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

Billy Nungesser in D.C.

June 10th - Billy Nungesser addresses the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on the ineptitude of BP. He tells it like it is.

Numbers as of Day 50

By the Numbers to Date:
• The administration has authorized 17,500 National Guard troops from Gulf Coast states to participate in the response to the BP oil spill.
• More than 24,000 personnel are currently responding to protect the shoreline and wildlife and cleanup vital coastlines.
• More than 4,500 vessels are responding on site, including skimmers, tugs, barges, and recovery vessels to assist in containment and cleanup efforts—in addition to dozens of aircraft, remotely operated vehicles, and multiple mobile offshore drilling units.
• Approximately 2.17 million feet of containment boom and 2.6 million feet of sorbent boom have been deployed to contain the spill—and approximately 520,000 feet of containment boom and 2.3 million feet of sorbent boom are available.
• Approximately 16 million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered.
• Approximately 1.14 million gallons of total dispersant have been deployed—798,000 on the surface and 346,000 subsea. More than 500,000 gallons are available.
• More than 145 controlled burns have been conducted, efficiently removing a total of more than 3.62 million gallons of oil from the open water in an effort to protect shoreline and wildlife.
• 17 staging areas are in place and ready to protect sensitive shorelines.
• From: www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com.

'BP has lied to us from day one.

In an article from the independent about PJ Hahn, director of coastal zone management for Plaquemines parish, here's an excerpt:

"Hell," says PJ Hahn, the man at the very tip of the sharp end of America's oil spill disaster, "we're under siege here. If somebody was breaking into your house, would you get on the phone to friends and neighbours to discuss it? You'd shoot the sonofabitch. It's that simple.".

"You don't wish it on anybody, but the bottom line is this: if the oil ends up on a beach in Mississippi, you get a big digger, scrape off the first layer, hump in some new fresh sand, and everybody's in bathing suits next day. It don't work that way for a marsh."

Read the article here

Grand Isle Photos - Post BP Spill

From talented photographer Andy Levin, pictures of Grand Isle's assault from BP.
Very upsetting.

Investigation transcripts

If you have some spare time and are interested in transcripts a fact-finding joint investigation for

May 11 - 12, 2010, here are the links:

 

http://www.deepwaterjointinvestigation.com/posted/3043/Deepwater_Horizon_Joint_Investigation_Transcript_May_11_2010.621903.pdf

http://www.deepwaterjointinvestigation.com/posted/3043/Deepwater_Horizon_Joint_Investigation_Transcript_May_12_2010.621931.pdf

 

 

Scuzzbucket of the Week

His name is Matthew Lynn and he's a British thriller writer and columnist for Bloomberg dot com.
In his latest column,
he shares his cold hearted feelings
about what BP should do regarding the oil spill.

BP likely is finished in the U.S. There is no form of apology that will make any difference. The average American consumer now hates BP and isn’t about to change that opinion for a generation or more. So BP should just hire the nastiest, meanest lawyers that money can buy -- the one commodity the U.S. has in over-abundance. Fight every lawsuit. Refuse every claim above the bare minimum. You’re going to get hammered anyway, so you might as well go down fighting.

Just say: “Thanks for everything guys. It was good while it lasted. Sorry about the oil spill, but so it goes. Goodbye and goodnight.”

Bless You Boys!

The Saints team went down to Plaquemines Parish today to lighten the hearts of those so affected by the BP Oil Spill. I love these guys.

Tide Turing?

Here is a transcript of President Obama's remarks after a Cabinet meeting to discuss the Oil Spill.
I'm not sure if it puts my mind at ease or if he's just saying empty words, but at this point I'm willing to see what happens
in the near future.

