http://www.washingtonpost.com/?wpisrc=nl_natlalert

The Washington Post
4:26 PM (7 minutes ago)

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News Alert
04:18 PM EDT Tuesday, August 3, 2010
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BP says its engineers have begun pumping heavy drilling mud into the blown-out Gulf of Mexico oil well in hopes of choking it for good.

BP spokesman John Barnes says crews launched the so-called “static kill” process Tuesday at 3 p.m. Central time to plug up the well and then possibly seal it with cement.

For more information, visit washingtonpost.com:
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/VP6EHT/2689BV/SLUJ0Z/P044AB/LHQTY/CM/t
Special thanks to Richard Charter

Ed Cake, quoted here, is a veteran of fighting offshore oil; I met him at an OCS coalition meeting in DC in the late 80’s; good to see he is still working to protect his coast. DV
IPS News
August 3, 2010

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52352

By Dahr Jamail

GULFPORT, Louisiana, Aug 2, 2010 (IPS) – Contrary to recent media reports of a quick recovery in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists and biologists are “deeply concerned” about impacts that will likely span “several decades”.

“My prediction is that we will be dealing with the impacts of this spill for several decades to come and it will outlive me,” Dr. Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer, as well as a marine and oyster biologist, told IPS, “I won’t be here to see the recovery.”

Cake’s grim assessment stems partially from a comparison he made to the Exxon Valdez oil disaster and the second largest oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (BP’s being the largest), that of the Ixtoc-1 blowout well in the Bay of Campeche in 1979.

“The impacts of the Exxon Valdez are still being felt 21 years later,” Cake said, “The impacts of the Ixtoc-1 are still being felt and known, 31 years later. I know folks who study oysters in bays in the Yucatan Peninsula, and oysters there have still not returned, 31 years later. So as an oyster biologist I’m concerned about that. Those things are still affected 31 years later, and that was a smaller spill by comparison.”

He is also concerned about deepwater habitats. Given that BP has used at least 1.9 million gallons of chemically toxic dispersants, the vast majority of the oil has remained beneath the surface, and much of that has sunk to the sea floor.

As an example, he cited “a new coral colony ecosystem” within 10 miles of BP’s blowout Macondo Well, which was found by a pipeline company whilst it was producing an environmental impact assessment statement of the route of the pipeline.

“They found some amazing coral communities that no one knew about, and now they will be covered in oil,” Cake said, “Those will not recover.”

Dr. Stephen Cofer-Shabica, an oceanographer in South Carolina, focuses on the biology of barrier islands. He monitored the affects of the Ixtoc-1 oil disaster on Padre Island National Seashore in south Texas.

“You can go back now, 31 years later, and there’s still oil in the sand there [Padre Island],” he told IPS. But his main concern is now about what the state of Louisiana is doing in response to BP’s oil disaster.

Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal has authorised the dredging and building of sand berms near Louisiana’s barrier islands in an effort to keep oil away from the shore. One area where the dredging project is still underway is the Chandeleur Islands.

“The Chandeleur project is totally futile and a waste of resources, and I can’t believe they are still doing it,” Dr. Cofer-Shabica said, “That’s what I find totally unfathomable. There’s oil floating around underwater, that has been dispersed and these barrier islands, as constructs, will not have any effect on that oil at all.”

According to Dr. Cofer-Shabica, the so-called fix is actually a hugely destructive problem. “From an oceanographic perspective, this was biologically destructive, especially when you start digging up the bottom in shallow water, and building these barrier islands.”

He added, “Louisiana is in a precarious position anyway because of the subsiding that is happening in the delta, and on top of that you have worldwide sea-level rise, so it has two physical factors that are working against its marshes. So building barrier islands to presumably keep oil out, amidst rising sea levels, makes no sense.”

In addition to this, he said that the biological impacts of building islands “are larger than the physical impacts,” and said this of dredging sediment from those areas: “You’re in shallow water that is biologically rich with clams, worms, and bacteria, that will all be dug up and destroyed.”

