remember our veterans today

If you have not paused at 11:11 this morning, please offer a moment of silence tonight at 11:11, or anytime today

In memory of my grandfathers, uncles and my dear father who have served our country so freedom may ring

Rising Tide VI

Just posted at NOLAFemmes, a review of RTVI

This year’s Rising Tide blogger conference was held at Xavier University in New Orleans. If you would like to read the events of the day, you can look on Twitter, hashtag #rt6 or @risingtide. New this year was an adjacent room hosting a tech school featuring several sessions on how to get the most out of your blogging and social media experience. Another great addition this year, the conference was webcast! The space at Xavier is one of the best yet, with plenty room to spread out, a myriad of vendors, and cool environs to participate in the event. The opening address by Sr. Monica Loughlin was a very warm welcome by the conference hosts, and Sr. Monica gave the audience a history of St. Katharine Drexel, the founder of Xavier, noting that she lived her life going against convention in order to achieve her vision, and that she would have been proud that a grassroots blogger assembly was being held on the grounds of her dream made reality, Xavier.

The first speaker was Richard Campanella, who spoke eloquently on the historical geography of New Orleans, and those implications on the current state of New Orleans’ neighborhoods. He has spent countless hours as a researcher gleaning information from local archives to write many books on the city. He presented a thorough picture of the city and surrounding regions and established a foundation of the relevance of New Orleans as a truly unique part of the country. The next presentation, the panel on social media and social justice promoted using social media to mobilize grassroots opposition to unjust legislation in state and federal politics. Moderated by Dr. Kimberly Chandler of Xavier University, it was a dynamic panel with good information on how to participate in social justice. Jimmy Huck who writes The Huck Upchuck blog, and follows Latino and immigrant issues in and around New Orleans presented issues concerning Latinos in New Orleans and stated that this demographic is much more plugged in than many people think and are able to participate in social media activism. One panel member noted that social media can also be used against the activists, with the case in point concerning the recent London Riots: pictures of rioters were posted on a website with a number assigned and people were asked to notify the authorities if they knew the individual in the picture. Scary thought indeed…

The lunchtime panel spoke on the Macondo/BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill that began April 20, 2010 killing 11 people. The panel reviewed the spill timeline, and Bob Marshall discussed the fact that the Minerals Management Service was “in bed” with Louisiana politicians and the oil companies and how it is virtually impossible to change any oil company policy to benefit the citizens of Louisiana and the environment where we all live. Anne Rolfes reported that the oil industry has an exponential number of accidents that are not reported. Drake Toulouse of Disenfranchised Citizen commented on the post-oil spill financial claims distribution mess that Ken Fineberg inherited, and how his promises of distributing checks within 7 days went unfulfilled. The delays wound up wearing people down so they just gave up and took a check, but unfortunately are still living with the disaster effects on their health and finances. All agreed that the American Petroleum Institute controls congress, therefore citizens have little control over this mess and we are all screwed because of that. It was also reported that any remaining monies from the 20 billion BP put into the GCCF fund would be returned to the company, instead of distributing it to people suffering from the spill. Bob Marshall said that he recently watched again the 1948 Louisiana Story movie and how so long ago there was no value on the swamps and wetlands, but now that we realize the wetlands destruction equates a loss of a way of life in Louisiana, it might be too little too late to save the wetlands.

After a delicious lunch by J’Anitas, David Simon the second featured speaker explored the conceptual background of his series Treme’. He presented the fallacies of logic, speaking specifically about “standing” and ad hominem arguments, the second in which a person uses an argument against the other person as opposed to the subject being argued between them. He noted that politicians frequently use the ad hominem fallacy of logic, such as in health care debates and other political discourse. He also posited that “standing” is the lamest way politicians diminish political discourse, using as an example the controversy over the demolition of a row of houses on S. Derbigny street that were featured in the poster of the first season of Treme’. Simon also noted that because he is not a New Orleans local, he got Treme’ right because he bluntly inserted himself into New Orleans situations that perhaps a local would not have ventured, caring nothing about “standing” for or against anyone or anything. Simon also cautioned the audience about the biotech development proposal slated for construction alongside the new LSU medical center, and how Johns Hopkins in Baltimore promised the same. Unfortunately a decade later, the empty dirt filled lots which were to be filled with new businesses and research buildings are still that, empty…

