The newest edition of Wave Maker's News, GRN's quarterly update on the pressing issues facing the health and quality of the Gulf region's waters and wetlands, has just been released. GRN's Healthy Waters team is continuing our efforts to protect the rivers, streams, wetlands and coastal waters of the Gulf region. Since oil began spewing into the Gulf over two months ago, we've been working aggressively to deal with the short and long-term implications of the BP deepwater drilling disaster. In this edition of Wave Maker's News, read more about our efforts to address the impacts of the BP drilling disaster, recent victories for clean water in Louisiana and Mississippi, and continuing work to protect Florida from nitrogen and phosphorous pollution.
Recently, I had the pleasure of leading an amazing crew of GRN volunteers to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in middle Tennessee. Bonnaroo, which is in its 9th year, draws over 80,000 people to a huge field in rural Tennessee for a weekend of sweaty camping, great music, and an incredible festival atmosphere. Bonnaroo has also made a major commitment to hosting an eco-friendly festival – including inviting groups like GRN to set-up booths in “Planet-Roo” and get attendees involved in protecting our environment and communities.
This year, our crew had an awesome weekend talking to thousands of festival-goers from around the country and world about the BP oil drilling disaster and how they can help protect the health of the Gulf of Mexico. It was truly inspiring to meet people from all walks of life and many, many different places who all shared a commitment to helping the Gulf region get through this difficult time.
One of the questions that we had for festival-goers was: What do you have to say to BP CEO Tony Hayward? Check out the slideshow below to see some of their answers (warning: some people expressed their feelings in rather strong language).
(Carolyn Cole/LA Times/June 14, 2010) - Blair Witherington, a research scientist with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, helps the rescue effort.
Two very disturbing reports about the BP drilling disaster’s affects on Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles were published recently
1. The offshore oil slick and Gulf of Mexico currents mix to create a deadly combination. “Young turtles swarm around oil spill” - Houston Chronicle article - “Thousands of endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle hatchlings are congregating in areas near the BP oil blowout as predicted - with deadly consequences, a Florida researcher said Thursday.”
2. A BP turtle rescue team was prevented from collecting endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles trapped in the offshore oil slick.
SeaTurtles.org article and video interview of Louisiana boat captain hired to rescue animals injured by offshore oil.
This blog has been following the recent wanderings of Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles equipped with satellite tracking devices. “Karen” was tagged and released after she laid 79 eggs near Galveston, Texas, on May 18, 2010. She stayed near Galveston until June 6th when she entered into Louisiana waters near Sabine Pass. She has been swimming east towards the oil ever since. Over the weekend she swam from an area outside the oil danger zone. She is now in the middle of the oil that has drifted to the coastal wetlands, only 50 miles from the Deepwater Horizon well site. We hope one of the turtle rescue boats finds her in time.
Have you ever had a week that felt like a month? This week was another one of those for me. As I look back on the past 7 days, I'm amazed at the volume of news created by the oil drilling disaster, and how many moving pieces are at play.
The week started with President Obama's trip to coastal Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle where he ate the seafood, and saw how hard-hit those tourism dependent economies really are. This was his third trip since he first visited back on May 1, and the first time he ventured outside Louisiana. He then returned to Washington, where he gave the first oval office address of his administration. I was on at Louisiana Public Broadcasting with LSU coastal science Professor Ed Overton, and oysterman Mike Voison to respond. You can watch it here, but the overwhelming response from the three of us was that we were underwhelmed.
GRN certainly does not dispute the three priorities the President laid out for the Federal response to BP's deepwater drilling disaster:
Kemp's Ridley hatchling courtesy of Sea Turtle Inc.
Once there were tens of thousands of adult Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. As unbelievable as it sounds, there is a 1947 film that shows an estimated 42,000nesting on one Mexican beach in a single day!
As President Obama prepares to address the nation this evening about the BP drilling disaster, some local New Orleans students at Success Preparatory Academy have a message for him. Second grade Science teacher, Amy Shipley, has been opening up the thoughts and imagination of her students to the importance and wonder of nature and the Gulf ecosystem, as well as the need to protect the environment from tragedies such as what we are experiencing today. This heartwarming and inspiring video is a message, a video letter if you will, to President Obama asking him to protect the fish and wildlife from the oil. Please take a look and share with your friends far and wide.
