Friday, August 27, 2010
Subsea Structures May Be in Seismic Danger Zone part 2
Gulf of Mexico Subsea Structures May Be in Seismic Danger Zone
BP's Atlantis - World's Deepest Moored Semisubmersible
BP's Atlantis - World's Deepest Moored Semisubmersible
Part 2: Large 2006 Earthquakes of 6.0 and 5.2 Magnitude Strike the Gulf of Mexico–Unidentified Oil Rig Feels Shaking — Epicenter Relocated in Green Canyon
In 2003, the Mineral Management Service ordered an assessment of seismic activity in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), which we discussed in Part 1 of this series. There was concern then whether oil production assets appeared to be in the path of increasing seismic risks. Now, within approximately three years of that study, two more larger earthquakes strike in the GOM. Let’s take a look at the history of those 2006 earthquakes.
The larger of the two earthquakes hit in September 2006. It shook a broad area and received significant public notice. The slightly smaller, but more threatening of the two occurred in February 2006. Its epicenter was in oil rich Green Canyon. It was the one that stirred the most attention from the oil industry. The concern remains identifying the extent of the threat posed by seismic events in the GOM oil producing region. Will continued development risk increased danger to our environment?
On September 11, 2006 the news-wires were reporting a 6.0 magnitude earthquake that had struck in the Gulf of Mexico the day before. The U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) summary of the event reported a strong earthquake located 250 miles south-southwest of Apalachicola, Florida at 8:56 a.m. MDT on September 10, 2006. The earthquake shook hard enough to knock items from shelves and created seismic disturbances of oscillating waves appearing in swimming pools in parts of Florida. Numerous cities in Florida felt the shaking. The strength of the event was substantial for the GOM. USGS received reports that it was “felt” in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Other areas outside of the United States that reported feeling the earthquake were The Bahamas and Cancun and Merida, Mexico. There were no reports of serious damage or casualties.
USGS Tectonic Summary
The official USGS report place the earthquake beneath the GOM far away from the nearest active plate boundary. Thus, the event was not located along a recognized fault line. This phenomenon forms some measure of mystery over the cause of quakes in the Gulf. The “midplate” earthquakes are much less common than “earthquakes occurring on faults near plate boundaries.” It is thought that the most likely explanation for this earthquake is “long-term tectonic stresses” originating from forces applied at the plate boundary (located in the Atlantic Ocean). At least one geologist with extensive experience in the Gulf of Mexico has departed from the establishment’s causal theories. We shall discuss his beliefs later in the series. The epicenter location is designated with a star in the map below.
Zoomed In Map of Earthquake Epicenter 9-10-06
The USGS says this earthquake was the largest of more than a dozen seismic events instrumentally recorded in the GOM in the past three decades. It was also the most widely felt.
5.2 Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Unidentified Oil Rig
On February 10, 2006 a 5.2 magnitude earthquake struck in the oil producing Green Canyon region of the Gulf. According to a USGS study the location of this earthquake stirred the interest of the petroleum industry as indicated in the following excerpt:
The offshore southern Louisiana seismic event has attracted much interest in the U.S. Gulf Coast energy industry, because of its location in an area of dense infrastructure associated with the production of petroleum (fig. 1). The event was felt onboard one offshore production platform (Rijken and Leverette, 2007) and at scattered locations along the U.S. Gulf Coast (U.S. GeologicalSurvey, 2008).
