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Gulf Coast Oil Disaster: Photos and Videos (Ongoing)
GETTY IMAGES
A worker uses a shovel to remove an oil glob from the beach Thursday, July 1, in Biloxi, Mississippi.GETTY IMAGES A worker uses a shovel to remove an oil glob from the beach Thursday,... more-
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A Bird's Eye View of the Oil Disaster
CNN iReport Blog Saturday, June 19, 2010
One day, a pelican is flying free and the next, it's thirsty, covered in gooey oil, and being transported 20 minutes via truck to a place it can be cleaned up with detergents. iReporter Michael Rusch has gotten a true bird's eye view of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in Louisiana, whether watching pelican feathers get cleaned or sitting in the cockpit of a helicopter high over the water.
Rusch says just three weeks ago, he was a guy in a loft in New York. But the disaster compelled him to head out to the Gulf Coast to see what was going on for himself. Inside the Fort Jackson Oiled Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, U.S. wildlife officials told him the rescued birds often come in scared and dehydrated and are given a day to calm down before the cleanup takes place. Rusch said wildlife officials emphasized that the cleaning procedure was probably the scariest thing these pelicans had ever experienced.
"They're very subdued. You can tell that they're very stressed," Rusch said of the oily birds. "They're huddled together, they're scared, they're nervous."
Rusch’s videos show cleaners holding a bird while another does the washing. He captured images of the cleaned birds in a more natural setting afterward, and said they did seem more relaxed at that point.
Rusch is one of many journalistic-minded folks who've headed to the Gulf to help tell this story. He says he's gotten inside access including interviewing Kevin Costner and eating lunch with cleanup workers. He says he's gotten the impression that many organizations, especially BP, are increasingly making their operations more transparent so people are updated on what's going on.
"Just the sheer size of it is a very daunting visual. You're sitting in the helicopter and you can see the oil spilling out in all directions."
Editor's Note: This blog post is part of a series of profiles of Gulf Coast residents and visitors directly affected by the oil disaster. If you'd like to share your story, you can upload photos and videos to CNN iReport.CNN iReport Blog Saturday, June 19, 2010 One day, a pelican is flying free and the... more-
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BP Cleanup Crews, in Louisiana, Have Trampled Pelican Nests and Eggs, And Have Killed Newly-Hatched Chicks By Crushing Them - Graphic Photo
By the CNN Wire Staff
June 16, 2010 9:55 a.m. EDT
Photo: The nesting grounds of brown pelicans and other birds have been affected, the Plaquemines Parish president says.
Venice, Louisiana (CNN) -- Crews cleaning up the oil in one Louisiana parish have trampled the nests and eggs of birds including the brown pelican, which came off the endangered species list last year, the head of the parish said Wednesday.
Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said the parish doesn't want to turn away contractors, but he called for more care when crews work in the sensitive wetlands.
He said officials recently found broken eggs and crushed chicks on Queen Bess Island, near Grand Isle.
Plastic bags containing snare boom were "recklessly placed" around the island without consideration for wildlife. In one picture released by the parish, a plastic bag was on top of a nest containing broken speckled eggs.
Dozens of people, including experienced veterinarians, have been going to the area from all over the country to help with the affected wildlife, the parish said.
Nungesser met with the Humane Society of the United States and asked it to work with contractors who are cleaning the birds to come up with a better way to enlist the help of volunteers, the parish said.
"We want to improve our comfort level of knowing someone is out there looking for these birds and other animals -- doing all they can to save them," Nungesser said on the parish website.
"The people BP sent out to clean up oil trampled the nesting grounds of brown pelicans and other birds," he said. "Pelicans just came off the endangered species list in November of last year. They already have the oil affecting their population during their reproduction time, now we have the so-called clean up crews stomping eggs.
"The lack of urgency and general disregard for Louisiana's wetlands and wildlife is enough to make you sick," he said.By the CNN Wire Staff June 16, 2010 9:55 a.m. EDT Photo: The nesting grounds of... more-
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Gallup Poll for June 16, 2010: Many Americans Say Gulf Beaches, Wildlife Will Never Recover
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To see the various graphs, try clicking on this link. However, if it doesn't work, go to: gallup.com , and look for Poll Number 140762
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June 16, 2010
Many Americans Say Gulf Beaches, Wildlife Will Never Recover
Nearly all agree that full recovery will take 10 years or more
by Lydia Saad
PRINCETON, NJ -- From what they have seen of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill rolling onto America's shores, nearly half of Americans (49%) believe that at least some of the affected beaches will never recover. Even more, 59%, believe normal levels for some animal species will never be restored.
