EPA allows fracking fluid in Gulf

SUBHEAD: EPA plans to allow unlimited dumping of fracking wastewater in the Gulf of Mexico.

By Mike Ludwig on 22 September 2016 for TruthOut -
(http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37710-epa-plans-to-allow-unlimited-dumping-of-fracking-wastewater-in-the-gulf-of-mexico)


Image above: In May 2016 a Shell oil facility leake 90,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, according to federal authorities. From (https://thinkprogress.org/yet-another-oil-spill-wreaks-havoc-on-the-gulf-of-mexico-and-nearby-coastal-communities-1e3b62d92d1#.2ac8u4hdh).

Environmentalists are warning the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that its draft plan to continue allowing oil and gas companies to dump unlimited amounts of fracking chemicals and wastewater directly into the Gulf of Mexico is in violation of federal law.

In a letter sent to EPA officials on Monday, attorneys for the Center for Biological Diversity warned that the agency's draft permit for water pollution discharges in the Gulf fails to properly consider how dumping wastewater containing chemicals from fracking and acidizing operations would impact water quality and marine wildlife.

The attorneys claim that regulators do not fully understand how the chemicals used in offshore fracking and other well treatments -- some of which are toxic and dangerous to human and marine life -- can impact marine environments, and crucial parts of the draft permit are based on severely outdated data. Finalizing the draft permit as it stands would be a violation of the Clean Water Act, they argue.

"The EPA is endangering an entire ecosystem by allowing the oil industry to dump unlimited amounts of fracking chemicals and drilling waste fluid into the Gulf of Mexico," said Center attorney Kristen Monsell. "This appalling plan from the agency that's supposed to protect our water violates federal law, and shows a disturbing disregard for offshore fracking's toxic threats to sea turtles and other Gulf wildlife."

The Center has a history of using legal action to stop polluters and challenge the government to enforce environmental regulations, so the letter could be seen as a warning shot over the EPA's bow.

Earlier this year, lawsuits filed by the Center and another group won a temporary moratorium on offshore fracking in the Pacific Ocean, and the groups are currently preparing to challenge fracking in the Santa Barbara Channel under the Endangered Species Act.

Offshore fracking involves pumping water, chemicals and sand at extremely high pressure into undersea wells to break up rock and sand formations and clear pathways for oil and gas. Offshore drillers also treat wells with corrosive acids, such as hydrochloric acid, in a process known as "acidizing."

The technologies have been used hundreds of times to enhance oil and gas production at hundreds of Gulf wells in recent years, and environmentalists say use of the technology could increase in the future as the industry seeks to maximize production in aging offshore fields.

Still, little was publicly known about these "well treatments" until Truthout and environmental groups began filing information requests with federal regulators.

Regulators and the fossil fuel industry say offshore fracking operations have a good safety record and tend to be smaller in size compared to onshore operations, but environmentalists continue to worry about the chemicals used in the process because many of them are known to harm marine wildlife.
Plus, dolphins and other species in the Gulf are still suffering from the lingering effects of the 2010 BP oil spill.

Under the EPA's current and draft permits, offshore drillers are allowed to dump an unlimited amount of fracking and acidizing chemicals overboard as long as they are mixed with the wastewater that returns from undersea wells.

Oil and gas platforms dumped more than 75 billion gallons of these "produced waters" directly into the Gulf of Mexico in 2014 alone, according to the Center's analysis of EPA records.

These large volumes of wastewater cannot contain oil and must meet toxicity standards, but oil and gas operators are only required to test the waste stream a few times a year. Monsell said these tests could easily be conducted at times when few or no fracking chemicals are present in the wastewater.

The EPA expects these chemicals to have little impact on the environment because the large volumes of wastewater and the ocean dilute them, but the Center points out that much of the EPA's data on the subject comes from studies prepared in the 1980s and 1990s. Offshore production technology has advanced since then and hundreds of frack jobs have occurred in the Gulf in the past five years alone.

"All they have to do is ask the Interior Department for this information, because they just compiled it all for us," said Monsell, referring to the thousands of documents recently released to Truthout and the Center under the Freedom of Information Act.

These documents, released under a legal settlement between the Interior Department and the Center, show that regulators approved more than 1,500 frack jobs at over 600 Gulf wells between 2010 and 2014 with permit modifications that were exempted from comprehensive environmental reviews.

Monsell said the EPA's permit is just another example of a federal agency "rubber-stamping" permits for offshore fracking without taking a hard look at how the technology impacts the environment.

The EPA, she argues, should prohibit the dumping of hazardous fracking chemicals and other wastes directly into ocean altogether.

"It's the EPA's job to protect water quality from offshore fracking, not rubber-stamp the dumping of the wastewater from this dangerous, disgusting practice," Monsell said.

The draft permit does prohibit the dumping of oil in the Gulf and proposes a new rule that would require oil and gas operators to keep an inventory of the fracking and acidizing chemicals kept on board.

This inventory must be made available to regulators upon request. The government's most up-to-date list of offshore fracking chemicals is now 15 years old, and the Interior Department regulators are currently working to update it.

Monsell worries, however, that these inventories would not track how much of the chemicals are dumped overboard, and the public will not be able to access them unless the EPA or Interior Department requests copies first.

Even then, watchdogs may have to wait on the government to process more information requests in order to make those inventories public.

• Mike Ludwig is an investigative reporter at Truthout and a contributor to the Truthout anthology, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Follow him on Twitter: @ludwig_mike.

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BP Gulf Spill Ignored

SUBHEAD: Five years after the BP oil disaster a barrier island for nesting birds is still devoid of life.

By Julie Dermansky 19 April 2015 for DeSmogBlog -
(http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/04/19/five-years-after-bp-oil-disaster-barrier-island-nesting-birds-devoid-life)


Image above: Cat Island, Mississippi, on May 22, 2010, nesting pelicans are seen as oil washes ashore from BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. From (http://www.spokesman.com/picture-stories/gulf-oil-spill-one-year-later/#867).

Cat Island, off the Gulf Coast in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, was home to a vibrant bird rookery inhabited by brown pelicans, seagulls, spoonbills, and egrets before BP's Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Five years after the largest oil spill in American history, the barrier island has just about disappeared.

Despite ongoing efforts by former Plaquemines Parish coastal zone manager PJ Hahn to restore the island, only the needed building permits and an engineering plan have been completed.
"Cat Island was ground zero of the oil spill," Hahn told DeSmogBlog.

He thought that the restoration of the island was a no-brainer since, while much of the oil spill's damage was underwater and invisible, the damage to Cat Island was easy to prove. According to Hahn, not only would the island's restoration be necessary for the birds, but it would provide a great public relations move for anyone who helped in the process.

At the time of the spill, Cat Island was approximately five and a half acres, covered by a dense forest of black mangrove trees which were occupied by nesting birds. All that remains now are two small strips of land — less than an acre combined. Mangrove stumps jut out from the broken, shell-covered sandy remains of the island, at times fully submerged during high tide.

"The island was a treasure and it deserves to be restored," Hahn told DeSmogBlog. He continues to advocate for the restoration project he spearheaded.

"It's a hard sell for many since the island doesn't serve as storm protection like other barrier islands that are in the process of being restored since the spill," Hahn said.

But Cat Island and other small barrier islands, some of which have completely eroded since the spill, were perfect bird habitats because they were free of predators. Hahn believes the $6 million restoration price tag is a good investment, one that will pay for itself in dollars generated by the tourism industry. "Bird watchers from all over will come to visit the island," he said.

So far, the parish has raised $3 million of the $6 million needed before the rebuilding process can begin.
Shell, the only oil company to contribute, donated $1 million. Other contributors include the American Bird Conservancy and the federal Coastal Impact Assistance Program. The parish hopes to get the rest of the needed funds from the state's "Restore Act Fund," made up of money from that part of the BP settlement that has already been paid.

Billy Nungesser, Plaquemines Parish president during the spill who is now running for lieutenant governor, had been famous for his fierce criticism of BP. But now it seems he's changed his tune.

During a town hall meeting hosted by Rush Radio in St. Tammany Parish, where residents turned out to express their concerns about the possibility of the first fracking project in their area, Nungesser gushed over the great relationship Plaquemines Parish has with the oil industry, no longer singling out BP as a bad player as he had in the past.

Though he believes residents should have a say regarding what type of industry is welcomed in their community, he said oil companies that operate in his parish "do the right thing."

Referencing the "horrible pictures of the pelicans covered in oil," Nungesser claimed that in the case of "a safety incident or something spilling from a platform, every company has gone beyond the call of duty in our parish to make it right. Oil companies are rebuilding those islands."

But Cat Island is a perfect example that Plaquemines Parish "has not been made whole," according to Hahn. "BP was asked to contribute to rebuilding Cat Island multiple times," Hahn said, "but they haven't given anything to help the project."


