The monitoring is at its lowest level since becoming law more than a decade ago, putting swimmers, surfers and divers at greater risk of exposure to contaminated water, a Times investigation shows.

By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times

August 30, 2010

Health testing of California’s beaches has slumped to its lowest level since ocean monitoring became law more than a decade ago, putting swimmers, surfers and divers at greater risk of exposure to contaminated water, a Times investigation has found.

Beaches from San Diego to the Bay Area are being tested less often and in fewer locations; some are going untested for months at a time. Statewide, the number of annual tests for bacteria has dropped by nearly half since 2005, according to a Times analysis of state records.

Beach closures and advisories have also fallen dramatically — in part because there’s less pollution, but also because health officials aren’t detecting the dirty water that remains.

At calm, sheltered Baby Beach in Dana Point, which attracts parents with young children but also traps contaminated runoff, health officials did not test for five months earlier this year.

In Long Beach, home to some of the most polluted ocean water in the state, 40% of beach sites are no longer being tested, city officials said. State records show that testing at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro is down 80% and 65% in Santa Monica. At San Onofre State Beach at the northern edge of San Diego County, water at the legendary Trestles surf break was tested only four times last year, down from nearly 70 times in 2005.

The culprit is a familiar one: state and county budget cuts. In 2008, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the $1 million the state had provided each year to test hundreds of beaches for bacteria. Since then, emergency bond funds and stimulus dollars have been tapped to keep the testing program afloat, but the money is expected to evaporate by year’s end.

Overall, water quality at the region’s beaches is almost certainly better than it was in the past, experts say. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to divert and treat runoff and wastewater before it washes into the ocean. Drought conditions have also reduced the amount of runoff reaching the ocean.

Nonetheless, clean-water advocates say the cutbacks have put people at risk. Those who swim in contaminated water are exposed to gastrointestinal viruses and to pathogens that can cause skin rashes and ear, eye and staph infections. Swimmers are most likely to get sick in poor-circulating water near river mouths and sewer outfalls, especially after rain.

“Water quality absolutely has gotten better during the summer months,” said Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay. “But the reality is that less frequent monitoring means there’s a much greater chance of someone swimming or surfing in polluted water unknowingly.”

Tourism officials have also expressed concern. They say the cost to monitor beaches is inconsequential compared with the estimated $12 billion in tourist-related revenue California beach towns generate each year.

“California’s coastline is one of our biggest assets as a travel destination,” said Kathryn Burnside, a spokeswoman for the California Travel and Tourism Commission. “What makes sense from a health perspective certainly makes sense for the tourism industry.”

Health and wastewater agencies responsible for beach testing defend the scaled-back monitoring as adequate. Some officials said the amount of testing has been underreported, while others acknowledged severe cutbacks.

Schwarzenegger’s office said the state has continued funding beach water monitoring at a 90% level despite budget difficulties.

“It is not immediately clear why the number of tests taken by counties have declined this much,” spokeswoman Rachel Arrezola said in a written statement. She said the Department of Public Health and the State Water Board are investigating the reason for the declines while they search for a permanent funding source for future testing.

Los Angeles County health officials said their own testing has remained constant and disputed the state’s records for the county’s coastline.

“We continue to do the tests weekly, and we’re not doing less sampling because we don’t have money,” said Alfonso Medina, director of the county’s Environmental Protection Bureau. However, other agencies that test some of the county’s beaches may have cut back.

Public health officials say they are unable to gauge if reduced testing has caused more swimmers to get sick. Cases are rarely reported because they mimic ailments such as food poisoning or stomach flu.

The number of beaches in California closed by health officials has fallen 74% since 2005, The Times found. Postings, which alert swimmers to contaminated water, dropped 44%. State and local officials do not know how much of that decline is attributable to cleaner water and how much to less testing. Many beachgoers, however, assume that the lack of signs means the water is clean.

“If there isn’t a sign posted, I kind of assume it’s safe,” said Susan Thomas, who takes her 16-month-old daughter, MaKenzie, to the beach every other weekend. “We’re obviously taking a risk going into the water anywhere along this coast, but when she swims, she goes under.”

The beach where Thomas spoke, Baby Beach in Dana Point, was busy on a balmy afternoon earlier this month. Dozens of children and their parents splashed in a shallow, roped-off swimming area as a lifeguard watched from a tower nearby.

Historically, the beach has been one of the region’s dirtiest, sliding by with C’s and D’s on Heal the Bay’s annual beach report card. And yet health monitoring at Baby Beach and 38 other beaches in Orange County — including Little Corona in Newport Beach and Main Beach in Laguna — shut down for five months during the winter for lack of funds.

California’s pioneering 1999 law requires health officials to test at least once a week during the long summer beach season. If a beach fails, lifeguards post signs alerting swimmers to the risk. Congress used the law as its national model, and many Southern California beaches expanded to year-round, almost daily testing earlier this decade.

But the California law has a loophole: Testing isn’t required if the program is not fully funded. Without money from Sacramento, health agencies can cut testing or choose not to report results without violating the law, something state officials suspect is contributing to the declining numbers.

In Ventura County, the loss of state funds meant that monitoring of its 42-mile coastline was halted for eight months in November 2008.

“Once the money went away, there was no mandate to sample, so we suspended sampling,” said program coordinator Richard Hauge.

In some coastal areas, nonprofits are taking up the slack as government agencies cut back.

