Category Archives: Oil Spill Facts
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 [...]
Read More »To cut through all the misinformation and all the spin – to get to the truth about how the Gulf is really doing below the surface – there’s no substitute for going down there and taking a look yourself. That’s exactly what scuba divers Scott Porter, a marine biologist, and Michael Boatright, a forensics and recovery specialist, did earlier this month. What they found is (more) alarming evidence that something [...]
Read More »Residents along the Gulf Coast wish they could forget how last year’s oil spill tore the fabric of local life by destroying jobs, harming health and reducing seafood consumption. But as the one-year anniversary of BP’s well explosion nears on April 20, scientists and coastal advocates continue to assess the spill’s ongoing effects. The coast is suffering and the cleanup is hardly over, speakers said in seminars in New Orleans [...]
Read More »ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2011) — NOAA scientists and academic partners have found a way to use air chemistry measurements taken hundreds of feet above last year’s BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill to estimate how fast gases and oil were leaking from the reservoir thousands of feet underwater. The scientists also determined the fate of most of those gas and oil compounds using atmospheric chemistry data collected from the NOAA WP-3D [...]
Read More »MOBILE, Alabama – The Gulf Coast Claims Facility announced Monday that it had reached “an important milestone” by processing more than half of the 256,000 final oil-spill claims applications it received. Included in the calculation are about 100,000 quick payments of $5,000 for individuals or $25,000 for businesses. Such payments are available to any claimant approved for spill damages during the facility’s emergency phase last year. Quick payment recipients must [...]
Read More »Just how dismal is Louisiana’s enforcement of oil spill regulations? Well, a New Orleans newspaper is out with an investigative piece that looks at years of state “enforcement” – and finds exceedingly little focus or success. The report details how overlapping state and federal jurisdictions are used to delay and dodge responsibility. In fact, only about 1 of every 100 oil spills faces any sort of enforcement action, such as [...]
Read More »Japan’s nuclear emergency turned more dire on Tuesday after the third explosion in four days rocked the seaside Fukushima Daiichi complex and fire briefly raged in a storage facility for spent fuel rods at a fourth, previously unaffected reactor. Three hours after the explosion, the radiation level at the plant measured 11,930 micro sieverts per hour – several times the amount a person can safely be exposed to in one [...]
Read More »In Louisiana, fewer than one in 100 oil spills result in any fine whatsoever — so why should an oil company clean up after itself? In the months since the April 20, 2010 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana regulators moved to fine BP Plc and two of its contractors as much as $1 million for each of the 86 days the runaway well gushed oil. The state attorney [...]
Read More »Not long after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, Cherri Foytlin asked President Barack Obama on CNN to come down to New Orleans and talk to her, so she could show him the damage that had been done, both environmentally and to her own health. When he didn’t make that visit, she decided she would take matters into her own hands and travel to the White House – on foot. [...]
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