Special thanks to videographer Randy Perez of Timecode: NOLA who produced the video.
Jonathan Henderson is the Coastal Resiliency Organizer for GRN
Everyone's a bit on edge here on the Gulf Coast as we enter day 56 of BP's oil drilling disaster. The known impacts to wildlife and people continue to grow, and more and more questions are gnawing at us.
What will all these dispersants in the water do? Why aren't workers being given respirators and safety equipment? How many oiled pelicans, dolphins, and whales aren't being found? Why aren't we seeing more cleanup?
"Episode 3: Wildlife in distress and dispersants" of GRN's ongoing Youtube video series Gulf Tides: Monitoring BP's Oil Drilling Disaster, features underwater images of dispersed oil, oiled brown pelicans and shots of wetlands affected by BP's crude. You'll also see interviews with locals like Clint Guidry of the Louisiana Shrimp Association and commercial fisherman Raymond "Bozo" Couture.
As GRN works to document what is happening in the Gulf, we are also pushing the government to federalize the response and mobilize more resources for cleanup activities while holding BP financially accountable.
BP's damage to the Gulf will likely take decades to understand and mitigate, and it is sadly only the most recent and acute affront to Louisiana's coastal ecosystem in the pursuit of dirty energy. Of the football field of wetlands lost in the state every 45 minutes, forty to sixty percent can be attributed to oil and gas activity.
Once you've seen Episode 3, please help us fight for a restored Gulf, whole communities, and a safe Gulf future by donating to our efforts. Signing up as a Gulf Sustainer with an automatic monthly donation is the most efficient and effective way to support a healthy Gulf.
Many economists are waiting to create an economic impact statement for the BP drilling disaster until after the oil stops gushing out into the Gulf of Mexico. An economic impact statement is important for many reasons: (1) it will give a better idea to people of the severity of the disaster; (2) it will help those affected by the disaster to claim a more accurate, and likely much higher, assessment of how they have been adversely affected by the disaster; and (3) an economic impact statement will assist in the Natural Resource Damage Assessment ("NRDA"), which BP will have to pay in order to repair and restore impacted natural resources. Aside from the ecological damage from the disaster, the major industries impacted from the disaster are commercial fishing, recreational fishing, and tourism.
The BP drilling disaster has hampered, if not shut down, the business of commercial fishing along the Gulf coast. In fact, eight of the top 50 ports in the United States, ranked by dollar value, are on or near the federal waters that have been closed due to the BP drilling disaster. Based off of 2008 totals, the total amount of money earned annually from the ports that are currently being affected by the spill is $265.8 million. Most economists use a multiplier between 1.5 and 3.0 to account for the wholesale and retail market chain value stemming from commercial fisheries. Assuming, for arguments sake, that all of the ports are, or will be, completely shut down, this would also halt between $398.7 million and $797.4 million of annual wholesale and retail market activity. In total, the commercial fisheries being shut down could result in more than $1 billion of lost economic value annually just among the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
While much more money is made in commercial fishing than recreational fishing, creating an economic impact statement for recreational fishing is still very important as there are over 2-million marine anglers on the Gulf coast. Unfortunately, BP's drilling disaster's economic impact on recreational fishing is difficult to total. Coming up with a recreational fishing economic impact statement is hard because most of the data collected is through surveys; collecting and totaling surveys is a very long process. Because recreational fishermen do not record when and how often they go out, surveys are a good way to measure the impact of a disaster. Survey data has yet to be collected post-disaster, but when it does the survey will measure, among other things, the difference in amount of trips taken by recreational fishermen before and after the BP drilling disaster.
One of the biggest unknowns, in creating the economic impact statement, is the affect of the BP drilling disaster on tourism. Measuring why someone chose to cancel dinner, hotel, and flight plans is complicated as there are many variables involved. For example, did someone cancel a hotel reservation in Pensacola because they chose to work an extra week at home or was it because of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico?
A long-term economic statement has yet to be published, and it will likely not be published for some time. When speaking to some economists, they said that the economic impact statements created from previous hurricane seasons will pale in comparison, and dollar value, to the economic impact statement for BP’s drilling disaster.