When Santa Barbara County reduced funding for year-round beach testing two years ago, the nonprofit Santa Barbara Channelkeeper raised money to pay interns to collect the water samples at 16 beaches through the winter, when the bigger waves draw more surfers.

Other places, such as Orange County, are collaborating more with sanitation districts, which are required to test ocean water as part of their license to discharge wastewater from sewage treatment plants.

And in San Diego County, which had to drop its monitoring program for half a year last winter, health officials have begun more frequent testing at pollution-prone coastlines, such as Torrey Pines State Beach.

Even with those assists, however, there is less information available for surfers and swimmers like Barry Gardner, a ninth-grade health teacher from Yorba Linda who takes half a dozen surf camping trips a year.

He’s wary of spending too much time in dirty ocean water and avoids a section of Doheny State Beach known as “Dead Bird Cove” because of its supposed toxicity. But for the most part, he prefers to push his luck.

“If the surf is good, I’m going to go in the water,” he said. “But if you don’t know what’s in it, it’s tough.”

tony.barboza@latimes.com

Times staff writer Doug Smith and data analyst Sandra Poindexter contributed to this report.

from our friends at the LATimes.com

Researchers describe ‘a constellation’ of oil droplets mixed with sediment. Phytoplankton, the base of the marine food web, is found to be in poor health nearby.

“…feeling a toxic response to those waters…”

By Sara Kennedy, McClatchy Newspapers

August 18, 2010

St. Petersburg, Fla. — Scientists have found evidence that oil has become toxic to marine organisms in a section of the Gulf of Mexico that supports the spawning grounds of commercially important fish species.

Researchers from the University of South Florida said Tuesday that, in preliminary results, there appear to be droplets of oil among the sediments of a vital underwater canyon where clouds of oil from the BP spill were found.

“So, indeed, the waters have a level of toxicity that needs to be recognized, and I think these were some of the first indicators that the base of the food web — the bacteria and the phytoplankton — may be affected,” said David Hollander, chief scientist on a research vessel that just returned from a 10-day trip in the gulf.

More than 200 million gallons of oil leaked into gulf waters from BP’s broken well until it was capped last month. The company used millions of gallons of chemical dispersant to break up the oil as it gushed off the Louisiana coast.

Researchers peering into the murk described what they saw using a process involving ultraviolet light.

“We were able to detect sediments that had oil covering them,” said Hollander. “It wasn’t like a drape, don’t get me wrong, like a blanket of oil; rather, it looked like a constellation of stars that were at the scale of microdroplets. They seemed to be at every location we looked east of the wellhead, and interestingly and surprisingly, at the top of the DeSoto Canyon to the east.”

He described the DeSoto Canyon as an underwater geologic feature that is thought to bathe the Continental Shelf with nutrient-rich waters.

In subsurface waters east of the wellhead, phytoplankton — microscopic, plant-like organisms that form the base of the marine food web — was found to be in poor health, Hollander said.

In those locations, phytoplankton was repressed, or “feeling a toxic response to those waters,” he added.

———

from our friends a LATimes.com

from CNN.com

Why hasn’t a single Gulf governor asked Obama to declare the spill a federal disaster?

By Mac McClelland | Fri Aug. 13, 2010

Given the size and far-reaching devastation of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, you may have assumed that it qualifies as a federal disaster. Though you’d have been wrong, you wouldn’t have been alone. “I am shocked that the Stafford Act has not been used for a declaration of federal disaster,” says Mitchell Moss, disaster expert and professor of Urban Policy and Planning at New York University’s Wagner School. “This is exactly why we have this policy tool—to provide federal aid in this kind of crisis.” And that aid could be crucial to some coastal communities’ survival.

The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act is the US law by which a federally declared disaster triggers the financial and logistical support of FEMA in any event that state and local governments aren’t equipped to handle, from hurricanes to terrorist attacks to chemical spills. It’s invoked by the president, by the request of an affected state’s governor. Though the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida have all declared states of emergency, none has publicly requested the federal designation. (Eight days of calls to the office of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal—whose state got most of the washed-up oil—and to the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness didn’t turn up anyone who would comment on the issue.)

What difference would a federal disaster declaration make? FEMA could provide assistance to individuals, local organizations, and governments. For example, a FEMA spokeswoman explained to me, FEMA could step in and buy the food if a church that was running a food bank ran out of money to buy meals.

As it stands, “the only person responsible is BP, but BP doesn’t have any idea what response and recovery means from a human perspective,” says Tom Costanza, chair of the Greater New Orleans Disaster Recovery Partnership, a collaboration of 60 local organizations. BP is required to pay for certain environmental damages under a slew of federal laws—the Oil Pollution Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, and the Superfund statute. “But there’s no funding for human recovery.

Since May, Catholic Charities of New Orleans has been delivering more than $100,000 worth of emergency grocery and bill assistance; last week, the organization announced that it’s out of money [1]. “Right now we have people standing in food lines,” says Costanza. “If this were a federal disaster, we’d get disaster food stamps. We’d get disaster case management. Disaster mental health. Disaster unemployment.” The Stafford Act would also activate an interagency task force that includes the American Red Cross, which so far, Costanza says, “didn’t raise a dime. Neither did the Salvation Army.”

Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao (R-La.), whose district includes fishing communities from New Orleans, “has not pressed the case for the Gulf Coast to be declared a federal disaster because he feels strongly that BP, not taxpayers, should be held strictly accountable for the damage it has caused,” according to a spokesman. But Costanza points out that government assistance doesn’t have to preclude BP accountability: The Department of Labor sent $27 million [2] in support to affected Gulf workers and will bill BP for the cost; the federal government has collected tens of millions from the company for its spill-response expenses.

