A bona-fide member of the Fifth Estate, practicing Mobile Journalism (MoJo) every chance we get...
The city of New Orleans suffered one of the worst disasters in U.S. history when Hurricane Katrina flooded the city in 2005. Then when the Saints won the Super Bowl in 2010, the people felt like the city was back. But seven weeks later, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico.
An Interview with
photographer David Rae Morris
by Glynn Wilson
LocustFork.Net
This is some raw video footage taken from a Project Gulf Impact boat trip August 24th.
“Within minutes of departing in Perdido Bay, Florida, we came across massive amounts of oil that had been obviously freshly sprayed with Corexit,” the group says. “The problem was, the dispersed oil wasn’t just in one place, but it was everywhere we went between there and Dauphin Island, Alabama. This is one of the worst we have ever seen it, with the dispersant still in powder form in some cases. This is happening in massive quantities across the Gulf of Mexico every day.”
Corexit 9500 and 9527A (the oil dispersant) are some of the most poisonous substances on Earth. They are greatly impacting our Gulf, and the animals and HUMANS who reside in it.
John L. Wathen’s summarized comments on the dumping of coal ash on poor, mostly black Uniontown residents in Alabama’s Black Belt.
It’s “clearly an environmental justice community where TVA transferred to the Kingston coal ash disaster. It was not cleaned up, simply moved to Uniontown, Alabama,” Wathen said.
Complaints filed with Lisa Jackson, the director of EPA, “took months to answer and then very weakly,” he said. “It seems that EPA is trying to protect TVA and it’s need to dispose of the disaster instead on the fine people of Perry County, Alabama. Coal ash is a toxic product and should be treated as one.”
Related Coverage
Despite persistent denials from BP officials, thousands of pounds of weathered oil is being pulled from under the surface of Pensacola Bay every day, according to the Pensacola News Journal.
“During more than a dozen interviews last week, BP officials and spokespeople for a number of government agencies working on the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill response denied knowledge of oil in the bay,” the paper reports.
But on Friday, Coast Guard Lt. Stephen West with the Incident Command Post finally confirmed an area of oil a quarter of a mile long and up to 50 to 60 feet off Barrancas Beach at Pensacola Naval Air Station, and admitted that buckets of sunken oil were being pulled up in another area of Pensacola Bay, near Fort Pickens at Gulf Islands National Seashore. Then on Saturday, Scott Piggott, who heads the Escambia and Santa Rosa cleanup operation for BP, said cleanup workers began noticing the submerged oil at Barrancas Beach.
Obama Speaks from New Orleans on the Fifth Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina
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Orange Beach Alabama town officials discuss their own testing for petroleum based hydrocarbons and components of the dispersant Corexit in Cotton Bayou and on Gulf of Mexico Beaches.
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BP’s lies and the lying liars who tell them…
The Federal Government or the State Court System?
David Underhill of the Mobile Alabama Sierra Club protests BP in Panama City, Florida
Legal Analysis
by Glynn Wilson
David Underhill of the Mobile Alabama Sierra Club, who recently protested a public forum sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior by wearing duct tape over his mouth since citizens were not allowed to speak like they should have been in a real democratic town hall public hearing, was also party to a stakeholders meeting August 17 with officials from national and local government agencies and environmental groups as well as the British Petroleum corporation.
There were already so many public complaints about the lethargic nature of BP’s response to paying claims to individuals and businesses along the Gulf Coast that the Obama administration stepped in June 15 and seized $20 billion of the oil company’s money, to make sure people receive compensation for losses suffered due to the largest and worst environmental disaster in American history.
By June 16, less than two months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico April 20, killing 11 workers and spreading it’s crude all over the Gulf from the Louisiana marshes to the beaches of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, President Barack Obama appointed Washington attorney Kenneth Feinberg to act as the arbitrator to lead an independent team to oversee paying out claims from the new $20 billion escrow fund.
But the question on Underhill’s mind at the August 17 meeting was whether Feinberg could truly be independent and fair if he is being paid by BP. So he tried to get an answer from one of the BP representatives at the meeting, Gary Willis. Clearly there is not much trust of BP on the Gulf Coast, since the company has lied time and time again about the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf, about the use of chemical dispersants, even about who has the power to control access to oiled beaches.
The answer Underhill got from the BP official was “fuzzy,” he said, so he and Casi Callaway of the Mobile Baykeeper did a followup interview with BP public relations representative Sam J. Sacco.
In an e-mail exchange obtained exclusively by The Locust Fork News-Journal, Sacco said: “A question was asked by one of your members at the Aug. 17 COAST meeting as to whether BP was paying the appointed claims administrator, Mr. Feinberg,” Sacco said. “The answer to that question is yes.”
On August 19, a group of waterkeepers went on a journey to take soil samples from the BP oil spill and came across an island full of dead birds in various stages of decay. For more information or to support our ongoing efforts please visit the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper’s Website.
Harper’s No Comment
