Category Archives: Cleanup Efforts
Warning: You may want to hold off on booking that Gulf Coast vacation – because the beaches aren’t as clean or safe as official reports indicate. According to a whistleblower lawsuit filed in New Orleans, BP cleanup crews intentionally left oil debris on Mississippi beaches while company officials falsely reported that the areas were adequately cleaned. (So much for public safety.) The lawsuit alleges that BP fired August Walter Jr. [...]
Read More »It’s been called the worst environmental crime ever perpetrated, anywhere in the world. Billions of gallons of toxic oil-drilling waste indiscriminately dumped into pristine Amazon waterways used for drinking, fishing and bathing by tens of thousands of Ecuadorians. Three decades of “deliberate” contamination laid waste to an expanse of lush rainforest comparable to the size of Rhode Island. Today, noxious pools of oily sludge still drain into local rivers and [...]
Read More »The federally approved plan amounts to a sweetheart deal for BP, and a huge black eye for Louisiana and the entire Gulf Coast. The plan – which transitions out of the cleanup phase into the restoration phase – allows BP to walk away from miles and miles of contaminated coastline, marshlands and beaches that are still being hit by fresh, highly toxic oil. A high-ranking Louisiana public official slammed the [...]
Read More »The mystery continues to unfold at the site of last year’s massive oil spill. Flyover surveillance footage taken Nov. 12 reveals no fewer than nine large oil-related work vessels in the waters surrounding BP’s Macondo Prospect. Vast expanses of surface oil have been reported at the site since we broke the story here on this blog in mid-August, but both BP and the U.S. Coast Guard have been unable – [...]
Read More »As fresh oil continues to blot on our sugar-white beaches and our fragile coastal marshes remain choked with thick crude, BP is set to pull the plug on cleanup efforts across the Gulf Coast – and, inexplicably, the U.S. Coast Guard is clearing the way for the oil giant’s hasty retreat. Here’s how Associated Press reporters Cain Burdeau and Dina Cappiello covered the disturbing disclosure on Nov. 8: BP will [...]
Read More »Scientists confirmed last month that BP’s oil continues to bubble to the surface where the infamous Deepwater Horizon rig once sat. While federal officials bury their heads, the situation in the Gulf worsens by the day. We now believe this second wave of BP oil has made landfall on Horn Island, a narrow strip of federally protected land just 12 miles off the Mississippi coast. Here’s the background. On Sept. [...]
Read More »It’s a rule we’re all taught in kindergarten: Clean up your own mess. The concept is so simple even five-year-olds get it. If you don’t clean up the mess you make, somebody else will have to – and even kindergartners (bless their stubborn little hearts) understand why that’s wrong. Sadly for those of us on the Gulf Coast, that very basic lesson didn’t gel with the folks at BP. Or [...]
Read More »Faith in the federal government has died on the Gulf Coast – or more accurately, it was killed. The trust between Gulf citizen and government was battered by the disastrously slow and inept federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and a stake was driven through its heart by the Obama Administration’s incessant coddling of BP during last year’s massive oil spill. By all accounts, those two critically important federal [...]
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