BP Refuses EPA Order to Switch to Less-Toxic Oil Dispersant
Oil washes ashore on 50 miles of Louisiana shoreline as tensions mount over how to treat the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
by Margot Roosevelt and Carolyn Cole
Reporting from Los Angeles and Elmer’s Isalnd, LA –
![[A dispersant plane sprays Corexit 9500 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana. So far, 715,000 gallons of dispersant has been applied since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, mostly on the spill's surface.(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/dispersant.jpg "dispersant.jpg")
A dispersant plane sprays Corexit 9500 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana. So far, 715,000 gallons of dispersant has been applied since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, mostly on the spill’s surface.(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)BP has rebuffed demands from government officials and environmentalists to use a less-toxic dispersant to break up the oil from its massive offshore spill, saying that the chemical product it is now using continues to be “the best option for subsea application.”
On Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave the London-based company 72 hours to replace the dispersant Corexit 9500 or to describe in detail why other dispersants fail to meet environmental standards.
The agency on Saturday released a 12-page document from BP, representing only a portion of the company’s full response. Along with several dispersant manufacturers, BP claimed that releasing its full evaluation of alternatives would violate its legal right to keep confidential business information private.
But in a strongly worded retort, the EPA said that it was “evaluating all legal options” to force BP to release the remaining information “so Americans can get a full picture of the potential environmental impact of these alternative dispersants.”
So far, 715,000 gallons of dispersant has been applied since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, mostly on the spill’s surface. The chemical has also been released near the leaking pipe on the seafloor.
Government officials have justified both uses, saying that if oil reaches the shore, it would do more environmental harm than if it were dispersed off the coast.
Dispersants break oil into droplets that decompose more quickly. But scientists worry that extensive use of the chemicals in the BP spill is increasing marine life’s exposure to the toxins in oil.
“While the dispersant BP has been using is on the agency’s approved list, BP is using this dispersant in unprecedented volumes and, last week, began using it underwater at the source of the leak – a procedure that has never been tried before,” the EPA noted last week, acknowledging that “much is unknown about the underwater use of dispersants.”
In the company’s May 20 letter to the EPA and the Coast Guard, responding to the EPA’s directive, BP operations chief Doug Suttles wrote that only five products on the EPA’s approved list meet the agency’s toxicity criteria. And only one, besides Corexit, is available in sufficient quantities in the next 10 to 14 days, it said.
But that alternative product, Sea Brat #4, according to BP, contains a chemical that could degrade into an endocrine disruptor, a substance that creates hormonal changes in living creatures, and could persist in the environment for years.
As the tensions over how to treat the spill escalated, reddish-brown washes of oil, 2 inches thick in places, soiled Louisiana beaches. Hundreds of workers scooped up gooey piles of sand and stuffed them into plastic bags.
“It is worse today than on the past two days,” said Darren Smith, 43, sweating from his work raking sand at a wildlife refuge on Elmer’s Island. “There’s definitely more oil, and it’s just going to keep coming.”
No booms protected the Elmer’s Island beach because the National Guard had focused on building dams to divert oil from the wetlands behind the beach.
A few miles away at Port Fourchon, plastic barriers that looked like pompoms were strung together along the beach but did a poor job of keeping out the oil. More than 50 miles of Louisiana shoreline has been contaminated so far.
© 2010 Los Angeles Times
My heart just breaks, because I came to love LA and its people. I liked the South and the oak trees with the hanging moss, the food, and the colorful people. I have good memories and it grieves me to think that the beauty that I enjoyed is not going to be there for others to enjoy.
I wonder if the man who was on the Ed Show got his permit so they could drudge to build the sand bar to stop the oil. It just seems silly to me that people who want to work to stop the oil from coming to shore need to get a permit before doing this important task. Can’t city hall wait until after he oil is coming out and then work on permits? That is like making people pay a toll when the government has ordered people to leave the area and taking the tolls off would speed up the process of getting people out of harm’s way. I would think they could lift the permit long enough to start building their sand bar.
I continue to pray over this situation.
In the next four weeks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average will drop at least 300 points upon growing fears of the ongoing economic crisis looming in the United States and abroad as instability in Greece and other European countries suffer the devaluation of the Euro as it tumbles into “no man’s land.”
BP’s latest attempt to cap the oil pipeline 5,000 feet underwater (a.k.a. “Top Kill”) using robots will fail. They will then come up with a “new plan” out of thin-air in an effort to seal the pipe and to instill confidence in the public. The Obama Administration will finally step in to take control of the operation, adding much needed resources in an effort to assuage the outrage being felt by Americans everywhere over this environmental catastrophe. A team of engineers and scientists will be sent down to the ocean floor, via bathyscaphe, in order to view the damage head-on and to make assessments as to how to repair the damage.
Is this a future foretold, or just simple deductive reasoning?
You decide.
I believe it could be the future, but at the same time we can still change the outcome to a more positive outcome. I know Pollyanna, but if one doesn’t keep hope alive they quit fighting. I want to keep my hope alive so I will continue to fight. Faith is what makes us strong and helps us endure the suffering and to allow the pain to make you strong enough to overcome. I am praying to St. Jude. He is known for helping in lost causes.
I believe that part of the problem is that the people who live there who are trying to fight this thing have to worry about getting permits before starting their work to build a sand bar to put the oil on that first. The Ed Show first broke the story on Friday. CNN had a story and the guy on last night. I am glad this important story is getting out. It is stupid things like this that make Americans angry at our government. Not only to the locals have to fight the oil they have to also fight city hall for permits before beginning work on their plan to save the wetlands and wildlife that is being destroyed this very second. Back to the Summer of DISCONTENT.
Well, I better get going. Have a good day!!
Chrisy