BP Nightmare Continues For Gulf Residents In So Many Ways

BP has been in a glaring public spotlight for weeks and months now, yet they continue to abuse and lie to the millions whose lives they have affected. The Gulf itself is a disaster, countless wildlife are sick and dying, industries are ruined and the oil continues to gush out from deep underneath the water. This is what you get when the region you live in relies on the production and refinement of oil.

Beyond the basics, BP is not trying hard to throw off the stereotype of being an evil and uncaring corporate giant. These two stories show how:

From RawStory:

After BP crews scoop up the oil off Gulf beaches, the waste is transported to Mississippi's Pecan Grove landfill. Even workers' protective suits, gloves, shovels, rakes and anything else that touches oil is buried there.

The Board of Supervisors in Harrison, Mississippi passed a resolution saying they don't want any BP waste in their community but there is little they can do. BP has cut deals with Waste Management, the owners of the landfill. They answer to the state instead of local county government.

BP ignored the press on this issue, but the landfill that contracted with them says it's safe because they installed a liner underneath. Whether or not that liner holds....tons of oil and tons of kitchen garbage are a bit different from each other...is debatable. Of course BP does have to do something with the oil, so perhaps they have some wiggle room, but when it comes to making things right with fishermen whose income has been decimated, there is no excuse for this:

From Perilous Nation:

Hundreds of fishermen from Lake Charles to Moss Point, Miss., were supposed to get checks from BP on Wednesday but didn’t.

Wednesday night, their lawyer wanted answers. Jeffrey Briet represents more than 500 fishermen, and he said the payment system he set up with BP required his clients to be paid every 30 days. Now that process has suddenly changed without warning, Briet said.

“Not only did they spring it on us that the process has changed, but the people I’ve been dealing with for six weeks who’ve done a good job said, ‘We don’t know what the process is going to be. We’re not authorized to talk to you about it. Someone from BP will contact you,’” he said.

Unsurprisingly, no one from BP contacted them and continue to stone wall. One would think it's a no brainer to compensate these poor fisherman....but then again, we are dealing with big oil, a tragedy in of itself.

Scary

It really is amazing how technology has advanced to track our destruction of the planet:

Killing The Gulf Of Mexico With Kindness

Damn it people I'm sick of hearing about biofuels. So many world leaders are promoting the virtues of producing ethanol to power our cars, yet they are either too greedy or ignorant to realize that for the most part, it is a sham. It takes just as much energy to produce the fuels as it saves us in pollutants when people drive their cars on it. Now pouring your old vegetable oil in the tank is one thing, but mass production is another. There are so many negative side effects, but to the people that live around the Gulf of Mexico, they know the dead zone first and foremost.

From RawStory:

A planned increase in US ethanol production from corn would spell environmental "disaster" for marine species in the Gulf of Mexico, said a co-author of a science study published Monday.

A boost in corn production will worsen the Gulf's so-called "dead zone," an area with so little oxygen that sealife suffocates, said Simon Donner, a geographer at the University of British Columbia in Western Canada.

"Most organisms are not able to survive without enough oxygen," Donner told AFP. "All the bottom-dwelling organisms that can't move away are probably going to die, while fish will migrate if they can."

Donner and Chris Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin used computer models to conclude that growing enough corn to meet US biofuel goals set for 2022 would cause a boost of 10 to 34 percent in nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, which run into the Gulf of Mexico.

Not only do we need to focus more on clean energy (wind and solar) but the way farming is done must be changed. For two centuries or more our nation's farmers did not use the abusive chemicals that we see today in their soil. Those nitrates flow into the rivers and create the death zone in the Gulf that we know today.

Too many people think biofuels are the answer. I say direct your kindness of the environment in other directions and wakeup to the realities of ethanol.

The Dead Zone Off Of Louisiana

This isn't about the widespread devastation of the Gulf coast due to Hurricane Katrina or Rita. The Dead Zone is in the ocean, created by toxic runoff from the Mississippi River that creates algae blooms in the open water and then the decaying plants suck out all the oxygen in the water, essentially destroying the possibility of life in the area. According to scientists, it is now the 2nd largest dead zone in the world and growing larger year by year.

From The Sun Herald:

NEW ORLEANS -- Researchers predict the recurring "dead zone" off the Louisiana coast will grow this summer to its largest size in at least 22 years, 8,543 square miles.

The forecast, released today by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, is based on a federal estimate of nitrogen from the Mississippi River watershed to the Gulf of Mexico. It discounts the effect large storms or hurricanes might have.

The "dead zone" in the northern Gulf, at the end of the Mississippi River system, is the second-largest area of oxygen-depleted coastal waters in the world. Low oxygen, or hypoxia, can be caused by pollution from sources including farm fertilizer, soil erosion and discharge from sewage treatment plants, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

If the economic situation wasn't bad enough already, this exacerbated problem will further hurt the economy of the Gulf coast. As the dead zone grows, the area where shrimpers and fisherman will shrink, resulting in a more crowded space and further depletion of the marine life that is still there.