Regardless of who ultimately foots the bill, NYU’s Moss says the Stafford Act is the communities’ best chance for long-term assistance at a time when initial relief is running out. Next week, Catholic Charities is cutting services to St. Bernard Parish, many of whose residents are struggling [3] with the spill’s effects. Many local fisheries still aren’t open. BP is drawing down its cleanup operations [4], the only job many unemployed fishermen have been able to get. The Greater New Orleans Disaster Recovery Partnership has repeatedly asked BP for a $12 million grant to help continue emergency humanitarian services for the next several months, but has yet to get a response. “There’s no legislation that tells them what to do,” Costanza says.

The fate of the fishermen rendered unemployed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill suggests the devastation that can occur in the absence of federal aid. Victims were ultimately able to extract $1.1 billion in compensation from the company, but only after 19 years of litigation. “A lot of them are dead, or bankrupt, or divorced,” says Brian O’Neill, the lawyer who tried the case. “The impact of the spill on both the natural environment and their abilities to make a living resulted in huge social disruption in the fishing communities. There were increased rates of alcoholism, domestic violence. Whatever social services existed were unable to handle it. Some communities didn’t survive or are half the size they were in 1988. Whatever assistance BP is giving these people now, that will taper off drastically when this is off the front page.”

from our friends at MotherJones.com

BRIAN SKOLOFF AND HOLBROOK MOHR

| 08/ 9/10 07:19 PM |
ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — Sheryl Lindsay’s wedding planner business is on the brink, crumbling with each cancellation over concerns about oil. Brides-to-be are walking away from plans for beachside vows, leaving Lindsay waiting to see whether she’ll be part of BP’s promise to make whole everyone who’s suffered from its spill.

BP said Monday it had received 145,000 claims from residents and business owners like Lindsay citing lost income because of the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and had paid out $324 million without denying a single claim.

That sounds pretty good, until frustrated residents and officials point out that 39,000 claims are in limbo – some of them, including Lindsay’s, have been there for months. Some that have been paid are only partial payments, and many of those people are still fighting for more money.

“Therein lies the problem,” Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said recently. “They don’t deny them. They just hold them open forever.”

Hood speculated that BP PLC would rather wait for Kenneth Feinberg, the federally appointed administrator of the $20 billion compensation fund BP established at the behest of the White House, to take over the claims process this month. That way, if a claim is denied, “he’s the bad guy” instead of BP, Hood said.

BP claims director Darryl Willis said the company isn’t deliberately delaying. Rather, 26,000 pending claims are still being evaluated and thousands of others need more documentation, the company said.

“Our intent is to continue paying claims until this process is handed over to Ken Feinberg,” Willis said. “There’s no intent to slow this thing down.”

However, BP does defer “questionable” claims to Feinberg, including “restaurants and tourist claims from areas that haven’t been impacted by an oiled beach,” company spokeswoman Pat Wright said.

“We believe there are some tough decisions out there that need to be made on a variety of these claims because many of these are claims are not squarely within the guidelines of the Oil Pollution Act,” she added.

The act was enacted in 1990 after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. Under the law, BP is responsible for cleanup costs, but the act caps the company’s liability for other economic damage, such as lost wages, at $75 million.

BP officials said early on that the company would not limit itself to that cap. But the company is using the guidelines for who should be compensated.

Wright said BP decided to defer some claims because Feinberg “has said that he’s going to look at this, maybe, a bit differently than we are looking at it.”

Feinberg, who oversaw payouts for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, did not respond to e-mailed questions from The Associated Press. He has said that claims without a direct tie to the oiled water will have a harder time making it through the process.

In Washington, the Justice Department and BP announced Monday that the company had deposited the initial $3 billion into the $20 billion fund.

Louisianians have been hardest hit by the oil and have reaped the most through BP’s claims process, getting 34,000 checks totaling $139 million as of Monday, according to BP. Alabama was next with $75 million, Florida residents took in $61 million, Mississippians $26 million and Texans had received $9 million since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 and started a spill that lasted more than three months.

BP said it has paid out $58 million in just the first eight days of August, in part by eliminating some paperwork requirements for business claims.

“I’ll be the first to admit that this process has not been perfect,” Willis said. “We’re going to continue to look for ways to get this money out and do it more efficiently.”

Who is eligible and how much compensation they deserve are open questions.

Lindsay said she was pointedly told by a claims adjuster that she wouldn’t get money from BP to keep afloat the beach wedding business she owns with her sister, which she said was on pace to make $500,000 this year until the spill.

“Last week we were told they were not paying wedding planners,” she said with a huff of frustration. “We’re having to close our offices. We’re not closing the business – yet – but we’ve just got to get out from under the rent. We can’t afford it anymore.”

Orange Beach Weddings has had 30 cancellations, owes on loans to the bank and must refund deposits while hoping for new clients.

“The phones just don’t ring anymore,” Lindsay said.

A few days after being told her claim was denied by one BP claims adjuster, another said it was merely on hold.

On Thursday, yet another adjuster, who identified himself as Buddy, said Lindsay’s claim was denied, that wedding planners were ineligible.

“Nobody can make a decision,” Lindsay said. “We’re just stuck.”

Wright said the adjusters in Lindsay’s case made a mistake, and that the 1,650 people on the claims team aren’t always on the same page. She said BP adjustors shouldn’t be denying any claims.

