[LORA:195] View this page "Another Perspective On BP Disaster In Gulf"

[John Mayo]

Hello,
Just how bad can it get? It's hard to put a positive spin on this
disaster. Read the interview below and consider trying to live and
cope day to day in the midst of such ongoing environmental
destruction.
John Mayo.
Ps Also, go to the bottom of the page to link to the LORA Google Group
website to read more.

BP Oil Spill Worsens With No Solution in Sight, 210,000 Gallons a Day
Spew into Gulf of Mexico
Federal authorities have banned commercial and recreational fishing in
a large stretch of water in the Gulf of Mexico due to the massive oil
spill caused by a BP-operated rig that exploded nearly two weeks ago.
An estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day is pouring into the Gulf in
what might turn out to be the worst industrial environmental disaster
in U.S. history. We speak with Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist and a
former commercial salmon fisherma’am from Alaska who experienced
firsthand the devastating effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
[Includes rush transcript]

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Guest:

Riki Ott, marine toxicologist and former salmon fisherma’am in Alaska.
She is author of “Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of
the Exxon Valdez Spill.”

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Rush Transcript
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ANJALI KAMAT: Welcome, everyone. President Obama visited southeastern
Louisiana Sunday to view the fragile coastline threatened by the oil
gushing out of a destroyed BP operated rig in the Gulf of Mexico and
assess the response to the crisis. Speaking in the town of Venice, he
described the massive oil spill as a “potentially unprecedented
environmental disaster,” but vowed to do whatever it takes to stop the
oil from devastating the environment and economy of the Gulf states.
He reiterated that oil giant BP bore the primary responsibility for
the expanding slick.


PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be
paying the bill. But as President of the United States, I am going to
spare no effort to respond to this crisis for as long as it continues,
and we will spare no resources to clean up whatever damage is caused.
And while there’ll be time to fully investigate what happened on that
rig and hold responsible parties accountable, our focus now is on a
fully coordinated relentless response effort to stop the leak and
prevent more damage to the gulf.



ANJALI KAMAT: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations
says that the slick appears likely to move toward the Alabama and
Florida coasts and engulf the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana’s
southeast tip. Meanwhile fishing has been suspended across a wide
swath of the Gulf of Mexico, one of the world’s most fertile fishing
grounds. Larry Schweiger, President of the National Wildlife
Federation described the situation.


LARRY SCHWEIGER: This region is being hammered at this moment by the
huge oil spill and we’re talking about thousands of yards of booms and
literally miles upon miles of oil edge that are not going to be
controlled. It’s clear that we’re heading for a serious, if not a
catastrophic loss of great habitat, of contamination that will last
for decades.



ANJALI KAMAT: Local fisherman in Louisiana say the disaster will take
a toll on their livelihoods.


FISHERPERSON: It is what our people live on. We have always fished
shrimp, trolling season, crab. Our seafood industry is major. And that
has affected our industry tremendously.



AMY GOODMAN: It’s already been nearly two weeks since the deepwater
Horizon rig exploded. And on Sunday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
admitted that an ultimate solution could take another ninety days
calling it a “very grave scenario.” But amidst criticism of the slow
response of both the government and BP, Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano said Sunday, any comparison between the ruptured BP
oil well and the Bush administration’s response to Katrina is “a total
mischaracterization.” Well for more on this oil spill, we’re joined
from Denver, Colorado by a marine toxicologist specializing in oil
pollution, Riki Ott. She’s also a former commercial salmon fisherma’am
from Alaska and experienced firsthand the devastating effects of the
Exxon Valdez oil spill. She’s the author of two books on the spill,
the latest ‘Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill." Riki Ott, welcome to DEMOCRACY NOW! First,
comment on the enormity of this disaster and then what needs to be
done.


RIKI OTT: It’s mind-boggling that the industry knowingly puts
environment, entire communities, entire other industries like fishing
industries at risk by really taking risks with reducing environmental
protections, weakening environmental regulation, weakening- getting
exemptions to laws, and then when something like this happens, it’s
like, “Oh, my, how did this happen?” So I think we have more than an
oil slick out of control, we also have these big corporations out of
control. And what can be done, I think, well the reason I’m- go
ahead.


ANJALI KAMAT: I was just going to ask you, you have studied the Exxon
Valdez spill extensively. What are the lessons we can learn from
that?