June 7, 2010 - 12:08 P.M. EDT

Remarks by the President After Meeting with Cabinet Members to Discuss the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Well, I just completed a meeting with the Cabinet that is directly in charge of dealing with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  From the beginning, we activated 15 agencies for what is now the largest national response ever to an environmental disaster.  And what we wanted to do is make sure that every agency was coordinating and that there was clarity about how we’re going to proceed in the coming months.
Now, we have gotten reports that have been confirmed by our independent scientists that the top hat mechanism that was put in place is beginning to capture some of the oil.  We are still trying to get a better determination as to how much it’s capturing, and we are pushing BP very hard to make sure that all the facilities are available so that as the oil is being captured it’s also being separated properly; that there are receptacles for that oil to go; that we have thought through contingencies in case there is an emergency or a hurricane so that these mechanisms are not disrupted and that there’s a lot of redundancy built in.
But here’s what we know:  Even if we are successful in containing some or much of this oil, we are not going to get this problem completely solved until we actually have the relief well completed, and that is going to take a couple more months.  We also know that there’s already a lot of oil that’s been released, and that there is going to be more oil released no matter how successful this containment effort is.  And that’s why it’s so important for us to continue to put every asset that we have -- boom, skimmers, vessels; hiring local folks and local fishermen with their facilities, equipping them with skimmers; getting every asset that we have out there to make sure that we are minimizing the amount of oil that is actually coming to shore.
Now, there are a number of other issues that were raised during this meeting that I just want to touch on.  Number one, when I was down in the Gulf on Friday, meeting with fishermen and small business owners, what is clear is that the economic impact of this disaster is going to be substantial and it is going to be ongoing.  And as I said on Friday -- and I want to repeat -- I do not want to see BP nickel-and-diming these businesses that are having a very tough time. 
Now, we’ve got the SBA in there helping to provide bridge loans, and we’ve got the Department of Commerce helping businesses to prepare and document the damages that they’re experiencing.  But what we also need is BP being quick and responsive to the needs of these local communities.  We have individuals who have been assigned specifically to ride herd on BP, to make sure that that’s happening.  We want the people who are in charge of BP’s claims process to be meeting with us on a regular basis.  But we are going to insist that that money flows quickly, in a timely basis, so that you don’t have a shrimp processor or a fisherman who’s going out of business before BP finally makes up its mind as to whether or not it’s going to pay out. 
And that’s going to be one of our top priorities, because we know that no matter how successful we are over the next few weeks in some of the containment efforts, the damages are still going to be there.
The second thing we talked about quite a bit is the issue of the health of workers who are out there dealing with this spill.  So far, we have seen that onshore we are not seeing huge elevations in toxins in the air or in the water.  But that may not be the case out where people are actually doing the work.  And we’ve got to make sure that we are providing all the protections that are necessary.  We’ve put processes in place to make sure that workers out there are getting the equipment and the training they need to protect themselves and their health.  But this is something that we’re going to have to continue to monitor, because there are a lot of workers out there, and increasingly we’re starting to get individuals who may not be experienced in oil cleanup, because we’re trying to get an all-hands-on-deck process.  We’ve got to make sure that they are protected.
Obviously, we’re also monitoring very carefully the impact to people who are not working out there, and that’s where the Environmental Protection Agency is doing constant monitoring of the air and the water quality.  And we are also doing testing on the seafood to make sure that toxins aren’t being introduced into the overall population.
A couple of other points I just want to make.  Dr. Lubchenco of NOAA reported on convening a scientific conference to make sure that on issues like the plume that’s been reported in the news and other questions about how large is this, what kind of damage do we anticipate, et cetera, that we have full transparency, that the information is out there, that it’s subject to scientific review so that nobody has any surprises.
And what we’re going to continue to strive for is complete transparency in real time so that as we get information, the public as a whole gets information, academics, scientists, researchers get this information in what is going to be a fluid and evolving process.
Let me just make one final point, and I think this was something that was emphasized by everybody here, and it’s something that I want to say to the American people.  This will be contained.  It may take some time, and it’s going to take a whole lot of effort.  There is going to be damage done to the Gulf Coast and there is going to be economic damages that we’ve got to make sure BP is responsible for and compensates people for.
But the one thing I’m absolutely confident about is that as we have before, we will get through this crisis.  And one of the things that I want to make sure we understand is that not only are we going to control the damages to the Gulf Coast, but we want to actually use this as an opportunity to reexamine and work with states and local communities to restore the coast in ways that actually enhance the livelihoods and the quality of life for people in that area.
It’s going to take some time.  It’s not going to be easy.  But this is a resilient ecosystem.  These are resilient people down on the Gulf Coast.  I had a chance to talk to them, and they’ve gone through all kinds of stuff over the last 50, 100 years.  And they bounce back, and they’re going to bounce back this time.  And they’re going to need help from the entire country.  They’re going to need constant vigilant attention from this administration.  That’s what they’re going to get.
But we are going to be -- we are confident that not only are we going to be able to get past this immediate crisis, but we’re going to be focusing our attention on making sure that the coast fully recovers and that eventually it comes back even stronger than it was before this crisis.
All right, thank you very much, everybody.
END
12:17 P.M. EDT

"We are going to have to leave"

A post from Louisiana Bucket Brigade blog about the never ending tragedy being faced by coastal residents

Killed Oil Rig worker was worried

From rawstory dot com one of the eleven men killed when the Transocean/BP oil rig blew up on April 20th was worried about safety practices aboard the rig. An excerpt from the story:

Transocean toolpusher Jason Anderson told his wife, Shelly, that he was concerned about BP's safety practices on the rig. Anderson was so worried about an accident that he spent his last trip home getting his affairs in order.