“I’ll be working to address this with the adjusters to make sure they fully understand,” she said.

Another lingering question is whether folks hurt by the federal moratorium on oil drilling will get help, specifically those who didn’t work directly on the 33 rigs that were shut down.

BP gave $100 million to a charity to give grants to rig workers affected by the moratorium, but that money isn’t for businesses such as supply boats that support the rigs.

Brett Broussard, who pilots offshore oil service boats, called it laughable for BP to say the company hasn’t denied claims. Broussard said BP told him he was ineligible because the moratorium put him out of work, not the oil spill.

“They’re parsing words. I am not eligible because of the moratorium, but their spill caused the moratorium,” Broussard said. “I find it repulsive and repugnant.”

Mitch Jurisich, a Plaquemines Parish, La., oyster farmer, compared the claims process to dealing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – “so similar it’s pitiful,” he said.

“I’m still sitting here sending paperwork after paperwork trying to get my first paycheck,” Jurisich said of his spill claim. “I feel I’ve had to give more paperwork for this than I would have to give the IRS in an audit. I’m losing confidence on a daily basis.”

___

Mohr reported from Jackson, Miss. Associated Press writer Pete Yost in Washington contributed to this report.

from our friends at LATimes.com

Looking from a bike trail near Griffith Park (Zoo Drive and the 134
Fwy), the Los Angeles River flows towards downtown Los Angeles
during part of its 51-mile route through 13 cities.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times / July 28, 2010)

An expedition along a muddy strech of the waterway offers a glimpse into the potential recreational and environmental jewel running through the city.

By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times

August 1, 2010

Marsh grasses along the Louisiana coast have been blackened by the BP oil spill.
(Reuters / July 28, 2010)

Oil-damaged wetlands may just have to wait it out!

Cleanup efforts often seem futile, and some biologists suggest simply letting nature take its course.

By Alana Semuels and Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times

August 1, 2010

Reporting from Terrebonne Parish, Comfort Island

Although thick, sprawling oil slicks have vanished from much of the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, pockets of goo still menace delicate wetlands and there is no effective way to clean them up, experts said.

The best hope for the soiled bayous, some biologists said, may be to wait for Mother Nature to do its own cleaning. In the meantime, some patches of marsh will probably die.

On remote Comfort Island on the eastern edge of Louisiana, lush grass meets a soft-dirt beach and abandoned oyster shells. On the shore, shining like grotesque jewels, are droplets of oil. Push further into the mushy dirt, and spots of oil seep up.

“See? You can see it. Here, here and here,” said Paul Kemp, National Audubon Society vice president, pointing to a spot in the dirt. He picked up an oily seashell, rubbed the goo on his thumb, and sniffed it. “It comes in on every high tide.”

Countless insects and tiny crabs pop in and out of holes in the oil-stained dirt. They are key parts of a sensitive ecosystem — food that will be gobbled up later by sandpipers and shore plovers.

Oil is a poison to the wetlands. On Comfort Island, elsewhere in Breton Sound and farther south in Barataria and Terrebonne bays, the oil has appeared to kill grass along the water’s edge, leaving once-green reeds coarse, stunted and blackened.

Kemp said he hasn’t received an official estimate of the extent of wetlands oil exposure. But the damage is vast: Louisiana has 7,700 miles of shoreline, and much of it teems with wetlands and marshes, which were hit with the first waves of the oil.

The marshes are an important part of the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem. They are home to fish, shrimp and crab, and an important last stop for migratory birds who feed in the grassy waters before they make the long journey across the gulf. They also help calm storm-driven surges of water that pummel seaside communities.

If enough oil seeps into a marsh, “the plants die, and once the plant dies, there isn’t any natural regeneration,” said Denise J. Reed, a wetlands specialist and director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences in New Orleans.

Once marshes turn into open sea, there’s no getting them back.

Just setting foot on the grasses can cause irreparable damage, pushing oil toward the plant roots deep below the mud. Breaking their stems will deprive the roots of oxygen. And pulling out oil-soaked grasses removes the only roots that keep the patches of soft marshland soil from eroding into the sea.

“They’re so sensitive that they succumb to the oil spill impacts, but you can’t go in and clean them up because you cause more damage,” said Wes Tunnell, associate director of the Harte Research Institute for the Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

Some ideas for cleanup include burning grasses, vacuuming oil or flushing the marshes with fresh water.

However, “the removal process may be too aggressive and cause more damage to the marsh than would have occurred if a passive approach was utilized,” said a report by the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Nonetheless, crews did attempt triage recently on an oil-contaminated marsh in Terrebonne Parish on the southern edge of Louisiana. With a fleet of 75 boats, crews treaded lightly, standing on boats to avoid crushing delicate grass. They tried to soak up oil with pads attached to poles — something like giant Q-tips — gingerly swabbing them through the marshes.

Success was limited. The grass still looked brown, and some seemed on the verge of death.

The best method may be to wait it out.

“We have nature on our side, we have a very warm climate, and we have fantastic amounts of natural microbes in our system” that can digest the oil, Reed said.

The long-term future of the wetlands, environmental groups said, also lies in efforts to stop the marshes from eroding into the sea. The marshes were already disappearing because of flood-control levees and canals built to help construct and maintain oil and gas pipelines.