After Simon, a delightful and lively panel discussion on New Orleans Food was moderated by Jeffrey of the Library Chronicles. The panel talked about the miraculous post-Katrina recovery of the restaurant industry and the ensuing burst of food creativity as described by Todd Price. Rene Louapre who writes Blackened Out pointed out how there have been no New Orleans chefs participating on Bravo’s Top Chef series, and the reason probably is that New Orleans chefs in their 30′s have abundant opportunity to open restaurants in the city than anywhere else because of the storm and the abandoned food establishments just waiting to be put back into commerce. Chef Adolfo Garcia recalled how many chefs worked together after Katrina to help each other and mobilize restaurant re-openings because there were so many people in town that needed places to eat: first responders, contractors, insurance people and others who had money to spend and nowhere to dine. A lively discussion ensued about assigning the nomenclature of Creole to the current cuisine being served in town and the question arose: is New Orleans losing its food identity? Alex del Castillo talked about mobile food vendors, “taco trucks”, setting roots into brick and mortar restaurants that contribute to the eclectic mix of New Orleans creole cuisine. Chris deBarr of Green Goddess Restaurant had the most optimistic take on it all: in merging the varied cuisines of the different cultures of New Orleans (Italian, French, Caribbean, African, Vietnamese, etc.) the true identity of Creole cuisine is discovered by marrying local cuisines and cultures into great food.

Next was the presentation of the Ashley Morris Award, and this year’s recipient was Dedra Johnson of the G_Bitch spot blog. An extremely well deserved recipient, she tirelessly writes about the state of the New Orleans public school system. And finally, the exuberant Brass Band panel, hosted by Big Red Cotton discussing the history of and return after Katrina of New Orleans brass bands, closing out another wonderful Rising Tide conference. The TBC Brass band trumpeted another successful year and heralds the continuation and success of an inspiring event. Thanks to all the Rising Tide VI organizers, vendors and participants for making this year another memorable conference!

its not just oil

that is polluting our waters

Bogalusa paper mill admits fault as dead fish flow to Lake Pontchartrain
Published: Wednesday, August 17, 2011, 10:30 PM
By Katie Urbaszewski, The Times-Picayune

The paper mill lnked to a substantial fish kill in the Pearl River system cautiously admitted responsibility Wednesday, as the trail of dead fish reached Lake Pontchartrain and a reservoir near Jackson, Miss., was opened in an attempt to flush the pollutants out.

Officials from the Temple-Inland plant in Bogalusa acknowledged that a mixture of pulp from the paper-manufacturing process and unspecified chemicals poured into the Pearl River late last week at levels exceeding the plant’s environmental permits and might have depleted oxygen levels in the Pearl and its tributaries.

Numerous species of fish and shellfish, in large numbers, have turned up dead in the Pearl River system since the weekend as a result.
With thoughts of last year’s massive BP oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico close at hand, government officials mobilized to coordinate a cleanup effort.

“This discharge is doing significant damage to St. Tammany Parish,” St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis said Wednesday afternoon.

“We need to assist our citizens whose livelihood depends upon our waterways. The Pearl River is a home to a complex ecosystem that supports fisheries, tourism and transportation.”

The Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation inspected the lake and spotted some of the same types of dead fish that have scattered the banks of the West Pearl River and adjacent waterways. However, because tests found that oxygen levels in the lake are still normal, foundation officials said the lake is probably not polluted.

Tides probably carried the fish into the lake, and so much more water passes through the Rigolets, which connects the West Pearl, Middle Pearl and East Pearl rivers to Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne, than the river that the discharge is less of a threat, said foundation director John Lopez.

‘Black liquor’ released
Officials are referring to the material in the water as “black liquor,” a byproduct of paper-making that has a high pH. Temple-Inland regularly uses acid to balance the black liquor’s pH before releasing the material into the river, which its permit allows it do, said Jeff Dauzat, an environmental scientist from the state Department of Environmental Quality.

But Temple-Inland discovered, even before it was released, that the black liquor was exceeding its permitted levels in the plant, said Jay Wilson, vice president of environment, health and safety at the mill.
The substance has moved about 45 miles from its source through the Pearl River system, Dauzat said. He said if tests from his department confirm that Temple-Inland is to blame for the fish kill, it will be the third time a fish kill has been traced to the plant, although previous incidents might have occurred before Temple-Inland took over operations there.

Wilson said Temple-Inland has not been blamed for any past fish kills to his knowledge. Dauzat could not say when the past fish kills happened.