RIKI OTT: This is why I’m coming down tomorrow because it’s not just
about the environment, it’s about the people, too. And I remember
sitting in our community and just not knowing, our whole community not
knowing. How long was thins going to take? What was going to happen to
us? Would it be just this year that our income would be impacted?
Would it be years? We had no idea. And the not knowing was agonizing.
It was agonizing. So what we learned from this was that it’s not- the
killing does not stop in 1989- well, for us, in 1989. The killing will
not stop in 2010. The cloud of oil that is dispersed as dissolved
droplets under the giant slick, this is killing everything in the
water column. So clams, they all have a component that a life- part of
their life-cycle is in the water column. Shrimp in the water column,
the eggs, the young larvae. And all this is being wiped out. So it’s
not just a fishery that’s closed this year, it will be closed,
probably for the next couple of years because, where will be the
shrimp that should have been born this year and survived and become
adults? I mean, they just probably will not manifest. They won’t show
up. They won’t survive. So, we found the killing did not stop. And we
didn’t anticipate that and neither did the industry.


And Exxon did everything it could to reduce its liability. Exxon never
paid for long-term damages. It only paid for short-term damages. So
this is really something to watch out for. It’s one thing to say we’re
going to hold- the President- listening to him say, we’re going to
hold BP accountable to our laws. Our laws are pretty darn weak. For
starters, they’re will only going to protect directly damaged parties.
So fisherman, I’m sorry, but in our community, as I’m sure down in New
Orleans and along the Gulf Coast, the fisherman buy groceries, good
restaurants, put children in school, by clothes. If the fishermen
don’t have money, where- it damages all the shoreside industry as
well. So, there’s collateral damage to businesses that won’t
necessarily be compensated under the law. And unfortunately, the Exxon
Valdez case set president in the Supreme Court that these big
companies don’t have to pay much on the issue of punitive damage. It
got knocked way down. So it’s more like a business expense. These big
companies will go on making business, drilling for oil, and fishermen
are going to go bankrupt. That’s certainly what we saw in Cordova.


AMY GOODMAN: Riki Ott, I wanted to ask about this issue of
Halliburton, investigators delving into the causes of the massive gulf
oil spill, examining the role of Halliburton, the giant energy
services company that we know so well from places like Iraq, that was
responsible for cementing the deepwater drill hole. Can you talk about
what that means, the fact they just finished doing this?


RIKI OTT: I can talk a little bit more broadly about Halliburton. I
have been working widely on helping communities try to transition off
oil and gas. And, what I have discovered in Colorado, New Mexico, New
York is this coal bed methane fracking. And actually Halliburton
invented fracking and Halliburton also got an exemption, got an
exemption to the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act, it’s called the
Halliburton Exemption. So I think, I’m encouraging the news media to
look really more broadly at this corporate tendency to say, “Oh well,
these little environmental protection laws, these laws that protect
public safety, worker safety, public health, they’re in our way so
we’ll just exemptions to them.” I think we need to look at what the
industry has done, the fossil fuel industry, coal, oil, gas, in terms
of exemptions to the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Superfund Act,
U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act. You’ll find it’s just riddled with
exemptions. And even more scary, as more oil dumps into the ocean, we
are going to see more money dumped into our political campaigns
because of the Citizens United case. So I’m really concerned that
these big corporations are just going to buy off the politicians, buy
off the judges, and it will be business as usual. It’s really time to
end this corporate rule and legalize democracy. The people need to
rule. I encourage people to go take a look at our website
movetoamend.org that’s our national grassroots coalition to legalize
democracy. Movetoamend.org.


ANJALI KAMAT: And Riki Ott, finally, can you talk about the impact on
health workers- on cleanup workers, the health impact of breathing oil
vapors on cleanup workers?


RIKI OTT: That is a huge problem, and it’s not just the cleanup
workers. I’ve had my friends e-mail me from New Orleans and say it
smells like a big- worse than a gas station right now. This is not a
good thing. The classic symptoms of overexposure to crude-oil fumes
are headache, nausea, dizziness, and something that looks like a cold
or flu-like symptoms. We called it the Valdez Crud in Alaska and I’m
very sure we’re going to see this with the cleanup workers. But also
just in the communities. Exxon Valdez, we saw this phenomenon. Exxon
got away with not reporting cleanup workers’ health problems. There
over 6,722 workers reported upper respiratory illnesses, I discovered
in toxic tort lawsuits. And there is an exemption to the Occupational
Safety and Health Act that says these industries don’t have to report
colds and flu. So instantly, all this coughing and these cold and flu-
like symptoms become colds and flu instead of probably what it really
is which is a chemical-induced illnesses. This is work related. So we
really need to close that loophole in OSHA.


