Topics: Just released: 30k pages of BP oil spill documents. Help us find out what we've got!, Leaked: 30,000 BP oil spill memos, emails and transcripts, BP Voted “Worst Company in America”, A year after spill, BP gives political contributions to GOP leaders, Oil still oozing along coastline amid dying marsh grasses, A year after oil spill, researchers putting Gulf ecosystem under microscope, BP oil spill: The environmental impact one year on, The Gulf Oil Spill: One Year Later, 'Nothing Fundamentally Has Changed', A Year After the Spill, "Unusual" Rise in Health Problems, One Year Later, Gulf oil spill: Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi opt not to join lawsuit against Transocean, Louisianans Still Recovering From Gulf Oil Spill
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Gulf Watchers Diary Schedule
Monday - evening drive time
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Part one of the digest of diaries is here and part two is here.
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Our heartfelt sympathies go out to the family and friends of those men who lost their lives needlessly on the Deepwater Horizon. In their memory I'm fudging Gulf Watchers police of no embedded graphics to include one of the memorial cap that was placed on the Macondo well in memory of the eleven lost men.
- Dale Burkeen, 37
- Donald Clark, 49
- Roy Wyatt Kemp, 27
- Jason Anderson, 35
- Stephen Curtis, 39
- Gordon Jones, 28
- Karl Kleppinger, 38
- Blair Manuel, 56
- Dewey Revette, 48
- Adam Weise, 24
The press has, for the most part, has ignored this sad anniversary of the Macondo blowout that gushed untold evil in the the Gulf of Mexico for 87 horror filled days. They choose to cast a blind eye and deaf ear on the continued suffering of BP's Gulf victims, its people, critters and environment. We hope you will join Gulf Watchers in remembering the continuing Gulf losses and sorrow.
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| If you wish to help to fight back against the apathy you can help by digging through the 30,000 FOIA documents Greenpeace has received. It was among those documents that the Guardian found BP emails proving how hard BP was trying to twist the science about their black monster to their own ends.
The documents I clicked on were all PDF images of photos of the documents which means the text is not searchable. If anyone has decent OCR software pitching in to convert them to searchable text would be an enormous help.
Just released: 30k pages of BP oil spill documents. Help us find out what we've got!
The research team here at Greenpeace USA does some really great stuff. Uncloaking the Koch brothers, figuring out the truth about fracking, and pressuring polluters who are trying to influence our elected leaders.
But they can only do so much. In July 2010 the team began submitting Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests to the federal government about the BP oil disaster. They began to trickle back, slowly, and we stayed on top of it. But just like the gusher in the Gulf the trickle became a flood, and now we have around 30,000 pages of memos, reports and even flight records about the worst oil spill in American history.
While some of the agencies have simply ignored our requests, others have gotten back with some interesting documents. The problem is we simply don’t have time to go through them all. The Guardian ran a series of stories about them last week but no one has the manpower to read the fine print. Plus, we’re getting more through the letterbox almost every day.
This is where you come in. We’ve created a new site which allows anyone to view, download and comment on these documents. We’re updating it with new stuff and categorizing it to make your life easier. Always imagined yourself winning a Pulitzer? Still mad at BP and want to find out what really happened out there? Searching for evidence for a compensation claim? Now’s your chance to dig up some gems.
Log on to www.polluterwatch.org/research and help us sift through the mountain of data. Get in touch if you find something interesting and we’ll try to get the news out.
You’re all part of the research team now.
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| An independent news site in Australia has already found some treasures in Greenpeace's FOIA document stash. BP was trying to direct funding for the $500 million fund that was set up for scientific research. Jindall's office was trying to get BP to cough up money for his $360 million boondoggle sand berm project before contracts were let. Since it was private, rather than taxpayer money that comes with accountability, it's no surprise that Jindall was a lot more concerned about handing out the money to political allies than doing anything useful for Louisiana.
Experts said the berms wouldn't help and they didn't. Louisiana gets squat and Jindall gets #360 million worth of political buddies. To top it off the TV networks gave Jindall endless free time to rant about needing the sand berms when everyone with a lick of sense knew they would be worthless. Unsurprisingly, they have showed zero curiosity in finding out in whose pockets that #360 million landed.