Dr. Cake is also worried about oil contaminating the oysters. He has seen much oil in Louisiana’s marshes. “One of the experts with us worked for NOAA on the Exxon Valdez spill, and he told me if the oil is on the marsh grass, it’s in the oysters.”

BP and the Coast Guard are currently under scrutiny for having used so much oil dispersant, an industrial solvent that breaks up the oil so that it will sink below the surface.

For example, a 1979 report, “Effects of Corexit 9527 on the Hatchability of Mallard Eggs” in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, showed that even though dispersants are applied to minimise oil impacts to visible and charismatic species, Corexit actually enhances the lethal effects of crude oil on birds that are exposed.

Corexit 9527 penetrates eggshells and shell membranes as readily as crude oil. When applied to an eggshell near the embryo, the embryo would fuse to the shell membrane and die within 24 hours.

“Corexit breaks the oil up into micro-globules,” Dr. Cake said, “That’s the harmful part for oysters. Oysters are filter feeders, and they feed on a range of three to 12 millionths of a meter as particles. You can grind up graphite from a pencil in fine enough particles and they’ll run it through their system. It’s the same with the micro- globules of oil. They’ll be taken in, but in going through the system, and in absorbing some of that oil, it’ll cause lesions. So it’s actually what the Corexit does to the oil that’ll affect the oysters in the end.”

According to Dr. Cake, his study teams have people watching and monitoring affected areas.

“In the past month, in Bretton and Chandeleur Sounds, oil was there during the day, it was sprayed with Corexit at night, and the next day it was gone. Where did it go? It went to the bottom, and that’s adjacent to where these oyster farms are. So at that point, there’s a lot less water for that Corexit to disperse into, and there may be an impact from that on the oysters.”

Cake said that while scientists have found very large plumes of dispersed oil at depth, “I’m not sure that oil will ever get here as dispersed clouds. It’s getting here as sunken clouds, because that’s what they [BP] wanted it to do. Sink it, get it out of sight out of mind.”

Chasidy Hobbs with Emerald Coastkeeper in Pensacola, Florida, is on the City of Pensacola Environmental Advisory Board and Escambia County Citizens Environmental Committee. Hobbs also directs the environmental litigation research firm, Geography and Environment.

“We’re poisoning the entire Gulf of Mexico food web,” Hobbs, who is also an instructor and advisor in the Environmental Studies Department at University of West Florida, told IPS. “It’s crazy, and it’s criminal. I’m deeply concerned with the long-term ecological and human impact.”

Dr. Cake is among a large and growing group of scientists who are discussing a grim future for much of the Gulf of Mexico as a result of BP’s disaster.

“The oil itself on the bottom is being eaten by bacteria. This has always been the case in naturally occurring seeps across the Gulf. But now we’ve introduced much more oil, and as the bacteria grow they are consuming the oxygen that is in that area. And that oxygen loss will result in dead/hypoxic zones, like the one off the West side of the Mississippi over towards Galveston where there’s one that is 3,000 square mile area of dead bottom. Now we’re looking at that along the eastern part because of the presence of so much more bacteria.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.southernpoliticalreport.com/storylink_81_1533.aspx

Bill Davis
Editor, StateHouse Report (SC)
August 1, 2010 –

State Sen. Jake Knotts may believe that he “ain’t no tree-hugger,” but he’s beginning to sound more and more like one.

“We got to do what we can to protect our state’s beaches. They’re the most valuable things we got in South Carolina,” said Knotts, who helped kill a proposed bill in committee earlier this year that would have asked the state Department of Health and Environmental Concerns to expedite permits for offshore drilling.

Knotts, better known for his love of guns and West Columbia, said this week that the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has brought into sharp focus the need for the legislature to make sure “all the I’s are dotted and all the T’s crossed” before the state clears the way for any offshore exploration, whether it’s for natural gas or oil.

