EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
From the Wetlands in the Gulf, 'They Saw It Coming'
Last October we were filming in precisely the area now threatened by the advancing oil slick.
I remember sitting in a police launch motoring through a parking lot in the sea for hundreds of boats. Line-upon-line of orange vessels and stubby tugs awaiting duty.
A veritable city of ships in the marshes - the supply headquarters for the Gulf of Mexico's oil industry.
Many of the boats were on standby, waiting for a disaster such as this. The communities, the oil companies, the coast guard, all knew this could happen sooner or later.
If you can say there's good thing about this event - it is that it happened within reach of an armada of containment vessels, ineffective though they seem to be.
We stood on a small sliver of beach nearby and looked out into the Gulf. There you can see an almost unbroken line of oil rigs along the horizon.
In the fading light, their burning flares almost like a chain of foreboding. Under the surface, a spidery network of pipes reach up from the seabed, through which endless barrels of oil constantly glug.
The support ships steam to and fro. It's a vast enterprise - the Gulf supplies up to 30 per cent of the USA's energy needs. Within a 60km radius of Port Fourchon, there are 600 platforms.
Now just one of them threatens an entire coastline.
We filmed in the bayous and inlets, chugging by collapsed communities, ripped apart by hurricanes like Katrina. Those people that stayed, still earning a living from a fecund sea. Shrimp, crab and fish species abound in these waters.
As you nose through the reeds there's a sudden explosion of wings and legs, as a startled Spoonbill erupts in the air. Pelicans cruise overhead, there's a smattering of lilies with purple flowers.
This is still an environmental haven - against the odds.
Indeed the wetlands of Louisiana have already been ripped apart by the oil industry.
Channels carved out of the marshes to create channels for navigation and canals for oil pipelines. Salt water flooded into this pristine environment and messed up the dynamics of nature.
Once-flourishing oak and cypress trees, quickly died as the fresh water disappeared. Their rotted roots couldn't hold the marshes together and the natural system collapsed.
To make matters worse, the Mississippi river no longer deposits millions of tons of sediment in this area as it has done for thousands of years. Its levees and walls prevent that.
Now a new slow black death may soon advance through those very channels and waterways opened up by the relentless quest for oil.
We filmed a group of Native Americans of Atakapa origin. They've lived off the waters of the bayous for more than a thousand years, hunting, fishing and trapping.
Over time, they've endured many a challenge on this explosive hurricane coast. But in the past they were helped by a natural defence.
When the wetlands were still intact, they formed a barrier to anything but the worst weather. Not any more.
And now there's nothing but open water to protect this coast from the enveloping slick.
For centuries the Atakapa people have lived with the ebb and flow of nature.
Last October they told me they were fighting for their very existence because of fellow man's bid to dominate the environment. God knows what they're thinking now.
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
15 Comments so far
Show AllThis might give Congress something to do besides fight their little kid spoiled brat games they have been doing for the last year. Not that they could do anything smart or helpful, of course, as that is not their style.
Congress will probably award huge no-bid contracts to Halliburton and to private security firms. What these firms do with the money will be unaccounted for and unaudited. But of course some will find its way into campaign contributions. So much for Congress!
Sadly, we have to take the Janet Reno statement and joint statements with BP as symptomatic of just what you're saying.
No, this will take public action, possibly mass class action suits or a tremendous number of private suits.
What does the location of the well off of coastal waters do for BP's liability?
Within a 60km radius of Port Fourchon, there are 600 platforms. Now just one of them threatens an entire coastline.
Mr. Murphy. Line 1 please, a client calling about the law.
See my post under
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/01
as it applies here too.
In 2003 Mike Tidwell wrote a book "Bayou Farewell"....this is just another nail.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
The Republicans have for 30 years advocated opening all flood-plains and wetlands to development and all national parks to corporate concessions. They love to plan communities in areas (especially in the Southwest) that already have insufficient water resources to supply them over time. I saw a PBS documentary on some of these communities once and a right-wing "developer" was asked if he planned out water supplies for his own business plan's predicted rate of population growth over a 20 year period. His response? "That's not the way we do things. I guess the property owners and local government officials will address those issues when the time comes."
