Tagdead dolphins

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

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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...

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

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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...

Louisiana unloads and blows giant hole in BP settlement

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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...

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

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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...

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

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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...

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

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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...

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

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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...

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

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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...

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

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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...

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

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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...

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