Image above: Cat Island on April 8, 2011 photo, dead mangrove is seen on an eroding point of Cat Island, heavily damaged by oil from the BP oil spill. The island remains unrestored. From ((http://www.spokesman.com/picture-stories/gulf-oil-spill-one-year-later/#867).).

Cat Island was not mentioned in a BP report on the condition of the Gulf issued in March which paints a picture of the Gulf Coast on the mend. According to the report, "Available data does not indicate the spill caused any significant long-term population-level impact to species in the Gulf," and "affected areas are recovering faster than predicted."

State and federal agencies involved in the Natural Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA) took issue with BP's report.

"It is inappropriate as well as premature for BP to reach conclusions about impacts from the spill before the completion of the assessment," an NRDA report states. NRDA will determine how much BP and its subcontractors owe for the environmental damages.

When asked what specifically BP has done to restore Cat Island, BP media spokesperson Jason Ryan sent out a statement about other coastal restoration projects the company has contributed to.  

BP agreed to pay for restoration projects in advance of NRDA's assessment, which it was not required to do. Several of the projects are underway, but rebuilding Cat Island is not one of them.

The statement from BP points out: "The state loses about a football field worth of wetlands every hour," and that "with regard to Cat Island specifically, it was rapidly eroding before the spill, primarily due to the impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita."

Though BP wouldn't give a "Yes" or " No" as to whether it has contributed to rebuilding Cat Island, the company wrote: "We are studying shoreline erosion on marshes and barrier islands, including Cat Island, to determine if there was any acceleration due to the spill."

The BP spill "totally accelerated" the erosion of Cat Island," Linda Hooper Bui, an entomologist at Louisiana State University, told DeSmogBlog.

Bui has been working on studies of insect life in Barataria Bay that she began prior to the BP oil spill, making her a witness to the ongoing erosion process impacting the island. When plants are stressed they can't hold on to sediment, she explained. And that is what happened when the oil covered the plant life on Cat Island. "You lose the mangrove, you lose the sediment," Bui said.

"Heavily-oiled marshes erode at double the rate of a non-oiled marsh," Melanie Driscoll, Director of Bird Conservation for the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi flyway for the Audubon Society, told DeSmogBlog, citing a scientific peer-reviewed study done after the BP spill.

"Every year there is a delay restoring the island, there is less area for nesting," Driscoll said. " We need restoration to proceed as soon as possible."

On March 31, a trip arranged by Restore the Mississippi River Delta Coalition gave members of the media a chance to document what little remains of Cat Island. The National Wildlife Federation, a key player in the coalition, released a report about the health of the Gulf five years after the spill that paints a completely different picture than BP's.

The NWF report cites several scientific studies that document the negative impact the spill had on 20 different species, including the brown pelican, which were Cat Island's main inhabitants.

"The tragedy is brown pelicans were taken off the endangered species list the year before the spill," Hahn said. "If there is no habitat, there are no birds. Who knows if they will come back when we finally get the island rebuilt?"






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BP Seafood Deformities

SUBHEAD: Gulf of Mexico seafood deformities are raising alarms among scientists and fisherman.  

By James Gerken on 18 April for Huffington Post -  
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/18/gulf-seafood-deformities-raise-questions_n_1434268.html)

 
Image above: Crude oil discovered in fish on 9/21/10. The FDA and NOAA recently made the shocking announcement because of results from federal tests that allegedly found “no detectable residue” of toxic chemicals in the majority of seafood tested. But fishery experts are questioning the legitimacy of the testing methods used, citing the fact that the tests only looked for one chemical component of the Corexit dispersant — dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate (DOSS) — while ignoring the presence of numerous other toxic chemicals and chemical combinations like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), propanols, and 2-butoxyethanol, that are also highly toxic. From (http://mrscottyl.blogspot.com/2010/11/gulf-seafood-is-safe-to-eat-and-bp-was.html).
 
While the true extent of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill was not known for about 4 years, as Al Jazeera notes in the video below, the repercussions of BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico may become apparent more quickly.

Discovering eyeless shrimp, lesioned fish and other mutated and underdeveloped seafood, fisherman in the Gulf are pointing fingers at the BP spill. Biologist Dr. Darryl Felder told the news agency that Gulf seafood populations are dropping at alarming rates and that species richness is "diminished."
The Gulf Restoration Network's Scott Eust explained the bizarre shrimp deformities. "We have some evidence of deformed shrimp, which is another developmental impact. So, that shrimp's grandmother was exposed to oil while the mother was developing, but it's the grandchild of the shrimp that was exposed grows up with no eyes."

Al Jazeera reports that both the government and BP maintain that Gulf seafood is safe. BP released a statement last week, saying, "Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident."

A study published last October in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that the FDA allowed "up to 10,000 times too much contamination" and didn't identify the risks to children and pregnant women posed by contaminated seafood. Additionally, the study charged that the FDA's "scientific standards [in 2010] were less stringent" than after the Exxon Valdez spill, reported OnEarth.

Government testing standards were questioned months after the spill. In December 2010, a toxicologist with a team challenging the FDA's seafood testing said, the "FDA simply overlooked an important aspect of safety in their protocol," reported MSNBC.

Despite sales dropping precipitously following the spill, the Gulf's seafood industry was given a boost after the government's Defense Commissary Agency began selling Gulf seafood products on 72 East Coast military bases in early 2011, reported AP.


Video above: In original article as reported by Dahr Jamail for Al Jazeera TV and at (http://youtu.be/_VVyPiV5xdY).

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US oks BP's deepwater Gulf plan

SUBHEAD: BP received U.S. permission for oil exploration in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. By Katarzyna Klimasinska on 21 October 2011 for Bloomberg News - (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-21/bp-wins-u-s-gulf-deep-water-plan-approval.html) Image above: Robert Dudley is haloed as he stands before BP corporate logo. From original article. BP received U.S. permission for oil exploration in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the first approval since the company’s Macondo well caused the nation’s worst offshore spill last year.

The company must obtain a drilling permit before work can begin in a field about 192 miles (309 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which announced approval of the exploration plan today in an e-mailed statement.

“This is definitely progress,” said Iain Armstrong, an analyst at broker Brewin Dolphin Ltd. in London. “I don’t think the ship’s quite turned around yet, but the compass is pointing in the right direction.”

BP Chief Executive Officer Robert Dudley is seeking to revive U.S. output in the Gulf as the lack of new wells drags down production. The London-based company waited almost a year to submit drilling plans while it reviewed safety after President Barack Obama in October 2010 lifted a moratorium on deep-water work imposed after the well blowout and the spill.

BP rose as much as 3.2 percent in London trading after the announcement, and climbed 2.2 percent to 439.4 pence at the close. The stock is up 13 percent this month.

BP is planning to drill Gulf wells in water as deep as 6,034 feet (1,839 meters) in a field known as Kaskida, according to the agency statement. The Macondo well was in about 5,000 feet of water 40 miles south of Louisiana.

BP Safety Compliance

“Our review of BP’s plan included verification of BP’s compliance with the heightened standards that all deep-water activities must meet,” Tommy Beaudreau, the bureau director, said in the statement.

The U.S. decision on BP’s plan was criticized by Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee.

“Comprehensive safety legislation hasn’t passed Congress, and BP hasn’t paid the fines they owe for their spill, yet BP is being given back the keys to drill in the Gulf,” Markey said. “The major investigations into the BP oil spill disaster are now complete and it is time to assess and levy the fines against BP for its damage to the environment and economy.”

Starting work in the Gulf is part of Dudley’s campaign to repair BP’s standing with investors, regulators and the U.S. public. The company wrote off $41 billion in costs related to the spill caused by a blowout on the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 people.

“This is a company that spent the weeks following the blowout concentrating on its PR strategy, making a series of optimistic claims that were invariably at odds with the unfolding reality,” Ben Stewart, a London based spokesman for environmental group Greenpeace, said in an e-mail. “Now they’ve been let back into the Gulf of Mexico to conduct the kind of drilling operation that nearly bankrupted the company.”

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The Perfect Genetic Storm

SUBHEAD: BP's catastrophic Gulf Oil Spill was followed with a chemical and biological assault the was even worse. By Michael Edward on 21 January 2011 for World Vision Portal - (http://worldvisionportal.org/wordpress/index.php/2011/01/the-perfect-genetic-storm)

Image above: A BP cleanup crew on gulf shore. From (http://www.seismologik.com/journal/2011/1/21/the-perfect-genetic-storm-synthetic-dna-and-the-gulf-blue-pl.html).