Mississippi officials opened the Ross Barnett Reservoir on Tuesday night, and its usual flow of 200 cubic feet of water per second has been increased to 2,000 cubic feet per second, said Suzanne Parsons Stymiest, spokeswoman for St. Tammany Parish.

However, the reservoir is more than 100 miles upstream from where the fish began dying, and Dauzat said it could take weeks for the water to flush the pollutants out to the Gulf of Mexico.

The best short-term solution is to remove the dead fish from the river because decaying carcasses continue to deplete oxygen from the waterway, Dauzat said.

Temple-Inland has hired a private company to coordinate the initial cleanup, and on Wednesday, Davis negotiated with the company that the majority of the cleanup employees be hired from the affected areas.
Not only does this agreement help those who depend on the Pearl River for their livelihood, but it also ensures a better cleanup, Davis said.

“They know (the river) like the back of their hands and can really assist in the cleanup effort,” he said.

State of emergency
The state of emergency Davis declared for the parish Tuesday night remained in effect.

No one should swim, wade, fish or come in contact with waterways in the Pearl River watershed, the parish president warned. He also advises that no one eat, handle or collect fish or shellfish from those waters and that pets be kept from the water.

The Pearl River splits into three: the East Pearl River, which borders Mississippi; the West Pearl River, where the parish and the governor’s office have established a command center; and the Middle River. All include tributaries which make up the Pearl River watershed. Citizens should consider all of these bodies of water as contaminated, Stymiest said.

Davis said the company is absolutely taking responsibility for the fish kill “from a cooperation standpoint.” He said the mill is using its resources to clean up the river. As far as reparations go, “we decided we would discuss those issues at a later time. But I had to inform them as president that we believe they are the responsible party,” Davis said.

Gov. Bobby Jindal made harsher statements Wednesday.
“I made it very clear that we expect the company to clean up this mess, not only to make sure that it never happens again before they reopen the plant, but also that they’ve got responsibility to reverse the damage that has been done by this discharge,” Jindal said. “He (CEO of Temple-Inland, Doyle Simons) committed to me that they were going to do that. We are going to hold them accountable to that commitment.”

Jindal said Temple-Inland has made a commitment to pay its employees even while the mill is closed. Jindal also said there could be federal issues as well, including a possible investigation of violation of the Endangered Species Act.

Butch Gautreaux says goodbye

Cenlamar posts state senators Butch Gautreaux’s final speech – a must read since no one in MSM picked it up

Thanks Cenlamar

German Coast Farmers’ Market

A new picture post of the German Coast Farmers’ Market in Destrehan has been added over at NOLA Femmes, check it out!

okra and tomatoes

The latest dish I’ve tackled is okra and tomatoes. I consulted several cookbooks, and stuck primarily to the recipe found in Richard and Rima Collin’s The New Orleans Cookbook.

Since okra and creole tomatoes are in season right now, its the perfect time to make this dish. It can also be made year round, since most grocers carry frozen okra all the time. You can make it vegetarian, serve it as a side dish, or add sausage, shrimp, andouille, ham, tasso or any protein you like to make it a complete dish. It can also be served over rice. Here are the ingredients I used for this version:

Okra and tomatoes

2 pounds okra
6 creole tomatoes, washed, seeded and diced
1 1/2 onions, chopped
1 bunch green onions, chopped (save the green tops to add at the end)
2 jalapenos minced
1 poblano pepper, chopped
1 pound cooked ham seasoning
1/2 pound tasso, diced
2 teaspoons creole mustard
salt, pepper, parsley, red pepper flakes to taste

Here are some of the ingredients

Wash off the okra

Cut off the tops

Then cut the okra into rounds

Cut the tomatoes and remove the seeds and “jelly”

Chop the ham and the tasso

Saute the onions until translucent, about 5 minutes

then add the okra to the onions – notice the ropes in the okra, so continue to cook it until the ropes are cooked off, about 15 minutes

Add the peppers and garlic and stir, cooking for 10 minutes

then add the tomatoes and mix well, cooking for about 5 minutes

Add the ham and tasso

and mix well

Add the secret ingredient, creole mustard

Cover, then cook for 30 minutes, adding the green onion tops the last 5 minutes

then enjoy

add some pecorino romano if you like!

the gift from BP that keeps on giving

Gambit Weekly did an in-depth review of the health effects on coastal oil spill workers in this week’s paper. If BP thinks we’re gonna lay down and die without a fight, they are gravely mistaken.

