Opening state offshore waters to fishing and winding down the cleanup effort on the coast is premature, said Louie Miller, state director of the Mississippi Sierra Club.
“We’ve got shrimpers out there saying there is oil out there,” Miller said. “We had a meeting Wednesday night where we had over 150 shrimpers… who are saying there is oil out there and these underwater plumes are varying in size and shape. This stuff is obviously moving around out there.”
William Walker, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, said, “It would be helpful, very helpful, if these folks who know where all this stuff is would call us and either take us on their boats or put themselves and whoever they want on our boats at our expense and take us to where it is. We’ll sample it, check it out and have it analyzed and determine what it is.”
Walker said his office number, 228-374-5010, has been on local television for people to report oil material in the Mississippi Sound, but no calls have been received. And, he said, he has given his cell phone number to fishermen, but not has not received a call.
“If you are not going to validate what you are saying through
accepted scientific protocol and approaches, then quit talking about it without any evidence what you are saying is true,” Walker said.
The existence of oil is irrefutable, Miller said. Oil has reappeared on beaches in Alabama, Petit Bois and Horn islands and continues to wash ashore in Louisiana, he said.
Miller said there also is evidence of submerged oil.
“It is a weird thing. It is like strands, this black water, as they are calling it. It is like strands that are about three to four times the thickness of human hair. These things can be about foot-and-a-half, to five- to six-feet-long.”
Miller said the assumption is oil that has been dispersed.
“To open up these waters, in my opinion, is nothing more than to limit the liability of BP to pay claims,” he said.
“Because now they can deny any claims after the time at which these waters were opened back up,” Miller said.
Walker said, “Our goal is not to maximize the claim potential for anybody, fishermen or otherwise. My goal is to reopen the waters that we had closed when we are convinced it was safe to do so.”
Reopening the waters has involved a “fairly rigorous opening protocol with the FDA and Coast Guard,” he said.
“We do feel like our waters are safe,” Walker said. “The federal folks have been analyzing for dispersant chemicals for a while now, and have not been able to detect it any closer to Mississippi waters than about 80 miles. Awhile back, they could detect some residual dispersant within 20 miles of the spill site.”
But, Miller said, there has been no testing for dispersant in seafood. “We’ve been assured dispersants have a shelf life of 17 days and they biodegrade and they are gone,” he said. “Somebody is not telling the truth here. I have no confidence in Bill Walker whatsoever. He might as well be working for BP. He is not protecting the resources of Mississippi.”
Walker and Trudy Fisher, executive director of the state Department of Environmental Quality, are the trustees for the state under the National Resource Disaster Assessment, Miller said.
“By doing all this, they have put us in a situation where the claims are going to be very limited and more easily contested by BP,” he said.
The dispersant did what it was supposed to do, and rendered the oil more accessible to microorganisms that feed on it, Walker said.
“All of the evidence we do have on dispersants is it doesn’t hang around,” Walker said. If dispersant does enter into tissue, is not bio-accumulated, he said.
The state Health Department is to deliver a program about the safety of oil and dispersants at Tuesday’s meeting of the Commission on Marine Resources, he said.
Walker said DMR would begin a grid-by-grid examination of the state waters next week.
If there is oil, Walker said he wants to know as badly as anybody. “But if it is not oil, we need to quit talking about it and move on and get off this business [that] Mississippi seafood is not safe,” he said.
“If it is not oil and we keep saying it is oil, all that does is continue to hurt the economic recovery of coastal Mississippi,” Walker said.
Miller said the evidence is oil and dispersants are in the food chain, and cites a Tulane University study that has found oil droplets in very young blue crabs.
Harriet Perry of the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs was the first to report the oil droplets in the crabs.
“We want the integrity of the seafood brand of the Gulf Coast to be above reproach,” Miller said. But, “no one knows if it is safe.”