"Everything seemed to be pressing to Jason about getting things in order. In case something happened. Teaching me how to do certain things on the motor home so that I could go and do things with the kids, make sure that I knew how to do everything..." according to his wife.

To view an interview with Jason Anderson's widow follow this link

An interview with his father, in which his father is quoted as saying “He loved his work and thought of his crewmates as family. He was the kind of son a man wants and loves and hopes his son will be.” can be found at this link.

Dredge Baby Dredge

Buccaneer State Park Reopens

WAVELAND — Five years after Hurricane Katrina smashed its buildings and wiped out its waterslides, Buccaneer State Park is open to visitors again.

Slightly more than 100 camp sites opened last month, offering visitors full hook-ups to water, sewer and electricity. Another 74 are under construction with a scheduled completion by mid-summer. When it’s all finished, campers will have almost 300 sites to choose from.

Renovating and rebuilding the park is a $17 million project.

So far, the main office has been rebuilt, along with a playground, a maintenance facility, three bath houses, two pavilions, the administrators’ residences.

Here is their website.

Why didn't we get this?

From Deepwater Horizon Response External Affairs deepwaterhorizonresponse.com

MIAMI -- A Sentry plan has been initiated to provide real-time ocean monitoring off the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas. Vessels will be used to conduct maritime patrols to provide early identification of any weathered oil products such as light sheen, which will naturally dissipate, or mousse mats and tar balls that could potentially threaten the Florida Keys and east coast of Florida. A vessel departed from John's Pass, near St. Petersburg, Fla. on the first patrol and patrols will generally last from four to 10 days.

Additional vessels and aircraft Sentry patrols may be implemented as necessary to provide early warning detection of any weathered oil products.These vessels are intended to provide a minimum of 48-hours additional notice so responders can maximize preparedness and response activities and notify the public There have been no reports of Deepwater Horizon/BP Oil Spill-related oil products reaching shore in the Florida Peninsula and there is no indication that it will have impacts from weathered oil products in the near future.  Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill activities in the Florida Panhandle are being coordinated by the Incident Command Post in Mobile, Ala.

More on the Queen Bess Pelicans

"As of noon Saturday, only five oiled birds were crated up for rescue, Carloss said, adding that was a sign improvement over 34 feathered victims rescued on Friday and 59 on Thursday

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/spill+hits+pelicans+hard/3119379/story.html#ixzz0q7ECx31F"

2010 Bayou Liberty Pirogue Races

ARE CANCELLED

Friday, May 14, 2010 St. Tammany bureau
For the first time in 60 years, the arrival of June will not be synonymous with the Bayou Liberty Pirogue Races.

According to Beth DiMarco, who with her father, Armand "Junior" Pichon, have been the key figures in the judge's reviewing stand at the annual pirogue races, this year's event has been canceled.

Sponsored by the Bayou Liberty Civic Center, the annual festival always has been as much a family reunion as a pirogue competition and fundraiser. Families greet each other, citing familial ties; paddlers churn through the water, hoping this might be their year to go home with a gleaming trophy and a fistful of cash; and civic center volunteers serve up cheeseburgers, refreshments and heaping dishes of nachos until, at some booths, there are no more festival foods to be devoured.

This year, families will have to keep in touch through more mundane means, festivalgoers will have to get their food and music fix elsewhere, and paddlers will have to keep on dreaming.

DiMarco explained that bids are being let on a construction contract for St. Genevieve Catholic Church and that, coupled with the Bayou Liberty bridge work, necessitated the cancellation.

"It's sad, but with all the activity with the pontoon bridge being dismantled and one lane on the new bridge, I guess it would be best on the safety side," DiMarco noted.

Money raised from the event traditionally has been used for playground maintenance at the Bayou Liberty Civic Center, still in disrepair since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Bayou Liberty area in 2005. Anyone wishing to contribute to this cause, or other civic center efforts, may send a check payable to the Bayou Liberty Civic Center to 33154 Dave Pichon Road, Slidell, LA 70460.

Though disappointed about this year's turn of events, DiMarco is hopeful that by 2011 all obstacles will have been cleared for the return of the races.

As her father always says, "This is part of our heritage."

Until the event is next held, the reigning champion of the Bayou Liberty Pirogue Races will remain Richard Savoie, who lives in Bayou Gauche near Des Allemands.

Published on NOLA.com

Published in The Times-Picayune Sunday, May 16, 2010

A surviving pelican from Queen Bess Island

After six weeks with one to four birds a day coming into Louisiana's rescue center for oiled birds, 53 arrived Thursday and another 13 Friday morning.

And, center spokesman Jay Holcomb said more are on their way from the rookery on Queen Bess Island, near Grand Isle.