Links to the NIH study mentioned in the article by Alex Woodward are here and here

Gulf Coast Syndrome”
On the one-year anniversary of the oil disaster, Alex Woodward talks to coastal residents who say they’re coming down with mysterious and frightening illnesses
by Alex Woodward

Paul Doom, a 22-year-old from Navarre, Fla., says despite blood screenings indicating chemical exposure, doctors can’t explain why he suffers seizures after swimming in the Gulf of Mexico last summer.

This is the best-hidden secret perhaps in the history of our nation.”

Dr. Mike Robichaux speaks into a microphone while standing on a truck bed parked in the shade of a massive tree in his yard in Raceland, La. He’s wearing a blue polo shirt and jeans, and his white-gray hair is parted neatly. The former state senator, known affectionately as Dr. Mike, is an ear, nose and throat specialist in Lafourche Parish and self-described “too easygoing of a guy.” Today, he’s pissed. “Nobody is fussing about this,” he says.

Robichaux invited his patients and dozens of others to speak about their situations. Outside of The Houma Courier, The Daily Comet and The Tri-Parish Times, their stories exist solely on blogs and Facebook — unless you visit Al Jazeera English, or sources in Germany, Belgium and elsewhere in Europe. A Swiss TV crew asks me why U.S. media aren’t talking about this. It’s a good question.

In the wake of the BP oil disaster, thousands of Gulf cleanup workers and residents have reported illnesses, with symptoms as tame as headaches or as violent as bloody stools and seizures. Nonprofit groups and teams of scientists are looking for answers using blood tests, surveys, maps, and soil and seafood samples. The National Institute of Health (NIH) began its “Gulf Long-Term Follow-Up Study for Oil Spill Clean Up Workers and Volunteers” (GuLF Study) to follow the health of 55,000 cleanup crew members over 10 years. It’s the largest study to monitor the disaster, but it won’t be treating its participants. Louisiana Bucket Brigade (LABB), a nonprofit environmental group, recently completed its survey of coastal Louisiana residents and found a dire need for medical attention. GuLF Study leader Dr. Dale Sandler says the illnesses “need to be taken seriously.”

“People are sick, and they have concerns,” she says. So where is the help?

Behind Robichaux, cars line a gravel drive along the bayou. Guests pull up chairs around the truck bed, cameras are rolling, and members of the media outweigh the guests 10-to-1. One year after the April 20, 2010 wellhead explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers, spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf for more than 100 days and closed fisheries and businesses along the Gulf Coast, people are listening.

“We wanted to be proactive and go out there and get it cleaned up as fast as we can, and do whatever it takes,” remembers charter boat captain Louis Bayhi, who worked for BP in the early days of the disaster. When his crew made it to shore, he went through a triage tent where doctors asked how he was feeling — but his complaints of headaches were brushed off as seasickness, he says.

Months later, Bayhi still hasn’t been paid for his work as a Vessels of Opportunity participant, a sum he says is $255,000. He’s visited hospitals for severe abdominal pains, but he doesn’t have health insurance, and no insurance provider will take him on, he says. He lost his home, and he and his family — his wife and his 2- and 3-year-old daughters — now live with his wife’s grandmother. The family visited Grand Isle beaches in August, where his kids swam in the water and played in the sand.

“My little girls now have more toxins in their blood than I have. That hurts more. I blame myself,” he says, fighting back tears. “I let them go and swim and play in the beach, but at the same time those sons of bitches said it was safe.”

Bayhi’s story is not uncommon for many living on the Gulf Coast.

One of the first “whistleblowers” in south Louisiana, Kindra Arnesen, a fisherman’s wife in Plaquemines Parish, became a public face of mysterious diagnoses and chemical exposure symptoms in south Louisiana last summer. Others have come forward, like 22-year-old Paul Doom from Navarre, Fla., who says he swam in the Gulf last summer and now experiences daily seizures and is in a wheelchair following a stroke, yet the hundreds of doctors he has seen can’t explain why, he says.

Clayton Matherne is a former professional wrestler of 15 years, and at 295 lbs., he looks it. “When I first met him, he was dying. Literally dying,” Robichaux says.

Matherne was an engineer on a support boat near the Deepwater rig when it exploded and says crews sprayed dispersants directly on top of him. Matherne wasn’t provided a respirator. Since May 30, 2010, he’s suffered paralysis, impaired vision, severe headaches, and he frequently coughs up blood. “I don’t know why things are happening like this,” he says through tears in a YouTube video dated March 25. “It seems to get worse every day. … It’s driving me crazy. … I prayed that God last night would let me die. I’m tired of suffering, and tired of watching my family suffer.”