There is more in the story concerning emails indicating BP had the say who got access to the spill site, British diplomats trying to figure out what angles to play and environmental groups trying to get NOAA to show some concern for wildlife but there are no quotes or links.
Leaked: 30,000 BP oil spill memos, emails and transcripts | Crikey
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As a result the environmental group have obtained some 30,000 memos, emails and transcripts which document the worst oil spill in American history. Taking cues from WikiLeaks, Greenpeace has begun to leak its considerable cache online for all to see. Here’s what we pulled out of the document dump:
In one internal email, BP environmental expert Russell Putt asks his colleagues if the company can take control of the $500m research fund set up to investigate the impacts of the spill:
“Can we ‘direct’ GRI [Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative] funding to a specific study (as we now see the Governor’s offices trying to do)? What influence do we have over the vessels/equipment driving the studies vs the questions?”
Butt’s request came after BP officials discussed whether the company could influence the research program to studies that BP considered “useful”.
Other emails released by Greenpeace reveal a war of words between BP and the government of Louisiana, with both accusing the other of delays in a sand derm [sic] project as part of the Deepwater Horizon spill cleanup.
The sand derm [sic] project involved building temporary sand barriers to protect coastal communities and a wildlife refuge. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican, was very public in his demands for sand derms [sic] to be used post-spill, to be paid for entirely by BP, but accused BP of delaying funding for the program.
Victor Aguiluz, a senior attorney at BP, sent an email on June 1, 2010, to an attorney at Jindal’s office and to Garret Graves, the director of the Governor’s Office of Coastal declaring:
“Given the Governor’s comments this afternoon, just wanted to be clear that, in our view, BP has no further work deliverables to send to the State in order to progress our efforts on the W9 project to the next step. BP is now waiting on the State’s action and response.”
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Aguiliz also noted that it seemed that BP was expected to simply fund the program, without any input to it, which it opposed.
Graves [chairman of Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority] replied, saying “Thank you for agreeing to front costs. That is a step forward…”
The back and forth email frenzy continued, with Aguiliz replying: “I think we may still be misaligned on the funding. I would not use the words ‘front costs’.”
The conversation about the contract then moved offline.
Despite spending a bazillion dollars in obnoxious commercials telling everyone how wonderful they are and the media ignoring the ongoing tragic aftermath of BP's assault on the Gulf BP still wins the "Worst Company in America" award.
BP Voted “Worst Company in America”
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BP has been named the "Worst Company in America" after winning an on-line contest hosted by Consumerist.com.
The oil giant's victory comes just two days before the first anniversary of the Gulf Oil Spill.
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Nearly 230,000 votes were cast during the six-week long contest.
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| Undeterred by BP's unpopularity Republicans are bellying up to the BP bar for cash handouts. The only Dem who shamed himself by joining them was Rep. Pete Visclosky of Indiana.
A year after spill, BP gives political contributions to GOP leaders
BP has broken a moratorium on political giving by making contributions to Speaker John Boehner and other GOP leaders nearly a year after its massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP Corp. North America gave $5,000 contributions to Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) through its political action committee, according to a campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday.
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A spokesman for BP did not return a request for comment.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) received $1,000 and $5,000 contributions respectively from BP North America’s political action committee.
Other recipients were the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which each accepted $5,000 from the company.
The only Democrat to receive a donation was Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.), who got $3,000 on March 22.
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| This is a prime example of why the environmental Humpty Dumpty can not be put back together again after an oil spill. There is no way to clean the oil out of these marshes and it will be killing for years, if not decades, as well as contributing to permanent marsh land loss.
Oil still oozing along coastline amid dying marsh grasses
The state's struggle to deal with the remains of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill can be seen in miniature in a broken stand of roseau cane in Pass a Loutre Wildlife Management Area, Wildlife & Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham said Tuesday morning.
Garret Graves, chairman of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, holds a tar ball Tuesday as Clint Dauphinet of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries turns a shovel of oiled sand from just beneath the surface on a sand spit island near South Pass. Oil remains in coastal marshes one year after the BP oil spill.
When Barham scooped up a handful of earth, what oozed from between his fingers was a mixture of soil and oil.
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The ooze of oil came from beneath the ground. There, it mixed with the roots of the cane stalks that had sprung to life after an original die-back and are now turning brown again.
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Cleanup contractors paid by BP removed oil from the surface, but determined that no further cleaning would be successful in this secluded patch, Barham said.