The projects essentially starved the wetlands of their lifeblood: rich sediment from the Mississippi River. More than 2,300 square miles of Louisiana marshlands have disappeared since the 1930s.

from our friends at LATimes.com

alana.semuels@latimes.com
ron.lin@latimes.com

Semuels reported from Terrebonne Parish, La., and Lin reported from Comfort Island, La.

Sampling operations being conducted on the research vessel Brooks McCall, near the site of the oil breach at the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo: Dr. Oscar Garcia / Florida State University).

~St. Petersburg, Fla. – Through a chemical fingerprinting process, University of South Florida researchers have definitively linked clouds of underwater oil in the northern Gulf of Mexico to BP’s runaway Deepwater Horizon well — the first direct scientific link between the subsurface oil clouds commonly known as “plumes” and the BP oil spill, USF officials said Friday.

Until now, scientists had circumstantial evidence, but lacked that definitive scientific link.

The announcement came on the same day that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that its researchers have confirmed the existence of the subsea plumes at depths of 3,300 to 4,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf. NOAA said its detection equipment also implicated the BP well in the plumes’ creation.

Together, the two studies confirm what in the early days of the spill was denied by BP and viewed skeptically by NOAA’s chief — that much of the crude that gushed from the Deepwater Horizon well stayed beneath the surface of the water.

“What we have learned completely changes the idea of what an oil spill is,” said chemical oceanographer David Hollander, one of three USF researchers credited with the matching samples of oil taken from the water with samples from the BP well. “It has gone from a two-dimensional disaster to a three-dimensional catastrophe.”

The other scientists involved in making the link, USF said, were biological oceanographer Ernst Peebles and geological oceanographer David Naar.

The finding is important because oil that escaped from the mile-deep, blown-out well had been treated with dispersants, which broke the oil in the water column into tiny droplets, and therefore did not form an oil slick at the surface, said Richard H. Pierce, senior scientist and director of the Center for Ecotoxicology at Sarasota’s Mote Marine Laboratory.

“It’s more readily taken up and absorbed and ingested by marine animals,” he explained.

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Although dispersed oil degrades more quickly over the long-run, in the short-term, it poses a more toxic threat to marine life, Pierce said.

“So, we’ve been very concerned, and it is critical USF has verified it,” he said.

The full report was not released Friday, but will be available sometime next week, USF spokeswoman Vickie Chachere said.

BP declined to comment on the USF discovery. “We have only seen media reports, and have not yet seen the report and underlying data,” BP spokesman Phil Cochrane said in an e-mail.

USF scientists found microscopic droplets of biodegraded oil at varying depths beneath the Gulf’s surface, the university said in a statement.

One layer was 100 feet thick; it was found 45 nautical miles north-northeast of the well site, officials said.

The researchers found the plumes after models created by a USF expert in ocean currents, Robert Weisberg, predicted subsurface oil from the Deepwater Horizon well would move toward the north-northeast, USF said.

“The clouds were found near the DeSoto Canyon, a critical area that interacts with Florida’s spawning grounds,” USF said.

The NOAA study made similar findings. According to the report, which was reviewed by 19 scientists known as the Joint Analysis Group, data collected by five research ships deployed in the Gulf from May 19 to June 19 showed oil suspended in the water between 1,000 and 1,300 meters — about 3,280 feet to 4,265 feet.

The NOAA scientists detected the oil by measuring its fluorescence — many of the droplets are too small to detect otherwise — and said that that measurement linked it to the BP well.

The report said the oil had been detected in heaviest concentrations near the BP well and that its concentrations dropped as the ships moved away from the well, but that not enough samples had been taken to determine the full “horizontal extent” of the plumes.

The report also said the impact of the oil on sealife had yet to be determined. Even at low concentrations, the report said, the oil “might be biologically meaningful” because of the length of time fish and other organisms would be exposed to it.

The report also said that scientists had detected lower levels of dissolved oxygen in the water at depths below 3,280 feet, but that they couldn’t determine why the levels were low with certainty. They said the levels were not so low as to be fatal to sealife.

Steven Murawski, chief scientist for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, said the data confirm that the subsea plumes of oil were the result of the Deepwater Horizon well.

“That’s a real smoking gun, as far as we’re concerned,” he said. “It really is a flow” from the well.

In May, when scientists first reported that they had discovered oil beneath the Gulf’s surface and blamed it on the Deepwater Horizon spill, they were denounced by both BP and NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco.

BP CEO Tony Hayward denied that such plumes existed and Lubchenco called the reports “misleading, premature and, in some cases, inaccurate.”

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from our friend’s at www.Truth-Out.org

None of the five witnesses called to testify will appear at Wednesday’s hearing of the U.S. Coast Guard-Interior Department probe into what caused the Deepwater Horizon oil rig to explode.

U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Hung Nguyen said the panel was notified shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday that four of the five people set to appear, all employees of Transocean, the owner of the rig, said they had changed their minds and would not appear. A fifth employee, Daun Winslow, had already been rescheduled to appear at hearings scheduled for Aug. 23-27 in Houston.

The panel has been set back by a handful of key witnesses failing to attend, calling in sick or refusing to testify on 5th Amendment grounds that they have the right not to provide testimony that could be self-incriminating. Two of BP’s top officials on the rig the day of the explosion, Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, failed to show up Tuesday, with Kaluza invoking his 5th Amendment rights, and Vidrine’s doctor supplying a medical note.

Both men gave the same reasons in May, when they also were called to testify before the panel, which has been meeting in suburban New Orleans.

Testimony from both men, who represented BP’s interests on the Deepwater Horizon, would shed light on what happened in the crucial hours before the explosion.