Well, that's how corporate, quarterly profit statements work, but not the natural succession of species. Nature neither saves nor spares species, regardless of how "exceptional" they may or may not think they are. If they destroy their own natural life support species and habitats that they are dependent upon and fail to adapt to the changes, then they perish.
A quibble. Nick Clark says "the Gulf supplies up to 30 per cent of the USA's energy needs."
That should be "USA's energy desires." So much of it gets squandered.
The USA does not need that much energy. If people looked seriously at the costs of getting that energy it is doubtful that they would want that much energy given the cost. Given reasonable alternatives and promoted with a bit of the propaganda that the media can produce the energy use can be reduced dramatically.
Good point to keep in mind.
The slogan that's come to my mind in the wake of the coal mine disaster and now this is "Conservation Doesn't Kill" That barrel of oil that's saved is no different than on that's drilled.
The slick is said to now be the size of West Virginia. It's been growing for only a few days. It will continue to spew oil at the same rate until it is capped or the well just runs out. We haven't seen anything yet.
I've been trying to think of an environmental disaster worse than this. Of the environmental catastrophes worldwide that stemmed from an incident, all I can think of to rival the potential of this is Chernobyl and maybe Bhopal.
I feel worse about this than I've ever felt about anything in the news. I'm from Port Arthur, Texas -- on the coast, on the border with Louisiana. We may see the effects of this all along the Gulf Coast for the rest of our lives. I never knew the failure of one rig could do anything like this. There has to be some way in this world to cap that thing.
what effect will this "spill" have on hurricanes?
An oil slick calms the waters by reducing wave height. It would also reduce evaporation from the water thereby making hurricanes less likely or less powerful. If the slick grows large enough to cover the entire region where hurricanes form it could result in a hurricane free season. However, the island of Cuba is a barrier to the movement of this slick into the area where hurricanes originate. Most likely, when the slick goes through the Florida Straights it will be carried by the Gulf Stream north along the east coast of the USA.
Let's analyze this a little:
1) "An oil slick calms the waters by reducing wave height."
Smooth surfaces (glass, ice, Teflon) allow opposing surfaces to slide more easily across them. So large waves would do more to oppose high winds than small ones.
2) "It would also reduce evaporation from the water"
I believe that oil and water mix very little so the total volume of water available for evaporation would change little and probably not enough to impact the strength of a hurricane.
3) "If the slick grows large enough to cover the entire region where hurricanes form it could result in a hurricane free season."
Technically, dark surfaces attract more light energy than RELATIVELY clean water. This will do more to heat the surrounding water and, thus, increase evaporation rates.
I can see this event leading to STRONGER hurricanes and not weaker ones. But I actually hope that you're the one that's correct about this. I guess we'll find out soon enough.
Imagine if you will, juxtaposing this disaster with what would happen if there was a major accident with offshore wind turbines....
NEWSFLASH:
-- Wind turbine collapses into sea.
-- Temporary power loss of less than 5 minutes whilst electrical network re-routed to exclude damaged component.
-- Crane & tug dispatched to retrieve submerged turbine whilst replacement from pylon surplus being readied on land.
-- Nature surveillance cameras showed several startled birds flying past at the time of accident but no loss of flora, fauna, or natural habitat will occur as usual.
In other news scientists no longer working under the monetary system have discovered a breakthrough method in dealing with radioactive waste to remove it completely from the environment.
And today's weather report is for yet another fine day with fresh air levels at 100% percent once more.
*************
But in reality today at this time, instead of all that above you get oil, greed, lies, and criminality on an endless treadmill of degradation, exploitation and death.
thanks, i enjoyed that/this.