There’s a new proprietary recipe being force-fed to all of us here on the Gulf of Mexico that is now becoming available worldwide. Although this recipe has been closely guarded for 8 months, we were able to break it down after examining the plentiful supply us “Gulf Coasters” have available here. The ingredients are abundantly available while both the recipe and the brewing process are not as secret as everyone had thought.

THE GULF BLUE PLATE (BP) SPECIAL

Fill a large bowl with saline ocean water, add a generous proportion of thick crude oil, then pour in a cup of liquid Correct-it (available from Nalco under the brand name Corexit) making sure you don’t spill any on yourself, stir gently, and then let it sit for a day or two. As the newly thinned oil mixture begins to sink to the bottom of the bowl, make sure the resulting gasses are allowed to ever-so-slightly bubble in orange foam on the surface. This will let you know you’re ready for the next and most important step.

Quickly add Syn-Bio (available from JCVI, SGI, and other private companies) along with a colloidal mixture containing iron, copper, and other natural elements to begin the interactive brewing process. Let it sit for no less than 6-9 months making sure nothing is allowed to disturb it. When there is no more gas coming to the surface and the mixture on the bottom turns into a gelatinous black goo, the first stage of the recipe is finished.

The amazing thing about this new state-of-the-art recipe is what it becomes after the initial first stage brewing process is finished. No-one knows! It’s no wonder some have begun to refer to it as The Blue Plate (BP) Special. You can be assured that once the second stage of this concoction begins to release its mutated biological ingredients, as it appears to have done so already, the rest of the world will abruptly notice.

OIL SPILL OR OIL FLOW?

There was never a BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. When you fill a glass with water, bump into something while holding it in your hand, and then some of the water splashes out, that’s a spill. When you turn on a water faucet and allow a continual flow to fill the glass so that it’s constantly overflowing, that’s not a spill. Because the multiple BP drilling operations that began at Mississippi Canyon 252 in 2009 fractured the floor of the Gulf of Mexico sometime before April 22, 2010, there is a continuous flow of crude oil and, especially, oil derived gasses such as methane. That’s called an oil and gas flow.

Since the Gulf has a steady flow of toxic crude oil and gasses, then how do you stop it? You can’t. The only solution to the problem is to find a way to eliminate it before it has a chance to surface en mass. This is exactly what has, is, and will continue to occur in the Gulf of Mexico.

SYNTHETIC GENOME BIOREMEDIATION

Toxic crude oil and gas can be changed, altered, or eliminated by microbes. Natural microorganisms in all the oceans, such as bacteria, have been known to do this over time, usually lasting decades and beyond. It’s a slow natural process. Yes, natural biology can do the job, but under continual flow conditions there is no possible way all the hydrocarbon-hungry microbes in the entire world can eliminate that much oil and gas fast enough. Time is the critical factor.

For the past decade, synthetic biology has been the new science realm. We now have engineered genetic biology that synthetically creates RNA and DNA sequences for both viruses and bacteria.

In the 1980’s, the fad was designer jeans. Now, we have designer genes.

Soon after the Deepwater Horizon inferno, U.S. government scientists – with grant funds supplied by British Petroleum – started giving us solid clues as to what they were doing with all that crude oil and gas. In May 2010, National Geographic quoted Dr. Terry Hazen from the U.S. government’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who said,

“…we could introduce a genetic material into indigenous bugs via a bacteriophage – a virus that infects bacteria – to give local microbes DNA that would allow them to break down oil. Either that, he said, or a lab could create a completely new organism that thrives in the ocean, eats oil, and needs a certain stimulant to live…”

There were two possible solutions according to Dr. Hazen, who is considered to be the foremost crude oil bioremediation expert in the world. Either use synthetically engineered viruses called bacteriophages, or ‘phages’, to infect and alter the genetics of indigenous Gulf bacteria; or, synthetically create an entirely new organism, i.e. a new species of bacteria, to eat up the oil and/or gas and introduce it into the Gulf of Mexico.

In September 2010, Duke University gave us another confirmation as to what was going on in the Gulf:

“In a paper published in the journal Science, Terry Hazen and his colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory discovered in late May through early June 2010 that a previously unknown species of cold-water hydrocarbon-eating bacteria have been feasting on the underwater oil plumes degrading them at accelerated rates.”

Natural microorganisms are well known to biologists and their genetic sequences are catalogued in a worldwide library. The public can even access the entire genetic library on the internet. But here we have a new and never before identified species of bacteria that suddenly “appears” in the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s eating up the oil at a much faster speed than any natural bacteria possibly could or ever has.

In August 2010, Science Magazine reported about bacteria that were gobbling up the Gulf oil and how it was being done by microorganisms that were not typical:

Hazen’s team found that microbes inside the plume samples were packed more than twice as densely as microbes outside it. Even more encouraging, the genes specifically geared to degrade hydrocarbons were more common in the plume as well, implying that it’s not just general bacteria that are taking on the plume.

Terry Hazen had described how the genes of a certain microbe that were “geared” (created) to eat-up crude oil were not just thriving within the oil plume, but were rapidly duplicating more than twice as fast as those same microbes outside the oil plume. He reveals that indigenous “general” or natural bacteria in the Gulf are not responsible for this amazing outcome. Obviously, he knows exactly what’s doing the job at such an accelerated rate: Synthetic genome bacteria created specifically to consume hydrocarbons, crude oil.

Dr. Terry Hazen is just one source, so I don’t expect you to believe synthetically engineered organisms are being used in the Gulf based solely on what he has said, even though he’s an absolute expert scientist in his field. What if I were to tell you that British Petroleum has admitted to using synthetic designer gene organisms in the Gulf? Would that help convince you?

In September 2010, reporter Stephen Fry of the UK’s BBC was granted a video interview with Mike Utsler, the Chief Operating Officer of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration. Here’s what Mr. Utsler publicly admitted on camera:

“There is a new form of microbiology that is attacking this (oil) plume and using it as a food source”.

You can view him saying this on our YouTube Channel or on our Gulf Blue Plague internet blog at BP Admits Using Synthetic Microbes in Gulf of Mexico. This 17 second video snippet is taken from a November 7, 2010 broadcast entitled Has the Oil Really Gone? which is available for viewing at BBC TWO.* Note how Utsler is cut off by his own people at BP immediately after stating this and the interview was abruptly ended.

* It appears that the BBC has now restricted this video so that it can no longer be viewed from within the US.

A NEW FORM OF MICROBIOLOGY

A “new form of microbiology” is not a natural biological organism. Genome scientist J. Craig Venter, PhD, the founder of Synthetic Genomics Inc. and JCVI, clearly defined this new biological structure on May 27, 2010 in his prepared testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce:

“One of the major advantages of synthetic genomics is that there is no need to have access to a physical supply of a particular DNA sequence. Sequence fragments are simply created de novo by chemical synthesis and assembled into entire chromosomes and organisms. This ability to synthesize (write) DNA and use it in the construction of new cells can catalyze a major change in what organisms can be engineered to do.

…these [synthetic genome] technologies could be used to produce bioremediation techniques.

In 2003, JCVI successfully synthesized a small virus, approximately six thousand base pairs long, that infects bacteria. By 2008, the JCVI team was able to synthesize a small bacterial genome.”

Now it’s easy to understand exactly what Terry Hazen, PhD, and BP’s Mike Utsler were revealing with regards to the creation of new genetically engineered microorganisms – either viruses that attack bacteria or bacteria themselves – within the Gulf of Mexico.

AN OBSCURE FAMILY OF SUPERHUMAN MICROBES

The latest development in the Gulf is how an incomprehensible bacterium is remarkably eating up the methane gas. It appears that engineered designer genes have also been used to remove the gas just as they have been used to consume the oil. The common denominator is that neither of these microbes are natural microorganisms. This should come as no surprise.

Microbiologist David Valentine at the University of California at Santa Barbara stated,

“Within a matter of months, the bacteria completely removed that methane. The bacteria kicked on more effectively than we expected.”

It sounds to me that this created synthetic genome microbe far exceeded the engineering and programming expectations.

According to a Fox Business report,

“This discovery offered a rare glimpse into the remarkable abilities of an obscure family of microbes in the depths of the Gulf”.

I agree. It is scientifically incomprehensible that any natural microorganism could do this and synthetically engineered microbes are definitely obscure by comparison.

University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye, who has been independently analyzing methane from the Gulf of Mexico, also agrees with me. She said,

“It would take a superhuman microbe to do what they are claiming.”

So it has, Samantha. It was specifically engineered and its “superhuman” genetics were created synthetically.

In a January 7, 2011 article, the UK Register wrote how the scientists were particularly

“surprised at the speed with which the bacteria consumed their enormous meal”.

They also brought up the fact that earlier studies elsewhere in the world suggested methane levels around Deepwater Horizon would be well above normal for years ahead. It’s remarkable what highly engineered designer genes can do.

