Happy Earth Day, Panhandle Style, 2012

Virgil Caine is my name,
and I drove on the Danville train,
'Til so much cavalry came
and tore up the tracks again
--The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,
The Band

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one
--The Walrus and the Carpenter,
Lewis Carrol

In the morning laughing happy fish heads
In the evening floating in the soup
Ask a fish head anything you want to
they wont answer they cant talk
--Fish Heads, Barnes and Barnes
___________________

Happy Earth Day, 2012. This weekend marks the second anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. This will be a post of local concern, but the consequences ripple outwards.

The Panhandle of Florida doesn't have much to be proud of, but Apalachicola Bay oysters and scallops used to enjoy national renown; no more. A recent study showed 89 percent of post-spill specimens displayed the signs of metaplasia, a condition in which tissues are transformed in response to stress. Oysters suffering from the condition often have trouble reproducing, which could have detrimental repercussions for the species further up the food chain that depend on them (Gulf Oysters Full of Heavy Metals.)

The government study group will tell you not to worry. Don't believe them.

Because you won't see the shrimp without eyes or eye sockets or decay on their heads because the restaurant will kindly remove it for you. You won't see the eyeless fish or their fin rot, or the festering sores, because we don't like fins and fish heads, anyway, and the purveyors will kindly fillet the rotting innards of certain seafood, which is also being found off of our Gulf Coast (2 years later, fish sick near BP oil spill site.)


Accommodation can be made for the crabs lacking claws; they can just be sold as lump crab meat and no one will be the wiser that they, too, lacked eyes as well.

The AP toes a bureaucratic line, saying, "[t]he illnesses are not believed to pose any health threat to humans", and the lead of the federally-funded team Murawski (and former government adviser) says, "It's not a people issue, and people should not be concerned about fish entering the market." What does that final statement even mean? Of course it's a people issue, and of course we should be concerned if these fish enter the market!

How can they say "don't be concerned" with any certainty when they follow with, ". . . the immune systems of the fish were impaired by an unknown environmental stress or contamination." In addition to the oil, the dispersant Corexit is mutagenic; several generations of shrimp and small fish have spawned since the environmental disaster and their terrible deformities are heritable. Worse, we do not know the effects farther up the food chain.

Dahr Jamail at Al Jazeera has the story (Gulf Seafood Deformities Alarm Scientists), and it would not do it justice to condense the reportage; read it, and weep for the once lively Gulf fisheries. The refrain of scientists and fishermen alike is, "We've never seen anything like it" when referring to the terrible blight of the sea creatures in the region. Daily KOS has also covered it here: We've never seen anything like It.

Independent journalist Greg Palast is one of the few who has actually gone deep into this story since it happened. (I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Palast briefly tonight on the radio program of South Florida activist Rick Spisak, and Palast said he was preparing to bring his findings before Attorney General Holder; thanks for the heads-up, Rick.)

Palast's latest post on 4.19.12 -- "BP Cover-up 'They Knew'" -- tells his story of finding the same blowout protector failure in a BP rig blow up in the Caspian Sea in '08, two years before the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and for the same reasons. He found some of his materials in Wikileaks, and he went to Azerbaijan himself to follow the story. Vultures Picnic is his latest book on the dirty dealings surrounding the tragedy.

Everyone can do something to help preserve the earth. Become your own advocate and voice your concerns. Get involved, and don't listen when they tell you it's a "fish problem", not a human one. Maybe the wealthy ones can just rattle their jewelry, to borrow from John Lennon.

Bottom line: Don't eat them oysters.

Zombielaya

This is not a road
--Louisiana fish kill, Field & Stream (9.23.10)

Zombielaya (df.):

Cajun food to keep the undead dead,
made with contaminated gulf seafood

To believe it is to see it

Murdoch? Oh, well, he's gone on
to his great reward.
Yeah... yeah, they say he's in Florida somewhere.
--The Big Kahuna (1999)
__________________

You won't read much about it in the news (the BP oil spill is so yesterday), but Louisiana has just suffered a major fish kill. Field & Stream asks, "Is Massive Louisiana Fish Kill BP Related?" Naw, it couldn't be -- could it? Unfortunately, these disasters are messy, and lack for a discrete end point. Oil spills are a gift that keeps on giving.