"No further cleanup necessary," he snorted as the oily soil dripped from his fingers. "You can smell that smell. There's a surge of odor that comes out of this marsh."
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Dried oil on a sand spit island near South Pass on Tuesday shows that oil remains in coastal marshes one year after the BP oil spill.
"This is the very terminal end of the Mississippi Flyway," said Todd Baker, biology program manager for Wildlife & Fisheries. "You get a wide variety of birds, waterfowl, neotropical migrants, raptors, all of them. When they come through, this is the first piece of land they see. When they leave, this is the last place they rest up before they jump across the Gulf of Mexico.
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About 15 miles away as the birds fly -- or 30 by boat -- Graves used a shovel and his hands to dig about a foot beneath the surface of a spit of sandy beach at the end of South Pass, turning over black-stained sand that smelled like diesel.
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| The Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process controls all but a pitifully small amount of scientific research being done in the Gulf. The polluter has a lot of veto power in the NRDA process because they get a say in approving scientific observations. The intent of the process seems to be to shorten the legal haggling but the polluter can choose to keep fighting the scientific findings in court for pretty much as long as they can afford to pay their lawyers.
Also, we've seen with No Oil At All's (NOAA) public statement that the seem more concerned with making the BP catastrophe story disappear rather than advocating for good science. The environment and the country would be better served by allowing The National Science Foundation to allot NRDA money on the basis of meritorious science rather than basing science decisions on NOAA's political agenda of the moment and the polluter's self interests.
A year after oil spill, researchers putting Gulf ecosystem under microscope
Last spring, as BP's unchecked gusher of oil began to spread across the Gulf of Mexico, University of Miami oceanographer Jerald Ault tried to answer the question that was on everyone's lips: What will this do to the Gulf?
"The thing is, we don't know what the long-term impacts will be, because something like this has never happened here," he said. "It's like we've been put in this movie that no one has written the ending to yet. And it won't be written for years."
Now, a year after the Deepwater Horizon exploded, thousands of researchers are working on that ending. They are busily gathering data, searching for answers in what experts believe is the most massive and expensive scientific assessment ever undertaken in the history of pollution events.
Fourteen agencies from the federal government and five states, joined by contractors working for BP, are engaged in the Natural Resource Damage Assessment, a process mandated by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 that eventually will result in a huge repair bill to the oil giant. The research work already has cost BP hundreds of millions of dollars, the parties said.
Meanwhile, scores of researchers from universities, nonprofit foundations and environmental groups are initiating their own studies or bird-dogging the NRDA process.
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But they also say the huge volume of toxic hydrocarbons injected into the system leaves a giant cloud over the future. They worry a list of unusual post-spill events -- from dolphin deaths to infections in some fish and crabs -- may be harbingers of bad times ahead.
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That jury is composed of the researchers working on those studies, the most massive of which is the NRDA, whose teams are surveying the health of every component of the ecosystem.
Institute for Marine Mammal Studies veterinary technician Wendy Hatchett prepares to take a skin sample from a dead bottlenose dolphin that was found decomposing on Ono Island, Ala., and brought for examination to Gulfport, Miss. Since January, 155 young or even fetal dolphins and small whales have washed up dead on Gulf beaches -- more than four times the normal amount, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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By last week, nearly 30,000 samples had been collected from the Gulf as well as from along 4,250 linear miles of shoreline stretching from the Florida panhandle to the Texas-Mexico border, the agency said.
Each team consists of representatives of federal and state agencies, called "trustees" because they represent the public trust. Also invited are the "responsible parties." Of the companies working on the Deepwater Horizon at the time of the accident, only BP has chosen to take part, NOAA officials said.
The collaborative effort is aimed at speeding the process by requiring that all parties agree to observations at the time they are made. However, that doesn't mean the parties will agree later on the significance of those observations in terms of damages the responsible parties must mitigate.
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| This story points out another horrible deficiency of the National Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA) process. Scientific findings can be kept secret as long as the legal food fight continues. If scientific results are not made public other scientists are unable to build on the findings.
BP oil spill: The environmental impact one year on
Scientists have warned that it is too soon to attempt to offer a considered assessment on what impact the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest of its kind, has had on the Gulf of Mexico's wildlife.
