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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...

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

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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...

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

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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...

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

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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...

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

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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...

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

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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...

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