The original explosion itself (about six and a half weeks ago) killed 11 men, and its aftermath (i.e., oil leaking all over the place) is in the process of killing marine wildlife in the Gulf. Somewhere between 504,000 and 798,000 gallons of oil a day have been leaking, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. (BP earlier estimated the figure at about 210,000 gallons a day. It's unclear whether they were just very, very wrong or... uh... well, lying.) As of today, an estimated 20 million to 40 million gallons of oil have leaked, making this the worst oil spill in U.S. history -- more than doubling the leakage from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
BP originally said it didn't expect the oil to reach any state other than Louisiana, but it's already gotten to Mississippi and Alabama and is soon expected to reach Florida.
Memorial crosses symbolizing what is lost due to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and oil spill stand in the front yard of a house in Grand Isle, La., Tuesday, June 1, 2010. "This is breaking people," property owner Patrick Shay, not pictured, said of the spill's effect on Grand Isle residents. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) Here's some quotes on the issue I've seen recently:
From USA Today:
"For anyone who cares about national treasures, this is your worst nightmare. And it's not over." -- Richard Charter, senior policy adviser on marine programs with Defenders of Wildlife
From WWL-TV, New Orleans:
"The bureaucracy moves slow, but the oil is moving fast. What we're doing is trying to keep up with that fast-moving oil." -- Plaquemines Parish (La.) Councilman Stuart Guey, regarding delays in building barrier islands to help keep oil out of fragile coastal wetlands
"I just walked out (of a meeting) just now cause a lady was talking about how well boom (an oil-gathering procedure) is working. She's obviously not from south Louisiana, and obviously not been in the Marsh holding dead pelicans. She has no clue what she's talking about." -- Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser
Nungesser again: "This panel is not a panel to decide whether we should dredge or not. We ought to have some of the dead animals in there, some of the people who went to the hospital sick trying to defend our coastline. Instead we have a bunch of bureaucrats from Washington assigned to tear this apart. If they don't go forward and make BP pay for this, God help them all."
After BP gave some Gulf fishermen $5,000...
"I call that 'Shut your mouth money.' That won't pay the insurance on my boat and house. They say there'll be more later, but do you think the electric company will wait for that?"-- Murray Volk, 46, fisherman of Empire, La.From ESPNoutdoors.com (more on this in a second):
"You can hear the silence. It's obvious this marshland has been damaged. You don't see bugs. You don't see the marine life you should see there. ... This is literally the Gulf's nursery. It's so important to our way of life to protect our fisheries, to protect our wetlands. This is a war to save our way of life." -- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
"Every time I go out there and see it, I break down. The marshes are dying, and I'm beside myself. If I had the ability to go out there and pick up oil, I'd stay there all night. ... If we don't throw everything we have at this, the only fish we're going to have are the ones in pictures." -- Nungesser
"I took an ass whipping after Katrina. But if you've got the guts and the fortitude, you can rebuild. It's not easy, but you can rebuild. I thought that was the most difficult thing I'd ever done. But this is. ... Who knows what's going to happen next? That's the uncertainty, that's the hard part. This year is shot. We know that. But are we talking one year, three years, 10 years before things get back to normal? We don't know. That's the scariest thing about this. It's on the brink of disaster here." -- Capt. Mike Frenette, a Louisiana fisherman
It's a shame all of this is happening to people who are still working on recovering from Hurricane Katrina and deal with similar threats seemingly every couple of years. But, if there's anything I've discovered from Gulf Coast residents in my interactions with them, it's this: they're extraordinarily resilient, hardy people. They're passionate about their home and their way of life. Otherwise, they'd move somewhere else, because frankly, living in a place that is so brutalized by nature year in and year out makes no logical sense.(Interestingly enough, ESPNoutdoors.com has provided excellent on-the-ground journalistic coverage of this issue on a blog on their site. Check it out, especially the June 2 entry.)
More to come later in the way of a personal update. There's a few post-graduation things that should become a bit more clear here in the near future. So, stay tuned.