In short, they said, nature did not work in such a way that the full picture will present itself within just one year.
Also, they added, more data needed to be gathered in the months and years ahead to gauge the full extent of the incident, which covered such a vast area.
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Researchers and conservation groups said it was difficult to access information being gathered as part of an investigation by a federal Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process.
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"What we know is very sketchy," said Claude Gascon, chief science officer for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
"We have tried, and many others have tried, and it is almost impossible to get any idea what that group of agencies and researchers are actually finding.
"The simple reason for that is that there is going to be so much potential litigation in terms of settlements etc, " Dr Gascon told BBC News.
"So it is very difficult to know at the moment, the scale of the impact has been and will be in the future.
"All of us, including conservation organisations, professionals and academics, are keenly awaiting whatever the federal process will release into the public domain."
There was also agreement that it was too soon for long-term impacts to manifest themselves, such as disruptions to ecosystems' food chains.
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"It is too soon to draw any conclusions about impacts, especially within the marine environment," he [Stan Senner, director of conservation science for Ocean Conservancy] told BBC News. "We certainly cannot gauge long-term effects just 12 months after the spill.
"For example, there were things like the massive use of dispersants, which was unprecedented. And because the well was so far offshore (50 miles), there were undoubtedly many, many impacts that were out of sight and we may never have the capacity to work out what really happened.
"Right now, there are far more questions than answers."
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| You know things are bad when a scientist from Texas A & M, incubator for big oil handmaidens, speaks out publicly to say things aren't all hunky-dory in the Gulf.
The Gulf Oil Spill: One Year Later, 'Nothing Fundamentally Has Changed'
“Nothing has fundamentally changed,” says Doug Rader, Chief Ocean Scientist for Environmental Defense Fund. There has been some chair-shuffling: BP’s bumbling CEO, Tony Hayward, was deep-sixed. The old Minerals Management Service has been tossed aside, now called the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management and Regulation, and has been talking tough about enforcing offshore drilling regulations. The industry has designed new containment systems, that, in theory, could be helpful in capping another deep water blowout.
But there has been no significant action in Congress to reform offshore drilling. Even the $75 million liability cap on damages related to a blowout or spill remains in place, allowing Big Oil to lay off the risks of catastrophe on U.S. taxpayers.
The biggest surprise is the widely held view that the blowout wasn’t such an environmental disaster after all – like the Gulf just swallowed up five million barrels of oil and 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants and everything is fine.
It’s not fine. Yes, commercial fisheries are thriving again and the shrimpers are back in business, but the notion that billions of oil-eating bacteria simply devoured the crude oil is "a pipe dream," says Rader. “The Gulf spill was an environmental catastrophe. It’s just one we haven’t been able to fully quantify yet.”
Certainly, bacteria in the Gulf – many of which have evolved to digest oil because of natural oil seeps in the area – did help to break down the crude. “But it didn’t magically vanish,” says Tom Shirley, a marine ecologist at Texas A & M. Shirley points out that there is still significant amounts of oil coating the bottom of the Gulf near the blow-out point, as well as in thick tar-like mats in coastal areas. And many of the most toxic elements in oil, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), resist breakdown by bacteria and are likely to be taken up in food chain, where they can have lethal impacts.
In the Gulf, scientists are just now starting to see impacts on larger marine mammals. Since January, 155 young dolphins and small whales have washed up on Gulf beaches. “That’s four or five times the typical number,” says Shirley. “These deaths are not from toxic exposure to oil, but from chemicals that have gotten into the food web or passed down from mothers.” And these are likely only small percentage of dolphin and whale deaths in the Gulf. One recent study estimates that the actual number of deaths could be 50 times higher. If that is correct, that means there were 7500 dolphin and whale deaths the first three months of this year alone.
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| There has been little to no press coverage of the potential health effects of BP's black monster. Establishing cause and effect between the oil spill and health problems is a monumentally challenging scientific task under optimal circumstances but which has been made nigh on impossible to do in the case of the BP's deepwater gusher since no one bothered to gather any baseline health data.
Many places in the Gulf are already environmental toilets with the added complication of large numbers of people employed in the oil industry where they routinely come in contact with the foul stiff. That only adds to the complication of proving cause and effect.
