'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

[thurnundtaxis]

Username - I love me some Osibisa!

Thanks for putting some positive energy into this terrifying thread of slow-motion apocalypse.

[Laodicean]

What's the game plan?

None of your business.

[Jeff]

Holy fucking shit. What does this mean besides cataclysmic disaster? Where does anybody go from here? What's the game plan?

BP's saying the report is incorrect and work continues.

[Laodicean]

While BP is ending efforts to halt the flow, it will continuing efforts to capture the flow.

Drink that milkshake, BP!

[82_28]

Holy fucking shit. What does this mean besides cataclysmic disaster? Where does anybody go from here? What's the game plan?

BP's saying the report is incorrect and work continues.

Yeah. Just turned on NPR, no mention of this development there yet.

[Cordelia]

While BP is ending efforts to halt the flow, it will continuing efforts to capture the flow.

Drink that milkshake, BP!

Agree, and nobody said it better than Daniel Plainview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDVzmbtVZ6s

[2012 Countdown]

Jindal To Feds: Hold BP Accountable
Gov. Bobby Jindal urges the federal government to hold BP accountable and force the oil giant to pay for a plan to build protective sand barriers.

Video Report-
http://www.wdsu.com/video/23761100/index.html

Nungesser: BP CEO Is 'A Disgrace'
WDSU.com


Plaquemines Parish President Has Harsh Words For Hayward

POSTED: 5:04 pm CDT June 1, 2010
UPDATED: 5:38 pm CDT June 1, 2010

VENICE, La. -- Plaquemines Parish Billy Nungesser is sounding off, expressing his anger and frustration toward BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward.
"His whole attitude stinks," Nungesser said. "He's a disgrace. I mean, this is crazy. This guy is their spokesman. No wonder they have problems."
Nungesser spoke to WDSU on Tuesday after a meeting with local and federal leaders about the state's plan to build barrier islands to protect his parish and others from the approaching oil.
Nungesser said he can't believe what Hayward is saying about the spill. Despite what scientists from several universities are saying, Hayward on Monday said there's no evidence of large masses of oil under the surface in the Gulf of Mexico, citing oil's natural tendency to rise to the top.

"I'd like to (take) him offshore, dunk him under the surface of the water, pull him up with that black gooey stuff on him and have him say, 'Our research shows no oil beneath the surface. It's all coming to the top,'" Nungesser said.
Nungesser said BP and Hayward, who has been in and out of Venice since the spill, have not been truthful from the beginning. At first, BP said the oil wouldn't come ashore, and they were wrong.
"He flies in and meets with his people in BP, doesn't ask how it's going, doesn't ask if there's anything else we can do," Nungesser said. "All he does is give excuses and defends ridiculous statements like, 'We don't think there's any oil below the surface.'"
In an interview with WDSU on Sunday, Hayward apologized to the people of Louisiana for the spill.
"I'm sorry. I'm very sorry that this has impacted people down here to the extent it has," he said. "Since the very beginning, we have thrown enormous resources at this to contain the leak on the seabed, to contain the oil on the surface, and to defend the shoreline and we continue to do that."
Oil from BP's spill has fueled what is now the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. And as hurricane season begins, tempers are starting to flare.
"He's absolutely ridiculous. It's a good thing that I didn't know he was in Venice yesterday, because one of us would have went to jail," Nungesser said.
http://www.wdsu.com/gulfcoast/23760353/detail.html

[Laodicean]

While BP is ending efforts to halt the flow, it will continuing efforts to capture the flow.

Drink that milkshake, BP!

Agree, and nobody said it better than Daniel Plainview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDVzmbtVZ6s

He is the perfect BP metaphor for this whole goddamn mess.

Go back down to your house and stay there. You'll know when the well comes in...

[Jeff]

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that BP's "top kill" effort may have failed because of a rupture in the well 1,000 feet below the ocean floor. The rupture made it imposible to create enough pressure within the well to force back and block off the gushing leak.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37451834

[2012 Countdown]

Well, if a hurricane comes, I guess I'd better plan on leaving this year. I usually stay. I've been through about 10 or so, and kind of pride myself on that. I left for Katrina, but that was the only one.
I don't want to have to deal with an Oilicane though. Maybe if I get a respirator -probably should get one now anyway.

Was looking through some photos posted at one of the local sites, and this comment rings kinda true...

"what strikes me is that now that the top kill hasn't worked we are being sold the idea that the oil will flow until late august. we are to accept this and go about our normal routine as if we can compartmentalize what is going on and not think about it. the media and bp and the government are in for a big surprise. nothing like this has happened to america before and the reaction is unpredictable. if this really drags on for months we could find out things about ourselves and our nation we never would have imagined. maybe good, maybe bad but clearly unpredictable."

[seemslikeadream]

Gulf Oil Spill Threatens Louisiana Native Americans' Way of Life
Monday 31 May 2010
by: Joseph Goodman | The Miami Herald

There is an ages-old expression among the people of southern Louisiana's Indian bayous. "Pas tout là,'' they say with smiles.

"Not all there,'' it means.

As in, "not right in the head.''

This is how the Native Americans of Pointe-Aux-Chenes have come to describe one of the guilty parties of the worst oil spill in American history. "Pas tout là,'' they say with a grin when asked about BP.

The Indians here have borne the consequences of the work of oil and gas companies for nearly 100 years, but the oil that is now only a short boat ride away has the potential to slam a death nail into this fishing village and the cultural identity of Indians who have populated it for centuries.

