April, 18 2011, 01:38pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Lauren Wright, 202 683-4929, lwright(at)fwwatch(dot)org
One Year Later, Gulf Still Suffering from Environmental, Health Consequences of Unprecedented Dispersant Use
Food & Water Watch Critical of President’s Proposed Budget for NOAA’s Gulf of Mexico Spill Recovery Efforts
WASHINGTON
Approximately one year after the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, national consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch released a report detailing the public health and environmental fallout from the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico, and called attention to skewed budget priorities for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the President's 2012 budget proposal.
According to the report, the administration's 2012 budget for NOAA - the agency tasked with conserving and managing living marine resources - would include $2.9 million on oil spill recovery efforts in the Gulf of Mexico, while allocating almost $60 million to promote policies that would further harm many fishermen and the Gulf environment.
"NOAA seeks to give tens of millions to push controversial fisheries management plans and promote ecologically damaging industrialization of our seafood. Gulf recovery efforts, on the other hand, don't seem to be the agency's priority," said Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch. "These policies NOAA is promoting - catch and trade and factory fish farming - would further devastate the Gulf economy and the marine environment," Hauter said.
BP dumped 1.84 million gallons of the dispersants Corexit 9500A and 9527 into the Gulf over the several months following the Deepwater Horizon spill. The dispersants did not eliminate oil from the environment; they broke it down into smaller, less visible particles and sank it below the surface of the ocean where much of the toxic concoction remains.
According to the report, the toxicity of the dispersants increases when they are mixed with oil. An underwater cloud of dispersed, microscopic oil droplets contaminates a volume of water 100-1,000 times greater than if the oil were confined to the surface.
As of April 7, 2011, 153 dead dolphins have washed ashore along the Gulf Coast since the beginning of the year. A recent study suggests that the true death toll could be fifty times the number of carcasses recovered and reveals that 7,650 dolphins may have died in the gulf since the beginning of the year.
"We're still extremely worried about the underwater plumes of oil and dispersant since they're even more toxic than dispersant sprayed on the top of the water," Hauter said. "The dispersed oil in plumes is more easily absorbed and consumed by marine animals. We should definitely consider this when researching the dolphin and sea turtle deaths. A year later, the body count keeps rising. No one is forgetting that this happened and the government needs to be held accountable for recovery efforts."
Massive underwater oil plumes have been discovered across the Gulf. The University of Georgia found a ten-mile long, three-mile wide plume that was 300 feet thick at points.
Above the surface, the report lists studies and incidents of Corexit's negative health impact on humans, revealing that:
* Immediately after the spill, nine cleanup workers became violently ill. Four additional men were hospitalized after their boat was accidentally doused with dispersant. In early August, 334 people in Louisiana claimed spill-related health problems, including headaches and dizziness.
* Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) tested blood from five people that came in contact with oil and dispersants and exhibited physical symptoms. Chemicals that corresponded to those found in oil, dispersant or both were present in all those tested.
* Tulane University's Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade surveyed 954 Louisiana residents to determine the spill's impact. Approximately half of all respondents reported having an unusual increase in coughing, headaches and skin and eye irritation.
* The National Institute of Health (NIH) is conducting the largest study on the dispersants' health impacts - interviewing 55,000 Gulf residents. BP originally committed $10 million to the $17.8 million study but recently cut its contribution to $6 million, leaving the government to fund the majority.
Corexit 9527 was one of the several dispersants used during the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. Nearly 7,000 workers reported feeling ill with respiratory distress during this time. The average age of death for those that worked with Corexit during the Valdez spill is 50 years old.
Despite expert recommendations that BP used dispersants associated with less environmental and public health risk, the company decided to purchase the more toxic Corexit from Nalco Holding Company, whose board of directors includes a former BP executive and board member. Since then, Nalco has experienced tremendous revenue gains, selling over $70 million in dispersants to BP and the government.
The Obama Administration recently proposed allocating $54 million in its 2012 budget to catch shares - a policy that has put thousands of fishermen out of business, and over $4 million to ocean factory fish farming - a widely criticized, environmentally unsustainable method of mass-producing fish.
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
(202) 683-2500LATEST NEWS
Labor Celebrates as Michigan Senate Votes to Overturn 'Right-to-Work' Law
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Lawmakers voted along party lines, 20-17, in favor of a package of bills that will repeal the right-to-work law—which barred unions from requiring that all workers in unionized jobs pay dues—and restore a "prevailing wage" requirement that construction contractors pay union wages and and benefits on state-funded projects.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer indicated on Monday that she intends to sign the bills, which will make Michigan the first state to roll back right-to-work laws in nearly six decades.
