1st thoughts on my oil spill visit

I’m an environmental scientist and author that works for a private company that produces natural biological products for the bioremediation of crude oil among other things. I have worked in environmental cleanup for over twenty years in locations all over the world. We were invited to send our products to one of the parishes in Louisiana to carry out a test of its effectiveness in cleaning up oil damaged beaches and wetlands. The opportunity to visit the oil spill area was a life changing experience.

We were struck by the overwhelming beauty of the Louisiana wetlands. They are vast. We drove for hours through a diverse habitat of grass and water that supports huge populations of fish, crustaceans, shellfish, and all of the other organisms that make this area of the world an environmental treasure to be protected. A living treasure house that nourishes a rich culture of hardworking people that make their living from the sea and that fills our grocery stores and restaurants with a sustainable bounty of seafood.

Or it used to.

I can tell you we didn’t see a single walrus, sea otter or sea lion in Louisiana. There might have been some at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, but we didn’t make it there. Those animals were listed in the BP spill response plan for the Gulf as “sensitive biological resources” even though they are not found in the Gulf. That shows you how much they care about the wildlife of the Gulf of Mexico. But maybe they were planning for an even bigger spill that would reach all the way to the Arctic. Who knows, with the success they’ve had in plugging the leak, the oil may make it to the North Pole before the year is out.

Now that’s planning ahead.

The fear and anger of the local people toward BP can be felt in any conversation that you have with them. We heard over and over, “BP is calling the shots, we’re helpless to do anything.” In the words of one local woman working in a restaurant, “We don’t know what we’re going to do. All we know is fishing and shrimping. If we can’t do that, what will we do?” For the fishermen, shrimpers and oystermen, a way of life they have known for generations may be lost forever. BP’s response has been to pay them not to fish or to hire them to run boom boats and skimmers.

The extent that BP controls all aspects of the spill on land is terrifying. I attempted to get samples of the oil for research purposes in Grand Isle and was stopped by police. When I went to the Port Authority of Port Fourchon to get permission to enter the spill area I was told that permission would have to come from BP. The duly appointed law enforcement of the region was apparently powerless to give us access. To quote law enforcement, “BP controls access to the spill—we can’t let you go in without their approval.” A foreign corporation has taken control of part of America…one of America’s most fragile, beautiful and productive regions. Think about that.

The U.S. military is everywhere; Humvees, and Amphibious vehicles. We even saw a Stryker armored personnel carrier. We felt like we were in a wetland version of Iraq. An enormous amount of our taxpayer money is being spent on this military presence.
Our armed forces are apparently there to support BP’s security effort to control access to the spill; so much for the administration’s claim that they are in control of the spill. It is BP’s show 100% except for the Coast Guard skimming and boom setting operations. All the clean up we saw was from private contractors running bulldozers and other equipment scraping up contaminated sand or positioning booms.

Have you gotten tired of hearing, “It’s never been done in 5000 feet of water.” during the repeated failed efforts to stop the leak? Maybe that means we shouldn’t use a technology until we know we can take care of the consequences of its failure. What do you think?

I have to say a boycott is not enough. We must reduce our demand for petroleum based hydrocarbons through the use of electric cars and trains and alternative sustainable technologies. We need to DEMAND that our government begin work immediately on a nationwide network of high speed electric trains to replace aircraft, auto and truck transport. We need a Manhattan Project for trains and electric cars. We need to change our lifestyles to emphasize sustainable technologies that minimize the use of oil based hydrocarbons. Only when we do that will the victory finally be won.