast off Destin, Florida; Ocean Springs, Alabama; and Cat Island, Mississippi. His team reported oil sightings during the day. At night, planes sprayed dispersant to break up the oil."

I'm pissed, I'm pissed and I'm pissed some more. WHO ISN'T involved in this cover up and sugar coating one of the worst environmental disasters in this country?

It's all about limiting BP's liability

Grand Isle town hall meeting - day 100 of oilspill

This is just one village on the coast. The story is the same from Texas to Tampa, folks who fly over tell me there’s still plenty of oil out there. BP is starting to scale back the use of fishermen and in the eyes of costal residents they are depending more on the use of COREXIT. What scares me the most is that most of the hermit crabs that use to reside on the beaches are gone. The concern is worms and smaller organisms that provide life for fish & birds have suffered the same fate.



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Lots of interesting oil spill information at dirty cajuns dot com.

Good news for a change

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation agreed to consolidate the litigation over the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in federal court in New Orleans before Judge Carl J. Barbier.

"Upon careful consideration, we have settled upon the Eastern District of Louisiana as the most appropriate district for this litigation. Without discounting the spill's effects on other states, if there is a geographic and psychological 'center of gravity' in this docket, then the Eastern District of Louisiana is closest to it," the panel ruled.

The decision is a victory for the City of New Orleans, which will benefit from the economic activity of having hundreds of disputes over financial responsibility for the oil disaster taking place in the city. It is also a victory for plaintiffs, who will be able to participate in the proceedings without having to travel as far.

The panel of seven federal judges, who met in Boise, Idaho, on July 29, ruled that all claims under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, personal injury and wrongful death actions should be centralized. The panel said that consolidating the legal actions "may also facilitate closer coordination with Kenneth Feinberg's administration of the BP compensation fund."

The panel also said that it believed that the "limitation of liability" proceedings brought by rig owner Transocean Ltd. in federal court in Houston is a "potential tag-along action" in this docket, and will be included on a forthcoming conditional transfer order, but the group did not make a definitive ruling on that consideration.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier

"Although our preliminary assessment is that the action should be included in the centralized proceedings, we do not prejudge the matter...the parties are free to object to the action's transfer," the judges wrote.

The panel said that it selected Barbier to oversee the litigation because he has gained considerable experience with consolidated litigation in his 12 years on the federal bench, and is already actively managing dozens of oil disaster cases. "We have every confidence that he is well prepared to handle a litigation of this magnitude," the judges wrote.

In making their choice, the judges rejected the notion that venues such as New Orleans might not provide a level playing field for all parties and that they should search elsewhere for a 'neutral' judge. "With all due respect, we disagree with the premise of this argument. When federal judges assume the bench, all take an oath to administer justice in a fair and impartial manner to all parties equally."

 

The Death of Delacroix

NOLA dot com video about Delacroix, Louisiana.

A PARADISE LOST

Dow’na Road

New Orleans Blogger Pistolette reminisces about her childhood and Katrina's affect in St. Bernard Parish in this well written post

The disastrophe is just beginning

Apparently a mass fish kill was witnessed in Fourchon yesterday (August 5, 2010).

from this link (read the whole story here) an excerpt:

A lot of birds are eating the dead and dying fish. A lot of oil is still in the water and saturating the sands and marshes. The media and BP are talking like everything is fine down here, and a visible lessening of the work force is apparent. Saturated boom still lines many of the beaches and marshes further contaminating substrates and wildlife. Large swaths of weathered oil still mat Grand Isle, Grand Terre Island, and likely all of the other barrier islands that were oiled, and it is unlikely that we'll ever get a satisfactory answer to what forces combined to kill these fish in Fourchon, Louisiana. Gosh it kind of sounds like I've lost faith in the system, but it feels more like it was ripped away from me by a mega corporation, and the Government and media that it bought.

Break Down of Species of Birds Present With at Least One Oiled Individual:

Most birds with oil were lightly oiled, and the oil looked old and weathered.

Lessons from Alaska Disappearing Act

From healthy gulf dot org, advice to citizens of the Gulf Coast:
Today we met with the Prince Edward Sound Regional Citizen Advisory Board (RCAC).
During our meeting the leaders of the RCAC made clear that if the citziens of the Gulf want to obtain better safeguards and better oversight, we had better move forward quickly. They warned us that the disaster will soon be declared over.

Read it all here.

BP & Waste Mgmt - Two evils unite

Despite the fact that citizens of Harrison County, Mississippi have been fuming over what the county estimates is 1,200 tons of oil-tainted byproduct dumped there.


The dumping of oiled sand, tarballs and the hazmat suits and gloves worn by the cleanup crews are being buried in a landfill owned by Waste Management.



Waste Management says that all the oil waste that has been stored at the landfill is classified as "non-hazardous," after being tested by the EPA and the Mississippi Bureau of Environmental Quality. It adds that there is a liner underneath the landfill, and groundwater there is monitored.

Waste Management also operates landfills that have been receiving oil waste in Mobile County in Alabama and Jackson County in Florida.

But local officials in Harrison County aren't easily assured. They point out that 250 homes are within a half-mile of the landfill.

And a supervisors meeting Monday didn't go all that smoothly.

"That landfill is in Harrison County for our waste," Supervisor William Martin said. "That's why it was built there. And now to allow BP to put all this waste in it, it's wrong."

It didn't help that a BP representative at the meeting did not have the authority to commit to anything. The representative was sent home.

More BP Coverups: Dead Animals

From Mother Nature Network.com, this story
about BP/Government coverup of the REAL death toll of wildlife in the wake of the oilastrophe (term courtesy of Adrastos.

Entitled 'Death Gyre' in the Gulf, the article opines that, compared with the Exxon Valdez, the "official count" of dead sealife from the Deepwater Horizon seems unbelievably low.

"Is it possible that a massive cleanup operation in early June was focused on collecting dead animals out at sea in naturally forming 'death gyres?' According to marine toxicologist Riki Ott, such gyres of dead and dying animals were common for weeks after the Exxon Valdez spill. And we know that BP was doing everything in its power to keep dead animal photographs out of the press. Kate Sheppard and Mac Mclelland of Mother Jones documented several instances of BP actually barring photography of dead animals on public beaches" .

The article also cites a text message supposedly sent from a worker in the Gulf at the time describing the hellish scenes. The text message hasn't been verified and was pulled from Facebook. I remember the day I read it and it seemed believable at the time: BP's hiding things, ignoring the press, the Coast Guard and EPA seemingly complicit in these underhanded activities.

But read the article for yourself and you decide.

The oil ain't gone, y'all

From Huffpo
The Crime of the Century: What BP and the US Government Don't Want You to Know, Part I

"We, ..... spent the last few weeks along the Gulf coast from Louisiana to Florida, and the reality is distinctly different. The coastal communities of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida have been inundated by the oil and toxic dispersant Corexit 9500, and the entire region is contaminated. The once pristine white beaches that have been subject to intense cleaning operations now contain the oil/dispersant contamination to an unknown depth. The economic impacts potentially exceed even the devastation of a major hurricane like Katrina, the adverse impacts on health and welfare of human populations are increasing every minute of every day and the long-term effects are potentially life threatening."