It’s one year later and the oil is still here on the Gulf Coast. No, it’s no longer in gooey blobs or floating mats. What we see along our once pristine white sand beaches is tar balls dotting the surf line and churning in the waves. According to our local Channel 3 News, there are still 110 clean-up workers on Pensacola Beach sifting through the sand to gather up those unwanted tar balls. Otherwise, our beaches look pretty good, just don’t look too close. And be careful where you step. Those tar balls stick to the bottoms of your feet or sandals and are darn hard to wash off.
The real threat is the oil we can’t see. We hear now and then that the Gulf floor is inches deep in gooey oil and is now an underwater wasteland. Over the past several months masses of dead fish have, from time to time, washed up on beaches from Louisiana to Florida’s Perdido Key. Of course, we’re told this is normal and not caused by the oil and dispersant toxins still in the Gulf. Dozens of baby dolphins washed up on Alabama beaches over the past couple months and over 100 more along the Louisiana shoreline. In addition, dead turtles are washing up on beaches all along the Gulf Coast. Once again, we’re told it’s normal to have all those baby dolphins and those turtles washing up on the beaches. Not!!! I’ve lived on the Gulf Coast for close to 20 years now and have never seen or heard of such an occurrence.
Tourists are coming back to our beaches, though not as many as before the oil. Here and there some businesses are still closed down, their doors and windows boarded over. No, it’s still not business as usual. We’re told that the Gulf seafood is safe to eat. I wouldn’t know as I haven’t eaten any. I miss eating those blue crabs, oysters, shrimp, snapper, mullet. However, I’m still not ready to go back to eating them. Tourists and some residents are apparently eating our local seafood. As far as I know, none have been harmed, or at least we’re not being told if people are being harmed.
We’re still pretty angry with BP here on the Gulf Coast. We have little faith in their empty promises of cleaning our beaches and Gulf waters. Promises, promises! BP claims to have paid out $4 billion to date in claims. Personally, I’ve only met one person, a crabber, who said he received his claim check from BP. According to the news media, hundreds of thousands of claims are still unpaid. Ken Feinberg is saying that over 800,000 claims were filed and that they’ve paid out 2/3 of those claims. Ken says that “If a claim hasn’t been paid then something is wrong with that claim.” Well, I guess those with “something wrong” will probably never get the money they’re due.
On CNN today it was reported that “All Federal Gulf waters have reopened for fishing.” Supposedly sport fishermen are back in the Gulf and catching some kind of fish. Though who knows if that fish is being eaten. I guess for sport fishermen it’s the catching that’s the thrill. Commercial fishermen and shrimpers are also back in the Gulf. As I’ve already said, some people are actually eating the local seafood. According to the news media, the Gulf seafood is being tested and is considered safe to eat. Well, I can only say “to each his own.”
Billy Nungesser of Plaquemines Parish, Lousiana, was on CNN today. He said Louisiana’s marshes are still filled with oil and the marsh grasses are dead or dying. The migratory birds are feeding and nesting in those marshes and, consequently, are dying. Billy says BP is doing close to nothing about cleaning up the marshlands. In addition, the dead marshlands are steadily washing away.
I keep intending to visit Pensacola Beach and take some new pictures to post here. The beach is only two miles away, but I’m still reluctant to go there. I want to remember that white sugar-sand and turquoise water the way it was before the oil. I don’t want to see those clean-up workers still picking up tar balls. I don’t want to see any dead fish, dolphins, turtles or birds. Though I imagine the clean-up workers scoop up the offending dead before the beach combers get to the beach.
As a news journalist on The Weather Channel said today, “Tar balls will be a way of life for a while.”
I would rather the oil had never been “spilled” in the Gulf.