He described it as a change from one level of crisis to another, but said it was something that people with Tri-State Bird Rescue and the International Bird Rescue Research Center always knew would happen. About 20 people are working at the center, and so far that's plenty, Holcomb said.

He and veterinarians Heather Nevill of Tri-State and Sharon Taylor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say the birds were not yet ready for cleaning.

They're being kept in wooden pens with mesh covers, white cloths over those and heat lamps to keep them warm so they won't preen themselves until they can be washed.


God bless the people from International Bird Rescue Research Center and TriState Bird Rescue.



If you want to donate money to these angels, click here for Internatikonal Bird Rescue and for TriState Bird Rescue. Please.

Here it comes, East Coast

Computer models show Gulf oil reaching East Coast

This is kind of ironic in that the East Coast is so against oil drilling of their coast……

POSTED: 02:04 PM Thursday, June 3, 2010
BY: The Associated Press
Computer models show oil leaking from a damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico could wind up on the East Coast and even get carried on currents across the Atlantic Ocean toward Europe.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research models showed today that oil could enter the Gulf’s loop current, go around the tip of Florida and as far north as Cape Hatteras, N.C. According to researchers, oil could threaten East Coast beaches by early July, but they cautioned the models were not a forecast.

The oil could then head by Bermuda on its way to Europe.

Martin Visbeck, a research team member with the University of Kiel in Germany, says it is unlikely any oil reaching Europe would be thick enough to be harmful.

STUPID SCUZZBUCKET

QUOTE:
Gulf Oil Spill 'Not An Environmental Disaster'




Don't worry about the oil spilling into the Gulf, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) says, because the worst spill in U.S. history is "not an environmental disaster," just nature taking its course.

"This is not an environmental disaster, and I will say that again and again because it is a natural phenomenon," Young said after Congressional hearings last week. "Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it. During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe. ... We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sealife, but overall it will recover."

Young, of course, has notoriously close and longstanding ties with oil companies, and went on to criticize the Obama administration's stated moratorium on new offshore drilling permits in the wake of the Gulf spill.

The Alaska Republican has already taken heat for those comments from his challengers on both sides of the aisle. "The man is an ostrich," Democrat Harry Crawford said. "He has his head in the sand if he can't see that this is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, man-made disaster in history."

Republican challenger John Cox acknowledged, "We know there's a problem. We know that this is a major disaster."

We are NOT okay

The latest pictures from Boston dot com, taken today, June 3, 2010 shows the brown pelican suffering, suffocating to death in that fucking BP oil that washed ashore. I can't stop crying. It's been 45 days, people have lost their livlihoods, their futures. Our wildlife is suffering.

Our state bird reflects what's happening to US. Look at these pictures, see what's happening to them, know that this is MORE than the politics...can someone tell Obama? Please? He's due here tomorrow and will probably be shown another clean beach.

My heart hurts too much to show the pictues. These birds are suffering needlessly, so are Ridley Kemp turtles, oysters, shrimp larvae, crabs, fish and God knows what else.

Yet we still have to go to BP or the fucking Coast Guard (the spineless whores) with our hats in our hands and say "please can I use this to clean up my shores", "please sir can I have another".

louisiana seafood is safe and delicious!

American Zombie: Battling the misinformation

NYT on Billy Nungesser

An excerpt from the NY Times:

Within hours of the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, Mr. Nungesser, 51, became a go-to guy for the news media. In the ensuing weeks, he has turned into the angry everyman of the oil spill, whether delivering a broadside against the government and BP’s response efforts on CNN or standing in the gymnasium of Boothville-Venice Elementary School (Home of the Oilers!) before an anxious crowd of shrimpers and fishermen.

“I know it’s going to be rough,” he said to the crowd in a speech that sounded at times like a locker room pep talk. “I know everything’s not going to go our way. But they’re not going to beat us.”

“Go get ’em, Billy,” someone shouted from the bleachers.

To hear Mr. Nungesser tell it, the big boys — BP, the Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers — have all been better at pointing fingers than solving problems.

Along with Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Mr. Nungesser has been a dogged advocate for a plan to build barrier islands out of dredged material to keep the oil off the shores.

There are a number of experts, including the Army Corps of Engineers, who think this is a bad idea, citing cost, time and environmental impact. In Mr. Nungesser’s gospel, that kind of response, even if it turns out to be true, is only half an answer. Come up with a better idea, he tells critics, or keep your reservations to yourself.

“These guys have no clue and no ability to think outside the box,” he said at the morning staff meeting.

