Category Archives: Response
Justice coming too slowly for beleaguered sinkhole residents
It’s hard to believe, but with summer upon us we’re also getting closer to the one-year anniversary of the sinkhole fiasco in Bayou Corne. That means that roughly 350 residents of this bayou community 70 miles west of New Orleans have spent months now out of their homes in a forced evacuation, fleeing the smell of methane, an ever-widening hole in the earth that could now accommodate the Louisiana Superdome, [...]
Read More »It just keeps on getting worse for ExxonMobil and its major oil pipeline spill in Mayflower, Ark. This week, officials were bracing for a major storm that threatened to send more of the spilled oil from the Canadian tar sands into nearby Lake Conway — a major, environmentally sensitive waterway: Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel says he’s concerned about the effect heavy rainfall could have on dispersing oil that spilled [...]
Read More »There’ve been multiple reports over the last couple of days about officials in Arkansas restricting access — apparently upon orders from top officials at ExxonMobil — to news helicopters and other media photographers seeking to capture the full extent of the Pegasus pipeline spill in Arkansas. Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made it clear why the oil giant didn’t want you to see what was going on, as it [...]
Read More »This would not be the week that you’d want to begin work in the ExxonMobil PR department. Indeed, this seems to be the time when the oil giant — in fact, the world’s most profitable company, let us never forget — and its proverbial chickens are finally coming home to roost. Just in time for Earth Day, ExxonMobil’s environment-be-damned efforts to feed America’s addiction to oil are spoiling the earth, [...]
Read More »Last week, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal finally answered the question that had lingered in the humid bayou air for months, when he visited the giant sinkhole around Bayou Corne, about 70 miles west of New Orleans. And he came bearing….well, not exactly gifts but promises that the state would apply the necessary pressure to make sure the owner of the collapsing salt cavern under the ground, Texas Brine Co., would [...]
Read More »At the start of the BP civil trial now underway in New Orleans, I expressed my pleasure that more of the facts of what happened on the Deepwater Horizon rig on, and leading up to, the night of April 10, 2010, would finally be aired for the public to see, in an open court of law. Sure enough, the first couple weeks of the case — with billions of dollars [...]
Read More »Many times in this space, I’ve told you about the remarkable work that my friend Bonny Schumaker has done with her environmental and animal rights outfit called On Wings Of Care. Bonny is a former NASA rocket scientist and an ex-commercial pilot who knows how to use her aviation skills for so much good, as an environmentalist and as a fighter for animal rights . The work that she’s done here [...]
Read More »It’s looking more and more like the federal government’s massive civil suit against BP over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is actually going to trial — although you never know what’s going to happen until the judge bangs the final gavel. I do know this: If BP — and the people of the Gulf Coast — actually all do get our day (or weeks) in court, you’re sure to hear [...]
Read More »After exactly 200 days out of their homes, the beleaguered residents of Bayou Corne finally got a hearing in Baton Rouge this week. They were also told of growing uncertainty about when the crisis in Assumption Parish — where the massive sinkhole created by a collapsing salt cavern continues to grow — will ever be resolved. Many of them want out. Can you blame them at this point? On the 200th [...]
Read More »Just a quick follow-up on a post I wrote earlier this month about offshore drilling in the Arctic, which so far has been one disaster after another ever since Shell launched its project off Alaska this past summer. Recently, the feds who’ve signed off on this unholy venture have told the public that in a worse-case scenario, authorities or contractors could deploy dispersants like Corexit, the chemical used widely in [...]
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