Stuart H. Smith » Dispersant

The forgotten divers of Deepwater Horizon

admin — Tue, 28 May 2013 18:46:45 +0000

This past weekend's Memorial Day ceremonies were a special time for remembering the many men and women who were called to serve and who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. The troops who have fought for our country are truly special -- and yet at the same time they embody something more fundamental about the American character. There is a deep instinct among so many citizens -- not just soldiers and sailors but among many civilians as well -- to help others, to rush into a dangerous situation rather than run away. I witnessed that instinct close up in the days and weeks immediately after BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010. Fisherman, charter boat captains and many other good citizens of the Gulf Coast went into the heart of the spill to help with the cleanup -- working to contain the spill, document its impact, or rescue sea turtles or other wildlife that had been stranded. As a lawyer, I went to court with environmental groups who were shocked and disappointed that these workers weren't provided adequate protective clothing or gear. But no one exposed themselves to greater risk than a small group of divers who went down into ...

Surprise, surprise: New evidence about BP disaster suddenly turns up

admin — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:55:06 +0000

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 in penalties against BP as well as rig owner Transocean and prime contractor Halliburton on the line -- has been a font of useful and important information. Not only have the American people gained new insight into the errors and miscalculations that led up to the explosion that killed 11 rig workers and unleashed as many as 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, but new evidence has suddenly, almost magically, appeared, nearly three years after the tragedy. Like this:

BP's cement contractor on the Deepwater Horizon rig has discovered cement samples possibly tied to the ill-fated drilling project that weren't turned over to the Justice Department after the 2010 oil spill, a lawyer for the contractor said Thursday.

Halliburton lawyer Donald Godwin told U.S. District Judge Carl ...

Yet another study questions the use of Corexit

admin — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 15:50:55 +0000

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 a lot of gobbledygook from the Big Oil icon about how well the spill was managed and everything is just a-OK on the environmental front today. Don't believe a word of it. Over the last nearly three years, we've been telling you that the tons of dispersant called Corexit -- in addition to making folks, and fish, sick -- sprayed to make BP's oil from sight didn't really make it go away. In fact, on the eve of what could be an epic court battle, we hear from our sources along the coastline that lingering oil has continued to wreak havoc on the shrimp harvest, and we've seen the remnants of the Deepwater Horizon disaster regurgitated by every tropical storm that strikes Louisiana or nearby states. Now it comes yet another study that questions why BP and the feds ...

Yet another reason not to drill offshore in the Arctic

admin — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 00:12:37 +0000

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 the Gulf in 2010, to avoid the worst consequences of a spill. In Louisiana, we know better than that. We've already seen how down here how the dispersant actually made things worse, making clean-up workers and other Gulf residents sick and harming our once-thriving fisheries. But now we learn even more from a study funded by another arm of the federal government -- that these toxic chemicals are likely to stick around for a mich longer time if ever deployed in frigid waters like Arctic, or in deeper sections of the ocean:
EPA oil spill expert Albert D. Venosa, working with academic researchers, wanted to better understand the degradation of Corexit 9500, the main dispersant used during the spill. They ran tests on artificial seawater at 5 ºC, about the temperature ...

Government and Lubchenco dispersing lies about Corexit to the Arctic now

admin — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:15:37 +0000

There's a couple of things we've learned about the U.S. government -- and some of the people who've worked there -- over the last three years. We saw in the Gulf of Mexico that when it comes to dispersing a major oil spill, the feds have no idea what they're doing. But sadly, when it comes to dispersing bad info, the government is second to none. Now the feds are spilling misinformation in the Arctic region -- the area where Shell has launched a risky and ill-advised offshore drilling campaign. Recently, Alaska Public Radio publicized a report authored by Dr. Jane Lubchenco -- the soon-to-be-departed head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA -- that seeks to argue that dispersants like Corexit, the toxic that was massively deployed on BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, offered no ill effects. Here's a snippet:
“It was our judgment that use of dispersants would help the oil be naturally biodegraded more naturally, and that certainly seems to have been the case” Lubchenco said.

Nearly two million gallons of dispersants, mostly Corexit, were used on the spill, close to half of it underwater while the oil and gas was gushing out of the ...

New Orleans memo: You can still have great music without noise pollution

admin — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:21:54 +0000

Sometimes a name can tell you a lot. In the past, I've told you about my enthusiastic support for a New Orleans group, active on Facebook and the Internet, that's called "Hear the Music, Stop the Noise." The title makes a powerful point: That it's possible for a great American city like my hometown to continue having a spectacular and vibrant music scene without assaulting people's eardrums and harming their health. This public education campaign has been very successful. Since launching in January of this year, the website has received over 18,000 hits and over 20,000 page views. Hundreds have signed the petition on the website. The Facebook page has 167 people who have friended our page and we are getting more every day. We're not opposed to the great venues in the Big Easy -- the Cajun rhythms of a bar like the Maple Leaf or the world-class funk of a Tipitina's, not to mention the great jazz that New Orleans is famous for. Most of the worst noise offenders are bars whose owners do not appreciate the need to have balance such that they have dragged down once-great entertainment strips like Bourbon Street, even as wonderful food and ...

The sinkhole keeps getting bigger, and so do the lies of Texas Brine Co.

admin — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 12:49:50 +0000

The crisis involving the Bayou Corne sinkhole in Louisiana just doesn't stop. In what's becoming an almost daily headline, the sinkhole grew again, swallowing up more trees and even part of an access road:
A 1,500 square-foot section caved in from the edge of a sinkhole in Assumption Parish Tuesday night and pulled down several trees and part of an access road, parish officials said Wednesday.

The road was built to park excavators used in pending cleanup of the sinkhole, which emerged Aug. 3 in swamps between the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas on property owned by Texas Brine Co., parish officials said in a blog post.

The 4-acre sinkhole has seen periodic edge collapses, or sloughing off, and has gradually become wider as the saturated soil on the edge falls into the slurry hole. Estimates before the most recent collapse put the width at 475 feet.
The continued growth of the sinkhole, which is about 70 miles west of New Orleans, is not surprising at this point. But the deteriorating situation raises the stakes that residents might be exposed to known carcinogens or elevated levels of radiation that have been found in the sinkhole, which ...