U.S. Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Mike O’Berry said the four Transocean employees “chose to not voluntarily come in to testify,” and their decision came about 40 minutes before the conclusion of Tuesday’s hearings. As a result, Wednesday’s hearings were canceled. They are expected to resume Thursday and conclude Friday.

It was not immediately clear late Tuesday whether the four were invited to testify or had been subpoenaed.

David Adler, a lawyer for Mark Hay and Billy Stringfellow, both Transocean employees, said he did not have access to documentation that would be used to question his clients.

“I’d like to be able to sit down with my clients and read the documents,” Adler said, adding that his clients were willing to testify.

– Rong-Gong Lin II in Kenner, La.
Twitter: @latenvironment
Facebook: latimesenvironment

from our friends at LATimes.com

The NYC govt. and the USDA quietly captured 250-400 Prospect Park geese and carted them off to gas them, needless deaths that won’t prevent plane crashes.

By Deanna Zandt, AlterNet
Posted on July 16, 2010, Printed on July 16, 2010

It was a sickening shock that no one saw coming: In the dark, early morning hours of July 8, officials from the US Department of Agriculture, along with NYC Parks Department representatives, rounded up several hundred resident geese in Brooklyn’s largest park, ziptied their feet and legs together and carted them off–to gas them with carbon dioxide. They were then double-bagged, and shipped off to a landfill. It’s not entirely clear how many geese were killed altogether; estimates range from 250-400 in total. (Also notably missing are the several hundred mallard ducks that also populate Prospect Park’s lake; at the moment, only a few dozen black ducks are seen now.)

The reason? Well, it all starts with America’s favorite hero, Captain Sully. Since the Hudson landing in January 2009, rules around geese populations near airports have been shifting. Recently, it was decreed that no geese can exist within seven miles of New York’s airports. The decree is fraught with numerous problems.

First, the geese that US Airways Flight 1549 struck were not resident geese — they were migratory geese from other parts of the continent. It’s well-known in Prospect Park that the geese there are resident; not only do they stay their year-round, but their flight muscles are relatively atrophied in comparison due to their sedentary lifestyle. They are simply unable to fly as high as the airplanes that make their way over the park. (It’s a common joke amongst park regulars that some of the geese spent their winters in nearby Green-Wood Cemetery.)

Second, I’m told by local Park waterfowl aficionados Anne-Katrin Titze and Ed Bahlman that the measurement that was taken of the new seven-mile rule is wrong: officials measured from the border of the airport’s property, and not the runways. Measuring from the runways, they say, would have spared the lives of the park geese.

Even if the park geese were a danger, no public opportunity to discuss or brainstorm a better solution (such as those offered by groups like GeesePeace), contributing to the outrage and feelings of powerlessness Last year, Mayor Bloomberg supported the killing of local geese in a radio address, saying, “There is not a lot of cost involved in rounding up a couple thousand geese and letting them go to sleep with nice dreams.” Protests outside City Hall and his home resulted; the Mayor is notably silent now.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is “distraught” over the killings, but so far has not taken further action against the federal officials and park representatives who sanctioned them. Park administrator Tupper Thomas (noted for her ushering in the era of public-private partnerships taking over Prospect Park) is reportedly not answering any questions, and is directing inquiries back to the USDA. Park officials are already on the public’s hotseat with the ongoing garbage problems within the park.

For days after the geese disappeared, there were lies and confusion being spread about their whereabouts. The Audubon Society claimed the geese suddenly flew off to nearby Jamaica Bay, for example, though the geese had otherwise never left the park in large numbers. Finally, on Monday, the USDA admitted publicly what they’d done.

No one disputes that public safety is everyone’s top priority. But these geese posed no threat, and were senselessly taken from the community. According to the Brooklyn Paper, the Humane Society of the US “called on federal officials to ‘immediately halt’ its killing program and focus on ‘a plan that will truly protect public safety.’ The group claims that evidence shows that airplanes typically encounter migrating birds, not resident populations like the hundreds that call Prospect Park home.”

The park community mourns the senseless death of these animals that were so much a part of our Prospect experience. On a telephone pole near the lake, an anonymous poster has been taped to a telephone pole. It reads, “R.I.P. Geese. Call 311, voice your outrage.”

Deanna Zandt is a media technologist and the author of the new book, Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking. She is a contributing editor at AlterNet.

© 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

from our friends at AlterNet.org

Coast Guard Senior Chief Andrew Jaeger, right, and Petty Officer 3rd Class Tomas Kaselionis ignite oil that’s been collected inside a U-shaped length of fireproof boom — a “burn box” — in the Gulf of Mexico. (Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times / July 9, 2010)

Wearing purple fireproof gloves, George Ross leaned over the side of a small boat and gingerly placed his igniter package — essentially a modified Molotov cocktail — into a syrupy pool of black oil that had bubbled up from the BP spill site a few miles away.

The fuse sputtered, then a marine flare spit flames between two half-gallon plastic jugs filled with diesel gel and lashed together with foam and tape. In seconds, a blaze roared up, black smoke poured skyward and the air sizzled with the sound of burning oil.

“Accch, she’s got the fire now,” said Ross, a grizzled Scotsman who works on oil spills around the world. “Listen to her snarling and spitting and crackling.”

It was the 13th burn of the day Saturday for the teams doing arguably the most dangerous and controversial work in the cleanup. In the three months since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank, killing 11 people, they have lit 329 fires at sea and burned more than 10.3 million gallons of oil.

