Conservation & Environment

I remember the words, “We’ve had the Big One,” with chilling clarity, spoken just over 21 years ago when a fellow fisherman arrived at my door in the early morning and announced that the Exxon Valdez had run aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and was gushing oil.

For the small fishing community of Cordova, Alaska, where I lived and worked as a commercial fisherma’am, it was our worst nightmare.

That nightmare is reoccurring now with BP’s deadly rig blowout off the Gulf Coast – with haunting parallels to the Exxon Valdez.

I was not at all surprised when officials reported zero spillage, then projected modest spillage, and then reported spill amounts five times higher than their earlier estimates.

As the spill continues, I imagine that even the newly reported amounts will continue to vastly underestimate the actual spillage.

 Underreporting of spill volumes is common, even though lying about self-reported spill volume is illegal – and a breach of public trust.

Read the complete story from Reuters.

 

 

 

 

 

Major oil spills could devastate fishing and tourism industries in Atlantic states.

Offshore drilling along the United States' Atlantic Coast certainly presents risks.

There could be major impacts on sea life and, consequently, the fishing industry up and down the East Coast. Worse, there are inherent risks for shore communities and for the multibillion-dollar tourism industry that flourishes from New England down to Florida in every state that has beaches, especially this one.

Read the complete story at The Courier Post Online.

 

 

 

 

 

A sense of doom settled over the American coastline from Louisiana to Florida on Saturday as a massive oil slick spewing from a ruptured well kept growing, and experts warned that an uncontrolled gusher could create a nightmare scenario if the Gulf Stream carries it toward the Atlantic.

President Barack Obama planned to visit the region Sunday to assess the situation amid growing criticism that the government and oil company BP PLC should have done more to stave off the disaster. Meanwhile, efforts to stem the flow and remove oil from the surface by skimming it, burning it or spiking it with chemicals to disperse it continued with little success.

"These people, we've been beaten down, disaster after disaster," said Matt O'Brien of Venice, whose fledgling wholesale shrimp dock business is under threat from the spill.

"They've all got a long stare in their eye," he said. "They come asking me what I think's going to happen. I ain't got no answers for them. I ain't got no answers for my investors. I ain't got no answers."

Read the complete story at The Palm Beach Post.

 

 

 

 

 

 Oil from the Gulf Coast spill could sweep northward to the Carolinas within a few weeks if the situation doesn't improve, some experts say.

Others are calling it a remote possibility – saying their biggest worry is for the N.C. fishing industry, which depends on Gulf Coast oysters and shrimp in the off season.

The spill is at the top of the "very energetic" Loop Current, a part of the Gulf Stream that sends water south along the western Florida shelf, around the state and northward along the East Coast, said Jerald Ault, a professor of marine biology at the University of Miami.

"The net result is, the potential for dispersion is very high," he said.

Read the complete story at the Charlotte Observer.

 

 

 

 

 

Opponents of a federal plan to allow drilling off mid-Atlantic states said Friday that the massive spill in the Gulf Coast shows why expanding oil leases is a bad idea for New Jersey.

New Jersey environmentalists and political leaders said the Gulf spill had solidified their opposition, and a fishing group that previously supported proposed oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean said the disaster changed many members’ opinions.

The spill 40 miles off Louisiana is leaking an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil per day into the gulf, making it one of the worst manmade ecological disasters in the United States. The spill started after an oil rig leased by British Petroleum exploded April 20, killing 11 people.

At the present rate of leakage, the disaster could eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska by mid-June, a distinct possibility if oil companies fail to stem the flow.

Read the complete story at The Press of Atlantic City.

 

 

 

 

 

The 1st District Democrat says she's cosponsored legislation that would ban any oil drilling in the Gulf of Maine.

Maine's Congresswoman Chellie Pingree says she'll strongly oppose any effort to open the Gulf of Maine to offshore oil drilling.

The 1st District Democrat says such drilling would put Maine fishing jobs at risk.  "We don't want to see what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico ever happen in the Gulf of Maine," Pingree says in a statement. "An oil spill like that one here in Maine would be devastating to the fishing economy and our environment."

Read the complete story at MPBN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As oil washes ashore near the mouth of the Mississippi River, fishermen swallow fears about the future of what state license plates call "Sportsman's Paradise."

Crabbers pull up traps.

Shrimpers make a final pass.

Guides earn a few hundred dollars taking TV crews out to the mammoth oil spill that threatens one of the most valuable – and fragile – estuaries along the Gulf Coast.

"It halfway broke my heart when I came to Ernie's Hole, one of our favorite fishing spots, and there wasn't a soul there," says Capt. Cade Thomas. "And there was oil in it, enough that you could see it."

Eerily – sickeningly – the oil spill has followed the path and pattern of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. What didn't look so bad in the beginning becomes a disaster that only gets worse.

Read the complete story at The Ledger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

STATES ALONG the Gulf of Mexico have bet their fishing and tourism industries on the safety of oil drilling offshore, and that bet, which New England has refused to make, has turned into a losing one. The nation as a whole should take the growing oil spill in the Gulf as a warning — that there are consequences to relying so heavily on fossil fuels, and that domestic oil production is no panacea for US energy needs.

President Obama announced earlier this year that he would permit more offshore drilling. Even under that policy, the waters of New England and especially the fertile fishing grounds of Georges Bank would still be off-limits. Yesterday, Obama sensibly said there will be no new drilling anywhere until engineers learn what caused the Deepwater Horizon oil rig to explode and its “blowout preventer’’ to fail. That inquiry should begin even while efforts continue to stop the discharge of oil into the Gulf — currently at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day — and contain the massive leak. It’s vital to prevent more disasters. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has ordered teams to inspect the 30 drilling rigs and 47 production platforms in deepwater locations in the Gulf.

Four decades ago, an oil-rig spill off Santa Barbara in California helped give birth to the environmental movement. Since then, the oil drilling industry has had a generally good record. That was one reason that Obama ended the moratorium on drilling from Delaware to Florida. By doing so, he hoped to win support from drilling advocates for the broader energy and climate change legislation working its way through Congress.

Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

After 46 years in the U.S. Senate, the late Edward M. Kennedy now appears to be influencing government decisions from the grave. Yesterday Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced approval of the Cape Wind renewable energy project on federal submerged lands in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Massachusetts. But the approval came with several concessions made to the concerns of the late Hyannis Port resident, who had sailed in the sound for decades. Kennedy and members of his family had been the most prominent influential coastal residents fighting the project.

"In a nod to the concerns of the Kennedys — and presumably other property owners in the area," the New York Times reported today, "Mr. Salazar said he had ordered Cape Wind to limit the number of turbines to 130 instead of the initial 170, to move the farm farther away from Nantucket and to reduce its breadth to make it less visible from the Nantucket Historic District." The statement released by the Interior Department said special care was taken to reduce the visual impact from "the Kennedy Compound Historic District."  

The turbines will be painted off-white to reduce their contrast with the sea and sky, while still remaining visible to birds, and their lights be turned off during the day and dimmed more at night than originally planned, Salazar said.

Read the complete story at New American.

 

 

 

 

 

Conservationists monitoring the spread of oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig across the Gulf of Mexico say the situation is at risk of turning into a disaster for the biodiversity in the area. Coastal areas around Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida will all potentially be affected by the spill. Oil that drifts ashore will impact on important breeding grounds for seabirds and many other species, according wildlife experts. Oyster and lobster fisheries could also be badly hit.

"It seems to me yet another man-made environmental tragedy on our hands," said Martin Spray, chief executive of the UK Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. "The coast of Louisiana has about 40% of the US coastal wetlands so it's a seriously important area. These are incredibly important for their fisheries as well, so there are human livelihoods involved as well."

Read the complete story at The Guardian.