Despite the impossibility of closure, BP's Macando well was officially declared "permanently killed" on 9.18.10 by Adm. Thad Allen "point man" for the incident. The WaPo reported "several clues indicated it had been done successfully."

"Allen said that the relief well lost drilling fluids, which was a sign it had broken through. The drill bit encountered extra resistance, indicating it had pierced the Macondo well's casing. And readings from the Macondo well's new blowout preventer also seemed to agree that something had changed far below the seafloor" (BP's Macondo well to be permanently "killed" by Saturday).

In our impossibly sketchy coverage of this spill, it is always a comfort to know that something has changed. One thing for sure that has changed since the well's kill is the directionality of hundreds of thousands of fish off the Louisiana coast who have decided to go belly up (Louisiana Seeks Cause of Massive Fish Kill.)

Says Parish President Billy Nungesser (R), who asked the state and federal governments to test the waters in the area, "We can't continue to see these fish kills." And Billy speaks more truth than he knows, for it's the seeing that's the damn thing. If the fish had only had the good manners to sink to the bottom, we mightn't have been bothered by this distressing news which does not accord with the sanguine government reports (or media non-reports).

The press reports of Mr. Obama's 27-hour visit to the Gulf in mid-August grated. No photographers or tv video crews were allowed to witness Obama's ballyhooed "swim the Gulf". The official line was that the White House didn't want to make the ladies swoon over photos of the president's thin, heaving, hairless chest.

This is absurd, as most presidents readily o.k. beach photos. It shows they are a man of the people, and none would do so more than a collection of photos of Obama and family frolicking in the polluted waters of the Gulf. After the fact, one solitary photo was released by an official White House photographer of the president up to his neck, with daughter Sasha in an indeterminate body of water.

The London Independent identified the swim as actually occurring at Alligator Point in St. Andrews Bay, well to the East of the spill zone. In any event, the official photo lacked any identifiers, like the name of the boat or shore-side signage. Nothing was evident in this photo aside from water and two people (minus the FLOTUS), which makes me doubt the sincerity of Obama's "personal assurances of (the) Gulf's safety." The AP would not publish the WH's handout photo.

I really can't blame Mr. Obama for not wanting to hang out at the Redneck Riviera, and he and the missus were soon off for their second trip this summer for 10 days in Bar Harbor, Maine. Even sans the oil, the Gulf Coast is not a very chic hangout. But the Apalachicola Bay did produce some of the country's best oysters and shrimp, and those days are gone.

Despite the massive fish kill, "Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, in coordination with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, has ordered an emergency reopening of all fishing in 210 square miles of state waters west of Bayou Lafourche previously closed due to the BP oil spill. With today’s action, 95 percent of state waters are opened." Oysters are still verboten. One wonders why the rush to judgment? Methinks the governmental agencies doth protest too much.

Who knows -- maybe the agencies will also discover that the oil dispersant Corexit (whose presence is not being tested for in the fish flesh) is good for what ails you ("Corexit'll Correct It!"), and better living through chemistry will be more than just another fallow promise.

The Gulf fiasco -- "the worst ecological disaster in the nation's history" according to FSU Biological Oceanographer Ian McDonald -- has been dwarfed by other, more visible national dissipations. McDonald is an international expert on oil spills who estimated early on that the amount of oil spilling was at least five times BP estimates.

How much oil was actually spilled and how much remains is anyone's guess. The UK Telegraph reports 4.4 million barrels; the NYT, 4.9 million bbls. Researchers have found a 2-inch slime carpet on the ocean floor, and report, "It's kind of like a slime highway from the surface to the bottom" (Scientists Find Thick Layer of Oil on Seafloor.)

And what of the 22-mile, 3-mile-wide column of oil below the surface, and other such findings? The news stories conflict: Oil Spill Persists, Oil Plume is not Breaking Down Fast, Oil from spill not going away quickly.

But y'know, Halloween's fast approaching, and I've seen Thanksgiving tchotchkes in the stores, so there's plenty else to distract us before Christmas gets here.