Torn on the bayou: Sinkhole keeps getting bigger, more dangerous

admin — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:12:51 +0000

A lot has happened over the last few weeks. In the political world, the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney sees a new kerfuffle every few hours. Down here in Louisiana, we've been whacked by Hurricane Isaac, and on the environmental front we're still trying to get BP to pay its fair share for all the havoc it's wreaked in the Gulf. But there's one thing that hasn't changed much all this time. That dangerous sinkhole in Bayou Corne, about seventy miles west of New Orleans, is still there. In fact, it's getting bigger almost every day. And residents of the small rural community are still alarmed at fresh bubbles coming up from under the ground, and they want answers. Here's some of the latest news from the Louisiana bayou:
BAYOU CORNE — The outer edge of a sinkhole in Assumption Parish has caved in for a second time in three days, parish officials said Thursday.

A 25-foot-long section of embankment fell in Thursday morning after a 200-foot-long section had fallen in Tuesday evening, parish officials said in blog posts this week.

The sinkhole was found on the property of Texas Brine Co. LLC of Houston ...

A temporary reprieve from Shell’s risky and reckless Arctic drilling scheme

admin — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 12:03:51 +0000

For the last couple of weeks, we've been consumed with the never-ending fallout from BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster. Some 29 months after the explosion that killed 11 people and spewed 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, we've seen a hurricane toss BP's oil onto our once pristine beaches all over again. And we've also been fighting it out in the legal arena -- to make sure that people whose livelihood and whose health has been harmed by the recklessness of Big Oil receive justice. Sometimes it seems like a complicated tale, but actualy what happened off the coast of Louisiana is actually fairly simple. In order to feed society's increasingly desperate addiction to fossil fuels, BP was attempting something that's very, very hard: Drilling for oil way offshore, under one mile of seawater. Despite the inherently dangerous nature of this enterprise, emails and other evidence show that BP was remarkably careless in its safety and testing procedures, and government regulators were lax in their oversight. The accident was proof of the worst-case scenarios with such high-risk drilling. Because of our recent troubles here in the Gulf, it's been appalling to see another icon of Big Oil, Shell, forge ahead ...

Louisiana DEQ bungles a toxic nightmare from Hurricane Isaac

admin — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 21:06:49 +0000

In recent months, I've joined with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and others in calling for the state's Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, to be stripped of its powers and for the federal Environmental Protection Administration, or EPA, to take over. This is not an idea that I toss around lightly. Time and time again, Louisiana's DEQ has shown that it's simply unable or unwilling to do its job: Keeping the state's residents safe from pollution. Now, a new, harrowing tale of DEQ bungling has emerged amid the floodwaters of Hurricane Isaac. As the deadly storm lashed Louisiana --the state with a higher concentration of chemical plants and oil refineries than anywhere else -- the agency failed to act and once again failed to warn residents of a toxic catastrophe in the downriver town of Braithwaite, the community that was ravaged by Isaac's floodwaters.
More than 191,000 gallons of toxic chemicals may have been released from the Stolthaven New Orleans petroleum and chemical storage and transfer terminal in Braithwaite during Hurricane Isaac, according to a company report filed Tuesday with the U.S. Coast Guard National Response Center. That's just one day after the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality assured the public that monitoring at the ...

Now, BP claims it wants to clean up Gulf — but not until it spends more on PR

admin — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 18:44:03 +0000

You've got to say this about British Petroleum -- they have some nerve. For more than two years, we've been reporting about all the lingering fallout from the Deepwater Horizon disaster -- the sick and deformed seafood, the dead zones and the depleted oyster beds, the oiled marshlands and the dying dolphins, and the clean-up workers with crippling health issues. But now, after Hurricane Isaac whipped up some of the estimated 1 million barrels of spilled oil that's still out there in the Gulf, BP says it's seen the light. Now, 29 months later, BP insists that it's going to clean up the Gulf, and that it's serious this time:
"What we have seen to date in the form of buried tar mats and tar balls exposed by Isaac have been identified in the isolated areas that we worked" before the storm, said Mike Utsler, President of BP's Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, speaking at a news conference at a New Orleans hotel. "It's not unexpected to see this material where it's been exposed."

Seeing that oil on the beaches has been “not unexpected” by countless BP cleanup workers who have stated they were not allowed to clean up oil and instead ...

We object: Why BP’s $8.7 billion deal is “a failed settlement”

admin — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 19:51:18 +0000

The last couple of weeks have brought a lot of news – both good and bad – down here to the Gulf Coast. Hurricane Isaac was a double whammy; the storm itself destroyed homes and upended people’s lives, but it also stirred up a ton of BP’s oil. There’s believed to be as much as 1 million barrels of oil still polluting our waters, some 29 months after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. That is simply not acceptable. The good news is that the people of the Gulf Coast – including our government officials – are showing a backbone and standing up to BP. The oil giant is trying to ram through a $8.7 billion settlement with thousands of residents and business owners harmed by its recklessness in the drilling rig disaster. As I noted last week, that sounds like a big number but it won’t come close for making right on the Gulf Coast – especially as recent events show the environmental carnage from Deepwater Horizon is an ongoing affair. My law firm – SmithStag LLC, which represents numerous clients with claims against BP, has joined with a second firm -- Krupnick, Campbell, Malone, Buser, Slama, Hancock, Liberman & McKee, P.A. -- ...

Louisiana unloads and blows giant hole in BP settlement

admin — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 15:04:26 +0000

For the last 29 months, I've been chronicling the widespread and still-very-much-ongoing fallout from BP's gross negligence -- "a corporate culture of recklessness," as U.S. government lawyers called it -- that killed 11 people and spewed an astronomical 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Currently, BP, arm in arm with the class action lawyers (Plaintiff's Steering Committee, or PSC) who are set to make 600 million dollars for less than two years of work if the settlement is approved, are racing ahead in a push to get a federal judge in New Orleans to give his speedy approval to an $8.7 billion settlement of the legitimate claims that thousands of Gulf Coast residents and business owners have lodged against the oil giant. The settlement would allow the company to sweep most of its massive liability to average citizens for the Deepwater Horizon disaster under the rug and get back to its business of making billions of dollars of profit in exploiting the world's addiction to fossil fuels. The State of Louisiana hired incredibly competent private counsel who, unlike the vast majority of the class action lawyers in the PSC, are extremely respected, top-notch environmental lawyers. Like the Federal Government ...