The moratorium against offshore exploration along the Atlantic coast was lifted late during the Bush administration, and while the Obama administration has yet to reinstate the moratorium, exploratory efforts have been put on hold.

Bill could be up again

But with gas prices always poised to rise again, interest in offshore drilling could force a bill back onto the South Carolina legislative agenda when the General Assembly returns in January.

Knotts said this week that he is not against drilling, per se. But he just wants to make sure the oil industry and the federal government have their collective acts together and that before any drilling ever starts here, they have learned valuable lessons from the Gulf spill that threatened everything from jobs to the entire ecosystems along the coasts of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

“A, what, seven-inch crack in a pipe took nearly 90 days to close?” Knotts said, making a home-spun argument for alternative energy. “All I know is a windmill falls over, and oyster beds aren’t ruined; fish and shrimp loads aren’t impacted. You just put up another windmill and keep on.”

Music to someone’s ears

Knotts’ words are music to the ears of environmentalists like Dana Beach, the executive director of the S.C. Coastal Conservation League, who said drilling profitably off the S.C. coast is at best a “fiction.”

Beach, who is waiting before he nails Knotts’ picture to his trophy wall, was referring to the belief held by many of the state’s scientists that there are not enough oil deposits off the coast here to warrant interest from the oil industry, and natural gas about 50 to70 miles offshore.

“Well, then he’s got nothing to worry about,” said state Sen. Paul Campbell (R-Berkeley), who served with Knotts on the same committee.

Campbell supports drilling

I won’t mince words. I’m for offshore drilling,” said Campbell, a former regional president of aluminum maker Alcoa. “If we don’t go after [drilling], we’re being irresponsible, especially in terms of the number of jobs and opportunities it could bring the state.”

Like Knotts, Campbell said he would support efforts to search for fuel sources off the coast, but only if there were a comprehensive management and safety-response plan in place.

Planning pounded by cuts

But who would run the plan? DHEC, often criticized for being under-manned, under-funded, and overly-friendly with testing subjects, has been hit hard by recent budget cuts.

In this year’s state budget, DHEC has seen nearly 50 percent of its operating budget from state general funds cut, according to a department memo. The agency’s overall budget has been affected because the state general funds are matched by federal contributions.

“DHEC does a great job,” said Knotts. “But they’re already overloaded. They do a good job with the money they’re given.” Given the hamstrung nature of the department, Knotts said now would be the worst time to call for expedited permits.

That topic will be the main discussion point next Friday at Coastal Carolina University, where its 13th annual economic growth summit, put on by the business school ,will tackle the issue “Consequences of Offshore Drilling on the Carolina Coast, positive and negative.”

The event will bring together an academic panel of experts on issues ranging from tourism to ecology. Ralph Byington, the college’s business dean who worked on an oil rig in a former life, said these are crucial issues to coastal areas like Conway, where the school is located, as well as the rest of the state.

Crystal ball: Like abortion, offshore drilling looks like an issue that will be reintroduced and fought over for years to come. And that would be a monumental waste of time, according to the SCCCL’s Beach, because there are bigger issues to deal with. For example, because of limited drilling opportunities off our coast and expanded ones off mid-Atlantic states like Virginia, Beach said the legislature – and the federal government — needed to focus on not preparing for a mess of the state’s own making, but a potential fiasco floating south from neighboring states.

http://www.statehousereport.com/

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/02/98512/government-revises-gulf-oil-flow.html

Posted on Mon, Aug. 02, 2010

Erika Bolstad and Lesley Clark | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: August 02, 2010 09:19:01 PM
WASHINGTON – As BP neared a fix that’s expected to kill for good the runaway well that’s wreaked economic and environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the government Monday said that 10 to 12 times the amount of oil had been flowing from the well than it originally thought.

New estimates released Monday by a government-led team of scientists found that as much as 62,000 barrels of oil were leaking from the well each day at its peak – far beyond the initial estimate of 5,000 barrels a day and more in line with what scientists told McClatchy it was.

