Coast Guard Tells Louisiana Residents Oil Spill is not an Environmental Disaster

Friday, May 28, 2010
Spilled oil in Pass a Loutre, Louisiana (photo: Reuters)

Two days before the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced that the Deepwater Horizon accident had easily eclipsed the Exxon Valdez disaster as the nation’s worst-ever oil spill, U.S. Coast Guard representative Edward Stanton downplayed the seriousness of the matter at a town hall meeting in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.

 
“I don’t consider this an environmental disaster,” Stanton told an audience of concerned fishermen and local residents. “But it is an economic disaster.”
 
Stanton’s remarks did not sit well with those listening. Attendees wanted to know why the U.S. government wasn’t being more active to stem the hemorrhaging of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. They also questioned federal officials’ reluctance to challenge BP, operator of the oil platform, and its attempts to break up the oil using toxic chemicals.
 
“Where the heck does that even come from in the United States that corporations are going to dictate to the government what they’re not going to do and what they will do?” asked fisherman Mike Frenette, regarding the government’s decision to continue allowing BP to use dispersants banned in the United Kingdom.

The USGS estimates between 18 million and 39 million gallons of oil have been discharged into the ocean. The Exxon Valdez spill was 11 million gallons.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
 
Plaquemines Fishermen Ask Who's In Charge, Federal Gov't or BP (by Sabrina Canfield, Courthouse News Service)

Comments

Theo 14 years ago
Someone should dump 500-1,000 gallons of oil on this guy's property. Then lets hear his take on 'enviromental disasters'. He must be on some really heavy drugs to be so out of touch with reality. The entire government is in such heavy denial about its own incompetence, criminal activities and fiscal insanity that every single person from OBama on down to Congress, Cabinet members, Pentagon leaders and every department head should be drug tested and psychologically evaluated for mental illness.
ben benar 14 years ago
The oilspill is not an environmental disaster, it is exactly what your owners tell you it is, nothing more, nothing less. If you are surprised that corporations are corporations are your owners and that they are in the position to dictate anything to the government it is because you have been drugged down with too much infotainment on TV to realize that the USA has slipped into a fully fledged corporate nation, i.e. a fascist nation. In case you want to go deeper into this matter you will find out that the USA does not have a government, it just has corrupt politicians who perform the collective role of the maidservant to the Synagogue of Satan. If you are interested in law you will find out that the fact that the USA does not exercise its sovereignty means that it is no longer a sovereign nation, it is effectively reduced to become the North American dependencies of IsraHell. Any day the Free World may choose the USA can be brought down and US diplomats may be given 48 hours to pack up and leave after which deadline they may be hunted down like ordinary criminals.

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