Six Months Later, an Oil Disaster Spreads Across the Gulf

[G_j]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rocky-kistner/post_1096_b_769149.html


Rocky Kistner

Media Associate, NRDC
Posted: October 20, 2010 08:52 AM

Six Months Later, an Oil Disaster Spreads Across the Gulf


For six months, I have lived and worked near ground zero of the worst oil disaster in US history. I've traveled on boats hunting thick, reddish peanut butter-colored crude that slowly washed towards the coastal marshes of southern Louisiana. I watched tough, resourceful people of the bayou weep at the sight of the oily tide invading precious fishing grounds.

It's been an exhausting yet exhilarating experience, and I have grown close to people in this community. I've gotten to know fishing families that are struggling with possible health risks to their children. I've watched divisions and conflicts rise up between fishermen who have been paid to work for BP on the cleanup and those that never got a dime. I've lived here and learned a lot in the process, including rule number one: never get in a boat with someone who doesn't know their way around the bayou. You've never lived until you get stranded on a sandbar in the delta bayou at night and have to swim in the dark through the muddy, alligator-infested waters to safety.

But there was one experience I'll always remember. I was at a Port Sulphur town hall meeting with BP money czar Ken Feinberg when news broke that the BP well was plugged. After 87 days of anxiety and repeated failures to tame the beast, the news was met with mere tepid applause. People were tired and scared of the future. They knew the real test was ahead of them.

Once the well stopped spewing crude, it didn't take long for the media to pull out. Without dramatic visuals of a volcano of crude gushing from the bottom of the sea, there were other stories to pursue. But even though most media left, the oil never did. It still washes in with the tide as tar balls and sheen, visible when boat engines kick up the mud in the shallow waters of the marsh.

..more..

[Uncle Joe]

1. Shrimp with blackened gills.

I've seen numerous samples of shrimp people have saved with a black substance in their gills. Just this week, an NRDC colleague was taking photos at the Venice marina when she was shown a large grey shrimp by an irate fisherman who claimed the gills were full of hydrocarbons. Is it oil? We don't know, but people have to choose between catching and selling these shrimp or starving themselves. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for them. And it's causing tension in the community.



Shrimp with blackened gills from Venice marina, Oct. 18, 2010

Photo by Anthony Clark/NRDC

Thanks for the thread, G_j.

[jdlh8894]

2. Head'm ,Shell'm, use 'm for bait!

[BeFree]

5. mmmm, boy, oiled shrimps!!

BP claims it is a delicacy and gives away 10 free shrimp with every tankful of gas you buy from a BP station.

Next thing you know you can just put that shrimp right in the gas tank.

[howard112211]

16. Wow, maybe with these new shrimp, the world's fuel problems will be solved.

Thank Jesus for BP.

(sarcasm tag for the irony impaired)

[G_j]

10. that is very, very sad

and alarming

[xchrom]

3. Recomend - this is going to be a long devastating story. Nt

[Hell Hath No Fury]

4. We have ADD as a nation ---

:( Anyone who doesn't think it will be a decade before a recovery in that region is kidding themselves.

[blindpig]

6. ;(

k&r

Kill Capitalism

[felix_numinous]

7. BP should pay these fishermen pensions for life

and pay to revive the gulf communities, if there was any justice.

[maryf]

8. thanks for keeping focus on these folks...

K&R

[G_j]

9. thank you, ...America moves on, Gulf coast feels abandoned

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9293060&mesg_id=9293060

America moves on from spill, coast abandoned
By Agency Reporter
Monday, 11 Oct 2010


BIRMINGHAM: About 800 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, Dave Edmonds is struggling to remind people about the BP oil spill, the Associated Press reported on Saturday.

<snip>

”Awareness has dropped. People don‘t really care about the people who were affected. They don‘t care about the fish life,” said Edmonds, founder of Taking Back the Gulf.

For Gulf residents fighting for economic survival, a nation‘s short attention span is deeply unsettling, especially with oil still washing ashore. Yet it‘s unclear whether Americans are turning their attention elsewhere, or whether it‘s just the media that have.

<snip>

Recent research also raises the question of whether the spill is being overlooked outside the Gulf region, or if information on recent developments is just harder to come by. A Pew Research Center study found that only one per cent of news coverage was dedicated to the spill last month, down from 22 per cent during the height of the crisis.

..more..

[SoCalDem]

11. and yet the majority in these areas will gleefully elect the very people who will

shove them all under the rug and then stomp them to death

[G_j]

12. I agree

and much of the Gulf was already an environmental disaster before the "spill"!

[maryf]

13. This planet is getting to be a series of disasters...

all caused by the quest for profit...or profit mongers taking advantage of disasters (such as Haiti...and how many others???)

[G_j]

14. funny how enities like Halliburton

get in on both sides of a disaster.

:-(

[maryf]

15. and profit either way...

:fistbump: :grr:

[G_j]

17. it all works out for them

The Shock Doctrine

In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine