NEWS & LETTERS, September-October 2010
Protests and ruin from oil spill continue
Chicago--The oil released by the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon is still fouling the Gulf of Mexico, polluting the environment, harming people's health and playing havoc with regional economies. As the impact continues, so do protests, organizing and reconstruction from below.
The cover-up continues too with the brazen claim of an official report by a government agency, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that 50% of the oil was gone and that the rest was "in the process of being degraded." Scientists quickly assailed this misinformation, and the report's lead author contradicted its conclusion in Congressional testimony. A peer-reviewed scientific study showed that, in fact, a huge amount of oil still lurks underwater. Yet in August it was revealed that scientists at the Univ. of South Florida, who had first reported large underwater oil plumes in May, had been pressured then by NOAA and the Coast Guard to retract their statement and keep the public in the dark. Water samples the scientists turned over to NOAA were never returned.
BP'S LIES EXPOSED
A Congressional investigation also found that BP kept dumping as much toxic dispersant into the Gulf of Mexico as it wanted, even after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ordered it to stop. The Coast Guard routinely granted exemptions to the orders. BP lied to the Coast Guard about how much dispersant it had used, and sometimes released first and asked for permission later.
Several EPA staff members, including whistleblower Hugh Kaufman, have raised concerns about the nearly two million gallons of dispersants used, and accused the EPA of deliberately downplaying its danger to both workers and the environment.
Les Evenchick, an ecosocialist activist in New Orleans, told me, "The biggest problem now is the dispersant Corexit which the FDA head has admitted not testing for in seafood samples. Many coastal residents are reporting skin rashes after contact with Gulf waters even when the water appears free of oil. Respiratory problems have also been frequently reported. Those with rashes are typically being told they have scabies (a parasitic mite) or a staph infection but testing is not being done--the hospitals are just giving antibiotics and hope things will clear up."
If the history of the Exxon Valdez spill is any guide, we can be sure that cleanup workers are already suffering health problems as a result of exposure to the oil and Corexit, and for many of them the health effects will last for years. We can also be sure that the companies and government will cover up the toll taken.
The National Center for Disaster Preparedness undertook the first systematic study of the spill's human impact, finding that 40% of those living within ten miles of the coast were directly exposed; that over one-third of parents reported children suffering physical or mental symptoms as a consequence; that income decreased for one in five households and one in four fear they may have to leave the area; and that, as with Hurricane Katrina, the greatest impact has been on the poorest.
The response from below is taking many forms, and has not vanished just because the oil has been declared "gone." The Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctors is a grassroots initiative to alert residents, cleanup workers, and volunteers of the health risks of the oil and dispersants, and to provide Toxic Survival Kits, something that no one else is doing.
There will be a national "Spill into Washington" rally in D.C. on Sept. 4 and 5. Protests and teach-ins continue across the country. Here, the Chicago Committee on the Gulf Crisis has been doing both. The miles that separate us from the Gulf Coast do not reassure us--and not only because of the oil spill across Lake Michigan from us in Kalamazoo.
The committee is calling attention to the global damage caused by fossil-fuel-based society and the local connections including the struggle here against the expansion of BP's nearby Indiana refinery so that it can process even more of the especially dirty tar sands oil piped in from Canada. We are part of the coalition that is making progress toward a Clean Power Ordinance that could help shut down the two coal-fired power plants that pollute heavily Latino neighborhoods in our city.
--Franklin Dmitryev
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