Residents of affected coastal communities have reported health ailments, such as severe coughing, migraines, eye irritation, that are consistent with common symptoms of chemical exposure. As health bills mount, Gulf Coast residents’ livelihood options have plummeted. Fishermen, shrimpers have reported record loss in sales. They fear the spill will cause long-term damage to marine life and the economy of the region. Anglers are reporting dark lesions, rotting fins, discoloration in the fish they’re catching in the Gulf. Meanwhile, some scientists remain concerned that dispersants used in the spill cleanup may have damaged endangered species [or] their habitat.
David Pham talking:
In Bayou La Batre itself, about 70 to 75 percent of the city became unemployed, because in the city we only have two industries: its seafood and shipbuilding. And shipbuilding is down because of the recession, and now BP has stopped our fishing industry. So we had a situation where a vast majority of our community members were unemployed, and they were relying on a system that was supposed to be easy for them to assist them, but really it just caused more headaches and pains for families.
With this oil spill, they expected that going out into the Gulf and spraying dispersant would make the oil disappear. Basic physics: matter is neither created nor destroyed, it only changes forms. It’s just sunk down to the bottom of the Gulf. These poor people haven’t gone away just because you’ve come in and thrown a couple of dollars here and there, There are still poor people here. They are still vulnerable, very vulnerable, to disasters, be it man-made or be it by nature. We had Katrina. Then we had BP, which was man-made. But we still have the same poor people victimized by these disasters. And what we’ve not figured out or what we’ve not done as a nation, as is the government’s responsibility, which is how to make these people less vulnerable.
Its estimated that over 6,000 sea turtles were killed; 26,000 marine mammals, including dolphins and porpoises, were killed; and on the order of 82,000 seabirds. And one of the worst things is, is that the death is still happening. The disaster is not over. So at this very moment, dolphins and sea turtles are still washing up onshore dead and covered with oil.
the dispersants are particularly disturbing, because the oil was bad enough, then we sprayed this highly toxic dispersant on it, which is actually four times more toxic than the oil to many of the wildlife. And so, the oil did not disappear, but it was broken down into smaller parts, where it sunk into the water column, in some places onto the bottom of the sea. And so, now you’ve got this unbelievable chemical soup out there on the order that’s never been seen before. There’s never been an oil disaster where we’ve sprayed this much dispersant into the ocean not knowing its impact on wildlife. And so, the dispersant we sprayed out there is also killing wildlife. And indeed, the Center for Biological Diversity, just filed a lawsuit challenging the continued use of dispersant in future spills, because it’s a horrific way to address these oil spills. It’s all about hiding the oil, not about cleaning it up.
despite all the horror that was caused by the dispersants, it’s still the government’s position that they would use those dispersants on the next spill coming up. The American public don’t know what all the chemicals are in the dispersants. There’s never been an environmental analysis of their effects on wildlife and on people. And we’re saying to the government, “You cannot go forward and use this again, minimally until you at least figure out what the environmental effects are, but preferably not to use it at all.”
the dispersants that they were using were actually banned in Europe. So one of the issues they had is they had a large amount of this dispersant, they were banned from using it in Europe, and they had to move it. They had to ship it, and this was their chance to actually sell it, make some money on a product that they can’t use anywhere else. And so, they poured millions of gallons of it into the ocean.
And dispersants, in particular, have a very damaging effect on the small wildlife and the invertebrates. So, for example, the oyster beds were hit really hard by this. And unfortunately, just as the sea turtles and dolphins are still dying today, if we go out and use this dispersant again, this disaster is going to just keep rolling and rolling and rolling. And it points to the fact that we have not addressed the fundamental problems with offshore oil drilling. We still do not have a method of containing or cleaning up further oil spills, but yet we’re going forward with new drilling all the time.
when the Gulf crisis hit, it had huge reverberations across the country for offshore oil drilling, because we’re also doing just as dangerous, indeed more dangerous, drilling in Alaska, and the President had just decided to open up the Atlantic Coast to drilling, as well. And so, when that crisis hit and the media attention was finally put on this tremendously dangerous practice we do, everything was shut down for a short while. But now, as that memory has faded a bit and folks aren’t paying as much attention, the Obama administration this month began reissuing new deepwater drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico. It began issuing new permits in Alaska, as well. So, it is pushing us back to doing the very same dangerous drilling we did before the spill.
And secondly, it is using some of the very same legal loopholes that were used to allow the BP drilling project to go forward without environmental review. So the administration, for example, just issued deepwater drilling permits to Shell Oil in the Gulf without environmental review. It excluded them by saying the chance of a spill are so small, we don’t have to address it.
They had turned around and ordered new deepwater drilling permits to Shell also in the Arctic, in Alaska. And we’re very, very concerned about the Arctic, because as bad as the spill was in the Gulf of Mexico, at least you had a massive fishing, oil industry, Coast Guard, government infrastructure at hand that you could bring to address that spill. In the Arctic, where Shell is planning to drill, the nearest Coast Guard station is 1,200 miles away. There’s no infrastructure up there. There’s no fishing industry up there to address a big spill. So you would have this oil pouring into this frigid, icy water, and nothing available to clean it up.
And then, meanwhile, to make matters even worse, the Republican Party, especially Doc Hastings, head of the Resource Committee, out of state of Washington, is pressing the government to open up new areas to drill for oil, including the Atlantic Coast, and to say that if the government fails to review these opinions in 60 days, which there’s no way it could possibly do that, these projects go forward without any drilling at all. So, between the Obama administration pressing to have business as usual and the Republicans pressing to have even more oil drilling, we’re poised here to go forward with not only having not learned the lesson of this spill, but very likely to cause another spill to happen again.
Discussion with
David Pham, Boat People SOS, a national Vietnamese American organization working with fishing communities impacted by the BP oil spill in Alabama.
Tracie Washington, president of the Louisiana Justice Institute
Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity
– from democracynow.org
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