The new estimates raise questions about whether the early response ever anticipated the disaster’s actual size and scope. The well gushed an estimated 4.9 million barrels for nearly three months before BP put in place a temporary cap 18 days ago.

The government now estimates that 53,000 barrels were leaking each day before BP installed the cap. Only 800,000 barrels – about 16 percent of the total – was captured before flowing into the ocean.

Now, BP is finalizing plans to begin what’s called a “static kill,” a process that would force down any remaining oil and gas in the well by pumping heavy drilling mud into it.
“We’ll just be slowly pumping the mud in initially and it will gradually build up pressure,” BP’s Kent Wells said Monday during a technical briefing. “We’ll be carefully monitoring the pressures and the volumes. The team will be looking and making sure we do everything to get this well killed, if at all possible.”

That procedure is expected to begin Tuesday and could stretch into Wednesday. If it works – and the White House said it is “watching cautiously” – BP will move quickly this week to begin cementing the well closed permanently.

The company still must decide how best to cement the well closed: from the top, or through one of the relief wells currently being drilled. There’s still some uncertainty about the conditions deep inside the well, and until they pump mud into it, company officials won’t know the safest way to proceed, said Thad Allen, the top federal official in charge of the spill response. It would make him most comfortable to close the well in from the bottom using the relief wells they’ve drilled, Allen said.

“I think everybody would like to have this thing ended as soon possible,” Allen said, “but my duty as the National Incident Commander is to give you my best view. It may be a little conservative, but I think we need to understand: We don’t know the condition of the well until we start to put mud in it.”

Meanwhile, both Allen and the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday defended the safety of chemicals credited with breaking up the oil into tiny droplets and dispersing it into the Gulf. The EPA said Monday those dispersants hastened the decomposition of the oil, a process that may also have kept vast quantities of oil from fouling the shoreline. BP, which used more than 1.84 million gallons of dispersants, stopped applying them shortly after it put the cap in place.

The EPA said Monday its new study found the dispersants used to break up oil in the Gulf are no more toxic when mixed with oil than the oil is on its own.
Dispersants were used as a “last resort and necessary tool, when all other measures were not adequate” against the oil, said Paul Anastas, the EPA’s assistant administrator for research and development. Oil, Anastas said, was “enemy No. 1.”

So far, the government’s monitoring data shows no accumulation of dispersant in marine life that was tested, including on juvenile shrimp and small fish that are found in the Gulf and are commonly used in toxicity testing.

All eight dispersants were found to be less toxic than the dispersant-oil mixture to both species. Oil was more toxic to shrimp than the eight dispersants when tested alone. Oil alone had similar toxicity to shrimp as the dispersant-oil mixtures, with exception of one other dispersant, which was found to be more toxic than oil.

However, Anastas also said there’s “ongoing monitoring” by a number of federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, to ensure the food chain is not affected. The EPA hasn’t found any dispersant “away from the wellhead,” Anastas said, including in sediment or near coastal wetlands.

He called it “interesting to see that the dispersant/oil mixture was about the same toxicity as oil alone. That shows us that the effect of oil plus dispersant seemed to be a wise decision and that oil itself is the hazard we’re concerned about.”

Often, Allen said, the government was making decisions “without complete information, and sometimes under conditions of uncertainty because we have never used dispersants at this level before.”

“That was done, and to the extent there’s an issue about it, I’m the National Incident Commander and I’m accountable,” he said.

Yet scientists say many questions remain about the use of the chemicals, and congressional investigators still plan a hearing Wednesday to examine why the U.S. Coast Guard allowed BP to continue using dispersants in the face of multiple warnings from the EPA.

“The Coast Guard proceeded to approve use of surface dispersants 74 times over a period of 48 days,” said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. “That is not ‘rare’ by anyone’s understanding of the word, and it raises questions regarding whether an excessive amount of surface dispersant may have been used.”