Predicted Timeline for Full Recovery of Gulf Shore Beaches, Wildlife (Including Fish and Birds)
More generally, Americans foresee a very long road to recovery for both the U.S. beaches and wildlife affected by the BP oil spill. The vast majority believe it will be a decade or more, if at all, before either aspect of the Gulf environment is back to normal; few think a full recovery will happen within four years.
Separately, Americans broadly agree that the oil spill will negatively affect the U.S. economy and the U.S. consumer. Roughly four in five believe the overall U.S. economy will be hurt, that gas prices will go up, and that food prices will increase.
Possible Economic Effects of Gulf Oil Spill
Women More Pessimistic Than Men About Undoing Oil Damage
The most striking subgroup differences in views about the oil spill's impact are by gender, with women much more pessimistic than men. (Gallup has previously found women to be more concerned than men about environmental matters.)
Sixty percent of women, compared with 37% of men, believe some Gulf beaches will never recover -- a 23 percentage-point gap. Additionally, there is a 13-point gap between men's and women's perceptions of whether the affected wildlife will fully recover.
Predicted Timeline for Recovery of Beaches Predicted Timeline for Recovery of Wildlife
Women are also more likely than men to believe that gas prices will increase (83% vs. 74%), and that the U.S. economy in general will be hurt (88% vs. 78%).
Bottom Line
In his remarks when visiting the Gulf shoreline this week, as well as in his Oval Office address Tuesday night, President Obama has stressed the need for a long-term commitment to the oil spill cleanup. Americans may be getting impatient with BP and the federal government for not doing enough to cap the gushing oil rig and contain the leaked oil, but it appears they are resigned to a lengthy process to restore the beaches and wildlife, with perhaps limited success.
Survey Methods
Results for this USA Today/Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June 11-13, 2010, with a random sample of 1,014 adults, aged 18 and older, living in the continental U.S., selected using random-digit-dial sampling.
For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell phone-only). Each sample includes a minimum quota of 150 cell phone-only respondents and 850 landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents for gender within region. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.
Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, education, region, and phone lines. Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2009 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in continental U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.___ To see the various graphs, try clicking on this link. However, if it... more-
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Brown Pelican Long a Symbol of Survival
Brown pelican long a symbol of survival
By Wayne Drash, CNN
June 15, 2010 11:51 a.m. EDT
Photo: Oiled pelicans await treatment at the Fort Jackson Oiled Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Buras, Louisiana.
(CNN) -- Long before the brown pelican came to symbolize the tragedy of the Gulf oil spill, the giant bird stood for something much greater: survival against all odds.
The state bird of Louisiana was nearly wiped out by pesticides in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet after decades of conservation efforts, the brown pelican just last year was removed from the endangered species list.
"At a time when so many species of wildlife are threatened, we once in a while have an opportunity to celebrate an amazing success story," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declared on November 11. "Today is such a day. The brown pelican is back."
Now, eight months later, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal stands on the deck of a boat near Pelican Island off the Louisiana coast. He's surveying efforts to protect the state's wetlands. He's ordered the National Guard to begin building barriers in the ocean to try to stop the oil from reaching shore.
Yet Jindal pauses to talk about the brown pelican. The recent images of pelicans, coated in BP oil like grotesque statues, have taken on the symbolism of the spill. Louisiana has long been known as the "Pelican State," with the bird gracing the state flag.
"Here's what's really sad," Jindal said. "For every one of those mother adult pelicans you're saving, there are many more back there that you can't get to. And for every mother pelican you're saving, there may be a nest, there may be eggs that can't be saved.
"And that's the tragedy in this: That for every animal we see, what's this oil doing to their young? What's this oil doing to their life cycles?"
The recovery of the pelicans, before the spill, was largely attributed to the ban of the toxic chemical DDT in 1972. The pesticide traveled down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico.
Three species were most affected: the brown pelican, the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. A component of DDT accumulated in each of those birds and, as a result, it affected the strength of the eggs they laid.
"The result was that you had thinner egg shells in the nest. During incubation, all the species had the tendency to break the eggs more easily," said Dr. Doug Inkey, a senior scientist for the National Wildlife Federation. "This resulted in a huge population decline in all three species."