Day 175 and NOA is still dissembling about the amount of oil left in the Gulf. Weeks back they made the claim that 74% of the oil in the Gulf is gone. Then they switched it to 75%. When leading scientists across the country disputed that percentage, NOAA responded with “the vast majority” of the oil is gone. Now that the term “the vast majority” is being disputed, NOAA spokespersons are saying they never meant “the vast majority” to be a “measurement.” They’re now explaining that the oil can be “gone” in many ways, like evaporation and by being dissolved in the waters of the Gulf. So NOAA is saying now that the “disolved oil” is “gone oil,” but that “gone is not gone, gone.” No kidding. They really said “gone is not gone, gone.” This is NOAA, the leading government entity’s statement in regards to the amount of oil still currently in the Gulf. So the oil is still out there. Duh! I rest my case! (Please read more at teshobbs.blog.com and teshobbs.blogspot.com)
Day 165 and things are pretty quiet. Not much is said on the news regarding the BP Oil Spill. We’re told the “spill” is over, the “cleanup” is over and now we’re in the “recovery” stage. Huh? There are still tar balls and oil blobs getting washed up on our beaches, though not near as much as before. We’re told that the beach waters contain diluted oil products in the parts per million and that it’s no longer harmful.
If you dig in the sand you’ll find oil. So we’re still not supposed to dig in the sand. However, since most tourists are long since gone, due to the end of the tourist season, there doesn’t seem to be anyone out there who wants to dig in that sand. Just every once in a while the local news station goes to the beach and interviews some lone woman with a toddler playing in the sand. Said woman/mother always says, “The sand and water are beautiful!” Does someone pay them to say that?
The cleanup crews are still doing their thing on the beaches. Only the crews are different than the previous crews. All the local cleanup workers were long since dumped and they’ve bussed in people from outside of the area. We’re told these “imported labor” cleanup workers are from the Miami area. They’re bussed down to the beaches in the mornings in big, white, unmarked buses and at the end of each day they’re bussed to the cheaper, low-end motels inland.
A few nights back one cleanup worker stabbed another cleanup worker at their motel. A few weeks back, some cleanup workers staying at a condo on the beach dropped a resident’s orange tabby cat to its death from a 17th story balcony. All the residents have been in an uproar since that incident. So I guess thats why the cleanup workers are bussed way off from the beaches, so we don’t see them except when they’re working at cleaning up the sand.
Locals are angry that they’re no longer using locals to do the cleanup work. Our economy here has gone right down the toilet (can’t think of a better way of putting it) since that BP oil first washed onto our beaches. Lots of businesses have closed, most noticeable are the closed restaurants. Other businesses are just barely holding on. There are pretty much no jobs here for anyone. So the cleanup jobs were helping out by putting some of the unemployed back to work. So it’s really a dirty deal to bring in outside “imported labor.”
Now people are asking, “Are the cleanup workers illegals?” Well, lots of them seem to not speak English, so that’s a possibility, I guess. At any rate, they’re not people from around here. Locals were being paid $10/hour for the cleanup work. I imagine these new workers are paid a lot less.
Another major problem is that the BP claims are not getting paid. Oh, some of the claims are getting paid, here and there, but most are getting denied. We’re hearing that the claimants aren’t submitting the proper paperwork. But we’re also hearing that the paperwork they’re requesting is impossible to obtain. For instance, if a beach hotel or condo had cancellations during the time the oil was on the beaches, they have to prove that each cancellation was due to the oil and not for some other reason.
Not sure how they’re going to get that proof in writing. It’s not like the tourists sent in notarized statements that they were cancelling due to the oil. They just cancelled. Duh! The beaches were inundated with oil for months. So who wouldn’t cancel? All except for a few lookiloos who actually wanted to come down here to see the oil for themselves instead of watching it on the news.
It was recently announced by Ken Feinberg that they’re not paying the small claims as they’re too small to warrant a check. Huh? And how small is too small? So if you’re filing a claim for $5,000 is that too small? What about $10,000? On BP’s ads, which run daily round the clock on the TV and radio, they brag about having paid out $400 million in claims to date. Is that all? The Gulf Coast economy has lost billions of dollars over the last several months since the spill started. So $400 million is just a drop in the bucket.