Jerald Ault, a professor at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, said he’s worried about the potential cascading effects of the dispersant in marine life and how it could effect physical growth, reproduction and mortality. Some of the effects on the environment may not play out for some time, he said.
“It’s good to say it’s in the same ballpark as oil, but from where I sit, that’s one plus one,” he said. “I buy that it’s a tradeoff, but the question is: ‘What are the consequences of the tradeoff?’ I’m not sure we have the ability to determine that at this point.”

Other scientists have linked subsea plumes of oil to the well, and fear that the tiny droplets 4,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf will be more readily absorbed and ingested by marine animals.

“These particles of dispersed oil are small enough to be easily absorbed by filter feeding animals such as oysters, and also absorbed into the bodies of crabs and shrimp,” said Gina Solomon, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Big globs of oil wouldn’t get into these creatures as easily. That may mean a higher likelihood of contamination in the food chain, which would be bad news for predators in the ocean and also maybe for humans if seafood becomes more contaminated with oil residues.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Over-60-Percent-of-BP-Wast-by-Robert-Bullard-100730-66.html

For OpEdNews: Robert Bullard – Writer

As of July 15, more than 39,448 tons of BP oil spill waste was disposed in nine approved landfills in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Five of the nine the landfills receiving BP oil-spill solid waste are located in communities where people of color comprise a majority of residents living within a one-mile radius of the waste facilities.

A significantly large share of the BP oil-spill waste, 24,071 tons out of 39,448 tons (61 percent),was dumped in people of color communities. This is not a small point since African Americans make up just 22 percent of the coastal counties in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, while people of color comprise about 26 percent of the population in coastal counties.These numbers present significant environmental justice implications that have not been addressed by government, including the U.S. EPA.

It is clear that theflow of BP oil-spill waste to Gulf Coast communities is not random. A disproportionately large share of the oil waste is headed to African American and other people of color communities. Dumping BP disaster waste on communities of color is not “green” nor is it a pathway to recovery and long-term sustainability,

Allowing BP, Gulf Coast states, and the private disposal industry to select where the oil-spill waste is dumped only adds to the legacy of environmental racism and unequal protection. Environmental justice communities and their allies are demanding that BP end the unfair waste dumping practice. They also want to see EPA and the U.S. Coast Guard engage in a more rigorous oversight of BP’s waste plan to ensure that no single community or population in the Gulf Coast states becomes the oil-spill waste dumping grounds.

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http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/07/bp’s-waste-management-plan-raises-environmental-justice-concerns/

BP’s Waste Management Plan Raises Environmental Justice Concerns
by Robert D. Bullard / July 29th, 2010

Much attention the past three months has been focused on the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill disaster and clean up efforts. Government officials estimate that the ruptured well leaked between 94 million and 184 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. However, not much attention has been given to which communities were selected as the final resting place for BP’s oil-spill garbage.

A large segment of the African American community was skeptical of BP, the oil and gas industry, and the government long before the disastrous Gulf oil disaster, since black communities too often have been on the receiving end of polluting industries without the benefit of jobs and have been used as a repository for other people’s rubbish.

Given the sad history of waste disposal in the southern United States, it should be no surprise to anyone that the BP waste disposal plan looks a lot like “Dumping in Dixie,” and has become a core environmental justice concern, especially among low-income and people of color communities in the Gulf Coast – communities whose residents have historically borne more than their fair share of solid waste landfills and hazardous waste facilities before and after natural and man-made disasters.

For decades, African American and Latino communities in the South became the dumping grounds for all kind of wastes – making them “sacrifice zones.” Nowhere is this scenario more apparent than in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” the 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi from Baton Rough to New Orleans. Gulf Coast residents, who have for decades lived on the fenceline with landfills and waste sites, are asking why their communities are being asked again to shoulder the waste disposal burden for the giant BP oil spill. They are demanding answers from BP and the EPA in Washington, DC and the EPA Region 4 office in Atlanta and EPA Region 6 office in Dallas – two EPA regions that have a legacy of unequal protection, racial discrimination, and bad decisions that have exacerbated environmental and health disparities.
Today we are seeing a disturbing pattern re-emerge in the disposal of the BP oil-spill waste. Because of the haphazard handling and disposal of the wastes from the busted well, the U.S Coast Guard and the U.S. EPA leaned on BP and increased their oversight of the company’s waste management plan. BP’s waste plan, “Recovered Oil/Waste Management Plan Houma Incident Command,” was approved on June 13, 2010.