Breaking: Spill settlement unraveling as Halliburton slams deal; BP stock plunges

admin — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 19:58:00 +0000

BP's $8.7 billion attempt to put the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill behind it continues to come undone. In the latest unraveling of the oil giant's proposed settlement with thousands of Gulf residents and businesses harmed by the offshore disaster, key rig contractor Halliburton has filed court papers (here and here) slamming the deal as unfair and lacking transparency, and urging a judge to reject it. Halliburton's plea to U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier to ditch the settlement is largely based on its findings from an expert in damages -- Marc Vellrath, the CEO of the Finance Scholars Group -- who attacked the sprawling settlement as failing to distinguish from the wide variety of the claims against BP. "An upscale seafood restaurant in New Orleans, Louisiana, does not suffer the effects of an oil spill in the same way as a golf course in Mobile, Alabama," according to the legal brief filed this week by Halliburton. "Likewise, an oyster fisherman operating off the coast of Louisiana has a claim that is very different from a hotel on the coast of Florida." Halliburton's objections come just days after stinging briefs in the case by the U.S. Justice Department and the state of Alabama tore ...

Worst fears about BP oil washing ashore after Isaac are coming true

admin — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:13:48 +0000

Last week, I reported on this blog there were early indications that Hurricane Isaac had indeed whipped up some of as much as 1 million gallons of BP's spill oil that remain in the Gulf, assaulting beaches from Florida to Louisiana with tarballs and other goo most likely linked to the 2010 catastrophe. Tonight, there are growing indications that the Gulf's beaches are under assault from BP yet again:
The state is closing a 12-mile section of Gulf coastline from Caminada Pass to Pass Fourchon after Hurricane Isaac washed up large areas of oil and tar balls at the location of one of the worst inundations of BP oil during the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010. Robert Barham, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, said agency crews surveying damage from Isaac discovered large sections of viscous oil and tar balls floating along the coast from the beach to one mile offshore between Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge, just west of Grand Isle, to Pass Fourchon.

"It's a very large mass that is viscous but hasn't coalesced into tar mats yet," Barham said. "But the Elmer's Island beaches are littered with tar balls of every size, from ...

Bombshell: Feds slam BP in key court filing, admit pollution from 2010 spill continues to ravage Gulf

admin — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 04:45:41 +0000

In a bombshell federal court filing, U.S. government lawyers are slamming British Petroleum for making false and misleading statements that seek to both dodge blame for 2010's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and ignore the ongoing environmental devastation, from diseased dolphins to destroyed wetlands. The papers filed late last week by the U.S. Justice Department's top environmental lawyers and New Orleans U.S. Attorney Jim Letten charge that BP's effort to show the fairness of a proposed $7.8 billion settlement with thousands of Gulf Coast residents and businesses harmed by the spill is instead larded with falsehoods. The federal government's 37-page objection to BP's legal claims blast the oil giant's "culture of corporate recklessness" that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster and argue that BP wants the court to overlook deceased dolphins in Louisiana's Barataria Bay and dying deep-sea corrals that are sickening fish in Gulf of Mexico. And the feds are not alone in accusing BP of going over the line in trying to justify the pending $8.7 billion settlement. In a separate filing, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange also accuses the oil company of misrepresentation and argues that BP committed "willful misconduct" by attempting a risky "top kill" method to stop the 2010 spill, ...

BP cleanup crews spotted as Isaac stirs up oil, bad memories

admin — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 21:25:03 +0000

For residents of the battered Gulf Coast, Hurricane Isaac didn't just bring sheets of rain, pummeling winds, and a powerful storm surge. The slow moving, deceptively destructive Category 1 hurricane stirred up tragic memories of Hurricane Katrina, which arrived seven years earlier to the very day, and it stirred up something else. Oil. As much as a 1 million barrels, the remnants of a man-made disaster, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill. At approximately 6 a.m. today, my consultant Marco Kaltofen from Boston Chemical Data Corp. -- who has been invaluable in documenting pollution and other fallout since the BP catastrophe -- reported that he spotted a large BP crew and a fleet of payloaders and other heavy equipment ready to move out at Orange Beach, Ala. That is a community that has suffered tarballs and other toxic pollution after earlier -- and lesser -- tropical storms in the Gulf. Later today, Kaltofen sent me pictures of a positive test for oil residue in sand from Destin, Fla., a nearby restaurant that had been polluted with oil from the storm surge, and oily material in the sand at Destin's Calhoun public beach -- all a good distance east of where Isaac made landfall. Although our ...

Isaac likely to bring grim, oily reminders of 2010 BP spill to Gulf coastline

admin — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:49:45 +0000

Tropical Storm Isaac is bearing down on the Louisiana coast and is likely to become a hurricane later today, before making landfall somewhere close to New Orleans. This is not good news for either my hometown or the surrounding areas which have been struggling for seven years -- to the very day -- to recover from the grim aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Even though Isaac is not expected to match the destructive force of Katrina, which was a major Category 3 storm when it finally made landfall, I hope that anyone who's in the expected impact zone takes every necessary precaution, as even a Category 1 hurricane will bring a powerful storm surge to low-lying areas, epic amounts of rain and flooding, and destructive winds. There's one other thing about these tropical storms that attack the Gulf Coast every summer and fall; they typically bring reminders of the manmade, environmental damage that's taken place in the region. One current example of that is the area around Bayou Corne, where rural residents already alarmed by the impact of an expanding sinkhole are now dealing with the stress of an evacuation and the fears that flooding could worsen their situation. But the greatest ...

Update: Expert says Louisiana officials “in denial” over radium risk at sinkhole

admin — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:14:21 +0000

A veteran radiation expert says Louisiana environmental officials are "in denial" over the hazard posed by elevated radium levels discovered in the slurry liquids of the massive sinkhole that has forced out residents of the rural town of Bayou Corne. Stanley Waligora -- a New Mexico-based radiation protection consultant and leading authority on the health risks of naturally occurring radioactive material, or NORM -- confirmed earlier reports that radium levels at the site about 70 miles west of New Orleans are not within limits but roughly 15 times higher than the acceptable level set by the state. Waligora said officials with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality need to launch immediate additional testing to ensure that the hazardous radium is not leaking into nearby groundwater and posing a threat to human health as well as livestock. The consultant's recommendations come two days after this blog first reported that analysis of DEQ test results from Bayou Corne -- posted online earlier this week by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network -- revealed not only elevated radium levels but also airborne chemicals associated with highly volatile butane, stored in a cavern near the sinkhole. The sinkhole -- now more than a football field across, filled with ...