On January 6, 2011, the Christian Science Monitor reported how the study’s leaders boldly stated that rates of methane decomposition after the Gulf oil spill

“were faster than had ever been recorded in any other place on the planet.”

That’s because these are not natural microbes. You can’t compare apples to grapefruit.

TRACE ELEMENTS ADDED TO THE GULF

In the same CS Monitor report, University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye stated how

“[The Gulf] is not well stocked with trace elements the bacteria need to survive – among them, copper, which bacteria specifically use to deal with the methane. Shortages of copper, as well as other trace elements, likely would have slammed the brakes on the exponential growth in bacterial populations needed to get rid of the methane in fewer than four months.”

The same applies to hydrocarbon-eating bacteria that consume oil, except that iron is needed more than the other trace elements. Since copper and iron are not prevalent mineral elements normally found in the Gulf of Mexico, the synthetic bacterium eating both the oil and the methane would not be able to do so at the remarkable speed they have without such essential earth elements. The only possible way these synthetic bacterium could have done this is by adding the required elements to the Gulf. Spraying a highly dissolved or colloidal mixture of trace elements onto and into the Gulf of Mexico would be absolutely required to accomplish this.

In our October 21, 2010 research article The Gulf BLUE PLAGUE (BP): It’s Not Wise To Fool Mother Nature, we had revealed the abnormally high amounts of elements found in the Gulf and that it was being sprayed along with or separately from the oil dispersants. In August 2010, rain water samples were tested by the Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana where rain coming directly from the Gulf had unusually high concentrations of iron, copper, nickel, aluminum, manganese, and arsenic.

Without a doubt, the synthetically created bacterium introduced into the Gulf of Mexico to consume the oil and gasses were – and continue to be – fed these essential trace elements. Otherwise, they could not have thrived or reproduced at the accelerated rate they have. The continued spraying in the Gulf by aircraft and by boat is not Corexit or other oil dispersal chemicals. Consider the current spraying to have the same effect of adding liquid fertilizer to your crops.

SYNTHETIC MICROBES MUTATING NATURAL MICROORGANISMS

In early December, 2010 the research vessel WeatherBird II, owned by the University of Southern Florida (USF), went back to the Gulf of Mexico for follow-up water and core samples. As reported by Naomi Klein on January 13, 2011 in Hunting the Ocean for BP’s Missing Millions of Barrels of Oil,

“…these veteran scientists have seen things that they describe as unprecedented …evidence of bizarre sickness in the phytoplankton and bacterial communities…”

This “bizarre sickness” in the indigenous Gulf microorganisms is the direct result of the synthetic microbes that are still creating genetic sicknesses by mutating the DNA of the natural microbes. We had alerted our readers to this in DNA Mutations Confirmed in Gulf of Mexico on September 28, 2010 when we stated,

“DNA mutations are occurring within the Gulf of Mexico at a microscopic cellular level. The obvious effect this has on marine life as well as humans is a Pandora Box of unknowns.”

Tampa Bay Online gave further insight to this in an interview with Dr. John Paul, an oceanography biology professor at USF, regarding the oil plume they had discovered 40 miles off the Florida Panhandle:

It was found to be toxic to microscopic sea organisms, causing mutations to their DNA. If this plankton at the base of the marine food chain is contaminated, it could affect the whole ecosystem of the Gulf.

“The problem with mutant DNA is that it can be passed on and we don’t how this will affect fish or other marine life,” he says, adding that the effects could last for decades.

In Naomi Klein’s article, she describes how Paul introduced healthy bacteria and phytoplankton to Gulf water samples and what happened shocked him. The responses of the organisms “were genotoxic or mutagenic”. According to Paul, what was so “scary” about these results is that such genetic damage was “heritable,” meaning the mutations can be passed on.

Genotoxins pass on genetic changes to successors who have never been exposed to the original gene. Healthy microorganisms are then genetically changed and will pass on their DNA mutations to their descendants. This is a genetic chain-reaction as each mutated microbe interacts with and affects other microorganisms, especially with regards to the food chain:

“…the phytoplankton, the bacteria, and the [microorganisms] that graze on them – the zooplankton – seem to be the most potentially impacted.” – Dr. David Hollander, USF Marine Geochemist: December 6, 2010: Video interview on WeatherBird II.

THE PERFECT GENETIC STORM

In a Bridging The Gap radio interview with Dr. John Waterman on September 9, 2010, he stated,

“Microbes can morph, they can change. Viruses can turn into bacteria and bacteria can turn into fungi. In the Gulf we have bacteria that can morph. It can morph [mutate] because it’s attacked by a virus. The virus can change the genetics of the bacteria so that it morphs [mutates] into something very deadly.

Some of these changed bacteria can become deadly, Ebola deadly. When you have a morphed bacterium that gets airborne, now you’re going to see it go from person to person.

We’re on the verge of something that can become a deadly pandemic. They had to know that was the case. All it has to do is enter the human host… and once it gets started, it’s going to be impossible to stop.”

In October, 2010, I was contacted by Riki Ott, PhD who had written a book on the effects of the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska. Her Master’s Science degree is in marine biology with emphasis on the effects oil has on zooplankton. She had just read my It’s Not Wise To Fool Mother Nature article and wanted to talk. So far, she is the only U.S. based scientist who has agreed with me that there were genetically bio-engineered bacteria eating the oil in the Gulf.

In an article she published while in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, entitled Bio-Remediation or Bio-Hazard? Dispersants, Bacteria & Illness in the Gulf, she recounts how comments made by a local grandmother made her re-evaluate her thoughts on crude oil bio-remediation. That grandmother said she felt the oil-eating bacteria were “running amok and causing skin rashes”. Here’s part of what Dr. Ott wrote:

“To make things a little scarier, some of the oil-eating bacteria have been genetically modified, or otherwise bio-engineered, to better eat the oil – including Alcanivorax borkumensis and some of the Pseudomonas.”

Pseudomonas alcaligenes is a Gram-negative aerobic bacterium used for bio-remediation purposes because it can degrade aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene or methane. Alcanivorax borkumensis is also a Gram-negative bacterium used for bio-remediation purposes because it can degrade oil hydrocarbons. There we have it. Confirmation once again that synthetic designer genes are the reason the oil and gas are being eaten up at alarming rates within the Gulf.

But why are these Gram-negative bacteria so important? Because, as Riki Ott said,

“Oil-eating bacteria produce bio-films. Studies have found that bio-films are rapidly colonized by other Gram-negative bacteria – including those known to infect humans.”

A nurse Riki Ott was working with in the Gulf, Nurse Schmidt, put it this way:

“This is like a major bacterial storm. It could be the reason we are seeing a variance of symptoms in different individuals. In some people, we see respiratory complications, while in others we see skin or GI symptoms. I think it is due to a multitude of colonized bacteria.”

But this is not just a typical bacterial storm. In this instance, there are synthetically created bio-remediation bacteria that have mutated untold species of natural organisms in the Gulf water and in the air. As different colonies begin to grow and colonize, you are witnessing the perfect genetic storm.

SYNTHETIC DNA CREATED THE GULF BLUE PLAGUE

I’ve written numerous articles in various forums since July, 2010 trying my best to warn not only my own family and friends, but the entire world with what has been evolving in the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve described in detail precisely how it was and is still evolving. For the record, I’ve researched and published these findings in the World Vision Portal forum, WVP’s YouTube channel, in the Blue Plague blog, and in weekly radio broadcasts on the Living Light Network. In August, I appropriately named the ensuing pandemic The Gulf Blue Plague.

To my frustration, few have cared to listen. I’ve been ignored and shunned on most internet sites owned and controlled by those who purportedly claim to be representing those of us living along the Gulf coast. Many of them simply don’t represent us at all. They exist for their own agendas, such as to find clients for their attorney practices. Some have exploited Gulf victims to only make a name for themselves. Some simply disappeared when BP and government agencies said the Gulf oil disaster was finished. The truth of the matter is that it’s not finished in the least. The worst part is yet to come this spring and summer as the warmer water and air accelerates the growth of the synthetically mutated viruses and bacteria.

What’s taking place in the Gulf of Mexico is not a regional problem just for those of us who live here. It’s a worldwide problem. Subtle viral and bacterial signs are beginning to show up everywhere. Mysterious unexplained diseases affecting fish, sea mammals, animals, fowl, trees, plants and mankind are occurring because of the synthetic genomes that are changing and mutating the natural organisms in the oceans and in the air.