No one has ever burned oil in U.S. waters after a spill, so government agencies, oil companies and environmental groups are watching closely.

“We’ve burned more oil than the Exxon Valdez spilled” off Alaska in 1989, said Ross, who helped clean up that disaster too. “No one can deny this is a success.”

Coast officials and oil spill experts describe the offshore burns as a crucial tool to destroy oil before it can reach shore. The burning is likely to increase now that BP has lifted a containment cap from the wellhead, allowing oil to gush without hindrance, with the goal of installing a tighter seal by Sunday. Officials say they may be able to permanently close the well by early August.

But confusion and delays still plague the oil-burn program, and may hinder its utility in the weeks ahead.

The burns resumed last Friday after a break that began June 21, when environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit charging that young sea turtles may have been burned alive between the fireproof booms used to corral the oil.

The reptiles, most of them endangered species, forage and hide in beds of sargassum seaweed, which float on the currents that aggregate the oil. No one could confirm that any turtles had been incinerated, but the issue led to a public outcry.

BP and the Coast Guard agreed to place wildlife biologists with long-handled nets aboard the igniter boats to grab any turtles before a burn. Then rough weather forced more delays.

Coast Guard Senior Chief Andrew Jaeger led the first boat back out last Monday to resume the oil infernos. But another storm moved in before the 30-boat burn fleet torched any oil, forcing it to return to port.

Jaeger said the oil must lie at least blanket-thick on the surface, and that only a super-hot igniter can set it ablaze. The thicker the oil, the more efficient the burn.

“It’s impossible to light with a match or fireworks,” he said. “Is it possible to light the oil by accident? No, it is not. This absolutely can be done safely.”

Fire-resistant boom has been rushed to Louisiana from Algeria, Brazil and elsewhere. “We’ve nearly depleted the world’s supply of fire boom,” Jaeger said. “We’re destroying them at a faster rate than they’re designed for in tests.”

Jaeger led the mission back to the burn zone Saturday, four hours by boat from the nearest port, Venice, La. When the continental shelf dropped away, the gulf appeared royal blue, but reddish streaks of oil sometimes stained the waves.

More than 50 miles from shore, ground zero for the BP spill, a frenzy of activity was visible in every direction.

Some 28 shrimp boats worked in pairs, towing both ends of 500 feet of fire-resistant boom to corral oil in U shapes, called burn boxes. The igniter boats, smaller aluminum-hulled craft and speedy red Zodiac inflatables, darted about to set the blazes.

Small spotter planes circled overhead to radio new sightings of oil patches. Dozens of skimmers and other cleanup or repair vessels, as well as oil rigs and tankers, dotted the horizon.

Wildlife observers hired from a Virginia company, East Coast Observers, rode in the igniter boats, closest to the burn boxes. No one had reported spotting any turtles since the fires resumed.

The morning saw a giant sludge burn that shot flames high in the sky and lasted more than two hours. A dozen smaller fires followed.

“We’re rewriting the book here,” said Donnie Wilson, president of Elastec/American Marine, which makes oil spill equipment, as he monitored the operation from a command ship. “We can take a few boats and boom, and burn more oil in a day than all the skimmer boats out here can collect.”

Wilson’s son recently visited and produced a short video of successful burns to the tune of “Ring of Fire,” the country classic by Johnny Cash. “It’s become our theme song,” Wilson said.

But the igniter crews struggled as an afternoon breeze kicked up foot-high waves. The surface oil became more emulsified, and thus frothy and difficult to light.

The fire lit by Ross, the Scotsman, fizzled out after a few minutes. He tried several times, but the pool of oil refused to catch fire. Even moving a 200-foot command boat to block the wind didn’t help.

“It’s been a rough day,” Dino Bertrando, the captain, said later. “This operation needs glassy water.”

Others were also frustrated. Two scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency rode to the burn site with plans to launch two helium balloons, each 15 feet in diameter, to take air samples directly from the smoke plumes.

A package of sensors attached to each balloon is designed to help determine if burning oil on salt water produces more hazardous byproducts than burning oil on land, as some scientists fear.

But after the EPA scientists left port, the project was postponed for at least two days amid confusion about the mission, whether it was safe, and who had approved it.

So far, air monitoring stations along the Gulf Coast have detected no toxic pollution blowing ashore.

Jaeger, a 20-year Coast Guard veteran, postponed deploying 10 more shrimp boats that were supposed to help with the burns. It wasn’t clear how many of the captains, all Vietnamese, speak English, he said.

“It’s already seen as a bit of a wild card, burning oil at sea,” Jaeger said. “We don’t want anyone to think we’re out here on a joyride. Because we’re not.”

bob.drogin@latimes.com

Thanks to: www.latimes.com

Caroline Casey talks with LaTosha Brown; Alabama native and Director of the Gulf Coast Fund for Ecological Health and Community Renewal, a community-led social justice philanthropy in the Gulf South region. For the past five years, she has served as a founding Advisor to the Gulf Coast Fund that has provided $2.7 million dollars in grants, technical assistance and support to over 170 coastal groups and organizations. She has over 13 years of institution building, organizational management, political and philanthropy experience in the southern states of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana.

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LaTosha Brown’s site: www.gulfcoastfund.org

Caroline Casey’s Coyote Network News: www.coyotenetworknews.com

Shrimp, crab, oysters, gators, birds, snakes, people – all have ties to Louisiana’s Barataria Bay.