BP hired private contractors to cart away and dispose of thousands of tons of polluted sand, crude-coated boom and refuse that washed ashore. The nine approved Gulf Coast solid waste landfills, amount of waste disposed, and the percent minority residents living within a one-mile radius of the facilities are listed below:

Alabama
Chastang Landfill, Mount Vernon, AL, 6008 tons (56.2%) Magnolia Landfill, Summerdale, AL, 5,966 tons (11.5%)

Florida
Springhill Regional Landfill, Campbellton, FL, 14,228 ton (76.0%)

Louisiana
Colonial Landfill, Ascension Parish, LA, 7,729 (34.7%) Jefferson Parish Sanitary Landfill, Avondale, LA, 225 tons (51.7%) Jefferson Davis Parish Landfill, Welsh, LA, 182 tons (19.2%) River Birch Landfill, Avondale, LA, 1,406 (53.2%) Tide Water Landfill, Venice, LA, 2,204 tons (93.6%)

Mississippi
Pecan Grove Landfill, Harrison, MS, 1,509 tons (12.5%)

According to BP’s Oil Spill Waste Summary, as of of July 15, more than 39,448 tons of oil garbage had been disposed at nine approved landfills in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. More than half (five out of nine) of the landfills receiving BP oil-spill solid waste are located in communities where people of color comprise a majority of residents living within near the waste facilities.

In addition, a significantly large share of the BP oil-spill waste, 24,071 tons out of 39,448 tons (61 percent), is dumped in people of color communities. This is not a small point since African Americans make up just 22 percent of the coastal counties in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, while people of color comprise about 26 percent of the population in coastal counties.

Clearly, the flow of BP oil-spill waste to Gulf Coast communities is not random. The mix of waste and race was the impetus behind the Environmental Justice Movement in Warren County, North Carolina more than twenty-five years ago. In 1982, toxic PCBs were cleaned up from North Carolina roadways and later dumped in a landfill in mostly black and poor Warren County. We also saw the pattern in 2009 when 3.9 million tons of toxic coal ash from the massive Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) power plant spill in East Tennessee was cleaned up and shipped more than 300 miles south by train and disposed in a landfill in rural and mostly black Perry County, Alabama.

The largest amount of BP oil-spill solid waste (14,228 tons) was sent to a landfill in a Florida community where three-fourths of the nearby residents are people of color. Although African Americans make up about 32 percent of Louisiana’s population, three of the five approved landfills (60 percent) in the state that received BP oil-spill waste are located in mostly black communities. African American communities in Louisiana’s Gulf Coast were hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina and have experienced the toughest challenge to rebuild and recover after five years. Dumping more disaster waste on them is not a pathway to recovery and long-term sustainability.

Clearly, Environmental Justice Executive Order 12898, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations,” signed by President William J. Clinton in 1994, requires the EPA and the U.S. Coast Guard to do a better job monitoring where BP oil-spill waste ends up to ensure that minority and low-income populations do not bear an adverse and disproportionate share of the burdens and negative impacts associated with the disastrous BP oil spill. Allowing BP, Gulf Coast states, and the private disposal industry to select where the oil-spill waste is dumped only adds to the legacy of environmental racism and unequal protection.

Robert D. Bullard is director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center (EJRC) at Clark Atlanta University and author of Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (Westview 2009). He can be reached at: rbullard4ej@worldnet.att.net. Read other articles by Robert D., or visit Robert D.’s website.

This article was posted on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at 7:59am and is filed under Discrimination, Environment, Oceans/Seas, Oil, Gas, Pipelines. SPecial thanks to Richard Charter