Despite an affinity for the spotlight, Mr. Nungesser is a hard man to pin down. Between a cellphone that buzzes like an angry wasp, an unending string of interview requests, a visit by the president and the actual work of managing the parish, it is nearly impossible to slow him down long enough to confirm some basic biographical facts.

For example: How did Mr. Nungesser come to own an elk ranch in the parish?

The elk, he said late Thursday night over a 10-minute dinner of Sun Chips and soda, were bought from a man in Nebraska with the money he got from selling his house to his sister when he went to live in a shipping container.

Mr. Nungesser throws out sentences like that, and before one has a chance to ask him to elaborate, he is back on the phone, talking to a state trooper or a parish official or his fiancée, who needs to know that a television camera crew was following him home that night.

Back to the shipping container.

“I had a Jacuzzi,” he clarified. “It was nice.”

In his 20s and early 30s, Mr. Nungesser worked for his father’s business, a catering company that served offshore drilling rigs. In 1991, before he got involved with the elk (he sells the velvet off the antlers for arthritis medicine), Mr. Nungesser realized that metal shipping containers could be modified and used as living quarters for workers on offshore rigs.

He had a hard time at first selling the idea to investors, mainly friends and friends of friends, and so he moved into a container himself. The company, General Marine Leasing, eventually reached $20 million in sales, and now, instead of a shipping container, he lives on a palatial estate built on a man-made hill in front of an artificial lake.

Mr. Nungesser rode out Hurricane Katrina on this estate and decided to run for parish president as a Republican in 2006, he said, out of frustration over the local response to the recovery.

It was a big decision. A run for state representative in his early 20s had left him cynical about politics, despite his pedigree: his father was the chairman of the State Republican Party when there was not much of one to speak of, and he was the chief of staff for Gov. David C. Treen, the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, in the early 1980s.

Mr. Nungesser’s preparations for public office had come from running a business, an experience that made him good at laying into uncooperative oil companies but not always agile when it came to the give and take of a democracy.

“In private business, Billy was, in essence, the chief cook and bottle washer,” said Anthony Buras, a member of the parish council. “In the private business mentality, you move forward the minute you make a decision. Sometimes in government that isn’t always doable. There have been some times where there’s been some conflict with that.”

Mr. Nungesser’s impatience with the parish council is not something he takes pains to hide, railing against “the egos and the jealousy” of his political opponents with the same irritation he displays when criticizing the response to the oil spill.

That is the mode he seems to enjoy most, and one he was fully engaged in late Thursday night on the front porch of the Myrtle Grove Marina.

He had just taken a regiment of journalists out in boats to see oiled pelicans, and now, his clothes drenched from a sudden downpour, he was balancing a flurry of phone calls with the demands of the news media.

Standing in white shrimp boots that he called his Cajun Reeboks, he kept up the phone conversation while hooking up his microphone for a CNN interview like a seasoned correspondent.

Fired for wearing safety equipment?

From Save Our Gulf dot org:

 

BP Tells Fishermen Working On The Oil Spill That They Will Be Fired For Wearing A Respirator

We have had numerous fisherman, that have been hired through BP's Master Vessel Charter Agreement to work on the oil spill response, tell us that their BP "bosses" have told them that if they use a respirator or any safety equipment not provided by BP that they would be fired.

Hundreds of fisherman have been hired to attach booms to their shrimp boats in place of nets and drive their boats directly through the oil slicks to corral and collect the oil that is spilling from BP's broken well in the Gulf of Mexico. These fisherman have one of the highest potentials for exposure to toxic air pollutants from the crude oil out of all of the responders working the spill. In addition to crude oil there is the added danger posed by the aerial application of dispersant chemicals and there have already been reports that fishermen working on the spill feel that they have been impacted by the dispersants.

It is only prudent that these fisherman be provided respiratory protection and encouraged to use it. Instead, they have not only NOT been provided respiratory protection, they have been threatened with being fired for using their own respiratory protection.

When we first realized that these workers were not being provided with adequate safety gear we activated our project that provides safety gear to people working on hurricane recovery but, in this case tailored to oil spill response. We have since distributed hundreds of half face respirators with multiple packs of organic vapor cartridges a piece as well as nitrile gloves, sleeve protectors and booties.

LEAN also participated in what we thought was a successful Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), brought by a team of layers led by attorney Stuart Smith, requiring BP to provide the volunteers with safety gear. As a result of that TRO, "the Judge ordered a consent agreement, now court record, wherein British Petroleum has agreed to amend the Master Vessel Charter Agreement and take responsibility to ensure workers are properly trained in haz-mat protocol and are provided all necessary equipment at BP's expense," said James Garner, of Sher Garner Cahill Richter Klein & Hilbert, L.L.C.