The Bald Cypress Swamp of Barataria Preserve, which is more biologically diverse than the Everglades and serves as a nursery and breeding ground for the gulf’s shrimp, crab, oyster and fish. (Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times / June 11, 2010)

By Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times

June 11, 2010
Reporting from Barataria Preserve, La.

The sickening images of pelicans struggling in oil along Louisiana’s barrier islands only hint at what’s at stake if the slick forces its way into the state’s 3 ½ million acres of estuaries and marshes.

These bays and bayous are thrumming with life — they are far more biologically diverse than the Everglades — and serve as nursery and breeding ground for the gulf’s world famous shrimp, crab, oyster and fish. The wetlands system that fringes the coast is often called “Liquid Louisiana.”

Nearly everything that lives in the gulf is in some way connected to Barataria Bay, which is part of a coastal water system that regularly flushes with tides that mix salt water and fresh water. Pirates used the region’s uncounted cul-de-sacs as hideouts and bases from which to launch forays into the gulf and Caribbean. Today, commercial fishermen motor south from their docks in Lafitte and Barataria.

The prospect of oil penetrating that connection threatens a unique system of floating freshwater marsh already brought to its knees by hurricanes, thousands of canals cut for oil industry traffic, and the dikes, levees and channels that have altered the natural flow of the Mississippi River.

Oil first reached islands at the mouth of the bay May 20, and this week streamers of rust-colored mousse pushed past Grand Isle well into the inland waterway.

“It’s all tidal. We are connected to the gulf and therefore affected by storms in the gulf and, potentially, oil,” said David Muth, chief of planning and resource stewardship at Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve. Barataria Preserve is part of the park.

“This tragedy has already happened,” Muth said. He poured over colorful map containing hundreds of yellow points, each representing nesting colonies in the region, all in the path of the incoming oil. For example, a survey of site No. 83 revealed 400 pairs of brown pelicans, 8,500 pairs of royal terns, 30,000 pairs of sandwich terns and 200 pairs black skimmers.

“This is a soap opera and we’re just in Act 1 right now,” Muth said. “It’s going to go on and on and on.”

Earlier this week Muth toured Barataria Bay, checking on nesting birds and looking for signs of oil. He launched from Twin Canals into a bright green carpet of floating dots known as duckweed.

A solidly built New Orleans native, Muth steered the boat down broad avenues of water the color of weak ice tea, the result of naturally occurring tannins. Trailing his hand, he pointed out an oily residue on the surface. It was not crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon well, but vegetable oil that is the byproduct of the near-constant breakdown of organic compounds in the marsh.

These reedy redoubts are where the gulf’s marine life comes to be born and mature. “Much of the life in the Gulf of Mexico depends directly or indirectly on what comes out of the estuaries,” Muth said.

The value to the nation’s fisheries is well known.

If the region’s “natural capital” were treated as an economic asset, the present value of the Mississippi Delta would be between $330 billion and $1.3 trillion, according to a 2006 report by the Seattle-based group Earth Economics.

Muth, his green and brown National Parks Service cap set low on his forehead against a blistering sun, guided the boat past a small alligator, with part of its eyes and nostrils peeking above the water’s surface. At 4 feet long, the gator was likely 4 years old, Muth said. Three moorhen chicks waddled across the duckweed, effectively walking on water to their waiting mother.

The birds were standing on mats, known locally as “flotant.” All the vegetation in this floating estuarine freshwater marsh rest on top of the water’s surface, moving up and down with tides. The mat is so thick in some places that shrubs and trees grow on them.

The mats float above a bay floor that has beneath it 30,000 feet of deltaic sediment, the result of millions of years of deposits by the Mississippi River.

Muth paused, listening to a mournful lowing he couldn’t quite make out. Eventually he guessed the sound was the muted cry of a pig frog being swallowed slowly by an aquatic snake.

“What I love about this place is that it’s a system that is incredibly alive and diverse,” he said. “When I go to the beautiful places — to Yellowstone or to the Rocky Mountains or to the Everglades — what I’m really struck by is how lifeless it is. There aren’t that many creatures around at any given time. I’m used to being in a place where there are birds and frogs and turtles and snakes. This is an incredible place.”

The boat continued south across the expanse of Lake Salvador and its green spits of land, stranded islands of what was once connected land. The region has been ripped apart by storms and the constant cutting of canals for oil and gas operations; there are some 10,000 miles of canals in south Louisiana. Today there are a few threads of land to hold together. Boaters equipped with GPS programs are surprised by false alarms warning they are about to run into land where there is only open water. The programmers can’t keep up with the land loss.

The shoreline in the Barataria Preserve retreats 30 feet every year.

This thin tissue of remnant land eventually gave in to Barataria Bay, where a dozen shrimp boats were laying down booms, which trailed like a tangerine-colored tail.

The crews were busy trying to protect an island where marshy edges already had a black coating of oil. In the open water, strands of rusty orange mousse floated: oil that has been treated with dispersants. Muth observed a colony of nesting Forster’s terns.

“The sickening, helpless feeling around all this is the birds have to go on making a living with patches of oil moving through the system,” he said. “We just don’t know how many times can these birds take even a light oiling.”

Like most wetlands scientists, Muth cannot say for sure what the impact of oil will bring to this delta.

“Oil is a wild card,” he said. “This is an extremely adaptive place. When you throw in a completely unnatural event, like this mass of oil, we just don’t know.”

julie.cart@latimes.com

from our friends at the latimes.com