They are angry, yet they speak of BP with a smile. The oil is coming, but still they smile and work and party down on the bayou.

"People here are just laid back and we enjoy life,'' said Lora Ann Chaisson, a tribal councilwoman of the United Houma Nation, a state-recognized tribe whose 17,000 members live in a six-parish area. "We know the oil is there, but we're still going to enjoy life.''

Their Home

The Houma's English is saturated with a French-Indian culture all their own. Tiny Pointe-Aux-Chenes and nearby Isle de Jean Charles are home to members of the Chitimacha tribe -- whose ancestors moved into the area 2,500 years ago -- and the Houma. They work the waters of Bayou Pointe-Aux-Chenes and its nearby bays and lakes for shrimp, fish, crabs, oysters and crawfish.

Their way of life likely will soon change. On Saturday, oil released into the Gulf of Mexico from the spill that began April 20 was three miles inside Bayou Pointe-Aux-Chenes. It has already ruined oyster plots, soiled crab traps and cut off shrimp trawlers from some of this area's best fishing grounds.

"The oil has locked us in,'' said Jamie Dardar, a crabber and Houma Indian. "Everyone is on top of each other now and you can't even drive a boat through there for all the traps.

"But it's only a matter of time before they shut it completely down. It's only a matter of time. This oil is just going to finish us.''

BP's oil could be the end for the current livelihoods of Dardar and many other Houma, but the beginning of that end for Bayou Pointe-Aux-Chenes began long ago. The oil that moves deeper into the bayou each day is being hurried along by saltwater currents that rush unabated through an eroding landscape destroyed by the actions of oil and gas companies over the decades.

Saltwater intrusion into areas like Bayou Pointe-Aux-Chenes began in the 1930s when oil and gas companies acquired land in southern Louisiana. Over the years, businesses like the Louisiana Land and Exploration Company dug ditches and dredged canals through the swamp to pipe gas, explore for oil and mark property lines.

Saltwater now rushes unchecked through those cuts and it is slowly killing the wetlands. In the past 80 years, southern Louisiana has lost about 2,000 miles to the Gulf. Here in Bayou Pointe-Aux-Chenes, pristine land populated by Houma and Chitimacha is shrinking and each hurricane displaces more and more families.

Pointe-Aux-Chenes means Oak Point, but most of the oaks that once branched out across the bayou are gone. A recent trip through the wetlands aboard a small flat-bottom fiberglass boat offered a first-hand account of saltwater intrusion and its devastating effects.

"Right here there used to be a grocery store -- way out here in the water,'' said Anesie Verdin, the boat's captain and a 63-year-old Chitimacha who fishes these waters every day for shrimp, oysters and crabs despite battling throat cancer.

Treatment of the disease has left Verdin with a delicate and raspy voice and he strained to speak over his tiny vessel's outboard motor. Reverently, he pointed to a cemetery in the middle of the marsh. A thin white cross stood amid roseau cane. Cemeteries long ago abandoned by Chitimacha dot wetlands throughout Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. Verdin and others tell of protecting the burial grounds with shotguns against the dredging equipment of oil companies.

Further down the bayou is land once owned by Verdin's grandfathers, eaten away by saltwater. Verdin complained about oil and gas companies taking advantage of his family's and his people's tribal lands. He claims his grandfathers were tricked long ago into selling most of their property to the Louisiana Land and Exploration Company, now owned by Conoco-Phillips.

"My grandfathers did not know how to read or write,'' Verdin said. ``The oil company would come down and tell you they wanted to lease your property for a lot of money, $25, but what they were signing, they were actually selling the land.''

Old Stories

Verdin's grandson Adam, 20, sat aboard the oyster boat while Verdin told stories of the bayou. Adam Verdin recently attended a rudimentary hazardous-materials training class to help clean oil out of the marsh.

"I'm not too happy about it because if they would have taken the proper care to prevent this, then my grandson wouldn't have to be going out there to fight the oil to save the wetlands,'' Anesie Verdin said. ``That's not fair. The worst part is the younger generation will not be able to fish or nothing and they won't be able to see nothing because it will all be gone.''

On a sticky Friday night on the bayou, the Verdin family and their friends sit inside a small open-air seafood processing station in Pointe-Aux-Chenes and tell stories and jokes on the water's edge. Laughter carries across a small canal filled with brackish water calm as a sleeping swamp dog. The jokes are laced with thinly veiled double entendres.

"You've got to suck the head and eat the tail,'' one woman yells as a visitor inspects a tray of perfectly prepared boiled crawfish.

Everyone screams with laughter.

Shrimp trawlers outfitted for fishing the bayou and small flat-bottom boats used for harvesting oysters and crabs are tied off only a few feet from the celebration. It's an all-you-can eat bayou buffet.

Huge buckets of boiled hard-shell crabs and crawfish -- only hours ago removed from the bayou -- are shared.

Picked over shells are stacked high. Fried soft-shelled crabs are reserved for this night's visitors. Beer flows. The smell of crab boil drifts out into the night.

These nights could soon be lost.

[2012 Countdown]

And another...

[Jeff]

"if this really drags on for months we could find out things about ourselves and our nation we never would have imagined."

Thanks for posting that quote, 2012 Countdown.

[freemason9]

on the other hand, alabama beach front property is becoming totally affordable

[Nordic]