The bald eagle, peregrine falcon and brown pelican were all listed on the endangered species list. In the case of the brown pelican, wildlife officials in Louisiana and Florida teamed up to help save the bird over a 13-year period. A total of 1,276 young pelicans were captured in Florida and then released at three sites in southeastern Louisiana, according to the Interior Department.
"When their populations were low, we brought in those brown pelicans from Florida," Jindal said. "Now, when we capture them oiled, clean them up and rehabilitate them, we have to release them back in Florida to get away from this oil."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has deployed more than 450 people across the Gulf to respond to the nation's worst environmental disaster. As of Monday, the oil threatened 36 National Wildlife Refuges. Nearly 1,200 birds have been saved, including 728 in Louisiana.
Ron Britton of the Fish and Wildlife Service gave a CNN crew a tour of the marsh islands near Grand Isle, Louisiana, a prime breeding ground where oiled pelicans have been spotted.
"What you're trying to do is get in and get those as quick as you can," Britton told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "But the ones you're missing have less chance each night you can't get back. And the ones we don't get back, we're pretty sure are going somewhere and not surviving."
Oil affects pelicans in various ways. The birds' feathers interlock in a way that helps regulate cooling and, when oil soaks their feathers, the birds lose the ability to do that, biologists say.
"Brown pelicans dive into the water for fish. As they break the water, that's one of the ways they contact the oil. Then, once it's on their feathers, the birds preen daily," said Jennifer Coulson, president of the Orleans Audubon Society.
"When they're preening, they ingest all the BP oil. And so, that's another way they get sick and die."
Inkey of the National Wildlife Federation added, "When they get back to their nests, then they rub some of the oil from their chests to their eggs -- and oil on eggs is not a good mix. It's usually deadly for the developing embryo."
Inkey recently visited a brown pelican-nesting habitat along the Louisiana coast. Hundreds of the birds lived together in nests about 6 feet high in mangrove trees along the shore. There were two layers of protective booms surrounding the island that were "close to being worthless."
"We saw more oil inside the booms than we saw outside the booms," he said. "It was surrounded by a bathtub ring of oil."
His first thought: What's going to happen to the pelicans this year?
What's this oil doing to their young? What's this oil doing to their life cycles?
--Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
"This is the worst-case scenario: It's during breeding season," he said. "We're likely to lose a whole generation of young of many different species. ... It only takes once for a bird to really get messed up in oil for it to have an effect on the nesting success."
He and other biologists said it's far too early to know the full effect of the oil spill on the larger population of brown pelicans -- and whether the bird would ever make it back to the endangered species list. "It would be premature to suggest that," Inkey said.
Biologists said the pelican -- known for its long beak with a hooked tip and its 6-foot wingspan -- is better equipped to survive than smaller birds that ingest oil in greater proportion to their size. In addition, there are five species of sea turtles in the Gulf, and all are endangered or threatened.
"A sea turtle hatchling does not stand a chance," Inkey said.
Regardless, it's a dire situation for all types of wildlife in the region, biologists said.
Yet it was the images of the oil-soaked pelicans that brought home the scope of the disaster -- and its potential devastating consequences. The birds survived DDT, the constant erosion of Louisiana wetlands and Hurricane Katrina.
Inkey already had returned from his visit when the photos first appeared. "I got sick in my stomach," he said. "I had seen oiled pelicans, but not like that. The ones I saw were simply gray. These were just heartbreaking."
He paused. "How do you explain a picture like that to young children and get them to understand that this is something, although unintentional, that man caused?"
CNN's Dugald McConnell and Brian Todd contributed to this report.Brown pelican long a symbol of survival By Wayne Drash, CNN June 15, 2010 11:51 a.m.... more-
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Oil Flow Estimate Has Been Raised to 35,000-60,000 Barrels a Day, Up to 50% More Than Previous Estimate
By the CNN Wire Staff
June 15, 2010 5:40 p.m. EDT
President Obama addresses the nation live Tuesday night at 8 ET with the latest on the BP oil disaster. Watch it live on CNN, CNN.com/Live and the CNN iPhone app.
(CNN) -- Government officials Tuesday increased the estimate of oil flowing into the Gulf to between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels (1.5 million to 2.5 million gallons) per day, up to 50 percent more than previously estimated.
The government's previous estimate, issued last week, was 20,000 to 40,000 barrels per day. The change was "based on updated information and scientific assessments," and was reached by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and Chair of the National Incident Command's Flow Rate Technical Group Marcia McNutt, the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center said.
