A Blog by John DeCock, President of Clean Water Action

05 June 2010, 1:01 pm

The Gulf Oil Gusher and Other Environmental Disasters — Totally Predictable and Preventable

Today’s guest blogger is William A. “Willie” Fontenot. Willie served on the Clean Water Action Board from 1989 to 2007, much of that time as Board Chair.   He currently serves on the Board of Clean Water Fund.  During much of his professional career, Willie worked in the Louisiana Attorney General’s office assisting grassroots groups across the state and region. Willie has close personal and professional ties to many of the communities, leaders and local organizations on the front lines of responding to the BP oil spill disaster.

Oil has been washing up in the wetlands of coastal Louisiana for about two weeks and the local residents are not happy. Critters like the state bird, the Brown Pelican, dive in the water to catch their food but birds cannot “see” oil floating on the surface.

Cleaning Brown Pelicans one by one is important, but the scale of wildlife damage is well beyond our ability to save most animals affected.

Research by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service more than fifty years ago determined that just a couple of drops of oil on an egg is enough to smother an unborn chick.  While the parent bird is sitting on the nest to keep the eggs warm, if they have been floating on water with just a tiny sheen of oil, there will be enough oil in their feathers to smother all of the  eggs in a nest. Since this is nesting season along the Gulf coast there will be thousands of undocumented victims  in our coastal bird population. If an adult becomes coated with oil they will not be able to fly or care for the chicks and both the adults and young will perish.

Many tens of thousands of birds, turtles, fish and wildlife will be killed and many coastal residents will lose their businesses, homes and way of life.

By the end of this month, June of 2010 oil will be washing up on beaches and wetlands all along the Gulf coast from Mexico to Cuba. By the end of July beaches will be fouled from Key West to Georgia and by the end of September oil will have  reached Virginia. If the ocean currents and winds follow their normal patterns then the residents of Long Island should be finding tar balls on their beaches by September or October. Then by the end of the year residents of Maine and Canada will want to avoid those nasty oil balls which will be sitting on their beaches.

This international industrial accident could have been prevented if appropriate actions had been taken by industry and government officials two and three months ago. Unfortunately we will find out that decision makers were cutting corners because they were trying to save money, to help their friends, they were willfully and knowingly not following the laws, rules or regulations.  It is even possible that bribery and other criminal conduct were involved. Corners were cut and what may have looked like a good way to save a few million dollars is now causing billions of dollars of damages over thousands of square miles.

Cutting corners has caused most industrial accidents in the last hundred years. The December 1984 runaway chemical accident in Bhopal, India, which has caused the death of more than 20,000 people, was totally predictable and preventable. The March 1989 EXXON Valdez accident in Alaska was totally predictable and preventable. The  December 24, 1989 EXXON oil refinery accident in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was totally predictable and preventable. The BP Oil Refinery explosion of March of 2005 at Texas City, Texas was predictable and preventable. Many other disasters such as the failure of the Kingston coal power plant fly ash holding pond near Knoxville, Tennessee in December 22, 2008 and the Massey Energy Company coal mine explosion of April 6, 2010 in West Virginia where 25 miners died  were all very predictable and preventable. Basically none of these accidents should have happened, none of these people should have died and billions of dollars of damages and the lives of thousands of people were unnecessarily ripped away from them and their communities.

In late September of 1982 there was a train derailment in the town of Livingston, Louisiana of 33 railroad tank cars. The resulting fires, explosions and chemical releases forced the evacuation of the residents for two weeks while the toxic and hazardous fires were finally brought under control. This was the worst railroad car accident involving chemicals in the Us and the accident was due to human error and faulty railroad

Deadly, toxic, massive industrial accident in a fragile ecosystem. Entirely predictable, but wreckless disregard for safety ensured it would happen. (Photo: U.S Coast Guard photo by Chief Petty Officer John Kepsimelis)

tracks. This was definitely a predictable and preventable accident.

Over the next year we will learn that the BP oil rig disaster of April 20, 2010 was predictable and totally preventable.

BP was drilling for oil just south east of Mobile Bay Alabama in federal waters and the oil rig was very close to the Alabama – Florida state line just south west of Pensacola. Currents in this part of the Gulf of Mexico move counter clockwise and that is why the first oil from the accident washed up in Louisiana rather than Florida or Alabama.

There are thousands of other examples from around the country and the rest of the world which clearly show that officials in both industry and government need to do better jobs, to better train and manage their human resources and to get serious about their responsibility to manage, protect and restore  our valuable natural resources for present and future generations.

Previous Posts:

• A Complete Clean up for Bayou d’Inde
• An Interview with Tony Wagner
• The Race to Failure
• TGIF or TGFO
• Asleep on Bayou St. John
• There Has Been Blood
• Citizen Courier Welcomes James Sebastien!