Threat to Bayou Corne grows as tests show elevated levels of radium, butane traces in and near sinkhole

admin — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 20:35:55 +0000

Elevated levels of radium in the water and tests showing airborne indicators of butane -- the highly explosive fuel stored in a nearby cavern -- are two alarming signs that the environmental catastrophe in the Louisiana town of Bayou Corne is far from over. The disturbing new information comes from both air and water testing at and near the massive and growing sinkhole in the bayou, 70 miles west of New Orleans -- with additional analysis by a well-known expert with whom I've worked on past crises, Marco Kaltofen. The information about radium is buried in a state news release that is poorly written and goes out of its way to downplay the results. The sinkhole -- caused by a failing salt cavern owned by the Texas Brine Co., which collapsed after state and company officials ignored residents' reports of shaking homes, noxious odors and gases bubbling up from the swamps -- has forced local residents to evacuate the area. This week, state officials released the results of samples taken 80 feet under the surface of the growing, slurry-filled pit. Kaltofen, a civil engineer and president of Boston Chemical Data Corp., noted that test results posted by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, ...

UPDATE: Sinkhole crisis worsens, 2 workers rescued, town braces for possible butane catastrophe

admin — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:29:12 +0000

The nightmare in Bayou Corne -- the besieged small town in southeastern Louisiana coping with the effects of a massive sinkhole, compounded by the incompetence of state bureaucrats -- keeps getting worse by the day. UPDATE: Breaking news this afternoon: The sinkhole is expanding:
NAPOLEONVILLE (AP) — As experts predicted, a sinkhole filled with slurry water and vegetation has been slowing expanding.

Assumption Parish Police Jury spokeswoman Kim Torres says the sinkhole near Bayou Corne grew by 50 feet Thursday morning as the surrounding environment sloughs into it. Two cleanup workers in a boat near the site almost fell in and had to be rescued by airboat.

Their boat, which was tied to a tree, was eventually swallowed by the muck.

There were no injuries reported and cleanup operations have been suspended.

Before that, state regulators are preparing for a worst case scenario involving a nearby underground storage site for large quantities of highly explosive butane, which could be compromised by the sinkhole, creating a massive explosion.
How massive? The best of the worst-case scenarios comes from company and state officials, who've consistently underestimated the potential for damage from the failed brine cavern so far; they insist that ...

Disappearing La. speckled trout another blow to BP’s Big Lie

admin — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 17:01:48 +0000

You can add speckled trout to the list. Over the last several months, I've told you about all kinds of reports about serious problems to both the safety and available of Gulf seafood. Eyeless shrimp. Deformed crabs. Red snappers covered in lesions. Not to mention the days when the Gulf fleet returns to the dock with little catch at all, in waters that were once chock full of some of the tastiest seafood in the United States. All of this happening in the 28 months since British Petroleum unleashed a 5 million barrel torrent of crude oil off the coast of Louisiana, prompting little doubt of a connection between the Deepwater Horizon spill and the mounting woes for the beleaguered fishermen who populate the coastline. It kind of puts the Big Lie to that multi-million-dollar barrage of BP ads trying to sell U.S. tourists that everything is back to normal down here -- not to mention making a mockery of the fact that the Big Oil icon was also a "sustainability" partner of the just-concluded London Olympics. Closer to home, the local press uncovers a new ecological horror virtually every couple of days. Indeed, evidence of new problems is actually mounting because it typically takes a couple ...

Incompetent Louisiana regulators knew of risk at sinkhole site since early 2011

admin — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 16:14:33 +0000

It's hard to know which is the worst thing about the ongoing environmental nightmare in the southeastern Louisiana community of Bayou Corne, where a massive sinkhole has forced an evacuation after homes shook and residents were assaulted with gas odors. Is it the fact that residents of the small bayou town will be out of their homes for weeks while the Texas company that worked a giant salt cavern to produce brine drills a large relief well to figure out just what caused the sinkhole, and the extent of the problems underground? Or is it the risk that the sinkhole -- which is now wider than a football field and over 400 feet deep -- poses to the many nearby pipelines as well as a nearby well storing a large quantity of highly explosive liquid butane, which some experts worry poses the risk of an explosion that would resemble a nuclear blast? Or is it this: State regulators from the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources -- that inept, pro-industry gang with a long track record of failures -- were told of problems at the Bayou Corne salt cavern 20 months ago, yet failed to act or seemingly even grasp the extent ...

If another major pipeline spill doesn’t convince them to kill Keystone XL, nothing will

admin — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 03:48:50 +0000

When will America ever learn? Industry and some government officials -- helped sometimes by mixed signals from the Obama administration -- continue to push for the Keystone XL pipeline to run across some of the major drinking-water sources of the American Midwest, despite the risk of a catastrophc spill. And they assure us that this Keystone pipeline will be different, that it will come with the latest state-of-the-art safety equipment and rapid response that will prevent an inland Deepwater Horizon. But if that's the case, why can't Big Oil and Gas run a pipeline safely today? In fact, the New York Times reported last year that there have been about 100 major pipeline spills in the United States every year, a number that has not changed considerably over the last two decades. That's been compounded by atrocious oversight by government regulators:
The little-known federal agency charged with monitoring the system and enforcing safety measures — the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — is chronically short of inspectors and lacks the resources needed to hire more, leaving too much of the regulatory control in the hands of pipeline operators themselves, according to federal reports, an examination ...

Louisiana covers up risk to Bayou town from sinkhole, massive methane leak

admin — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 18:17:55 +0000

Here we go again. Once again, a corner of Louisiana is under an environmental assault, threatening both the health and the immediate safety of local residents. Once again, the cause appears to be the careless practices of Big Energy as it races to exploit the rich bounty of natural resources in the Bayou State. And once again, Louisiana state officials in the administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal are working harder to downplay and even cover up the extent of the problen, rather than acknowledge the grave risks to a bayou community. This real-time crisis is unfolding in a place called Bayou Corne, a swampy area in the heart of Cajun country, 70 miles west of New Orleans as the crow flies. Like much of this part of the world, the area around Bayou Corne has long been exploited for its natural resources. For two decades, a firm called Texas Brine Co. LLC operated a large salt mining cavern underground here, where salt was extracted and the briny water sold to oil and gas customers. The site was abandoned last year, and there are conflicting reports whether the cavern may have been used to store natural gas, a process that has been known to cause problems ...

