CategoryRecovery

Seven years after Deepwater Horizon, and we haven’t learned much

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It was seven years ago yesterday that BP’s Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people and triggering an environmental catastrophe that in many ways has continued to this day. It is a moment I will never forget: I was in a small plane flying over the Gulf that next morning, watching the thick black plume of smoke with a mixture of shock and alarm. That soon gave way...

The damage from Deepwater Horizon that can’t be restored

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The 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is back in the news again, thanks to this weekend’s release of the blockbuster Hollywood movie about the rig explosion. Once again, Americans are talking again about a story that had seemed to fade from the picture — even though it would be a huge mistake to anyone to forget the worst ecological disaster in American history. It will certainly be...

They still don’t take seafood safety seriously in the Gulf

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In more than a quarter century as an environmental lawyer, I’ve learned a lot about the mostly ineffective ways that government regulators do their jobs — and that learning curve definitely accelerated in those first few months after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Time and time again, I — and others in the environmental community here in Louisiana — watched in those...

It’s time for Louisiana’s oil companies to pay up

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Elections matter. That was especially true last fall in Louisiana, when voters went to the polls to elect a replacement for the term-limited Gov. Bobby Jindal (who, if you’ll remember, had the audacity to be running for president at that time). It’s pretty hard to make a case that Jindal wasn’t one of the worst governors in the modern history of the state; Louisiana’s...

The day climate change came to haunt tar sands country

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The scenes that have been coming from Alberta, Canada, over the past week are truly tragic, and horrifying. Massive wildfires, whipped by high winds, have turned the area around Fort McMurray — heavily populated with energy workers in recent years — into a hellscape of towering flames and smoke. Some 245,000 acres of land have been burned, and firefighters aren’t anywhere close...

Chernobyl: A monument to folly that may outlast human civilization

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In addition to the sixth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon spill, this month marked another grim environmental anniversary — 30 years since the April 24, 1986 nuclear accident at the Chernobyl plant in what was then the Soviet Union and is now the Ukraine. In a strange way, the fact that the accident occurred well behind the Iron Curtain of the 20th Century has left much of the Western...

Five years of Fukushima — a living monument to human folly

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Today marks the 5-year anniversary of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant. In today’s distracted world — where the worst cases of attention-deficit disorder belong to the mainstream news media — it feels as if these annual anniversaries are the only way to bring attention to any ongoing environmental crisis, from the our...

Don’t shed a tear for BP’s lost billions

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Do you think that you had a bad year in 2015? I can almost guarantee that economically, it wasn’t as bad as it was for BP, the British oil giant behind the worst oil spill in American history. This week, BP officially it announced its earnings for the quarter and for the year — but the term “earnings” is something of a misnomer. Indeed, the Big Oil icon lost a whopping $6...

Dolphin study shows BP spill will affect Gulf for generations

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Over the last five years, a series of scientific studies have clearly documented the enormous consequences of the 2010 BP oil spill on fish and wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico. From the majestic and endangered Kemp’s ridley turtle to the sensitive shrimp and oyster beds, exposure to the more than 4 million barrels that flowed from the worst oil spill in American history, or to the toxic...

Louisiana still one bad storm away from environmental disasters

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One consequence of the recent 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina was a chance to reflect just how lucky New Orleans and the surrounding parishes have been recently — at least when it comes to weather. Of course, no major hurricane has struck Louisiana in a while, and so far 2015 has been largely free of severe tropical weather. On the other hand, that may also provide a false sense of...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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