"It appears that, despite the obvious potential for exposure to respiratory toxins, BP does not consider respiratory protection necessary equipment," said Paul Orr, Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper, "and even so to prevent the fishermen from using their own respiratory protection if they chose to do so is deeply troubling."

"The fisherman have entered into this (Master Vessel Charter) agreement with BP in order to make some income while they are unable to fish," Orr went on to say. "These fisherman are choosing to put themselves in harms way in order to provide for their families and that BP would force them to sacrifice their health in order to make ends meet when simply using a respirator could protect their health is unconscionable."

"There's no way you can be working in that toxic soup without getting exposures," said Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) office of solid waste and emergency response. Kaufman likened the situation to the World Trade Center cleanup after 9/11, which left workers with long-term respiratory problems despite repeated official claims that workers did not need respirators because the working conditions were safe. "It's unbelievable what's going on. It's like deja vu all over again," he said.

A restraining order against BP

from
CNN dot com


John Wunstell Jr., is asking BP to give the workers masks and not harass workers who publicly voice their health concerns.

Wunstell, a shrimper, said he was paid by BP to use his boat, Ramie's Wish, to clean up oil that has been gushing into the Gulf since an oil rig sank about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, gushing an estimated 19,000 barrels (798, 000 gallons) of crude a day.

In an affidavit, Wunstell wrote he started experiencing severe headaches and nasal irritation on May 24. Over the next few days, he also developed nosebleeds, an upset stomach, and aches.

On Friday, Wunstell was airlifted to West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, Louisiana, where he remained hospitalized Sunday.

Eight other workers were brought to the hospital this week and were all released.

"We need to start protecting these guys," said Jim Klick, Wunstell's lawyer.

In his affidavit, Wunstell described his experience at the hospital.

"At West Jefferson, there were tents set up outside the hospital, where I was stripped of my clothing, washed with water and several showers, before I was allowed into the hospital," Wunstell said. "When I asked for my clothing, I was told that BP had confiscated all of my clothing and it would not be returned."

The restraining order requests that BP refrain from "altering, testing or destroying clothing or any other evidence or potential evidence" when workers become ill.

Graham MacEwen, a spokesman for BP, said he could not comment on the restraining order, or on allegations that BP confiscated clothing.

Remembering Ixtoc

By Chris Hawley, USA TODAY
COATZACOALCOS, Mexico — Here on Mexico's Gulf Coast, the Deepwater Horizon disaster has revived memories of the world's worst accidental oil spill, a 1979 blowout that spewed oil for nine months, devastated marine life and covered the Texas and Mexican coasts with gobs of crude.

Now, people here are worried they may be in for a repeat of that disaster as ocean currents begin to catch oil from the Deepwater Horizon well and the Atlantic hurricane season gets underway June 1.

There are strong parallels between the two spills. Like the Deepwater Horizon spill, the Ixtoc 1 spill on June 3, 1979, involved the failure of a blowout preventer device, a kind of emergency shutoff valve. In both cases, metal domes put over the well failed to stop the leaks.

And in both cases, crews turned to something called relief wells dug horizontally through the seafloor to stop the spills, a technique that can take months.

The Ixtoc I was an exploratory well being drilled in 160 feet of water about 60 miles northwest of Ciudad del Carmen on Mexico's Gulf coast. By comparison, the Deepwater Horizon well is 5,000 feet deep. The Ixtoc 1 well was owned by Petroleos Mexicanos, Mexico's state oil company, known as Pemex. But it was being drilled by Sedco, a predecessor to Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig.

At about 3 a.m. that 1979 day, the drill bit hit a high-pressure pocket of gas and oil. The drill pipe bent, the blowout preventer failed, and an oil geyser shot 150 feet before bursting into flames.

Armando Rodriguez was a deckhand on a ship that was laying pipe for the Ixtoc 1 well. He was standing watch when the drilling platform exploded, shooting a pillar of blue flame into the night sky.

"The tower bent in half and went down in sparks," Rodríguez said. "We pulled out all the survivors. Then the oil started getting sucked into the engines, and the captain ordered us to back away."

All 63 crewmembers were rescued without injury. In the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion, 11 died.

The Ixtoc spill wiped out fishing along the Mexican coast for nearly two years, said fisherman Agapito Quintana Gomez, 73.

Reaching under a boat behind the offices of the Miguel Aleman Fisherman's Cooperative in Coatzacoalcos, Quintana pulled out what looked like a lump of rubber: hardened sludge from a more recent oil spill. Inside, it was glossy black and smelled like especially pungent tar. "This stuff is poison," Quintana said. "It's going to go everywhere. We saw this happen in '79."