[Cross-posted @ BigBrassBlog]

Primitives Are Us

It is better to offer no excuse
than a bad one
--George Washington

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear
--The Walrus and the Carpenter,
Lewis Carroll

It takes some cheek to go and use a sunflower
logo when your business is dirty oil
--Ben Stewart, Greenpeace activist
_________________

Sunday homily: Totemism

Yesterday and today there was a heavy haze over Tallahassee, and I am not the only one who thought there was a faint whiff of petroleum in the air. We are only 30 miles from the coast. But of course, such group sensory phenomena are known to happen.

But now word comes that Tony Hayward, that uppity Brit, will step down in October due to his monstrous handling of the debacle. And that will slake some of our anger, as though his being had anything to do with the catastrophic event. While non-Californians laugh at Burning Man, Mr. Hayward will be our Burning Man.

Why do these simplistic, symbolic gestures seem so comforting and necessary to people? It is like the razing of the Amish school post school-shooting or Abu Ghraib, or the current demands for the resignation of the Duisburg mayor following the deaths at the Love Festival: These people or structures are not the cause of the problems; how can their removal effect their repair? Resources and manpower are finite quantities. Every demolition or firing is a loss of materiel.

Last week a study on the dispersants used in the Gulf of Mexico (Corexit = "corrects it" -- the arrogance!) claims they "do not seem to disrupt marine life." Of course, the tests were done on a cells in a petri dish vs. real, live animals, so the results should be taken with a heaping serving of caution.

But we like to be told things will be well. People are esp. sympathetic to the plights of helpless animals, so it plays well to lessen their mental anguish, such as it is.

Estimates of how much petroleum has poured into the Gulf vary widely. BP's party line escalated slowly from 1,000 barrels per day to 5,000, then ten thousand or more, as other agencies began to surveil the flow. Using private scientific estimates, the rate of flow ranged from 20,000 to 80,000+ barrels per day. Internal BP documents estimate as much as 100,000 barrels per day.

Using 50,000 barrels per day as a mean, this would indicate 4,300,000 barrels of oil flowed into the Gulf over the almost 3 month span of the incident. "The Gulf of Mexico has been inundated with the equivalent of more than an Exxon Valdez-size spill each week" (Research on Gulf oil spill shouldn't take a backseat to litigation) and the 1989 Valdez spill has devastated Prince William Sound for decades.

Three months of living in the newly-toxic Gulf is not enough time to claim no effects from dispersants. Is anyone that gullible? There is one thing I do not like, and that is an outright lie. Corexit was banned in Britain for killing the limpet population. Do not tell me this toxin, dispersed with protective suits, is benign.

I lived in Central Florida, where a major lake (Apopka) was slowly killed due to pesticide and fertilizer runoff from the surrounding muck farms.

Lake Apopka was once a fisherman's paradise in the mid-20th century, but no more. The lake is the subject of much research, as it is here the androgynous frogs live. Two-headed frogs; male frogs with female reproductive systems. The ramifications are broad, as Lake Apopka was the headwaters of the Chain of Lakes, so many other lakes were also poisoned as well.

Yesterday congressional investigators"railed" against the Coast Guard and BP for their over-use of the dispersants:

"The investigators said the U.S. Coast Guard routinely approved BP requests to use thousands of gallons of the chemical per day to break up the oil in the Gulf, despite a federal directive to use the dispersant rarely. The Coast Guard approved 74 waivers over a 48-day period after the Environmental Protection Agency order, according to documents reviewed by the investigators. Only in a few cases did the government scale back BP's request.

"Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., released a letter Saturday that said instead of complying with the EPA restriction, 'BP often carpet bombed the ocean with these chemicals and the Coast Guard allowed them to do it'" (Congressmen: Too Much Dispersant Used in Oil Spill).

Of course, we are told the Gulf of Mexico Has Long Been Dumping Site, and other stories to mitigate our concern. We have heard the routine before from other chemical giants like Dow and Monsanto.

But it turned out the stuff in the orange barrels used in Vietnam wasn't that benign, after all.

_________________


There's still time to make an entry in the "Define Patriotism" contest! Win nifty prizes by saying what patriotism means to you. Yer a bunch of military guys (mostly), so you ought to have an idea, right?

Play HERE.

[Co-posted @ Big Brass Blog]

SpOILed

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
--Big Yellow Taxi, Counting Crows

“A planet doesn’t explode of itself,” said drily
The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air--
“That they were able to do it is proof that highly
Intelligent beings must have been living there.”
--Earth, John Hall Wheelock
_______________

I had to smile ruefully coming across a stack of bookmarks this weekend for a new book of essays by local authors celebrating the Gulf Coast -- "UnspOILed". A day late and a dollar short.