From New York to New Orleans, noise pollution terrorizes the public

admin — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 12:39:17 +0000

Shhhhhh. Can you hear me? We need to talk again. A couple of times since I started this blog, I've told you about another environmental battle that I've been waging in my hometown for a long time -- a problem that predates the nefarious doings of BP and the fracking boom from coast to coast. It's a war against noise pollution -- an assault on the ears, just as much as the environmental crimes of Big Oil and Gas can attack our other senses. Here in New Orleans, I'm a supporter of a group called Hear the Music, Stop the Noise which has launched a crusade against loud nuisance bars, especially in the French Quarter. (You can join the Facebook group here.) You might think that New Orleans -- the Big Easy, home to Mardi Gras and the Jazz Festival, Louis Armstrong and Professor Longhair -- is a strange place for a campaign against noise pollution. Actually, it's the perfect place for our cause. The once sweet sounds of muted jazz or the blues filtering out into a hot night on Bourbon Street has been swamped with pulsating, eardrum-busting waves of noise from a handful of thoughtless nuisance bars. We're beginning to ...

“Something really disastrous happening in the Gulf”: Research proves BP’s dispersant made things much, much worse

admin — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 12:09:17 +0000

There's an old saying in legal circles that the cover-up is always much worse than the initial crime. It's hard to say if that is exactly true with the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 -- after all, the initial explosion killed 11 workers and caused roughly 5 million barrels of oil to spew into the rich marine environment. But the core of the ensuing cover-up carried out by BP with the blessing of the federal government -- the massive, unprecedented spraying of a toxic chemical called Corexit in the hope that pushing the oil out of sight would also put it out of mind -- was a catastrophe in and of itself. Never before had so much dispersant -- some 1.8 million gallons -- been deployed, and never was so much sprayed at the bottom of the sea floor, where its impact has never been studied. Immediately, clean-up and recovery workers blamed the dispersant for an array of illnesses, while researchers speculated that so much Corexit in the food chain could have major impact on marine life -- and the seafood that you eat. Recently, scientists in Alabama came up with a new protocol for studying how ...

Olympics sponsor BP wins both a gold and a silver in environmental recklessness

admin — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 21:59:07 +0000

As a lifelong resident of the Gulf, I've already expressed my outrage and dismay at learning that BP -- yes, that BP, British Petroleum, spiller of roughly 5 million barrels of oil into one of the world's natural treasures -- has been named a "sustainability partner" of the 2012 Olympics in London, which finally kicked off this weekend. That selection made a mockery of the United Kingdom's boast that this 30th incarnation of the Summer Games would be the "greenest" Olympics ever. With its commitment to promoting global warming in its worldwide quest for every drop of very non-renewable fossil fuels and its wanton disregard for the safety of both its workers and the environment, the only thing that BP works to sustain is its bogus image as a good corporate citizen. Indeed, since the horrors of the Deepwater Horizon spill were unleashed on the Gulf in April 2010, BP's "response" has worked in two directions: Cover up its lethal errors such as its disregard for safety warnings and its lack of a response plan, and divert attention with slick TV ads and other PR gimmicks. As regular readers know, the safety of seafood harvested from the Gulf remains very much ...

Day of the dolphin: BP spill played key role in die-off

admin — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 12:43:05 +0000

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: The Gulf was under enormous environmental pressures before April 20, 2011, the date that the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up and killed 11 workers and then spewed so much oil into such a vital body of water. Let's face it, the reason that environmental protection is so important is because our wonderful ecology is so fragile. Even in a perfect world, unseasonably cold or dry weather or tropical storms like Hurricane Katrina can destroy marshlands or cause high rates of death or disease for certain species. But we don't live in a perfect world: Everything from high levels of nitrates in the Mississippi River basin to overdevelopment to rising sea levels from global warming has led to alarming conditions such as dead zones in the Gulf. This is the world that was overwhelmed by 5 million barrels oil two years ago. Here's the thing: The stress factors in the Gulf are so many and so great that the BP apologists -- and there are far too many of them -- have pointed to every other possible factor, except Macondo oil, for everything that's gone wrong in the region since the spring of 2010. ...

Pollution fighters catch ExxonMobil in a Baton Rouge big lie

admin — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:00:07 +0000

This is a bad news/good news post about a major threat to public health that most folks outside of Louisiana don't know about, and how a hearty band of citizens was able to get results in the face of a Big Oil giant that's hellbent on lying and state regulators who are normally prone to help big corporations cover things up. In the past, I've told you that Louisiana -- in addition to the natural and environmental threats that get so much national publicity, such the aftermath of the BP oil spill and Hurricane Katrina -- also copes on a daily basis with an array of massive oil refineries and chemical plants, many of them with poor environmental track records. One of the biggest complexes, and one of the most dangerous, is located in the capitol city of Baton Rouge and is operated by the same folks who brought you the Exxon Valdez disaster, the ExxonMobil Corp. Here the world's biggest oil company operates both the nation's third-largest oil refinery as well as a large chemical plant. The Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a top-notch group of environmental activists, has documented an alarming rate of accidents, especially at ExxonMobil's refinery. Over one five-year stretch, accident ...

The problem is that the Gulf was already under attack even before BP added 5 million barrels of oil to the mix

admin — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 13:31:38 +0000

There's one thing that's very important to remember when we talk about the Gulf of Mexico and the aftermath of the BP oil disaster. Which is this: That it's not as if everything was all hunky-dory in the region, environmentally speaking, before April of 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded. To the contrary, human activity -- industry, agriculture, suburban development -- along the mighty Mississippi basin has been placing major stress on the Gulf, and the extent of the problem has led to expanding dead zones. This major, lengthy investigation from Environmental Health News is one of the best pieces that I've read lately on what -- besides spilled oil -- has been killing marine life in the Gulf:
Washing off farms and yards, nitrate is largely responsible for the Gulf of Mexico’s infamous “dead zone.” Nitrate and other nutrients from the vast Mississippi River basin funnel into the Gulf, sucking oxygen out of the water and killing almost everything in their path. The pollution is one of America’s most widespread, costly, and challenging environmental problems, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Sewage treatment plants along the rivers already have spent billions of dollars, and some farmers now use ...

“The Gulf’s best tourism season in years” soaks an Alabama family in tarballs

admin — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 12:43:45 +0000

At this point, it's probably beating a dead horse to make fun of those omnipresent ads for BP promoting tourism along the Gulf of Mexico -- the ones that call it "the Gulf’s best tourism season in years.” The reality for most tourists along the Gulf Coast is that -- to put it mildly -- the experience can vary. It's possible to have a grand summer vacation two years after the Deepwater Horizon explosion -- but it helps not to eat seafood, given the lax testing standards. And if you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time, your experience could be a nightmare. Check out what happened to these locals from Foley, Ala., when they tried to swim in their local waters recently:
A Foley family said they became seriously ill after swimming on the beach in Gulf Shores where tarballs and oily sea shells were washing up Sunday. James Nolan said their bodies were coated in a tacky, brown tar that was nearly impossible to clean off.

