Glynn Wilson

State and federal Trustees unveiled the first set of early environmental restoration projects that are proposed for funding under the landmark agreement BP signed with the Obama administration in April 2011. The eight proposed projects are located in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.

“The Trustees selected projects that are ready to implement quickly and will bring long-term benefits to the region,” said Mike Utsler, Head of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization. “BP is committed to the Gulf, and we look forward to working with state and federal Trustees to identify additional early restoration projects that benefit the Gulf ecosystem and the people who live, work or visit the region.”

The two proposed initial Alabama projects involve an Alabama Dune Restoration Cooperative Project to restore 55 acres of coastal sand dune habitat with native vegetation, protective fencing and informative signs across the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, the Bureau of Land Management Fort Morgan properties, the City of Gulf Shores and the City of Orange Beach.

The second is an Alabama Marsh Island Restoration Project to protect 24 acres of existing salt marsh habitat and create 40 acres of additional salt marsh habitat in Portersville Bay. A permeable breakwater will be constructed in front of the island to reduce erosion of the existing marsh and the additional marsh habitat will be created adjacent to the island.

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Glynn Wilson | Thanks to Southwings.org

The Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force released its final strategy for long term ecosystem restoration for the Gulf Coast Monday following extensive feedback from citizens throughout the region. The Task Force delivered its final strategy recommendations on Friday to President Barack Obama, who established the Task Force by executive order.

The strategy is the first restoration blueprint ever developed for the Gulf to include input from states, tribes, federal agencies, local governments and thousands of involved citizens and organizations across the region, according to the release. The plan represents a commitment by all parties to continue to work together in an unprecedented collaboration to prepare the Gulf region to transition from response to recovery and address the decades-long decline that the Gulf’s ecosystem has endured.

EPA Administrator and Task Force Chair Lisa P. Jackson, partnering with Task Force Co-Chair Garret Graves, made the announcement during keynote remarks at the 2011 State of the Gulf of Mexico Summit in Houston. Ms. Jackson was joined by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Jane Lubchenco, Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, USDA Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Harris Sherman, according to a press release announcing the plan.

“After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, this Task Force brought together people from across the Gulf Coast in unparalleled ways to talk about how we tackle both the immediate environmental devastation, as well as the long-term deterioration that has for decades threatened the health, the environment and the economy of the people who call this place home,” Jackson said. “It has all come to this moment – when we move from planning and researching to supporting real, homegrown actions aimed at restoring this vital ecosystem.”

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Agenda Outlines Blueprint for Reversing Decline of Gulf Coast Ecosystem

Glynn Wilson | Thanks to Southwings.org

See a photo essay from the air as BP’s oil slick made landfall last May

WASHINGTON – The Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, chaired by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, released its comprehensive preliminary strategy on Wednesday for long term ecosystem restoration.

The agency is seeking public review and feedback on the strategy, which will be presented to President Obama at the end of the public review period and represents an historic opportunity for addressing long-standing issues contributing to the decline of the Gulf’s critical ecosystem, according to a press release announcing the plan.

“Even before last year’s oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico endured decades of decline that threatened the environmental and economic health of this region. This strategy is designed to prepare the region for transitioning from a response to the spill into a long-term recovery that supports the vital ecosystem and the people who depend on it,” Jackson said. “The health of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem starts and ends with its people and its communities. The individuals and families who visit the Gulf, who work in the region, who depend on its resources, and especially those who call it home, know its needs and challenges best. They will be integral to creating and executing this long-term strategy.”

The preliminary strategy is the first effort of its kind to be developed with the involvement of parties throughout the region, including the states, tribes, federal agencies, local governments and thousands of interested citizens and organizations. The plan builds upon on-going efforts underway in the Gulf Coast states includes specific steps for on-the-ground action and represents the Task Force’s commitment to putting Gulf coastal restoration on an equal footing with other national priorities.

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Pretty Slick movie clips (BP Gulf oil spill) from james fox on Vimeo.

On April 20, 2010, the BP Deep Water Horizon floating oil rig drilling on the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing eleven crewmen and injuring seventeen others.

The rig burned for three days and then sank in a mile of water fifty miles off the coast of Grand-Isle Louisiana. Over the next three months, the well gushed an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into Gulf waters, spanning thousands of square miles, threatening hundreds of miles of coastal wetlands and an abundance of wildlife. It was the largest accidental marine oil spill in history.

While BP struggled to cap the spewing well, they began using unprecedented amounts of the controversial chemical dispersant Corexit, both on the surface and, for the first time, sub-sea injection at the broken well-head 5,000 feet below.

Many locals and a few officials feared BP was only using these chemicals to sink the oil, concealing the magnitude of the disaster.

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Cherri Foytlin and three Gulf Coast activists have been arrested in front of BP Headquarters in New Orleans.

“The time has come. We have exhausted our options, collected the facts, tried negotiation, gone from meeting to meeting,” Foytlin said in a press release. “The oil is still here. We are still here, and we will not wait! Take care of my people on the coast!”

Since last summer, when Foytlin reached out to President Obama (to no avail), she said in the press release. She has attended countless town hall meetings, community forums, and has walked from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., she says, in order to be sure federal officials are aware of the unresolved economic, environmental, and health devastation caused by the BP disaster.

