"Mother Nature Don't Take Sides"

    Mother Nature Don’t Take Sides


    Rising early to begin the second full day of the journey, the Seattle University students were greeted by eighty degree weather and Darryl Malek-Wiley, a Sierra Club employee bearing doughnuts; is there a better combination? He led us to the much-publicized 9th Ward neighborhood where we had the opportunity to get first person accounts of the social and environmental effects the oil industry, Hurricane Katrina, and the BP disaster have had on the community and the neighboring ecosystems.

After arriving at our work site for the day, one of the first people we met was a lifetime resident of the 9th Ward who is dedicated to restoring the area while also improving its sustainability. While he spoke he emphasized the fact that, “nature don’t take sides” explaining how Katrina may have been the impetus for disaster but it was the series of mistakes made by engineers, business people, and government that exacerbated the damage. We listened to his vivid accounts while clearing overgrown paths that would be the foundation of refurbished park trails. This insightful conversation was the perfect transition into a key component of our trip: service. We contributed to an ongoing restoration project in the coastal wetlands; armed with machetes, trash-bags, sunscreen, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The current weatherization and restoration projects as well as the enthusiastic and welcoming people we met highlighted the resilience, dedication, and hope that the city of New Orleans embodies. We were thrilled to be able to experience and contribute to the restoration of this area.

                                                                                                                                 

   
     As a city, New Orleans holds a presence.  This presence can be described as lively, strong, and most definitely, resilient. We have been focusing our trip on the BP Oil Disaster, but in order to grasp the effects that the spill has generated we have closely observed the lasting ecological and social implications that Hurricane Katrina left in her wake.
     Something we learned from our day with the Sierra Club was the strength of the people who are organizing and fighting for their city. The Sierra Club headquarters of Louisiana is run by three paid staff, and in Darryl’s effort to describe the challenges they face he states that, “the problem is…well there are just so many problems”. The community members and social activists of this city hold a shared vision of a healed New Orleans and they work towards this each day by overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges. Some of the most powerful examples of this compassion are:

• After two years of closing the 9th ward neighborhood (one of the areas that was significantly devastated by Katrina), the city eventually allowed residents to return home. Within the 9th ward the state refused to open or give the financial funding to a vital aspect of the community: the neighborhood school. To re-open the school, residents literally broke the gates and began rebuilding their education without consent or assistance of the city government.

• The 9th Ward dealt with the threat of contaminated soil being laid over land where houses had been washed out. The residents demanded to have this sediment tested for contamination before it was deposited. The test results showed high concentrations of heavy metals. The community’s diligent efforts to defend the health and well-being of their neighbors protected families from these harmful substances.
• A major task that is being taken on by organizations like the Sierra Club is restoring coastal wetlands. The Sierra Club brought us to a 4 acre wetland site that is a small portion of the 30,000 acres they hope to eventually restore. Sites like the one we saw have deteriorated in the past decades due to the miles of man-made canals for industrial expansion. This particular canal was where the surge from Katrina entered in and consequently broke the levee of the 9th ward. These efforts to restore wetlands is crucial in upholding the city in a environmentally damaged region.

    John, a voice of activism and long-term resident of the 9th ward, gave of us some sound advice…

“We can’t help what mother nature done, but we can fix what we done.”

John

Booms, Boats, and Insider Trading

 A bleary eyed crew of Seattle University students began the day in much the same way they would at home: with a fresh cup of coffee. We had arranged an early meeting with an official from the Department of Homeland Security who had been stationed at the Unified Command Center on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain since late April, soon after the rig sank. He spent two hours briefing us on everything from the early response, to the BP Deepwater Horizon’s distress signals, to the current status of the remediation process.

 Here are just a few of the key points we gleaned from this informative conversation:

•   We began by first discussing the containment efforts by BP and the government. This complex topic included a breakdown of the timeline from the initial responses to the distress calls and the difficulties faced assessing the situation in the first days when sediment stirred up by the rig was impeding visibility of the remote operated vehicles (ROVs). The DHS official admitted that the boom, which was a focal point of the media throughout the 24/7 coverage, was primarily a cosmetic solution that did not have much success sequestering oil.
•   Our conversation then turned to details of the “vessels of opportunity” hired by BP that employed local fishermen, shrimpers, and what would become anyone with a boat to collect oil with booms and skimmers. Any boat over thirty-five feet in length was compensated $2,500.00 a day plus fuel costs. A more modest compensation of $1,700.00 was given to boats under 35 feet in length plus fuel costs. This ad hoc contracting was important as it allowed fishermen to earn a wage while their primary means of income were inaccessible due to fishery closures and oil encroachment on habitat. However, as the fisheries reopened and these people began to return to work, they found that it was more and more difficult to turn a profit due in part to concerns of hydrocarbon contamination in the seafood.  We will be speaking to members of the fishing and shrimping community later on in the week to examine what this process was like from their perspective.

•         After this assessment of the ecological and social effects of the oil disaster, we began a deeper discussion of the national implications of both the spill and containment attempts on financial markets. As mentioned before, many national and local entities were involved and working at the Unified Command Center. However, a somewhat unexpected agency turned up proving to hold high stakes in the issue surrounding the eventual containment of the oil. Anticipating the potential for improper gains in stock trading, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) set up shop at the UCC to monitor all correspondence and communication within the command center to ensure there was no insider trading being leaked from within the central hub of command.

Obviously much more was covered in this lengthy conversation, but so as not to overwhelm audience, we will be discussing many other issues that arose during the conversation in posts to follow. This account was delivered candidly, and with first hand experiences of many aspects of the clean up efforts. While many have criticized the efforts of the Unified Command throughout its tenure, it is important to remember it was staffed by dedicated individuals working 16-20 hour days for over three months as these tragic events unfolded.

Prelude

On Tuesday, October 5th, 12 Seattle University students embarked on an educational trip to New Orleans, Louisiana for the purpose of creating a photojournalism project aimed at enlightening the public on the impact of the BP Gulf Coast Oil Spill. The trip was envisioned by four passionate Environmental Studies undergrads : Lauren Ressler, Ian Siadak, Carey deVictoria-Michel, and Carli Redfield, and business student Phil Paine, weeks after the oil spill occurred last spring. Other participants include Environmental Law students Marcus Lee and Alec Osenbach, business students Makio Pastolero and Talia Marino and Community/Public Health Nursing graduate students Stefanie and Mary Margaret Thomas.

Over the course of the week, Seattle University students will be partnering with the Sierra Club, Vietnamese American Leaders Association, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Loyola Environmental Club, Bayou Interfaith Shared Community Organization, and YALL: Youth Alliance Louisiana Leaders. We have several educational and volunteer meetings planned for this exciting trip including meeting with the leaders of the EPA command center with the Department of Homeland Security, meeting with representatives from British Petroleum, working on a Sierra Club restoration project, meeting with members of the Vietnamese-American fishing community, working on a wetlands restoration project, and co-hosting a 10/10/10 work party event with students and professors from Loyola University, engaging in various clean-up projects around the city and raising awareness for utilizing the city’s new bike paths. The overarching goal of our group for the week is to gain a dynamic understanding of the current and future impact of the spill by engaging multiple perspectives: local and federal government, British Petroleum, industry workers, environmental activists, and community members. We look forward to absorbing the rich culture New Orleans has to offer and returning to the Pacific Northwest to share the many insightful lessons we will have learned. Stay tuned for daily updates on the status of our trip…