Matherne’s wife Becky says her parents are supporting the family after they lost their house. She says she and her husband have been approved for a home through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“It’s really not like anything I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been doing this 25 years,” says Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) director Marylee Orr. LEAN started receiving health complaints from Gulf workers and residents in the explosion’s aftermath. The group purchased $10,000 worth of respirators (about 200) and protective gear for oil cleanup responders, but BP wouldn’t allow the workers to use them, she says. Stuart Smith, the group’s attorney, argued that the Master Vessel Charter Agreement, a contract to hire fishermen to perform cleanup operations for BP, didn’t account for the health and safety of the workers.

Smith has served as lead counsel against more than 100 Big Oil cases and currently represents at least 1,000 clients along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida tackling BP and others involved with the Deepwater rig. His clients include the United Commercial Fisherman’s Association, the Gulf Coast Charter Captain Alliance and hundreds of sick Gulf workers. (The firm is scheduled to face Transocean Ltd. — the company that owned the rig — in court in February 2012.) “They did what they did,” Smith says. “My job is make them pay for it.”

Working with LEAN and Smith is a team of researchers and scientists across the Gulf Coast led by environmental scientists and toxicologists William Sawyer and Marco Kaltofen. The team has collected seafood samples for safety tests and sent blood work to Metametrix, a clinical laboratory in Duluth, Ga. Results from one patient’s volatile solvents blood screening show higher-than-average levels of ethylbenzene and xylene, two compounds present in oil. According to Metametrix, adverse effects that can follow exposure to the compounds include “brain fog,” hearing loss, headache and fatigue; continued exposure to xylene can affect kidneys, lungs, heart and the nervous system. The patient’s blood work also showed the presence of hexane, 2-Methylpentane and 3-Methylpentane and isooctane — compounds present in oil and gas.

LEAN also reported three divers from EcoRigs, a nonprofit marine science group, found high levels of ethylbenzene and xylene in their blood tests after diving in the Gulf near Grand Isle and the Mississippi Canyon, the site of the Deepwater rig explosion. Their symptoms include bloody stools, bleeding from the nose and eyes, nausea, diarrhea, stomach cramps and dizziness.

From July to October 2010, LABB and Tulane University’s Disaster Resiliency Leadership Academy performed 934 health surveys of residents in Terrebonne, Jefferson, Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes at seven survey sites. The results show three-quarters of respondents reported an increase in coughing, eye irritation, headaches and sinus irritation. Grand Isle resident Betty Dowd, who suffers a persistent cough, says its residents need blood work “to find out what exactly is causing these problems — whether it’s BP or not, we just need to know where it’s coming from.”

Pointing to the health and lack of long-term studies of Exxon Valdez victims, 9/11 cleanup workers and FEMA trailer residents, LABB director Anne Rolfes says she hopes the survey results serve as a warning sign. “We don’t want to be in a situation 10 years from now … where we wish we would’ve done something,” she says. The data should be used “not just to study people but treat their problems,” she says. “We don’t want to end up in 10 years with data on a bunch of dead bodies.”

The report recommends the government provide better access to health care (including mental health services). Only 54 percent of respondents had health insurance, and just 31 percent sought treatment.

“The money’s another situation, that’ll come, the good Lord will take care of me and my family,” Bayhi says. “But without your health, you don’t have nothing. I just praise God every day that I’ll be able to wake up and continue to watch my little girls grow up.”

Many cleanup workers and coastal residents blame the dispersants and an oil-dispersant mix for their illnesses. Sprayed by planes and pumped into the Gulf, more than 1.8 million gallons of the dispersant Corexit were used to break up the oil — though the product is banned in the U.K., and in May 2010, the EPA provided BP with a list of less harmful dispersants. BP stuck with Corexit.

Douglas Blanchard, a third-generation fisherman (“I got my degree on the back deck of a shrimp boat,” he says), was hired to handle dispersants, but he says he wasn’t allowed to use a respirator. “They never gave us no nothing to breathe, no protection,” he says. “It was a bad smell — it’d burn your nose, your eyes, your throat, headaches. Take pills like they’re candy, all day.”