“It was all over our arms and our legs,” Nolan said, who was swimming in Laguna Key. “I threw up right after. I never do that. We ...

New report sheds light on an alarming trend: Government muzzling scientists

admin — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 12:52:03 +0000

It's getting harder and harder to be a scientist in America these days -- especially if you work for, or work with the federal government, or if you cross one of the favored companies of our political leaders. We encountered this first-hand as we tried to investigate the BP oil spill and its aftermath here in the Gulf. Scientific experts who dared contradict the rosiest scenarios came in for a rough time. Back in September 2010, two of the outstanding scientists who did research on behalf of my law firm -- Dr. William Sawyer, a Florida-based toxicologist, and Marco Kaltofen, the head of Boston Chemical Data in Massachusetts -- started receiving unsettling calls from government attorneys after they reported finding disturbing levels of potentially toxic hydrocarbons in seafood. Instead of embracing their research, lawyers from the National Oil Spill Commission suggested they'd performed the research without proper permits; one said he was acting on a complaint from a major seafood distributor. The lawyers backed off after the calls were reported in the media, but the episode certainly suggested a government more interested in appeasing the powerful than in independent, untainted science. That was hardly an isolated ...

More BP fallout: Will the baby birds ever come back to Cat Island?

admin — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 07:15:24 +0000

There was a story a couple of weeks agoabout the aftermath of the 2010 BP oil spill that got a fair amount of attention, including on this blog. A researcher had discovered that the oil slick from the Deepwater Horizon blowup had sped up the already ongoing erosion of critical wetlands in the Bayou State:
The 2010 BP oil spill accelerated the loss of Louisiana’s delicate marshlands, which were already rapidly disappearing before the largest oil spill in U.S. history, a new study reports.

As the oil washed into the marshlands, it coated and smothered thick grasses at their edge. When the grass died, deep roots that held the soil together also died, leaving the shore banks of the marshlands to crumble, said Brian Silliman, the University of Florida researcher who led the new study.
Silliman found that the oiled marshes of Louisiana had receded at a rate of about 10 feet a year -- or double the normal (and already disturbing) rate of erosion of key wetlands in my home state. That's an alarming statistic -- but it's still just a statistic. Sometimes to really understand the impact that Deepwater Horizon had on ...

“Keystone Kops”: Major pipeline spills raise serious questions about safety of Keystone XL project

admin — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 12:24:37 +0000

For a lot of American environmentalists, the Keystone XL pipeline project was a major wakeup call about the rising, out-of-control power of Big Oil in this country, stretching all the way to the corridors of power in Washington. The proposal called for a 2,147-mile pipeline that would run from the booming oil-sands region of western Canada and ultimately connect all the way to the Gulf Coast. Supporters claim that the project would boost the energy industry in North America and create 20,000 American jobs. But the critics -- and there are many -- say the jobs numbers are grossly inflated and don't outweigh the major threats to the environmental that are posed by the Keystone project. For one thing, the oil that is pulled from the Canadian tar sands is an expensive, dirty fuel that will contribute to global warming. But an even more powerful argument against the Keystone XL plan is the issue of pipeline safety. The initial plan calls for the pipeline to cross the Sandhills in Nebraska, a critical wetlands, and the Ogallala Aquifer, which serves some two million people in eight states as well as many farms. So just one major accident would be catastrophic. Big Oil has tried ...

Dolphin die-off in the Gulf is ignored by U.S. media, which pushes happy talk of “recovery” instead

admin — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:30:57 +0000

In the U.S. media this week, I read more happy talk about "the comeback" of the Gulf Coast, at least in the casino-drenched city of Biloxi. I had to turn to the Canadian media to read about the ongoing mystery of the dead dolphins. Typical, huh? Of course, the "comeback" of Biloxi -- battered first by Hurricane Katrina and then by the BP oil spill -- is dripping with qualifiers and asterisks, if you read between the lines. Here's the good news as reported by the arbiter of good news in America, USA Today:
Today, a glimmering Frank Gehry-designed art museum stands where storm debris once piled up. Gamblers crowd the tables at the Hard Rock and IP casinos. Highway 90, the waterfront artery once littered with splintered homes and upended barges, is sprouting restaurants and rebuilt homes. And this month, Jimmy Buffett ushered in the grand opening of his $62 million Margaritaville Casino & Restaurant on the east side of town with a live concert.

About 4 million visitors came to the city last year, still down from the more than 8 million that visited pre-Katrina but significantly higher than the years immediately after the storm, according to city ...

Tale of Two Continents: A Quest For Justice for Chinese Fisherman Harmed by 2011 Oil Spill

admin — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 16:31:21 +0000

Imagine, if you will, an oil spill that in all too many ways is very much like BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe off the Gulf Coast. A major global oil giant, partnering on a deepwater oil rig in environmentally sensitive waters, suffers a series of accidents and then compounds the damage by trying to cover up the incident for days. Meanwhile, the size of the oil slick spreads across the sea surface. Tensions rise, as does public anger. Critical sea beds are contaminated, and a growing number of fishermen are in danger of losing their way of life. The one major difference between this episode and the ongoing tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico is this: The suffering fishermen are also completely shut out of a rigged justice system by one of the world's most powerful and unyielding oligarchies. This is exactly the maddening scenario along the coast of Bohai Bay in northern China, where a major offshore oil spill in 2011 has caused widespread environmental harm and wreaked havoc with the lives of fishermen who work there. Despite the damage caused by the oil that spilled from rigs in which an American oil giant, ConocoPhillips, has a substantial share, the ...

Shrimp contamination confirmed: Signs that the nightmare in the Gulf is not over are everywhere

admin — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 17:27:27 +0000

Unfortunately, every day seems to bring new reminders that the environmental nightmare unleashed by BP into the Gulf of Mexico in the spring of 2010 is not over. Sometimes, these things practically hit you in the face...or wash up on your beach. In the more than two years since millions of barrels of oil spewed forth into the Gulf from BP's Macondo mishap, I've joined with other environmental activists in warning that the region's frequent tropical storms and hurricanes were likely to stir up oil -- and re-create some of the horrors of the Deepwater Horizon all over again. Today, just like the meteorologist uttered in the movie "The Perfect Storm"...it's happening:
PASCAGOULA, Mississippi -- The meandering Tropical Storm Debby shut down much of the Gulf Island National Seashore, but its waves and wind also may be churning up tar balls, officials said Monday.