This- Oil spill cleanups are considered hazardous waste cleanups under
OSHA regulations. Workers should be wearing full face protection, they
should have what’s called “haz-wopper training,” hazardous waste
operator emergency response, um, training. This is like forty hours of
training. This is serious, and it’s not just a headache and a little
cough now. Your body gets overwhelmed by these chemicals. You go home
and you don’t get better. If it’s a cold or flu, you get better. But I
have had cleanup workers from the Exxon Valdez who I am still in touch
with tell me, “You know, I thought I had the Valdez Crud back to 1989.
I didn’t think I would have for fourteen years or twenty years. We’re
talking about people who are left untreated, they are disabled, a
hundred percent disabled. Who’s paying for that? Taxpayers. Not Exxon.
We’re talking about people who have died.


AMY GOODMAN: Riki, I was looking at a paper in Alabama called The
Press Register, and it has a piece with the headline, "BP Told to Stop
Circulating Settlement Agreements with Coastal Alabamians.” And it
says Alabama Attorney General Troy King said that he’s told
representatives of BP they should stop circulating these settlement
agreements. The agreements, King said, essentially require that people
give-up the right to sue in exchange for payment of up to $5,000. Is
this something that sounds familiar to you?


RIKI OTT: This whole oil spill or oil leak- I’m going to call it a
leak because we do not know how much is going to spill. This is like
deja vu. Exxon came to our community and similarly- all the other
twenty-two oil communities in Alaska, with a similar paper asking
people to waive their rights to sue. The judge upheld this. Anybody
who signs that paper is giving away probably hundreds of thousands of
dollars potentially. Potentially. As we know in Exxon Valdez, that our
case got knocked way back down and people recovered about seven to ten
percent of what they actually lost. So, absolutely do not sign that. I
am planning on spending the next three weeks down in the New Orleans
and Gulf Coast area. I hope to be meeting with ordinary people,
circles of people, having peer listening circles. These were developed
by Dr. Steve Picou, who’s in Mobile, Alabama and his colleague Dr.
Dwayne Gill in conjunction with the people of Cordova and the Alaskan
native community. And this was found to be the most beneficial to
alleviate some of the stress from the spill, were these peer listening
circles. It’s just people getting together and talking about their
agony and talking about the fear and what are we going to do? What are
we going to do? Don’t depend on BP to help you. Don’t depend on the
federal government. Don’t give your power away to the state of Alaska.
The people need to get together and figure out, what are we going to
do to put our lives back together?


AMY GOODMAN: Riki Ott, interestingly BP may not be liable for more
than $75 million. Under the law called the Oil Spill Liability Trust
Fund. Operators of the offshore rig face no more than $75 million in
liability for the damages that might be claimed by individuals,
companies, or the government. Although they are responsible for the
cost of containing and cleaning-up the spill.


RIKI OTT: This will be the first time that the Oil Pollution Act of
1990 is really put to test. So, we’re kind of a little bit in cold
water here, but what we know is that the industry does everything it
can to limit its liability. I am sure that this happened also to the
Oil Pollution Act of 1990. So, we’ll see how this plays out. But, the
people should not count, even though the President is saying, “We will
make sure BP pays,” BP is going to pay to the extent that it is made
to pay by law. And these big corporations, they help write our laws
and they help elect our Congress people that pass the laws. So, we’re
kind of playing on a very stacked deck.


AMY GOODMAN: Riki Ott, we want to thank you for being with us. We’re
going to check back with you as you travel through the Gulf. Riki Ott
is headed there today or tomorrow. Riki Ott, marine toxicologist and
former salmon fisherma’am is author of Not One Drop: Betrayal and
Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Spill. This is Democracy Now!,
democracynow.org, the war and peace report. When we come back, we’ll
be joined by the author Isabel Allende. Her first novel in four years
is just out. Stay with us. [Music break]


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