He was flown via helicopter to West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero where he says he was scrubbed with soap by workers clad in hazmat suits. “Afterward, they told us it’s not harmful,” he says. “We made good money, but the money’s not worth it.”

Tate Cantrell also remembers bringing a respirator on board his boat before handling dispersants and says he and his crew would be fired if they were caught wearing them. He says he now has trouble breathing. “It feels like an elephant on your chest all the time, like your lungs want to collapse,” he says. “I made a little bit of money, but everything I have now I’m trying to sell just to stay alive.”

The dispersants Cantrell and others were exposed to are a product of Nalco Holding Company, which has several high-profile oil industry ties. Exxon Mobil former president Daniel Sanders now sits on Nalco’s board of directors, and its audit committee chairman, Rodney Chase, served as BP’s chief executive and managing director from 1992 to 2003.

Deepwater Horizon Response, the multi-agency oil response team helmed by BP, says it halted dispersant use in July, but both residents and cleanup workers say dispersant still was being sprayed months later.

Dr. Sandler with the NIH GuLF Study says one of the aspects of the study is a look at the effects of dispersants versus the effects from oil exposure. “I think the exposure people have had varied quite a bit, depending on where they were and when, and when things during the spill were happening,” she says. “The issue is, what is the source of the chemicals in their blood, and how to interpret it? By starting with the workers, we can see who among them gets sick. It will be easier to draw conclusions, (and) we’ll understand the full range. If one person gets sick, that’s not a trend. One of the concerns people have is if you measure someone’s blood today, it does not reflect exposure they received from the oil spill, unless there are ongoing exposures. As best I know, that oil well is capped. There may be other ongoing sources of oil in the community or other things to cause the [levels of contaminants in the blood] to go up, but until you’ve done studies like ours, you just don’t know what to make of it. But we do have concerns for these people. They need to get medical care. They need to be seen.”

What puzzles Robichaux and others, however, is that many blood screenings show no sign of chemicals despite the patients’ illnesses. Commercial fisher and marine toxicologist Riki Ott believes chemicals may have “parked” in fatty tissue, and other tests are necessary. “If you go get a blood test now, it might not show any oil in your blood,” she says. “It’s not a clear reflection of what’s in your body.”

  Ott closely studied the environmental and health effects following the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, after which she wrote two books, Sound Truth and Corporate Myth$: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Since 2004, she has helped shift oil-dependent communities to more sustainable resources. She arrived in the Gulf in May 2010 and has been here since.

“I witnessed the emergence of a public health epidemic,” she says. “I think 6 million people, conservatively, were overexposed to dangerous levels of chemicals,” accounting for residents along the coast and its tourists. Ott believes Gulf residents deserve long-term medical attention, an overlooked need in Alaska, where workers who cleaned up following the Exxon disaster continued to suffer long after their jobs were finished.

  Sandler says the GuLF Study will examine long-term health effects and chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease. She points to the 2002 Prestige disaster that spilled 20 million gallons of oil into the Atlantic Ocean off the Spanish coast. A Spanish Navy study five years later found those involved with cleanup suffered from lung and cardiovascular diseases.

“I’m very happy they want to put resources in documenting the workers’ health, but that’s not enough,” says Orr with LEAN. “Where’s someone to help them with all this?”

After the testimonies, Robichaux’s patients and their families and reporters swarm him. He smiles and shakes hands before going inside the house to see his daughter before she leaves for a dance.

  In a private conversation, Robichaux confides, “I’ve been working for this community for 40 years. These are my people.” He sees about 60 patients, he says, though most from a distance. His wife Brenda is principal chief of the United Houma Nation.

  ”We don’t have answers,” Brenda tells the audience in Raceland. “But we’re trying to come together, get a really good handle on what’s happening — the illnesses and all the consequences — and stand together to see what we can do to see something happen.”

  Clayton Matherne’s wife Becky echoes Brenda. “We all need to stick together as one,” she says. “Without us being a whole, we can’t fight, we can’t do nothing.” Becky lowers her voice before she leaves the microphone. “I hope you all aren’t that sick,” she says. “And our prayers go out to you if you are.”

mother earth is still bleeding around the mouth of the river

Its like she has all these open sores from the abandoned wells that she cannot close off – and all the while our coast continues to die from it

Here is one west of the mouth of the river, near Grand Isle

Shallow Gulf well is source of mysterious oil sheen near Grand Isle, state official says
Published: Tuesday, March 22, 2011, 6:22 PM Updated: Tuesday, March 22, 2011, 11:00 PM
By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune

A large sheen of oil that has confounded the Coast Guard and state officials for days has been traced to a well-capping accident about 20 miles southwest of Southwest Pass, a state official said.

