Project Katrina

Via the always wonderful Mother Jones:

We’re not there yet. Today, Representatives Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Lois Capps (D-Calif.) wrote a letter to National Oilwell Varco (NOV)—the company that provided the data display systems used by the drilling crew to monitor the well—demanding that the company hand over key information to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, the independent commission formed by President Obama to investigate the disaster. The information locked away in NOV’s vaults could help the commission recreate the computer displays that engineers on the Deepwater Horizon were looking at just seconds before the rig exploded.

Unfortunately, NOV is declining. In their letter to the company, Markey and Capps cite their difficulties with NOV as a big reason why the commission needs the authority to issue subpoenas—a privilege it doesn’t currently enjoy. The House passed a bill co-sponsored by Markey and Capps (by a vote of 420-1) giving it that power earlier this year. But Senate Republicans stymied any further progress.

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Without subpeona power, the spill commission is toothless. Markey and Capps are using NOV’s heinous stubbornness to hammer that point home, and are lucky to have gotten their bill out the door in a Democrat-controlled House. But it’s not going anywhere in the Senate. Realistically, though, it doesn’t seem as though Democrats would have the legislative capital to burn on empowering the commission anyway. That’s too bad.

Peter Willcox is the Captain of the Greenpeace ship M.V. Arctic Sunrise. Heck he was the Captain of Rainbow Warrior—in command when operatives of the French intelligence service attacked and sunk the ship in 1985, killing one crew member. So when I heard, via Balloon Juice, he as in the area accessing the damage and writing about it, well I was kind of curious. He has a lot to say on BP’s use of Corexit and what his team found. Really needs to be read in full.

Corexit is mostly what BP has used on the spill.  There are a few things to know about Corexit.  One is that is was banned in U.K. over ten years ago because it is so toxic, as in poisonous to humans and sea life. According to the label on the product, it will irritate the eyes, it is not to be inhaled, and it can cause harm to red blood cells, your kidney and liver.  The OSHA data sheet states: component substances have a potential to bioconcentrate, that human health hazard is acute.  Nice stuff.

Also, according to EPA data, Corexit ranked far above other dispersants for toxicity, and far below other dispersants in effectiveness in handling Louisiana crude.

Corexit was also used on the Exxon Valdez spill.  Now read carefully: Almost all the clean up workers who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill are dead.  According to CNN, who made efforts to warn the people of the Gulf about Corexit, the average lifespan of an Exxon Valdez spill worker is 51 years.  That’s almost 30 years less than that of the average American.   There were 11,000 people involved with the Exxon Valdez spill.

Towards the end of his post he concludese, “I have seen many ugly situations during my life. Many of them, like the U.S. Government’s purposely experimenting on Marshall Islanders to study the effects of radiation, I have partly shrugged off because they happened so long ago (50 years in that case). But the BP spill and its effects on the people of the Gulf are happening now. Today. And tomorrow, and for the next 20 years. There are people there who need help right now.”