I’ve been constantly interviewing both family members and friends who are physicians, scientists, Registered Nurses, ship captains, shrimpers, and fishermen. All of them agree that the scientifically confirmed mutated organisms – directly caused by synthetically engineered genomes interjected into the Gulf – can and most assuredly will become a pandemic or even multiple pandemics. As my RN friend with over 30 years of trauma and clinical experience in Louisiana put it,

“This is like an opera where the main characters are Frankenstein and King Neptune. When the fat lady of the Gulf finally sings in the last act, there may not be much of an audience left to hear her.”

In summary, all I can say is what I’ve been saying for months now….

“Wherever the Gulf wind blows and the Gulf water flows”

http://worldvisionportal.org/wordpress/index.php/2011/01/the-perfect-genetic-storm/

NOTES & ADDENDUM

From The Gulf Blue Plague is Evolving – Part II

VIRUSES

Bacteriophages are viruses that change the DNA of bacteria. Many types of bacteriophages exist. Some simply infect the host bacteria while others insert into and alter the bacterial chromosome.

Some of the viruses donate their DNA materials to the host cell and cause alteration in the genetic code. Some bacteriophages can enter the host cell, but instead of immediately making new viral material the bacteriophages DNA will integrate into the chromosome of the bacteria.

BACTERIA

Bacteria are a large group of single cell microorganisms that grow to a fixed size and then reproduce through a form of asexual reproduction. Under optimal conditions, bacteria can grow and divide rapidly and some bacterial populations can double as quickly as every 9.8 minutes. Most bacteria have a single circular chromosome and inherit identical copies of their parent’s genes (they clone themselves).

However, all bacteria can evolve through changes made to their genetic material DNA caused by mutations. Mutations come from errors made during the replication of DNA or from exposure to mutagens (mutating agents), such as certain chemicals or bacteriophages (viruses). Mutations are changes in the DNA or RNA sequence of a virus. It can occur at both a Gene level – called a Gene Mutation – and at a Chromosome level – called a Chromosome Mutation. This process of change is called Mutagenesis. The result is a mutated virus that quickly duplicates itself, develops into maturity, and then discharges itself into the environment. A water environment discharge will become airborne due to high temperatures or as a result of storms.

Despite their apparent simplicity, bacteria can also form complex associations with other organisms. If bacteria form a parasitic association, they are classed as pathogens. Pathogenic bacteria are a major cause of human death and disease. MRSA and other flesh eating bacterium are pathogenic.

REFERENCES

• http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100511-science-environment-gulf-oil-spill-cleanup-future/
• Lawrence Berkeley National Lab http://www.lbl.gov
• http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/microbes-0910
• http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/08/bacteria-are-gobbling-gulf-oil.html?ref=hp
• The Gulf Blue Plague http://blueplague.org http://blueplague.net
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuDO0l8K90I
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vy7f9#broadcasts
• http://worldvisionportal.org/wvpforum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=1115
• http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/01/06/wsj-microbes-devoured-methane-bp-spill-study-says/
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/07/deepwater_horizon_metane_bacteria/
• http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2011/0106/Gulf-oil-spill-study-s-surprising-find-Bacteria-ate-methane-in-three-months
• http://chsl.webs.com/testresults.htm
• http://www.alternet.org/environment/149524/naomi_klein%3A_hunting_the_ocean_for_bp%27s_missing_millions_of_barrels_of_oil/?page=entire
• http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/sep/27/271417/usf-research-included-in-gulf-oil-spill-tv-special/news-metro/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tReP9bppy4Q
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riki-ott/bio-remediation-or-bio-ha_b_720461.html

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BP Spill Dangers Underestimated

SUBHEAD: FDA underestimating Gulf residents' carcinogen exposure from eating seafood.

By Matthew McDermott on 9 December 2010 for TreeHugger - (http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/12/fda-underestimating-gulf-residents-carcinogen-exposure-seafood-gulf-oil-spill.php)

Image above: Photo of Gulf shrimp and crushed red peppers. From original article.

Something to bring the horror of the Gulf oil spill back fresh to memory: The NRDC says that the FDA is grossly underestimating the exposure to carcinogens in seafood that Gulf Coast residents have been and are being exposed to. It all comes down to how much seafood they eat versus the national average.

NRDC surveyed the seafood consumption habits of residents of the Gulf and found that they eat on average anywhere from 3.6-12.1 times as much seafood as the national average--a difference which was not acknowledged by the Federal government.

The survey notes that the rate of shrimp consumption along the coast significantly exceeded the rates the FDA used to calculate exposure to cancer-causing chemicals from seafood contaminated during the Gulf oil spill.

Though NRDC says the survey does not represent a random sampling of the population, "the results are noteworthy in that they clearly show that a considerable portion of Gulf Coast residents eat substantially more seafood that reflected in FDA's risk assessment."

Another discrepancy the NRDC discovered: 60% of people surveyed weighed less than the weight estimates used by the FDA, meaning that they may be more vulnerable to contaminants.

As a result of this work, NRDC and 36 Gulf Coast groups have sent a letter to the FDA urging that they reassess the risks of eating contaminated seafood based on the actual regional seafood consumption patterns.

See also on the Gulf Oil Spill: Gulf Oil Spill Grinds Local Seafood Business to a Halt (Video) Are You Eating the BP Gulf Oil Spill? BP Oil Spill Already Entering the Gulf Food Chain .

COP16 as Cancun disappears

SUBHEAD: The UN climate conference in Cancun is sited near ground zero of climate change damage in Gulf of Mexico.

By Mark Stevenson on 30 November 2010 for Huffington Post -  
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/30/un-climate-change-confere_n_790129.html)


 
Image above: Cancun beach erosion undermines hotel seawall in 2009. From (http://www.cancuninfo.net/2009/12/cancun-beach-recovery-update-dec-82009).  



Cancun's eroding white sand beaches are providing a note of urgency to the climate talks being held just south of this seaside resort famed for its postcard-perfect vistas.

Rising sea levels and a series of unusually powerful hurricanes have aggravated the folly of building a tourist destination atop shifting sand dunes on a narrow peninsula. After the big storms hit, the bad ideas were laid bare: Much of Cancun's glittering hotel strip is now without a beach.

Hotels built too tall, too heavy and too close to the shore, as well as beaches stripped of native vegetation to make them more tourist-friendly, have contributed to the massive erosion.

"It was the chronicle of a disaster foretold," said Exequiel Ezcurra, the former head of Mexico's environmental agency. "Everybody knew this was going to happen. This had been predicted for 40 years."

Cancun's beaches largely disappeared after Category 4 Hurricane Wilma hit in 2005, leaving waves lapping against hotel foundations or against rocks.

Four category 4 and 5 hurricanes have hit Mexico in the past decade, the highest rate in 40 years and equal to all those in the preceding three decades, according to Mexico's National Meteorological Service. Many scientists blame such extreme weather patterns on climate change.

The coastline erosion was worsened by a rise in sea level, which has grown at a rate of about 2.2 millimeters a year.

"It doesn't sound like much, but ... in an area as low as that sandbar, it doesn't help, especially when the sandbar doesn't have the properties to compensate for sea level," Ezcurra said.

In a major restoration project last year, millions of cubic yards (meters) of sand were dredged from the sandy bottom of the Caribbean and pumped ashore in Cancun. The project created a seven-mile stretch of beach some 40 to 70 yards (meters) wide, at a cost of about $70 million.

It is already washing away. Waves have carved a waist-high shelf into the beach and Assistant Tourism Secretary Hector de la Cruz acknowledges that 6 percent to 8 percent of the new sand has been swept away – even without any major storms.

It was the second time such an undertaking had been tried; a $19 million beach restoration effort in 2006 also washed away, finished off by a Category 5 hurricane, Dean, that hit further down the coast in 2007.

Officials hope each disaster will be the last and the sand will somehow stick.

"The erosion was really caused by Hurricane Wilma stalling over the area, and we just have to hope we don't get another one like that," De la Cruz said.

Tourists and local residents are skeptical.

Fernando Garcia, a 47-year-old opal dealer from Bilbao, Spain, strode up the steep Delfines beach after a swim in the turquoise waters and gazed back to the shelf the waves have carved in the sand.

"In a year or two, another hurricane will come and the same thing will happen all over again," he said. "This is an absurd waste of money."

In a financial sense, however, it still works. Cancun remains the biggest money-earner of all of Mexico's tourist destinations, bringing in about $3 billion per year – about a quarter of Mexico's tourism income.

"I wouldn't talk about Cancun as an error," said De la Cruz. "I think Cancun is one of the most successful tourist developments not just in Mexico, but in the entire Caribbean."

And those with enough money to stay here continue to enjoy it – perhaps even more, as the climate undergoes increasingly large swings.

Margaret Young, a retired teacher from Winnipeg, Canada, came to Cancun as unusually heavy storms lashed her hometown.