Meanwhile, environmentalists reported new, unconfirmed sightings Tuesday of what appeared to be surface oil over several miles in Chandeleur Sound, all the way on the other side of the Mississippi River’s delta.

A state official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a continuing Coast Guard investigation, said the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries traced the emulsified oil on the west side of the river to its apparent source at West Delta Block 117. He said tests by a state-contracted lab confirmed that was the source of the oil.

Three discharges of oil from Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners’ Platform E facility were reported to the Coast Guard, records show. The first came Friday, with a report of a “downed platform” and half a gallon of spilled crude during operations to plug and abandon the well. Another report Sunday said the same incident had spilled 1.33 gallons of oil. A third report on Monday of 1.89 gallons of spilled oil was classified by the Coast Guard as “operator error.”

Late Tuesday night, Houston-based Anglo-Suisse issued a statement acknowledging that the Coast Guard believes it may be responsible for the spill and accepting responsibility for cleanup. Anglo-Suisse said it was surprised because the well is “non-producing and has been monitored closely for the last six months.” The company said it had reconnected the wellhead structure Tuesday morning and fully shut it in by 8:30 p.m.

The company said it was the 12th well in the area to undergo plugging and abandonment operations. Crews have been monitoring the site since September and didn’t report any oil discharge until the end of last week.

Wildlife and Fisheries officials found the source of the oil Monday evening and encountered workers in a boat trying to restore a cap on the well using a remotely operated submarine. “Well-capping went out of control,” the state official said.

The well in question is in shallow water, about 210 feet deep, but the specter of any well-capping accident comes at the worst possible time for federal regulators, who have just approved the first four deepwater drilling projects since last spring’s BP oil disaster — mostly predicated on the oil companies’ assurances that they can now cap their wells quickly in case of a blowout.

Environmental groups pounced on the symbolism of the latest spills.
“We have thousands of spills every year. The BP spill just called attention to it, but it’s really the Wild West out here,” said Anne Rolfes of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. “There are laws on the books that are unenforced. The record is clear that we don’t have the situation under control. It’s taken several days to figure out where (the spill west of the river) is coming from, and if we don’t have the technology to do that, then we shouldn’t be drilling new wells at all.”

According to federal government data, several wells in that 3-square-mile block were operated by Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners LLC. A news release from the former federal Minerals Management Service said in 2006 that five wells in that drilling area had platforms damaged in Hurricane Katrina. The state official said the spilling well is one that used to have a platform over it, but lost it during Katrina.

The Coast Guard, meanwhile, still isn’t ready to say where the spill originated. “We don’t have any report of it actually being identified,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer Steve Leeman.

At a news conference earlier Tuesday, Coast Guard officials said only between ¼- and ½-mile of beach was directly affected by oily material within the 30-mile stretch between Grand Isle and West Timbalier Island where the sheen and emulsified oil has been seen.

Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, told reporters during a break in a conference in New Orleans earlier Tuesday that while officials with is agency had conducted a flyover of the affected area, the Coast Guard was handling the response and “exploring all possibilities.”
“I think right now, it remains a mystery,” Bromwich said.

and another east of the Mississippi near the fragile Chandeleur Islands courtesy of Anglo Suisse Offshore Partners, located in Houston, Texas.

New sightings of apparent oil near Chandeleur islands reported from flyover
Published: Tuesday, March 22, 2011, 7:26 PM Updated: Tuesday, March 22, 2011, 11:35 PM
By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune

Even as officials tried to determine the source of weathered oil near Grand Isle, whole new swaths of what could be fresh surface oil have popped up on the other side of the Mississippi River, in the open water between the delicate coastal bayous and the sandy crescent-shaped Chandeleur barrier islands.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Steve Leeman said the Coast Guard had received no reports of oil-like material east of the river, but a group of environmentalists, engineers and scientists flew over Chandeleur Sound on Monday and Tuesday, and shared photographs and detailed descriptions with The Times-Picayune showing black, streaky plumes over a 20-mile stretch from just east of Quarantine Bay to just west of the shoal remains of Curlew Island.

That expedition was led by Bonny Schumaker, founder of the California environmental nonprofit group On Wings of Care Inc. It included Jim Franks, a scientist at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, and mechanical engineer Don Abrams.