Obviously, most claims are not getting paid. For instance, the State of Alabama is out something to the tune of $160 million in the cleanup effort and BP has denied that claim. Also in Alabama, an ambulance service signed a contract for, I believe, $170,000 for emergency services for BP cleanup workers. The services were rendered, but BP didn’t pay per their contracted agreement. Instead, BP told the ambulance company they’d have to file a claim. So far, that claim hasn’t been paid. BP now has a new contract with a different ambulance company for emergency services. Funny thing, we never heard that cleanup workers needed ambulance services until we heard about the bill not being paid.
Florida’s Escambia County and Santa Rosa County, as well as the state itself, are out millions of dollars spent in cleaning up the oil. BP and Ken Feinberg told them to refile their claims, but those claims are still not getting paid. So city, county and state budgets are short monies, which is causing shortages in other services, like the school districts and the police and fire departments. BP promised to pay for all the damage and cleanup, but that’s nothing but an empty promise. The taxpayers are footing the bill on this disaster.
We’re still being told the local seafood is safe to eat. However, I haven’t talked to a single person who claims to have eaten local seafood. I’m sure there’s someone out there, but I haven’t encountered them. We had fish, farm raised perch, for dinner tonight. I don’t know how safe farm raised perch is, but at least it’s not marinated in oil and dispersant. We’re still not ready to eat the local seafood.
It doesn’t look to me like we’re in the ”recovery” stage. Yesterday I counted seven bus loads of cleanup workers leaving our Pensacola beaches at the end of the day. That’s a lot of cleanup workers, if you ask me, for just a few miles of beach, particularly when we’re being told the “cleanup” stage is over. (Please read more atteshobbs.blog.com andteshobbs.blogspot.com)
Day 155 and once again digging in the beach sands of Pensacola’s beaches is an issue. Yesterday we were told it’s “okay” to dig in the sand to build sandcastles. Today they’re saying “no digging” and that if you dig more than 6 inches you’ll be arrested. Sheesh! I’m a sandcastle person and just the concept of not being allowed to dig in the sand pisses me off. However, the reasoning behind this is that BP, the Coast Guard, NOAA and everyone else involved, doesn’t want anyone digging in the sand, because then we’ll uncover those layers of oil that seeped down into the sand. And remember, we’re still being told that the oil is gone, gone, GONE!
In fact, BP and Thad Allen announced yesterday that the “recovery period” in the Gulf is now over. Huh? How can it be over when 40,000+ square miles of Gulf waters are still under a Fishing Ban? Not only that, just try to venture by boat into the banned areas, or do a flyover, and you’ll get arrested. So there’s something major still going on out there in the Gulf and they don’t want any of us to know about it, including the media.
So don’t for one minute believe this Oil Disaster is over. As the country’s major scientists are saying “It’s only just begun!” Oh, by the way, we’re being told that the “massive fish kill” in Plaquemines Parish, Lousiana, has nothing to do with the BP Oil Spill, that it’s caused by “nature.” Yeah, after over 200 million gallons of crude oil and untold amounts of Corexit 9500 dispersants were dumped into our Gulf waters.
Oh, I really love this part! They’re trying to beat us Gulf Coast residents over the head about the local seafood being “safe to eat.” To the extent that we’re being told it’s our “duty as good citizens” to eat that seafood. This brings to mind the order to “Drink the Kool-Aid!” I’m beginning to think those in power just want all of us here on the Gulf Coast to shut up and die! Well, we’re not going to “Drink the Kool-Aid” and we don’t plan to shut up and die any time soon. (Please read more at teshobbs.blog.com and teshobbs.blogspot.com)
Day 154 and it’s the end of summer. Only it sure doesn’t feel like it here on the Gulf Coast. Today the temp hit 96 on Pensacola Beach. About the only sign here of summer’s end is the lifeguard towers being removed from the beaches.
Today brought news that it’s no longer illegal to dig in the sand in order to build sandcastles on Pensacola beaches. Gee, so they’re no longer threatening to arrest people for digging in the sand? Well, try it and see what happens. This issue seems to change from one day to the next.
The only other news is that, supposedly, the blown-out well has finally been plugged. Nothing has been said about the “bottom kill” being done. Only that the well is “capped, plugged and dead.” Hmm! Guess we’ll just have to wait and see? (Please read more at teshobbs.blog.com and teshobbs.blogspot.com)