"We feel climate change," Young said. "We get storms in the summer that we never used to get."

And the foot of snow that fell in the Winnipeg area in late November was also unusual. "We used to get some snow, but not that severe," she said.

Told that the beach she and her friends were enjoying was largely artificial, Young said: "How would you know from looking at it? It's fabulous, one of the nicest beaches ever."

All the debate might be academic if it weren't for the fact that pumping huge amounts of sand affects both the ocean floor ecosystems where the sand was removed, and the coral reefs that lie offshore.

That's because sand from the sea bottom contains fine sediments that wash away with the tide from the newly restored beaches and onto the reefs, blocking out sunlight and causing them to secrete mucuous-like substances, said Roberto Iglesias, a biologist with the Ocean Sciences Institute of Mexico's National Autonomous University.

Experiments are still under way to judge the exact effects, but there is evidence that sea grasses have suffered higher die-offs from previous beach restoration efforts, said Iglesias, who works on coral reefs and coastal environments in Puerto Morelos, just outside Cancun, where the two-week U.N. climate change conference is being held.

Experts note that dredging sandy sea bottoms affects the populations that live there, such as conches, octopus and sea cucumbers.

Iglesias recalled one local official saying the resort had to choose restoring the beaches over protecting coral reefs "because the majority of Cancun's inhabitants make their living off the beaches, not the reefs."

De la Cruz, whose agency oversaw the sand-dredging project, blames more frequent, violent storms for the erosion and maintains "all the beaches in the Caribbean are vulnerable to these natural events."

But the former head of Mexico's environmental agency, Exequiel Ezcurra, says Cancun was built with fatal flaws.

Tall hotels force winds downward onto the beach, creating eddies that encourage erosion. Waves that once might have rolled harmlessly right over the dunes now smack into solid hotel foundations, and rebound – filled with sand – back out to sea. And the very weight of big hotels might be pressing the unstable sand peninsula downward.

Fittingly for the scene of what some see as an environmental crime, the coastal resort has increasingly been marked by police tape. In July 2009, marines cordoned off the beach in front of a Cancun hotel that had built an illegal breakwater to hoard sand.

The armed guards treated the stretch of beach as a stolen property case: While such cement jetties often benefit the builder, they rob properties down-current of their natural flow of sand.

Garcia says the powder sand beaches – unblemished by the shrubs, vines and dune grasses that might hold it together – are "something made up, intended as a promotional picture."

But he concedes their effectiveness. "This is something to be used to sell the idea of the resort to people who live in cold climates," he said.
See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Clearing the air in Cancun 11/29/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Rise of the Climate Hawks 10/27/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Soot is half of Climate Change 7/30/10
Ea O Ka Aina: COP15 Journal - Day 16 12/19/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Climate Deal in Copenhagen 12/18/10


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BP Corexit & Coverup

SUBHEAD: The Gulf crisis is not over. It is just hidden and forgotten by the American public.

Image above: Hired boats working deployed oil booms near Louisiana wetland island. Photo by Daniel Beltra for GreenPeace. From (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/05/12/GA2010051202394.html). By Anne McClintock on 23 August 2010 in CounterPunch - (http://www.counterpunch.org/mcclintock08232010.html)

Three vanishing acts are being played out in the Gulf:

• the disappearing of the oil from the ocean surface by Corexit,
• the disappearing of the story by the media blockade, and
• the disappearing from view of the shadowy private contractors who are making a mint helping BP and the Coast Guard keep a cover on the clean-up.

This triple vanishing trick, collectively choreographed by BP and sundry federal agencies, culminated on August 4th in a report released by NOAA that claimed 75% of the oil spill had been captured, burned, evaporated or broken down. The White House hailed the report as something to celebrate. Energy advisor Carol Browne announced:

“the vast majority of the oil is gone.”

A clamor of outrage immediately rose from the Gulf, as residents refused to dance the crisis-is-over, happy-feet dance. Hundreds of locals furiously insisted that they were still seeing masses of oil on ocean, beaches and marshes, and dead fish, dolphins, sharks, birds and other marine life washing ashore. Then on August 18th scientists from the Universities of Georgia and South Florida produced an open challenge to the White House report, asserting that 70% to 79% of the oil in the Gulf still remained in the water. Charles Hopkinson, a professor of marine science at the University of Georgia declared: “The idea that 75% of the oil is gone and of no concern to the environment is just absolutely incorrect.”

Spike Lee, filming in the Gulf, scoffed at what he called the BP/White House “abracabra kawabanga” trick and called on journalists to stay with the story. A few weeks earlier, the triple vanishing act had come together personally for me in a story that Steve, a private contractor, told in the shadows of a southern Louisiana bar.

I call the contractor Steve, though that is not his real name. I cannot tell you his real name because he has assured me that he will kill me if I do. I had been in the Gulf for three days with Karin Hayes, a film-maker, documenting the oil-spill when Steve approached us in the bar, urgently wanting to tell us something.

“It’s as if a nuclear apocalypse has gone off in the Gulf,” he said. “The media is not telling the truth. No one is telling the truth. Let me tell you something. Yesterday on the beach where we work, my crew cleaned up seven hundred bags of oil. Today we went back and the beach was completely covered in oil, as if we had never been there. Today we carried away another seven hundred and fifty bags. Every day we clean up, then the tide brings it in again. The oil is everywhere, deep under the sand. Today I wanted to measure the oil, so I stuck my shovel into the sand and the oil was down there eight inches deep.”

Steve leaned in close, “Do you want to know how long my contract is to work down here?” he asked. “Three years.” His jaw muscles tightened as if he wanted to suck his words back into his mouth, but could not. “They are telling everyone it is not so bad, but clean-up will take many years. I am going to be here a long time.” Steve wiped a hand heavily over his eyes as if they were burning. “Let me tell you something. Today we saw three sharks washed up dead on the beach. The insides of their noses were black with oil. The membranes of their mouths were black with oil. Their eyes were black with oil.”

Steve is a war veteran who has seen a great deal of horror, but he seems to find this memory inordinately upsetting. “I am telling you this for the sake of our grandchildren,” he said. “We have an apocalypse going on and no one is paying enough attention.”

The CTEH Cover Up

A few days later, Steve and I were talking in the chemical-laced dusk of a car park. The Louisiana night was a strange brew of oily vapors and ginger blossom. Steve was slumped against his car, exhausted by his fifteen-hour day. The red tip of his cigarette burned on-off in the dark like a warning signal. As we talked, the nightly, muffled thrup-thrup of distant helicopters began. A number of people had told me about these strange, night flights, as helicopters and planes headed out on mysterious missions. I asked Steve where they were going.

“They are looking for oil,” he said. “The helicopters go out first at dusk. When they spot oil, they radio the gps locations back to the Coast Guard. Then between one and three in the morning, the planes go out and spray the oil with dispersants.”

“Why do they go out at night?” I ask. “They are hiding the oil with dispersants, Steve said. “They don’t want people to know how much oil there is out there. And they don’t want people to know how much dispersants they are spraying. It’s one of the big secrets down here.”

As it happens, Steve knows a good deal about dispersants. Before coming to work on the oil spill, he worked as a contractor for Halliburton; he now works in the Gulf for a company dealing with environmental toxicity and health hazards. It took a couple of hours talking and half a bottle of Southern Comfort before Steve revealed the name of his company. “I work for CTEH,” he said. Then he dragged his hand hard over his eyes. “I can’t believe I just told you that,” he said, but it was clear he wanted to.

Founded in 1997 in Arkansas, CTEH (Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health) specializes in toxicology and risk assessment. According to its website, CTEH “specializes in the specific expertise of toxicology, risk assessment, industrial hygiene, occupational health, and response to emergencies or other events involving release or threat of release of chemicals.” As it happens, CTEH is the company down in the Gulf that is quietly monitoring the levels of chemical toxicity of the oil-spill and its possible impact on the health of offshore workers involved in the clean-up.

CTEH is part of the Joint Unified Command based in Houma, Louisiana, where BP shares its office with the Coast Guard. The CTEH website is frank: CTEH is “proud” of its role in the Unified Command response. The website is less frank, however, about one stunningly important omission. CTEH is being paid by BP.

CTEH, in other word, is monitoring the possible toxic effects on workers of the chemicals BP has unleashed, and it is doing this at BP’s expense. In short, CTEH is being paid by BP to check up on BP. This is a conflict of interest so flagrant it is like a murder suspect hiring the forensic experts who will examine the murder scene.

CTEH has, to boot, an impressively consistent record of unsavory conflict of interest cases, where they have ruled favorably every time on behalf of their corporate clients. CTEH was hired by a coal company after it unleashed a massive coal-ash spill in the Tennessee Valley. CTEH declared everything hunky-dory. CTEH was hired by a paper mill sued by an employee for asbestos exposure. CTEH blamed the employee’s health problems on his lifestyle. Murphy Oil Refinery hired CTEH after spilling one million gallons into a community in St Bernard’s parish, LA. CTEH found nothing there for anyone to worry about.