Pemex and a series of U.S. contractors struggled for months to stop that leak. One company managed to close the well casing, but the oil broke through below the seal and caused another blowout. Another contractor built a dome for the well that it called the "Sombrero," Spanish for "hat," but oil continued to seep from cracks in the seafloor.

In August 1979, balls of sticky tar began washing up on the hotel beaches of South Padre Island in Texas. Crews scraped them up with construction equipment and giant vacuum cleaners, and the Coast Guard stretched a net across the Port Mansfield inlet to catch submerged tar balls.

Pemex began drilling two horizontal relief wells soon after the spill in June 1979, but they did not reach the Ixtoc 1 well until November, five months later. The crews used the relief wells to pump mud and steel balls into the gusher, finally capping the leak on March 25, 1980.

BP, which owns the well in the Deepwater Horizon spill, began drilling its own relief wells on May 2 and May 16. They will take about three months to complete, the company says.

Other techniques tried on the Ixtoc 1 might not work in the Deepwater Horizon spill. During the Ixtoc spill, scientists experimented with spreading fertilizer on the slick to encourage bacteria that break down the oil. That may not be a good idea near the Louisiana coast, which already has too much algae because of fertilizer runoff from the Mississippi River, said Terry Hazen, an oil spill cleanup expert at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The algae created a "dead zone" of low oxygen levels in the Gulf.

The Ixtoc 1 leak spilled between 126 million and 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, making it second only to the intentional oil spill of about 462 million gallons caused by retreating Iraqi troops in 1991 during the Gulf War, according to the Interior Department.

After the 1979 spill, sea turtles and dolphins suffered. Scientists dug up hundreds of oil-covered turtle eggs and flew them to cleaner beaches to save them.

Many residents now fear the BP spill will bring a repeat disaster. A variation in the Gulf currents that occurs every six to 11 months could eventually carry the oil toward Mexico, said Mike Pigott, a meteorologist with the AccuWeather forecasting firm.

"The winds are dead out there now, but in June, they're going to start blowing again," said Roman Dominguez of the Gavilan del Rio Fisherman's cooperative in Coatzacoalcos. "That's what people are worried about. Everyone here remembers Ixtoc."

wackenhut?

It just goes on and on, doesn't it?

While precious wildlife and marshes slowly die due to BP's lacksadasial (sp) response to saving Louisiana's coastline, it has now come to light that those bastards are employing a security company called Wackenhut to take care of the perimeter of BP's and the "Unified Command" Center in Robert, Louisiana (formerly known as the home of Global Wildlife) to hold back the real story from the world.

An excerpt from naomiklein dot org:


I just got off the phone with my friends Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," and her husband Avi Lewis, host of al Jazeera English's popular program Fault Lines. They are traveling around the devastated US Gulf reporting on the horrific disaster caused by BP's massive oil spill. They described to me a run in that they just had with the private security company Wackenhut, which apparently has been hired to do the perimeter security for the "Deepwater Horizon Unified Command." The "Unified Command" is run jointly by BP and several US government agencies including the US Coast Guard, the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security.

Wackenhut, of course, is the notorious private security company that operates in the US and around the globe. It recently became part of the huge British mercenary network G4S. Most recently, Wackenhut gained global infamy for the conduct of guards from its subsidiary Armor Group after it was revealed by whistleblowers that the company created a "Lord of the Flies environment" at the embassy "in which guards and supervisors are 'peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks... [drunken] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity." According to the Project on Government Oversight, "Multiple guards say this deviant hazing has created a climate of fear and coercion, with those who declined to participate often ridiculed, humiliated, demoted, or even fired. The result is an environment that is dangerous and volatile. Some guards have reported barricading themselves in their rooms for fear that those carrying out the hazing will harm them physically."

In other words, Wackenhut is the perfect choice to "guard" the joint BP-US government-US military operation in the Gulf.

Bastards.

We are not okay

It starts again, not even five years post Katrina. Our government allows itself to be lied to about the tragedy unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico and we are forgotten. BP is in charge because "it's their money", so they won't allow journalists to do their jobs. Our two state senators are removed from this disaster. One wants to limit big oil's liability, the other is just a wack job. All I can say is thank the lord for Billy Nungesser, Craig Tafarro, Kevin Davis, Charlie Melancon, Anderson Cooper and WWL radio.

National Wildlife Federation on

BP's dog and pony show

from nola dot com:

BP, the oil company taking flak for its inconsistent response to the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, bused in 400 extra cleanup workers to Grand Isle during President Obama's visit today, Jefferson Parish Council Chairman John Young said.

"It appears to have been a PR stunt by BP, not to say we don't appreciate the extra participation," Young said. "We certainly need them, but we don't need them for just one day that happens to coincide with a visit from the president."