Since Republicans pushed the passage of the right-to-work law in December 2012, union membership in Michigan has fallen by about 40,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
State Sen. Darrin Camilleri (D-4), the lead sponsor of the bills to repeal the right-to-work law, said on the Senate floor Tuesday that the 2012 law "systematically made it harder for unions to do their job" and "created an environment where unions were put at a disadvantage when it came to negotiating for better pay and benefits across the board."
"People came to Michigan because of the promise of a union," Camilleri tweeted after the bills passed. "My family included. Unions fought for good pay and benefits so that all workers get ahead. Today we restored that promise and said to all workers that Michigan has their back."
Camilleri added that lawmakers could hear union members and supporters "loud and clear" as they cheered the passage of the bills.
"This is what happens when we elect union members to halls of power," said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the U.S. "We fight and we WIN for working people. Right to work, hit the curb!"
According toThe Detroit News, two of the three bills passed on Tuesday will have to go back to the state House for approval before reaching Whitmer's desk. The bills include $1 million in appropriations to "inform employers, employees, and labor organizations about changes to their rights and responsibilities."
The appropriations made the legislation referendum-proof, and opponents would need to gather enough support to propose a constitutional amendment restoring right-to-work on the ballot in 2024. Under state law, they would need to collect more than 446,000 signatures to propose the amendment.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 26 other states have right-to-work policies in place.
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The lawmakers pointed to recent reporting detailing how "SVB officials showed a pattern of risky and questionable decision making that may have contributed to the bank's instability and collapse and the ripple effects being felt throughout the economy."
Warren and Blumenthal asked the Biden administration to launch a probe to determine "whether senior bank executives and other key officials involved in the collapse met their statutory and regulatory responsibilities or violated civil or criminal law."
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Greg Becker, SVB's former CEO, sold millions of dollars of shares as recently as late last month.
The bank's leadership has also come under fire for dishing out bonuses hours before federal regulators took over on Friday.
"You have nobody to blame for the failure at your bank but yourself and your fellow executives."
In a letter to Becker earlier this week, Warren—a member of the Senate Banking Committee—slammed SVB for lobbying against bank regulations in recent years and argued that "you have nobody to blame for the failure at your bank but yourself and your fellow executives."
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The Wall Street Journalreported Tuesday that the DOJ and SEC have both opened investigations into the SVB failure, which was the second-largest bank collapse in U.S. history.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren said a 2018 law backed by Republicans and dozens of Democrats allowed banks to "load up on risk to boost their profits," endangering "our entire economy."
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Katie Porter unveiled legislation Tuesday to repeal the section of a Trump-era law that weakened regulations for banks with between $50 billion to $250 billion in assets, a move that experts and lawmakers have blamed for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the resulting turmoil.
"In 2018, I rang the alarm bell about what would happen if Congress rolled back critical Dodd-Frank protections: banks would load up on risk to boost their profits and collapse, threatening our entire economy—and that is precisely what happened," Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement. "President Biden called on Congress to strengthen the rules for banks, and I'm proposing legislation to do just that by repealing the core of Trump's bank law."
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SVB's leadership specifically lobbied for the higher threshold, insisting the tougher regulations were unnecessary even as experts and lawmakers raised concerns that gutting them would increase the risk of bank failures and cascading effects on the financial system.
"Americans deserve to know their money is safe when they deposit it in the bank," Porter (D-Calif.) said Tuesday. "In 2018, politicians rolled back critical regulations protecting Americans' deposits—ignoring warnings from financial experts in favor of Wall Street special interests. I'm calling on Congress to restore commonsense guardrails that keep corporate greed in check and restore confidence in our financial system."
Titled the Secure Viable Banking (SVB) Act, Warren and Porter's legislation would place more stringent regulations on institutions like Silicon Valley Bank by reviving safeguards for firms with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets.
Facing backlash from Warren and others for glaring oversight failures, the Federal Reserve is considering stronger regulations for banks with between $100 billion and $250 billion in assets, Reutersreported late Tuesday.
Warren and Porter introduced their bill with the support of 31 Democrats in the House and 17 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, including Sens. Bernie Sanders(I-Vt.) and Ed Markey(D-Mass.).
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Notably absent from the list of co-sponsors were the Democrats who helped Republicans usher the bill through Congress in 2018, often misleadingly arguing that the measure was chiefly about providing relief for "community banks."
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One of the Democratic supporters, Mark Warner of Virginia, defended the 2018 law over the weekend, tellingABC News that he believes it "put in place an appropriate level of regulation on mid-sized banks" and that "these mid-sized banks needed some regulatory relief."
The Leverreported last week that SVB chief Greg Becker held a fundraiser for Warner in 2016.
"The bank’s political action committee also donated a total of $10,000 to Warner’s campaigns in the 2016 and 2018 election cycles," the outlet noted.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), another major backer of the 2018 law, held a fundraiser in Silicon Valley earlier this week, just days after SVB collapsed.
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