Dan Brown, park superintendent, said he doesn't know if new oiling has occurred because park personnel have been withdrawn from the islands as Debby lingered in the Gulf of Mexico.

"We don't know yet," Brown said of oiled material turning up on the islands.
The reality. as the article notes, is that oil has ...

It’s not just oil spills: Our oceans are under more stress than they can handle

admin — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 15:57:19 +0000

I saw on the news today that a new tropical storm is forming in the Gulf of Mexico. When you're from New Orleans, that always grabs your attention. It looks like the Crescent City will be spared -- models show the storm more likely drifting east toward Florida -- but on the other hand it seems certain that one of these days another hurricane will bear down on Louisiana. And when it does, there's a good chance it will be every bit as powerful as Katrina, maybe stronger. That's because the water temperatures in the Gulf region -- the key factor for determining how deadly a tropical storm becomes -- have generally risen in recent years. And the likely cause is global warming.

Coincidentally, there's a new report on Al Jazeera -- which, odd as it sounds, is doing some of the best environmental reporting in North America right now. It highlights how pollution, overfishing, and climate change have created a crisis for the world's oceans greater than humankind has seen before. And it includes particularly alarming information about the Gulf of Mexico. It notes:

A drumbeat of recent scientific studies emphases an increasingly alarming convergence ...

The federal government, having learned nothing from 2010 disaster, plows ahead with new Gulf oil leases

admin — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 19:44:34 +0000

There was a report the other day that officials at my alma mater, Louisiana State University, are taking a good chunk of the money they received from the BP legal settlement and spending it on mental health services. It said that LSU is planning to spend some $14.4 million -- out of a $36 million settlement -- to hire psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and other mental health professionals. One of the main areas of focus will be on schoolchildren in the parishes most hard hit by the spill and the ensuing havoc that it wreaked on local industries such as fishing and tourism. It's a very worthy project. As an attorney who's been working with clients whose livelihoods have been devastated by the fallout from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, I've seen first-hand the enormous strains on families here in the Gulf. They're still worried about their jobs, their health, their future.

There's something else that the federal government, Big Oil, and the others who've promised to make the Gulf whole again could do to promote better mental health in the region. They could adopt sane, rational energy policies going forward. For one thing, they could exercise extreme caution about moving forward ...

When the fungi strike oil: One more way that BP’s spill is still destroying the Gulf

admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 12:17:28 +0000

There have been some stories recently that really confirm some of our worst fears about the aftermath of Deepwater Horizon -- about what kind of havoc would be wreaked upon the beautiful and fragile eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico by this black tide of nearly 5 million barrels of oil let loose by BP's recklessness. By now, we've all seen the pictures and read some of the gut-wrenching articles about dead and dying dolphins, oiled endangered sea turtles and now eyeless shrimp, deformed crabs and diseased fish. But what about the marine life that would don't see -- the microbiology that comprises the bottom of the food chain in the Gulf -- and sustains the glorious sea creatures who love there? More than 26 months after oil began spewing from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf, scientists are coming back with reports about the long-lasting impact of the massive spill on fungi and other microbes. And the news is terrible. This was reported recently in the New York Times:
A significant amount of the 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled still lies on the ocean floor, lingers in salt marshes, or is mixed into beach sand, scientists say. ...

Wall Street Journal relies on debunked data to make the case for Big Oil on legacy lawsuits

admin — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:56:04 +0000

"Louisiana has had its fair share of oil troubles..." Those are the opening words of an editorial that ran in the Wall Street Journal recently, and its hard to disagree with that. While oil exploration and drilling has been a source of jobs and revenue for my home state, it's also been the source of a lot of unnecessary environmental woe. The Deepwater Horizon spill and the reckless behavior of BP -- which the editorial does go on to mention, in passing -- is the best-known example of that; Louisianans will be dealing with the consequences of 5 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico for years and years to come. But what happened in 2010 at the Macondo field was only the tip of the wellhead, if you will; I've made a career for more than two decades of fighting Big Oil in numerous cases where the industry has destroyed people's land and their livelihood with dumping of radioactive or toxic waste or other material. But if you regularly read Rupert Murdoch's one-sided, pro-corporate propaganda sheet, you can probably guess that better environmental protection is not where the Wall Street Journal is headed with this. The smear ...

Two years and billions of dollars later, justice is elusive for charter boat captains after BP spill

admin — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 00:01:10 +0000

If there's been one common thread in the 26 months since BP and its reckless behavior decimated the Gulf of Mexico, it has been people from Big Oil or the government trying to insist that the situation is over, resolved, done with. Heck, we began hearing that within hours of the April 20, 2010, disaster, when BP maintained -- falsely, of course -- to the public that the situation after the explosion was under control and no oil was leaking. It's understandable, in way, to want to put something so awful behind us. Everybody wants to go back to their lives and act like this nightmare is over. But it's not. Seeking justice is hard work, and it never stops. You might have seen news reports about BP's proposed $7.8 billion settlement, seeking to resolve its serious civil liability in the wake of the spill. A lot of folks probably thought that the final chapter to the aftermath of Deepwater Horizon was in the works -- never mind the serious ongoing problems with marine life and the seafood industry in the Gulf. But even when it comes to the settlement, the devil is, as always, in the details. Sure, $7.8 billion sounds ...

Louisiana’s Toothless Tiger, the DEQ, Once Again Fails a Battered Waterfront Community

admin — Tue, 29 May 2012 16:38:46 +0000

When government fails to work on your behalf, the consequences are all too real. And for many years, the main governmental agency tasked with protecting the fragile environment here in the Bayou State -- the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ -- has been the epitome of government failure. The other day, I told you about DEQ's inadequate or in some cases non-existent response to significant chemical spills in Louisiana, a state that has a higher concentration of oil and chemical plants than virtually anywhere else in the world. I endorsed a proposal by a praiseworthy group of citizens who call themselves the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, who want the federal Environmental Protection Agency to acknowledge the crisis-like condition in the state and take over the DEQ's responsibilities. Otherwise, the potential impact of such a toothless tiger regulating the environment -- an agency that too often resides deeply in the back pocket of the industries that it regulates -- can be very severe for the everyday citizens of Louisiana. Just ask residents of the waterfront suburb of Slidell, and specifically the folks who live in neighborhoods such as Lakeshore Estates, Pirate’s Harbor, Treasure Isle, Rigolets Estate and Salt Bayou, all on or near the ...