Now, down in the Gulf, BP is paying CTEH to monitor the toxic levels of the air and water. As Nicholas Cheremisinoff, a former Exxon chemical engineer and expert on pollution prevention says, this means there is “a huge incentive for them to under-report.”

This also means that if anyone sues BP for health problems caused by toxic exposure to oil or chemicals, CTEH will be the expert witness called in on BP’s behalf. Indeed, two Gulf Coast residents, Glynis Wright and Janille Turner, are now filing a class action suit against BP in Alabama, for alleged health problems caused by clean-up chemicals, claiming that Corexit is four times more toxic than the crude oil. Cheremisinoff has said he is “100 per cent certain” CTEH will be called in as expert witness for BP.

Not surprisingly, down in the Gulf CTEH is flying very low under the radar. According to a report filed by the Louisian Bucket Brigade, at a community meeting in New Orleans, CTEH was present, but without any insignia or identifying credentials, repeatedly reassuring residents that the area was safe and that heat was the main hazard facing workers. When the LBB reporter asked the EPA rep why they were working for CTEH, the rep responded: “CTEH?…don’t know them.” When the reporter pulled out a copy of the CTEH website, the EPA rep backtracked: “Oh, yeah, we look at their data.” Asked if that didn’t amount to a conflict of interest, the rep admitted, “Yeah, that is a danger.” Shortly afterwards, he backtracked again: “No, we don’t really do anything with them. Who are they again?”

This crazy, conflict-of-interest carousel--where BP pays CTEH, and the EPA relies on CTEH data to monitor BP--is so flagrant that Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) has formally requested that President Obama relieve BP of responsibility for protecting the health of workers and local residents.

CTEH and the EPA underplay the hazards, but down in the Gulf people are getting sick. Some men working on the oil spill have become ill and some hospitalized, though we don’t know the full extent because sick workers are contracted by BP not to talk to the media. BP could well stand, not for Beyond Petroleum, but for Beyond Principle. In a particularly nefarious act of cost-cutting and labor control, BP has hired prison inmates to do the clean-up, refusing to let them wear respirators, as this makes it visible that conditions are hazardous. Nor can they carry cell-phones lest they document the damage. Forced labor: slavery déjà vu. And there’s an extra perk for BP. Private companies like BP who use people on work-release get tax rebates of $2,400 for every worker they employ.

I heard many stories of people getting sick. I talked to the wife of a Vietnamese fisherman: “My husband has had chest problems ever since he went to work for BP,” she told me. “A lot of people are getting sick. And when the south wind blows, my asthma gets bad,” she said. In an internet café, I overheard a young man talking loudly into his cell about a blistering rash on his chest. “The doctor thinks it’s over-exposure to the chemicals,” he said.

The Corexit Cover-up

You have to hand it to them: BP’s image makers do a heck of a job looking on the bright side of life. Consider the multi-million dollar ads they regularly place in the New York Times (any one of which would go a long way towards putting an out-of-work fisherman on his feet). Not a drop of oil to be seen from sea to shining sea. Even the skimmers seem to be skimming up stardust. The beach are pristine. Not a dollop of oil to be seen.

As Marci, a private contractor with an energy company, sardonically said to me one evening: “Clean. Clean as a baby’s butt clean. You know why? Dispersants.” Marci asked me: “Why do you think the oil stopped fifteen miles from the Florida coast? All along the Gulf, there is a fifteen-mile wide line where the oil stopped. How did it stop at that magical line?” She told me the same story others had told: “At night they go out with planes and spray it with dispersants. So the beaches look clean. But the oil is still there. Wait until the fall,” she said, “Wait until the weather cools, and the Mississippi drops. Then the oil will rise to the surface. Then the oil will come back.”

Marci was bristling with suppressed anger. ““You have to understand the tides,” she said. “Why do you think the oil is inside the booms, not outside them? It’s because of the dispersants. The dispersants sink the oil under the water. It looks like the oil is gone. But then the tides go in, taking the oil with them, and the oil goes in under the booms. Then the water cools, the oil rises, the tide goes out, and the oil is caught on the inside of the boom. Close to the marshes, close to the birds.” Travelling round Barataria Bay by boat and air, I have seen this for myself and have photos to show for it: islands surrounded by boom, with the oil trapped on the inside.

From the beginning, the use of dispersants has been clouded with controversy and cover-ups. The cutely named Corexit is made by the American company Nalco, and is famously banned in the UK and Europe on the grounds of its lethal toxicity. In April, shortly after the Deep Horizon blowout, Lisa Jackson of the EPA ruled that Corexit should only be used in “extremely rare” cases. Down in Louisiana, for decades there’s been a tightly-knit culture of mutual cronyism where local politicians and oilmen have their hands deep in each others pockets.

On August 1st, the US House of Representatives Committee confirmed that for over three months, in violation of EPA’s official guidelines, the US Coast Guard had fast-tracked 74 permits giving BP the green light to “carpet-bomb” the Gulf. All told, at least 2 million gallons have been dumped into the Gulf, sprayed over the seas, islands and marshes.

The main ingredient in Corexit is 2-Butoxyethenol, which is toxic to blood, kidneys, liver and the central nervous system, also causing cancer, birth defects. Corexit is mutagenic for bacteria, huge amounts of which live in the Gulf of Mexico. Corexit ruptures red blood cells and accumulates as it moves up the food chain. The EPA, reluctant at first to release data, eventually conceded that Corexit is lethal for 50% of any group of test animals that comes in contact with it. Even the Department of Transportation classifies Corexit as Class 6.1: Poisonous Material” for transportation purposes.

The risks of Corexit to humans, the fragile marsh ecosystems and marine life are potentially staggering. Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist and tireless community activist, has testified meeting people all over the Gulf who are showing symptoms: “headaches, dizziness, sorethroats, burning eyes, rashes and blisters that go so deep, they are leaving scars.”

Dispersants have never been used in such quantities before, or at such depths in the ocean, or on open marshland. Dispersants are so dangerous because they accumulate up the food chain. Fiddler crabs absorb the toxins in their muscles and are then eaten by birds. Coyotes and feral pigs eat the bird corpses. Pelicans absorb the toxins from fish and even lightly oiled pelicans ingest the oil through their constant preening. Larger marine life like tuna, dolphins and whales carry the greatest lethal loads. Stories have been told by fishermen finding vast, floating graveyards of birds, dolphins and whale corpses near the Macondo well site, which, they say, are secretly disposed of at night.

Oil on the surface is easier to see, easier to retrieve, easier to burn. One study shows that oil mixed with Corexit is 11 times as lethal as the oil alone.

So why use such lethal toxins in the first place?

Dispersants are called dispersants because that’s what they do. They disperse the oil; they don’t destroy it. Dispersants sink the oil below the surface, make it harder to see, and therefore harder to sue BP for liability. On August 20th scientists produced new evidence of vast undersea plumes of oil drifting for miles. This week, another team of scientists in the journal Science confirmed the discovery of a massive 22 mile subsea oil plume the size of Manhattan and, most dismayingly, very little evidence that the oil was being broken down by microbes.

Chris Pinetich, a marine biologist and campaigner with the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, confirmed what Steve and others had told me: that Coast Guard planes were flying out at night spraying Corexit on the water and land. “People need to realize that their water, their air, the sand they are walking on, they things they are touching when they wake in the morning are coated with this stuff,” he said. “We are producing an experiment in the Gulf the likes of which no one has ever seen. Top scientists admit that. We are all part of the experiment.”

Death by dispersants is slow and invisible. Death by dispersants wreaks its havoc over generations. Dispersants are what Rob Nixon has called “slow violence.” We often think of violence as immediate and spectacular, bounded by space and time. Nixon recalls us to violence of a different kind: the “attritional devastation” that takes place gradually over time and space. Slow violence may be less visible, less media-sensational but enacts a toll no less lethal and lasting for being slow and out of sight.

Corexit is a form of slow violence: a conjurer’s trick, an alchemy of deceit, a sorcerer’s bargain with life and death.

And down in Barataria Bay, people cough the BP cough. Workers have rashes and burning eyes. Their ears get infected; their hands get blisters. When the southwind blows, lungs tighten and close. Some fishermen vomit, some struggle to breathe. Some get dizzy, some get diarhorrea. Some have ashthma, some fast-beating hearts. Their chests burn fire; their throats are sore. And their children cough the BP cough.