Obama made his second visit today to Louisiana's oil-stricken coast, stopping in Grand Isle and Port Fourchon.

Young said he saw the workers dressed in red shirts, blue jeans and black shrimp boots mulling across the beaches and in the mess hall during the president's appearance. They were uniformed in a way "which you don't normally see workers dressed like that," Young said.

After Obama's departure, Young said, the work crews all but vanished.

"This is a total shame that a mockery has been made of this visit by the executives of BP," Councilman Chris Roberts said.

"What we want to make clear (is) if they're going to send them, then send them everyday, not just on the day of the president's visit," Councilman Tom Capella said.

BP spokesman Mike Abendhoff denied it was done solely for publicity.

"Obviously, it's unfortunate that that's what people are thinking," Abendhoff said. "We're not sending people for PR stunts.We're sending people to clean up this oil."

Abendhoff said the additional workers are part of BP's efforts gradually to increase its presence on Louisiana beaches to meet the incoming oil. "We've continued to add resources every day," he said

Young stopped short of saying Jefferson Parish officials were frustrated with BP's response to a disaster that has affected more than 100 miles of coastline. But he noted that parish officials commandeered idle BP-hired vessels last week to begin skimming oil that had traveled into Barataria Bay.

He said there appears to be a disconnect between the oil company and the Coast Guard, which is in charge of the response effort.

"I would compare BP today to FEMA after Katrina," Young said, recalling the halting response of the federal emergency agency in the days following the 2005 hurricane.

WTF????

"BP's much-anticipated attempt to cap its undersea gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, a spill now estimated at twice the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster, was suspended for more than 16 hours before it was restarted late Thursday afternoon, a BP executive said Thursday."

Birds affected by the Oil Spill

LOS ANGELES, May 24 (Reuters) - More than 300 sea birds, the bulk of them brown pelicans and northern gannets, have been found dead along the U.S. Gulf Coast during the first five weeks of BP's huge oil spill off Louisiana, wildlife officials reported on Monday.

The 316 birds found dead along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida -- plus 10 others that died or were euthanized at wildlife rehabilitation centers after they were captured alive, far outnumber the 31 surviving birds found oiled to date.

The raw tally of birds listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as dead on arrival at wildlife collection facilities include specimens obviously tainted with oil and some with no visible signs of oil contamination.

But all are being counted as potential casualties of the oil gushing since April 20 from a ruptured wellhead on the floor of the Gulf because of their proximity in time and space to the spill, said Jay Holcomb, who directs a rescue center for birds in Fort Jackson, Louisiana.

The specimens eventually will be analyzed to determine more conclusively if the birds were contaminated with oil from the BP spill, he said.

Holcomb, director of the California-based International Bird Rescue Research Center, said mortality for sea birds, many of them in the midst of their breeding season, is expected to climb sharply, especially if hurricanes move into the region and sweep more oil ashore.

"The potential for this being catastrophic is right there because there's a massive amount of oil in the water, and it's still pouring out, and there's a lot of nesting birds and a lot of birds using the coast," he told Reuters. "If the tropical storms take that oil and move it, that's when you're going to see the real impact, I think."

DIVING BIRDS HARDEST HIT SO FAR

The birds known to be hardest hit by oil in the Gulf so far are those that feed by diving into the water for fish, including the brown pelican, removed last year from the endangered species list, and the northern gannet, Holcomb said.

But shorebirds, wading birds and songbirds will increasingly be put in harm's way as more oil washes onto beaches and into marshlands.

Oil impairs the insulating properties of birds' feathers, exposing them to cold and making it difficult for them to float, swim and fly. Chemicals in the petroleum also can burn their skin and irritate their eyes. They also end up ingesting the oil when they preen, damaging their digestive tracts.

 

 

Affects on Marine Life in the Gulf

From the NOAA incident news (http://www.incidentnews.gov/attachments/8220/527747/DeepH20web_26May.pdf)

 

Marine mammals and turtles (effective May 25):

Sea Turtles

The total number of sea turtles verified from April 30 to May 25 within the designated spill area is 223. The 223 includes three entirely oiled sea turtles that were captured alive during dedicated on-water surveys last week: two small Kemp's Ridley and a larger sub-adult Loggerhead turtle. They were taken to the Audubon Aquarium where they are undergoing de-oiling and care and are doing well. In addition, 207 dead and 13 live stranded turtles (of which three subsequently died in rehab) have been verified. None of the dead or alive stranded turtles have had visible evidence of external oil.

 

Dolphins

From April 30 to May 25, there have been 22 dead dolphins verified within the designated spill area. The dolphin collected on May 24 is being evaluated. The other 21 dolphins have had no visible evidence of external oil.