Only Six Years After BP Oil Disaster, Gulf Coast Is Faced With New Drilling

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/36809-only-six-years-after-bp-oil-disaster-gulf-coast-is-faced-with-new-drilling

The horizon looked like peanut butter.

That’s what Cherri Foytlin thought six years ago as she sat in a boat speeding toward the largest oil spill ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

Then a journalist for a local Louisiana paper, Foytlin enlisted a fisherman and his son to give her a behind-the-scenes look at the damage caused by BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion that killed 11 people and spewed 205.8 million gallons of oil over 87 days in 2010.

They didn’t have to go far. From the brown water, the fisherman pulled out a pelican. The bird was convulsing and covered in oil. They steered the boat back toward land, but it was too late. Foytlin watched the fisherman cry as his son hugged him.

“That’s when I realized how incredibly fragile this Earth is,” Foytlin said. “When I got home, I had to take a really hard look at myself: ‘How have I contributed to this situation?’”

Foytlin was one of many people across the nation asking themselves that question. It wasn’t the first time Gulf-area residents were forced to stare at the crippling effects of offshore drilling on their communities. But it was the first time they felt their struggle with big oil sparked the world’s attention.

That’s important as the Department of the Interior is collecting comments through June 7 on a five-year oil- and gas-leasing plan that expands drilling in the Gulf. The plan proposes to sell 10 leases between 2017 and 2022.

[Nihil]

1. Expecting the people (much less the government) to learn from history is a proven failure. (n/t)