"The improved estimate is based on more and better data that is now available and that helps increase the scientific confidence in the accuracy of the estimate," it said.
Lawmakers hammered oil companies Tuesday as President Obama toured the Florida coast to reassure Americans that the government had firm command over the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
At Pensacola Naval Air Station, Obama declared war on the massive slick, as though it were an enemy lurking offshore.
"This is an unprecedented environmental disaster," Obama told a crowd of soldiers, Marines and sailors. "This is an assault in our nation's shore, and we're going to fight back with everything we've got."
The tough talk on soft sand preceded Obama's first-ever national address from the Oval Office, slated for Tuesday night. In the symbolically important speech, Obama will lay out a game plan for dealing with the worst oil spill in U.S. history, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told CNN.
Gibbs said Obama will outline containment and cleanup plans and address America's need to reduce dependency on foreign oil and fossil fuels.
Americans, frustrated with the incessant undersea gusher and also what some perceive as a lack of White House leadership, are sure to be listening, especially to what the president has to say regarding claims. The process has become a sore subject for those whose livelihoods have been stung by sheets of oil drifting in the Gulf and washing ashore.
Health threats from the Gulf oil disaster could last for years, and officials lack knowledge on how long chemicals in the spilled oil and dispersants will remain toxic, a health expert told a Senate committee Tuesday.
A Food and Drug Administration official told a Senate committee Tuesday that seafood from the Gulf of Mexico available to consumers in stores and restaurants is safe. "We are confident that Gulf of Mexico seafood that is in the market today is safe to eat," said Mike Taylor, deputy commissioner of the FDA.
Also Tuesday, BP said it suspended the operation to siphon oil from the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico after a fire aboard a drill ship Tuesday morning.
Siphoning resumed Tuesday afternoon, BP said.
The fire was likely caused by a lightning strike, and siphoning was suspended as a precaution, BP said. There were no reported injuries.
The spill now dwarfs the 11 million gallons that were dumped into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 when the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground, and oil in varying amounts and consistencies has hit the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
BP has been siphoning oil from a containment cap placed on the ruptured well but had to suspend oil collection Tuesday after a fire aboard the drilling ship Discover Enterprise.
A statement from the company attributed the fire to lightning. It said operations would restart Tuesday afternoon.
Obama is scheduled to meet with top BP officials in a highly anticipated meeting Wednesday. Speedy claims processing will be high on the agenda.
David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser, has said a new claims plan would call for an independent third party to handle the process, and a White House spokesman said the administration is confident that it has the legal authority to force BP to set up an escrow account for the purpose of paying damages.
BP announced Tuesday that it accelerated commercial large-loss claims and has approved 337 checks for $16 million to businesses that have filed claims in excess of $5,000. Initial payments began over the weekend and will be completed this week, the British energy giant said.
In Washington, senior Democrats launched a blistering attack on oil companies at a key House subcommittee hearing.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, said that four of the five largest oil firms have produced disaster response plans that discuss how to protect walruses, even though there are no walruses in the Gulf.
These are "cookie-cutter plans" that, in reality, are little more than "just paper exercises," he said.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, blasted the heads of ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Shell Oil for producing disaster response plans that are "virtually identical."
They all tout "ineffective identical equipment" and often use "the exact same words" in their plans, he said. They have spent "zero time and money" in developing adequate response blueprints, he asserted.
Meanwhile Tuesday, federal authorities announced guidelines to speed up maritime waivers that would allow more foreign ships -- in addition to the 15 already in the Gulf of Mexico -- to assist in oil cleanup efforts.
"Should any waivers be needed, we are prepared to process them as quickly as possible to allow vital spill response activities being undertaken by foreign-flagged vessels to continue without delay," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's response manager.
The Jones Act, which regulates maritime commerce in U.S. waters, requires that goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flagged ships that have been constructed in the United States and are American-owned. The law was intended to support the U.S. merchant marine industry but now limits foreign vessels from participating in the oil response.
Allen also announced Tuesday the establishment of three positions for deputy incident commanders, who will help oversee operations from the coast. The three will join a response team that already involves roughly 27,000 people.
CNN's Dana Bash, Anderson Cooper and Ed Henry contributed to this report.
http://www.evworld.com/press/greenpeace_northerngannet_bp.jpgBy the CNN Wire Staff June 15, 2010 5:40 p.m. EDT President Obama addresses the... more-
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Heart Breaking Video From The Louisiana Coast
Heart Breaking Video From The Louisiana Coast-
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