Project Katrina

Just a few interesting stories  on the anniversary of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon:

• The Times-Picayune remembers the 11 men whose lives were lost at sea.
• The Center for Public Integrity has an excellent piece today about BP’s public relations work in the Gulf, focusing on one woman in particular who became the company’s friendly face for community outreach programs. Turns out she has history of playing the public on BP’s behalf. Wow, imagine that.
• Scientific American has a story looking at the long-term impact for wildlife in the Gulf, reaching the concludion that there are still more questions than answers.
• The NAACP published a powerful report today, “My Name is 6508799,” which details the economic and health impacts for Gulf coast residents, many of them minorities, in the past year.
• Over at Grist, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) weighs in on what has changed in terms of drilling safety in the past year. His conclusion: Not a damn fucking thing happened. Not a single bill. Not a single change.
• The New York Times has a nice profile of Michael Bromwich, the individual tapped to head the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement in the aftermath of the spill.
• National Geographic looks at six things that the “experts” got wrong about the spill.
• On Tuesday, the federal government reopened the last of the Gulf waters closed to fishing during the spill.

A larger version and background information is located at Graphic.is.

Via the always wonderful ProPublica:

The oil spill that was once expected to bring economic ruin to the Gulf Coast appears to have delivered something entirely different: a gusher of money. Some people profiteered from the spill by charging BP outrageous rates for cleanup. Others profited from BP claims money, handed out in arbitrary ways. So many people cashed in that they earned nicknames—”spillionaires” or “BP rich.” Meanwhile, others hurt by the spill ended up getting comparatively little.

In the end, BP’s attempt to make things right—spending more than $16 billion so far, mostly on claims of damage and cleanup—created new divisions and even new wrongs. Because the federal government ceded control over spill cleanup spending to BP, it’s impossible to know for certain what that money accomplished, or what exactly was done.

As always the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

From the Associated Press:

In sleepy Ocean Springs, Miss., reserve police officers got Tasers. The sewer department in nearby Gulfport bought a $300,000 vacuum truck that never sucked up a drop of oil. Biloxi, Miss., bought a dozen SUVs. A parish president in Louisiana got herself a deluxe iPad, her spokesman a $3,100 laptop. And a county in Florida spent $560,000 on rock concerts to promote its oil-free beaches.

In every case, communities said the new, more powerful equipment was needed to deal at least indirectly with the spill.

In many instances, though, the connection between the spill and the expenditures was remote, and lots of money wound up in cities and towns little touched by the goo that washed up on shore, the AP found in records requested from more than 150 communities and dozens of interviews.