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Louisiana’s wetlands do not need this

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The big, potentially positive story in Louisiana environmental circles has been the push to restore the state’s depleted wetlands. It had become increasingly clear that something had gone terribly wrong in the Bayou State, where the swamps define a way of life — and also perform a very important role. These reedy marshes — as regular readers know well by now — are...

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...

The BP settlement isn’t good enough for Plaquemines Parish

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I’ve long said that no likely BP settlement would ever be enough for the damage that its 2010 oil spill caused to the Gulf region. Mostly, that’s a moral argument: The purpose of punitive damages is that a company must be shown that the cost of doing bad is more than doing good — but that’s hard to do when an oil company’s typically reckless drilling and production...

More evidence that BP got off too easily

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Last week I wrote here that BP’s $54 billion payout for damages and restoration from the 2010 Gulf oil spill just wasn’t really enough — both because of the ongoing environmental damage from the Deepwater Horizon oil that continues to wash up on our beaches and because dollars trumped real accountability. You won’t hear that critique too much from public officials, who are...

BP can never pay enough for what it’s done

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If anything has the ability to cut through the clutter in our 24/7 frenetic news cycle, it’s Wall Street. Say what you will about the capital markets, but the way that investors react to important news is a pretty good reality check. This week, there was a major development in the quest for just compensation for the 2010 BP oil spill, the ongoing crisis that sparked the creation of this...

BP’s new outrage: We can’t pay because oil is too cheap

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Every time that I hear or read about what the folks at BP are up to lately, I have the same thought: Can you believe these guys? Forget — if you can, for one minute — that these are the people whose gross negligence and corner-cutting caused 5 million barrels of crude oil to spew in to the Gulf of Mexico. in an accident that also claimed 11 lives. But since then, it’s been...

“The people who live along the Gulf Coast know the truth”

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It was gratifying to see that the editorial board of the New Orleans Times-Picayune has picked up on the issue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its treachery against the small- and mid-sized business owners of the Gulf Coast. As you’ll recall, last week we spotlighted how the inside-the-Beltway-based national Chamber — which receives the bulk of its support and is increasingly...

The revolt against the U.S. Chamber’s stunning betrayal of Main Street America

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It’s an idea that boggles the mind: America’s largest, most powerful and best-known business organization siding AGAINST tens of thousands of its own members — small- and mid-sized business owners in the U.S. heartland whose very survival is on the line. The only thing that could make that scenario involving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce even more staggering would be if the...

Slammed twice by BP, shipper says “I’m not going to give up”

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Earlier this summer, I told you about an outrageous breech of promise by BP — how the oil giant was abruptly closing down an internal-claims program that was intended to help business owners who wanted to resolve their claims from the 2010 oil spill, quickly and fairly. This was supposed to be an alternate route for those who didn’t want to go through the burden of dealing with the...

BP steps up its war against the citizens on the Gulf Coast

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Throughout 2014, BP has shown us its true colors, again and again. The “friendly, community-oriented company” that the British oil giant spent hundreds of millions of dollars depicting in its slick television ads — its effort to clean up its image even as gooey tar balls continue to assault the beaches of the Gulf Coast — is all but gone. In its place is a Grinch that is...

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