Slow Violence in the Gulf

Dispersants are not the only form of slow violence wreaked on the Gulf. The Deepwater Horizon blowout was by any standard spectacular violence: a volcanic crimson and grey apocalypse, an ocean in flames, a doomed, industrial colossus slowly pitching and sinking, taking with it nine men dead. But everyone I spoke to in the Gulf, echoed the same refrain: the Deepwater blowout was only the most recent, fast-forward, telegenic calamity on top of the permanent slow-motion catastrophe in the Gulf.

The slow violence of the oil spill comes on top of decades of slo-mo slaughter of the Gulf’s marshes and ocean waters by three forces: industrial dumping, chemical contamination and agricultural run-off; the forced engineering of the marshes by dredging and levees; and the tearing up of the vulnerable marshes by storms and hurricanes.

On July 18th, Karin and I flew in a Coast Guard plane to the Mocondo site. Two days before, BP partially capped the well. But flying over the five great passes where the Mississippi empties into the sea, I could still see great streaks of rust-red oil along the islands, and long white ribbons of dispersants in the foam-line of the currents. I already knew that beneath the Mocondo “ground zero” site lay a vast zone that had been dead for years, dead long before the Deepwater explosion: the Gulf “dead zone,” a stretch of water utterly inhospitable to life as vast as Lake Ontario.

The Gulf is one of the richest and most diverse eco-systems in the hemisphere, our largest wetlands and 40% of our fishing grounds. But since the 1950s, decades of greed and deregulation have turned the Gulf into the United States’ largest industrial wasteland. The Gulf is an immense, watery mausoleum to the hedonistic high-times of the military-industrial petro-era. If a gigantic hand emptied the Gulf like a basin of water, we would see a drowned version of industrial New Jersey: seeping oil-rigs, dumped military ordinance, unexploded bombs, thousands of miles of pipelines, a giant watery wrecking-yard, cluttered with the debris of a century of industrial waste. Miles from anywhere, the spires of an oil rig rise from the marshes, like a church to a demonic god.

Ninety per cent of all drilling for oil and gas in the United States takes place in the Gulf. This statistic hit home for me only when I opened a Hook ‘n Line fishing map. On the map, the Gulf’s waters are marked with thousands of small, red blocks so thickly clustered the map looks like a map with the measles, a map of malady. Each red square marks one of the 4,000 platforms littering the Gulf, many of them abandoned and many leaking.

The Gulf also bears the brunt of agricultural pollution from the heartland: runoff and waste from Midwest cornfields, sewage plants, golf courses, factories, nitrogen from fertilizer drain down the Mississippi into the Gulf every year. And through these damaged and vanishing marshes, massive watery superhighways have been cut, canals and passageways for the barges and huge ships on their way to the Gulf. Every straight line in the marshes is man made and a road to destruction. Every straight line has been forcibly dredged for flood control and shipping, the river and marshes forcibly reengineered by levees and canals to stop flooding, thereby fatally closing off the silt and fresh water that the marshes needs to sustain themselves, and rendering them vulnerable to the yearly slow violence of the hurricanes.

For many people I spoke to, the violence of Katrina was as great as the violence of the oil spill. Southern Louisiana is a half-drowned, shape-shifting, upside-down world, where boats float out of the treetops, and houses tilt out of the water. Everywhere we went, people still lived among the debris of Katrina. Boats flung by Katrina left to rot on the grassy verge of roads, half-wrecked houses, trees stripped bare and leaning arthritic against the evening sky.

Every day, Karin and I would drive past the huge coal and oil refineries, the Port Sulphur toxic dump, rotting boats, sunken cars, abandoned roads lined with methane barrels. Down near Venice, we found a toxic lake so rank with chemicals we can barely breathe. Not for nothing is the Deep Delta where we travelled every day, called “cancer alley,” with highest rates of cancer in the US.

One evening, Karin and I pulled into an unprepossessing marina near a town called Empire, driving carefully past the sleeping BP security guard. A few oyster-boats were festooned with yellow boom, but the rest of the marina wore a forlorn and dilapidated air. From every boat, the useless fishing nets hung like shrouds, dark relics of better times. One man moved slowly about his small houseboat. We got talking and Lloyd Boudreau invited me into his houseboat and unrolled a huge photo of the disaster Katrina had wrought: the picture of his life turned upside down by Katrina. Stubbing fingers blackened by a life on the oil rigs, he pointed to his houseboat, upturned like a toy. Katrina is the ghost he lives with, as if he has no room in his heart to begin to think about the oil spill.

Battered by the accumulated slow violence of decades of corporate greed and mismanagement, dredging, levees, and hurricanes, the Louisiana delta is vanishing before our eyes, slipping into the sea at the rate of one football field every half hour. Since the 1930s, land the size of Delaware has vanished under water.

From Blowout to Blowback

Then BP partially capped the well and the media began to cap the story. NOAA issued its report on August 5th with some implausibly neat arithmetic, declaring 75% of the oil gone. I speak to Steve on the phone. “All the media has left,” he says. “But the oil hasn’t.”

Then blowback starts. Saying 75% of the oil is “gone” sounds cheering (less cheering, of course, if one remembers that 25% of the Deepwater spill is still four times as much as the total Exxon Valdez spill), but down in the Gulf, no one is buying even the 75%-gone story.

“The oil has not gone,” Tony, an out-of-work shrimp fisherman told me, “It’s just below the surface.” “They’re just covering their butts,” says woman at a gas-station. “They want everyone to think it’s over,” Charlotte Randolph, Lafourche Parish president said of the NOAA report: “This week in Lafourche parish we had hundreds of barrels a day washing in.

I call PH Hahn, Director of Coast Zone Management in Plaquemines Parish. “I know there is plenty of oil out there,” Hahn insisted. “They say they have captured 75%, but they don’t even know how much there was to begin with. Figures lie, and liars figure,” he says.

“From the very beginning,” PJ told me, “the Coast Guard went to bed with BP. There was no oversight. They tried to cover for themselves. Now they’re trying to declare a quick ending. If they can get the President to convince everyone that it is over, then that reduces BP’s liability. There are two things working right now: there’s an election coming up and we have a President dying in the polls. They want to tell everyone it’s all ok. Now,” PJ says, “the media has left. They want to kill the story.”

“Last weekend, he continued, “we got stuck on a sandbar. When we gunned the engines, there was nothing but oil behind the boat. Then we dove with the Cousteau group again and there was plenty of oil on the bottom of the ground. The sand just covers it up. On Sunday night, we stopped at a barrier island, and as we were walking back to the boat, black oil spurted out of the hermit-crab holes. We pushed a stick down into the ground, and when we pulled the stick out, the oil began bubbling up. Fresh oil, not weathered oil. Wait till the shrimp boats start going out again. When those trawlers hit bottom, that’s when we will see a lot of things.”

A New Orleans radio poll showed 80% of respondents did not believe the NOAA report. Others offered similar testimony. Steve told me he saw a huge slick about five miles long and one mile wide on his way to work. Bob Marshall, writing for the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported seeing a great deal of oil at South Pass. Fishermen reported oil both inside Barataria Bay and out near the great Mississippi Passes and barrier islands. Riki Ott, flew out over Barataria Bay and afterwards wrote: “Bay Jimmy on the northeast side of Barataria Bay was full of oil. So was Bay Baptiste, Lake Grande Ecaille, and Billet Bay….We followed thick streamers of black oil and ribbons of rainbow sheen….The ocean’s smooth surface glinted like molten lead in the late afternoon sun. Oil. As far as we could see: oil.”

On my last evening down in the delta, fishing guide Dave Iverson took me by boat through Barataria Bay to the pelican rookeries at Queen Bess and Cat Islands near Grand Isle. As we passed through the hauntingly lovely, lacey-green filigree marshland, flocks of snowy egrets and ibis lifted gracefully into the air ahead of us, an explosion of white confetti, an exuberant celebration of life. But returning through the marshes in the twilight through the oil-damaged parts, I saw miles of tangled boom filthy with oil, and inside the boom the black marshes, blackened as if a fire from hell had roared through. And everywhere a great stillness. Not a bird to be seen. I thought of John Keats’s great line: “The sedge is wither'd from the lake and no birds sing.” I thought of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring that launched the modern environmental movement. Will this silence do the same?

On what abacus can we count the slowly dying, the invisibly hurt, the already poisoned but not yet dead? In this, our summer of magical counting. All summer we’ve been counting: numbers of gallons spilled, numbers of toxins released, numbers of birds dying, numbers of fishermen out of work. We are like children counting on our fingers in the dark, trying to ward off the shapeless face of something dreadful has been unleashed and cannot fully understand.

And down in Barataria Bay, the crabs climb out of the burning water and hold their claws to the sky. The creels stand empty; the boats lie still. Nets hang like shrouds. And children cough the BP cough.

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