Foytlin is one of several dozen Gulf Coast fishermen, BP clean-up workers, residents and community organizers who gathered in front of BP Headquarters in New Orleans to mark the one year anniversary of the date when the White House falsely claimed that 75 percent of the oil was gone from the Gulf of Mexico.

The group demanded BP and Kenneth Feinberg honor health claims and operate a transparent and fair claims process for those impacted financially. Feinberg has denied all health claims and has approved less than 40 percent of all claims submitted.

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Ocean lovers around the world will join hands on beaches and in cities beginning at 12 noon local time Saturday, June 25, for the second annual “Hands Across the Sand” event, a demonstration of opposition to expanding offshore drilling and support for cleaner energy choices.

With the oil industry pushing for a dramatic expansion of offshore drilling in U.S. waters, “Hands Across the Sand” participants will show leaders like President Obama the breadth of opposition to new drilling and support for a clean energy future rooted in energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy solutions, such as wind, solar and geothermal.

“Offshore drilling will never be safe. Expanding offshore oil drilling is not the answer; embracing clean energy is,” said Dave Rauschkolb, a Florida restaurateur who founded Hands Across the Sand. “We’re here to say NO to offshore drilling, and YES to clean energy.”

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Does She Know the Risks?

Glynn Wilson

GULF SHORES, Ala., April 23 — A new mother dips her child into Little Lagoon Pass in Gulf Shores, Alabama, one year after the BP oil gusher released an official estimate of 4.9 million barrels over three months into the Gulf, much of it making landfall along the marshes of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the beaches of Alabama and the Panhandle of Florida.

Then, an official estimate of 1.8 million gallons of Corexit, a byproduct of oil used as a dispersant, was dumped in the Gulf and along the shoreline, sinking the oil to the sea floor. It is still re-emerging on a daily basis somewhere along the coast, from the marshes of Louisiana to the beaches of Bon Secour, Alabama.

Would you let your kids swim in this water? Think about this…

Dr. Riki Ott Speaks Out at Orange Beach Public Health Forum: The Public Needs to Get Involved for the Truth to Come Out

Boat Captain Sean Kelly Suffers Severe Health Effects from BP Oil and Chemicals

Thousands of People Along the Gulf Coast Suffer ‘BP Crud’: The Untold Story of Human Health Effects From BP’s Oil Disaster

Glynn Wilson

Boat Captain Sean Kelly, interviewed in Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores, Alabama (see video below)

by Glynn Wilson

GULF STATE PARK, GULF SHORES, Ala., April 24 — When British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, 2010, killing 11 platform workers and pumping crude into the Gulf of Mexico by the millions of gallons, boat captain Sean Kelly of Seattle, Washington was traveling in Florida. Once the scope of the disaster became known after a few days, he got an opportunity to help by working the spill off the coast of Alabama.

“You want to help protect the shoreline and help the people that live here,” he said. “Whether its sucking oil over here or laying boom over there, you want to do your best to help.”

Little did he know that opportunity would ultimately cause such a major, devastating effect on his life and health. Kelly’s blood even now, a year after his direct exposure, shows higher levels of the petrochemicals associated with BP’s oil and chemical catastrophe than anyone doctors have tested thus far.

Thousands of people on the Gulf Coast are still suffering from the human health effects of the disaster one year after the event, a fact that we have been documenting since last September, when many news organizations would not cover the issue and some commentators were still calling the very idea of the story itself a “conspiracy theory.”

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Some Environmental Experts Say No

Glynn Wilson

David Underhill of the Mobile Alabama Sierra Club discusses the one year anniversary of BP’s Gulf oil disaster at Fairhope’s Earth Day festival (see video below)

by Glynn Wilson

FAIRHOPE, Ala., April 23 — When the British Petroleum corporation issued a press release this past week announcing that the multinational behemoth would commit $1 billion for Gulf Coast restoration projects, every news organization in the world ran a story about it. But where were the reporters and editors asking the tough questions, such as: Is the $1 billion enough? What is the plan for restoration? What does the company and the government plan to restore?

No amount of money can bring back all the dead wildlife, rotting at the bottom of the sea. The company can be forced by the government to pay for cleaning a large percentage of the oil and chemical dispersants out of the beach sand in many places. But they can’t restore the lost eggs of hundreds of species nesting and spawning in the marshes and bayous of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Nor can they heal all the sick and dying people along the coast who were exposed to the oil and chemicals in the air and water.

They can pay people, businesses and local governments for lost income for last year, when the largest and worst environmental disaster in U.S. industrial history hit the Gulf of Mexico when BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well blew up on April 20 and spewed crude from the Macondo well-head for nearly three months. But they can’t bring back all the businesses and people who simply closed up shop and fled the Gulf Coast. And no matter how many millions they spend on advertising to try to sell the American public on coming back to visit the coast and to eat the Gulf seafood, it will never convince anywhere near all the people that all is safe.

“BP has come nowhere close to paying the actual cost of the damage done, and they are not going to come anywhere close to paying the actual cost,” says David Underhill of the Mobile Sierra Club, interviewed on Saturday during the Earth Day festivities in Fairhope overlooking Mobile Bay.

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