“I lived on Chandeleur Island for seven weeks before the (BP) spill and I have never seen anything like this, other than what happened with the Deepwater Horizon,” said Abrams, who took photographs during the flyover.

“It’s too early in the season for this to be an algal bloom. It’s just not the color of the algae I’ve seen. I try to approach this very rationally and as a serious skeptic, so I’m not willing to say 100 percent conclusively it’s oil. But I’ve been out to the islands during the BP spill and stepped in it and it looks very much like oil to me.”

Schumaker’s log of the trip Tuesday described the sheen as larger than the day before and darker in color than the weathered oil to the west of the river, suggesting it may be fresher. Abrams said it appeared to be very close to the surface.

Coast Guard checks out dark-stained water in Chandeleur Sound
Published: Wednesday, March 23, 2011, 11:20 PM
By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune

The Coast Guard began an investigation of a large area of dark-stained water in the Chandeleur Sound on Wednesday to determine whether it might be oil, even as the agency was overseeing a separate cleanup of oil near Grand Isle, to the west of the Mississippi River.
“We have a crew out there sampling it and trying to identify what it is,” Petty Officer Stephen Lehmann said of the suspect water stretching from just east of Curlew Island to just west of Quarantine Bay along the east side of the Mississippi. “We’ve done some overflights with helicopters to gauge how big a thing this is and what it is.”
Test results should be complete by Thursday afternoon, he said.
John Arenstam, the Coast Guard’s New Orleans deputy sector commander, said Wednesday that his agency had received reports of oil-like material east of the river from officials with the state Department of Environmental Quality, who flew over Chandeleur Sound on Tuesday. The 20 miles of black streaky plumes were first spotted by environmentalists and scientists during flights over the area Monday and Tuesday.

Arenstam said there’s a good chance the dark water may be an algae bloom, though it’s still early in the year for such events. “We’ve had extreme high water increases in the Mississippi River,” and rapidly rising water full of sediment could spark such a bloom, he said. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard confirmed that it has notified Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners that preliminary samples suggest oil samples collected from Elmer’s Island, to the west of Grand Isle, match those from the company’s West Delta 117 well, which sits in about 210 feet of water 30 miles southeast of Grand Isle. The well is also a few miles east-southeast of the mooring point for tankers unloading at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port.

The Coast Guard said Anglo-Suisse agreed to aid in the cleanup, pending further tests of samples that might confirm where the oil is from. But the Coast Guard has not determined that the company is the legal “responsible party.”

“We do not believe the spill along the coast is the result of our operations, however, when the Coast Guard informed us that this might be the case, the responsible thing to do was mobilize,” said Anglo-Suisse CEO John Sherwood in a news release issued by the Coast Guard.

The company said it reported to the Coast Guard on Friday “a discharge of less than five gallons of oil from a non-producing well that was in the process of being plugged and abandoned in accordance with federal regulations.” The company said the well was fully shut in by 8 a.m. Tuesday, and is no longer capable of flowing. The plug-and-abandon operation involved a well that has been shut in since 2005.

An offshore construction and dive vessel have been at the site since September, with crew members monitoring the well continuously on the surface and at the wellhead under water, the company said. Anglo-Suisse is a privately held company based in Houston. It received Safe Operator Awards from the former Minerals Management Service in 2005 and 2007. The company has hired O’Brien’s Response Management to supervise the cleanup.

The Coast Guard said an overflight from just east of Grand Isle to the eastern end of Timbalier Island and 12 miles offshore found no oil Wednesday. No oil was visible at the West Delta wellhead, either.
About 8,400 feet of containment boom has been deployed to prevent damage to beaches and wetlands, and eight skimmers and 10 barge boats are in the area.

Over the weekend, the Coast Guard reported test results of a third area of suspicious water stretching south from off Grand Isle, saying small quantities of oily substances were below the state DEQ’s water standards.

The reports about the potential oil releases has some environmentalists concerned. “I’m frustrated by the lack of solid information about these incidents,” said David Muth, coastal Louisiana state director for the National Wildlife Federation and former chief of planning at Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve. “Do we know for sure how many separate incidents we’re dealing with? Do we have a handle on how much oil is involved?

“If several simultaneous events are taking place, are they freak occurrences or are they routine?” he said. “If we can’t be sure what’s going on, how can we be sure how to respond? And is this indicative of the fact that we are a long way from having an effective response capability for offshore drilling?”