The end result is predictable. Many will continue to sicken and die prematurely as a result of BP's assault on the Gulf and BP will never be held accountable. Government and the polluters will use the lack of conclusive scientific evidence as an excuse not to protect workers and affected residents when the next big spill happens and happen it will.
A Year After the Spill, "Unusual" Rise in Health Problems
Health issues that continue to plague Gulf Coast communities may be connected to the Gulf oil spill, experts say.
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"We're seeing patients who will come in and say my nose is bleeding all the time, my cough gets worse," said James Diaz, director of the environmental and occupational health sciences program at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans.
Itchy eyes, water eyes, nosebleeds, wheezing, sneezing, and coughing are all symptoms of exposure to crude oil, Diaz said. "We are seeing a lot of that.
"We know a lot about the acute health effects of the compounds in petroleum because it's a major industry here," he said.
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Day and night, Marylee Orr fields calls from cleanup workers, fishers, and their wives as they connect the dots between their health and exposure to dispersants and crude oil. More than 1.8 million gallons (6.8 million liters) of dispersants—chemical agents used to break up oil—were dumped into the Gulf.
"If you look at the human health effects of the . . . dispersant, everything you read at the beginning [of] that factsheet is what I hear over the phone: chest pain, respiratory problems, dizziness, gastrointestinal problems," said Orr, executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, based in Baton Rouge.
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A health survey of nearly a thousand coastal residents conducted by the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a health-justice nonprofit based in New Orleans, found that nearly three-quarters of those who believed they'd been exposed to crude oil experienced an "unusual increase in health symptoms."
In two other surveys of Gulf coast residents also conducted by university public health researchers and sociologists, between 35 to 60 percent of respondents reported experiencing mental stress and physical symptoms.
By August, 52,000 people were participating in the oil-spill cleanup, which was managed by a joint federal-industry response team. However the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences didn't secure funding to start a long-term study of cleanup workers' health until several months after the spill began.
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For instance, a study of cleanup workers from the 2002 Prestige oil spill in Spain found increased DNA damage, especially among those who worked along beaches. Such genetic changes can sometimes lead to cancer.
"We know the famous adage: The dose determines the poison," Diaz said.
He added he's most concerned for Gulf cleanup workers who worked offshore, where they were exposed to raining dispersant and fumes billowing off floating mats of burning crude.
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Governor Rick Scott chooses to depend on the kindness of BP rather than going to court to get compensation for losses to the state of Florida caused by BP. Big oil will no doubt reward Scott with fat campaign checks.
Gulf oil spill: Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi opt not to join lawsuit against Transocean
TALLAHASSEE - Facing a deadline today, Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday rejected a chance to join a federal lawsuit in Louisiana, where other governments are seeking to recoup damages from the oil rig owner involved in last year's catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
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The decision by Scott and Bondi, both Republicans, drew criticism from Democrats, who said Florida could have joined the Transocean lawsuit with little cost to the state while preserving the state's right to make a monetary claim against the company.
They noted that several other governments have joined the lawsuit, scheduled to be tried next year in federal court in New Orleans, including the state of Alabama, the city of Pensacola and the Leon County School Board.
"It boggles the mind," said Rep. Rick Kriseman, D-St. Petersburg, who is a lawyer. "By not filing a claim, potentially what happens, the state loses its rights to pursue a claim against Transocean."
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This is some very good reporting from a consortium of Gulf PBS stations that will give you a flavor of what challenges people in the Gulf are facing. The videos are well worth watching.
One Year Later, Louisianans Still Recovering From Gulf Oil Spill
Wednesday marks the one year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. The blast killed 11 workers and sent more than 200 million gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf waters for three months. One year later, Gulf region continues to feel the effects of the environmental catastrophe.
After the spill, reporters from ten public broadcasting stations in the region teamed up to create what has become the Gulf Watch Public Media Exchange. It's a place where stations can share stories and information, and where viewers and listeners can find all of the region's public media oil spill coverage.
Hari Sreenivasan spoke with Shauna Sanford and Charlie Whinham of Louisiana Public Broadcasting about the consortium and how Louisianans are faring one year after the spill.
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PLEASE visit Pam LaPier's diary to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!
Previous Gulf Watcher diaries:
The last Mothership has links to reference material.
Previous motherships and ROV's from this extensive live blog effort may be found here.
Again, to keep bandwidth down, please do not post images or videos.