A report issued in April by United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) uses the idea of "peak oil"as a basis for strategic planning (The Joint Operating Environment 2010). The report states that diminishing returns from established oilfields will necessitate of drilling new ones offshore, like the Deepwater Horizon.

Still, that would leave the U.S. behind the power curve in terms of new energy development and in competition for dwindling supply with emerging nations. The vast undersea reserves sound impressive until put into perspective with consumption rates.

From today's Daily Finance (The World Can't Live Without Deepwater Oil) The Tiber reserve [into which the Deepwater Horizon well tapped] "is expected to produce in its lifetime some 3 billion barrels of oil. Sounds impressive, but it's less than six months of current U.S. consumption."

That article also reports that "the majority of new production is assumed to come from the development of existing reserves, such as the offshore and deepwater deposits in the Gulf of Mexico, which currently yield 30% of America's oil production. Deepwater wells like the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon made up 15% of total U.S. production in 2002 and are expected to rise to 30% of total production by 2015."

I have a friend doing post-doctoral work developing alternative materials for solar cells. The work is very promising and could see widespread applications; however, he said he will have to work in Europe as there is no market for this kind of R & D in the states.

Perhaps the next book by the coast advocates will be called, "SpOiled".

Black Gold

--Water, Pavel Constantin (Romania)

Down by the banks of the River Charles
That's where you'll find me
Along with lovers, muggers, and thieves.
I love that dirty water
--Dirty Water, The Standells

Up from the ground came a bubbling crude.
Oil that is. Black gold. Texas tea.
--Beverly Hillbillies theme song
________________

Dirty water and Willie Horton ushered George H.W. into the Bush White House, and in a sense set the tone for the world to come.

Bush 41, the child of Ronald Reagan, viewed terrorism as warfare, and this legacy still affects our daily lives. George W. Bush took those ideas and turned terrorism and warfare on its head. All with the help of dirty water and a touch of racism.

Today we are flipping out over perceived terror threats when real threats to our health and safety are not being addressed by any level of government.

The dirty water is back, both in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the tap water of Boston ("'Boil-Water' Issued for Nearly 2 Million in Mass.") Millions of Bostonians were left without water last week when the system failed. It is but a few days in such a situation to disease and pestilence. What happens when the water and sewer systems of the older, tax-starved, rust-belt (former) metropolises -- Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit -- crash?

According to the Boston Globe [a paper that almost went bankrupt last year], "A major pipe bringing water to the Boston area sprung a 'catastrophic' leak dumping eight million gallons of water per hour into the Charles River." Connections in a series of Rube Goldberg connecting pipes which had patched the "riddled with leaks" 1940's Hultman aqueduct failed. Speaking on the pipe failure, Governor Deval Patrick said, "We have so much neglected infrastructure."

The BP oil spill and the Boston water failure show threats come in many packages, and we ignore the less sexy ones at our peril. Terrorism is a threat, yet it pales to insignificance when compared to Hurricanes Andrew or Katrina, massive oil spills and the crumbling utility infrastructures of our cities.

The Environmental Protection Agency's website cites water profligacy and an "infrastructure gap" for both wastewater and drinking water over the next 20 years, and addressing the repairs could top $200 billion (at today's costs.)

When the inevitable happens, what level of government will possess the funds and ability to address the calamity? Should cities like Detroit even be saved, and is the cost worthwhile? The same formula should have been applied to the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) before we deployed one set of boots to occupy foreign ground. Our own ground has rotten, past-expiration date utilities under the surface -- that should take priority in our national interest.

Our government is reactive versus proactive in all actual threat areas. It fails to reform decrepit financial instruments; it fails to protect us from avoidable oil spills off our shores, and fails to protect us from predictably failing utilities. All of these situations pose a significantly greater threat to our well-being than a shoe- or underwear bomber manque.

Bacteria in our water is more dangerous than the terrorists that we are told want to kill us. There is bacteria in my water but there sure aren't any terrorists camped out in the alleys.

Willie Horton is gone, but the dirty water remains.

--Jim and Lisa