Summer’s Here, And There’s Something Missing From The Gulf of Mexico

admin — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:19:24 +0000

Memorial Day is considered the official start of summer -- even down here on the Gulf where the mercury's been rising for some time now. It's a great holiday for hitting the beach, going camping, and throwing great barbecue on the grill -- maybe a choice steak, or maybe seafood. But so far 2012 hasn't been the greatest year for what the Aussies call "shrimp on the barbie." Down here on the Gulf Coast, there's just not as many shrimp around, and the catch of the day is getting more expensive. There's just something missing -- the signs of abundant marine life that we used to enjoy before the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe two years ago. I've told you many times over the last couple of years about my intrepid aviator friend Bonny Schumaker. Bonny's made repeated flights over the Gulf waters, and she's consistently finding the things that neither BP nor the government want you to know about, whether it's pollution from fresh slicks near the Macondo field or dead or diseased dolphins and sea turtles. A few days ago I received a new report from Bonny, and the information it contained was disturbing.
I am still concerned by the ...

Louisiana Isn’t Protecting Its Residents From Hazardous Chemical Spills, So It’s Time For Feds To Step In

admin — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:01:19 +0000

Louisiana has richly deserved its nickname, "Sportsman's Paradise." At its best, the state's bayous, teeming with wildlife, and the once-bountiful marine environment of the Gulf of Mexico truly have made the state a natural treasure. But Louisiana is also a state of contradiction. The landscape here is also dotted with a higher concentration of oil facilities and chemical plants than just about anywhere in the world. And so it's a thin line between paradise and environmental disaster -- as the world learned with the Deepwater Horizon fiasco offshore. But the sad reality is that residents on land often face danger on a routine basis from less publicized spills and leaks of hazardous substances from this cluster of chemical factories. Given that, you might think that the state agency that regulates these facilities -- the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ -- would be at the very top of its game. Unfortunately, folks who live here know better. The DEQ has long been a toothless tiger when it comes to safeguarding Louisiana from toxic chemicals. At best, the agency has been underfunded and overwhelmed, and at its worst the DEQ has been in the back pocket of the industry it's supposed to ...

Birds of Prey: White Pelicans in Minnesota Are Contaminated By Oil, Corexit from BP Disaster

admin — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:48:09 +0000

Last week, many people were pained to see -- for the first time --photographs by government experts showing dead, oiled sea turtles taken in the weeks immediately after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. It was not surprising that federal officials kept these photos, which also showed sperm whales swimming through an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, under wraps for so long. The ongoing tragedy of oil-covered endangered turtles and stranded or dying dolphins -- not to mention the ruinous impact on seafood, from eyeless shrimp to lesion-covered snappers -- is a grim reminder that reality on the Gulf Coast is far different from the upbeat picture that BP, with the endorsement of Washington, is selling to the American people. But beyond the immediate damage from the more than 200 million gallons that spewed into the Gulf, experts have long warned of the insidious impact of both crude oil and the toxic chemical that was used to hide the problem -- Corexit -- persisting in the environment. The worst fears were that the damage could spread far beyond the bayous of the Gulf Coast once these pollutants entered the food chain. And so it may sound bizarre -- biologists looking ...

Legacy Lawsuits: Sometimes The Smartest Action Is To Do Nothing

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:29:59 +0000

For weeks now I've been telling you about the mud-covered debate taking place in the Louisiana Legislature. Politicians greased to the gills by Big Oil dollars are now pushing an effort that would limit citizens from fighting back against decades of pollution in the oil patch. Big Oil invented its own phrase -- "legacy lawsuits" -- to describe what in reality is just the legal right of folks to recover damages from companies that fouled up their land and now want to walk away from the mess. The current session in Baton Rouge is slated to end in about three weeks. Despite a slew of other important issues in the Bayou State, the oil giants' efforts to put the kibosh on these lawsuits are near the top of lawmakers' agenda. The oil-slacked lobbyists are putting their money on legislation sponsored by a man they call "Mr. Oil" -- state Rep. Neil Abramson. Interestingly, Abramson doesn't have any oil wells in his Uptown New Orleans district, but he does have a gusher of Big Oil cash coming into the law firm where he works, Liskow & Lewis. Indeed, one of the firm's clients is British Petroleum, which speaks volumes. The Abramson ...

This Probably Won’t Make BP’s Next Tourism Ad: Tar Mat Off Alabama Beach

admin — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:38:40 +0000

It's hard to turn on your TV these days and avoid those cloying spots for Gulf Coast tourism that BP is spending millions of dollars on -- proving that the only thing the company behind the Deepwater Horizon disaster actually works hard on cleaning up is its image. You know the ad -- the one that declares to an uptempo zydeco soundtrack that "'I'm glad to report that all beaches and waters are open for everyone to enjoy!" (Which is not true, by the way.) Obviously BP didn't run this commercial past Tony Kennon, the mayor of Orange Beach, Ala. Kennon is furious at the British oil giant and when you learn about what's going on down in his Gulf Coast resort town, it's easy to understand why. Last weekend, with the peak tourist season just days away, a contractor for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was dredging an area near the Perdido Pass Bridge when it struck oil -- and not in a good, "Beverly Hillbillies" kind of way. The dredging unearthed a thick gooey tar mat that was underneath the sand. The activity released both a nasty odor and an oil sheen that covered the water east of ...

Clock Is Ticking In Fight To Save “Legacy” Lawsuits Against Big Oil

admin — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:18:38 +0000

The choice facing Louisiana lawmakers over so-called "legacy lawsuits" against oil-and-gas drillers isn't nearly as complicated it sounds. Between now and the end of their session next month, legislators in Baton Rouge still have a chance to do the right thing. They can protect the rights of property owners -- everyday folks like you and me -- to force oil and gas companies to pay the mounting clean-up costs for the toxic mess they've left behind after the last well is capped. Or they can let Big Oil renege on its legal obligation to make good on any environmental damage to the land that it leases. To say that the deck is stacked in favor of the oil giants and their campaign-cash-addled political allies would be an understatement, to say the least! At last count there is a small army of over 50 oil and gas lobbyists reportedly working this issue in Baton Rouge. But when the dust finally settles in early June, there's an increasing chance that citizens in the Bayou State may emerge with their right to sue Big Oil over its toxic legacy preserved altogether -- or at least get a bill that's not as bad as the first one that ...