The jury shouldn’t be out anymore on Corexit, the toxic dispersant that was massively dumped on the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill in 2010. Many of us had concerns almost from Day One, with reports from clean-up workers of headaches and nausea. Despite our campaign to convince the government to prevent BP from dumping more toxins on top of its gigantic oil spill, the feds ultimately...
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This week has been something of an upsetting one for the millions of Gulf Coast residents whose lives were turned upside down by the massive BP oil spill in 2010. Inside the federal courthouse in New Orleans, lawyers for the British oil giant have been pushing to reduce the civil penalties it will have to pay for the widespread damage under the Clean Water Act. In doing so, the firm has called a...
This has become a familiar storyline: Another month, and another study showing that the kind of toxic dispersant that was dumped so indiscriminately in the Gulf of Mexico in the weeks immediately after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe poses a significant threat to the long-term health of marine life. This latest study deserves particularly close attention, because of the rigorous scientific...
Is a little-seen academic paper the smoking gun that blows the lid off the growing Corexit scandal in the Gulf of Mexico? You’ll recall that Corexit is the brand name of the oil dispersant manufactured by Illinois-based Nalco and deployed heavily by BP in the first couple of months of 2010’s Deepwater Horizon spill. In fact, with the acquiesence of the federal government, the oil...
It’s hard to keep secret. But it’s really hard to keep a secret when hundreds, if not thousands, of American citizens have been sickened from exposure to a highly toxic chemical — even when it’s one of the world’s richest oil companies and people inside the U.S. government that are trying to pull off the cover-up. That’s the sad situation that is unfolding here...
Today is the three-year-anniversary of the event that changed life for so many of us here on the Gulf of Mexico: The explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig off Louisiana, which killed 11 people and triggered the worst oil spill in U.S. history. I was in a private plane flying over the Gulf just hours after the blast and saw the thick plume of black smoke, and I still remember the shock of...
Now that we’re more than two years out from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, a good bit of scientific research is starting to come in. Most of the findings — unfortunately, but predictably — are not good news for the Gulf Coast. Many of these studies are showing that oil has been more damaging to fish or other marine creatures, or to the region’s fragile wetlands, than...
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...
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...