The location of the exact epicenter has attracted an extraordinary round of scientific inquiry. Several studies have been done and published. The USGS study referenced here was conducted to relocate the epicenter from it original setting. The task took into account data from private sources to supplement its own seismic readings. While the exact point of the event remains elusive, one private report puts an unidentified oil rig platform around 9.4 miles from the Green Canyon event. The rig apparently escaped without damage to its SeaStar Tension Leg
- Atlantis Rig – Located In Green Canyon
Platform (TLP) construction. The crew onboard the unidentified rig reported feeling the vibrations of the earthquake. The Atlantis, owned by BP, was located near the original epicenter designated by USGS, although not yet in production. It is the deepest moored semi-submersible platform in the world located in over 7,070 feet of water. At the time of this earthquake, the Atlantis had ocean-bottom node array of seismic exploration monitors taking readings. This information was incorporated into USGS relocation of the epicenter. One presumes that the exact location of the epicenter becomes more important if it rests upon a highly valued oil prospect, where the building of subsea structures just might prove dangerous to life and environment. For whatever the reason, there was significant effort made to review the USGS initial finding. The seismic data gathered presented some unusual seismic information, which proved challenging for the geologists. The best that could be done was to establish a “preferred” location depicted in the map below:
BP which was operating around the Atlantis seafloor area. Comparative information was also available from the CGG Green Canyon Phase VIII Multi-Client Survey. The preferred epicenter was ultimately established 26 km north of the original center point. This had the effect of moving the epicenter further away from BP’s Atlantis. However, the accuracy of the determination remains subject to great doubt. The source for the earthquake was left largely undecided with early speculation of a “landslide” loosing favor and the existence of an unidentified “fault” unknown. The concluding remarks make this observation:It is noteworthy, however, that the revised epicenter of the Green Canyon event lies near the USGS/NEIC epicenters of two earlier earthquakes – those of June 30, 1994 (mb 4.2) and December 9, 2000 (mb 4.2; Ms 4.3) (fig. 3). As with the epicenter of the Green Canyon event, the epicenters of the earlier events are likely not determined with high accuracy. Nonetheless, extrapolating from the times of the three events, it appears that a region with linear dimensions of several tens of kilometers may be experiencing an earthquake of greater than magnitude 4 one or two times a decade, on average. If the earthquakes in this region are more numerous still at lower magnitudes, in keeping with most seismic regions worldwide, one might expect 10 or 20 shocks of magnitude 3 and greater in an average decade.
The widely held view among geologists is that there are no fault lines in the Gulf of Mexico to explain the source of seismic events. Yet these scientists seem to be saying that the linear area, extrapolated from timing and location of earthquake events, may form a line of several tens of kilometers along which earthquakes are to be expected. Is this a fault line 100 to 200 miles long or what? Does it increase the threat to oil production in the area? What design changes or precautions should be taken? Of course, any such discussion involves cost and adversely affects corporate profits. These seem to be appropriate questions. My search has found no evidence of proposed precautionary measures even being discussed. There has been no change in the Zone 0 seismic risk rating of the region. There has been no study that I have found of what affect on seismicity the extraction of oil and gas may be causing in the Gulf. I have been unable to find any new studies to expand these findings or test the existing structures.
Is there a coming major earthquake in the future of the Gulf of Mexico? Are we likely to have an underwater Haiti? There is cause for concern given the seismic events and USGS studies that have been discussed in Part 1 and 2 of this series.
Seismic Risk Questioned As Deep Water Development Increases part 1
Earthquake Activity in Gulf of Mexico Prompts 2003 Study for MMS
Part 1: Seismic Risk Questioned As Deep Water Development Increases
The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is not known for its earthquake activity; however, a number of earthquakes ranging between 3.0 and 4.9 on the Richter scale caused enough concern for Mineral Management Services (MMS) to engage in a 2003 study of the likely performance of subsea oil production assets during small earthquakes. The Gulf region is classified as Zone 0 for seismic risk. This means that all shallow and deepwater development of crowded subsea structures including oil rigs and pipelines have not been designed or constructed to withstand earthquake activity.
2003 Assessment Ignores Risk Of Major Earthquakes
An Assessment of Seismic Risk for Subsea Production Systems in the Gulf of Mexico was conducted for and submitted to MMS in December 2003. The 165 page study was performed and prepared by the Offshore Technology Research Center of Texas A & M University. Increased earthquake activity in oil producing regions of GOM raised questions about the performance of deepwater subsea systems, which the study hoped to answer.
Note that the Macondo Well of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is located in Mississippi Canyon in Block 252 which places the cursed well within the region of seismic events. The name Macondo is the same name as the fictitious cursed town in the novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Colombian nobel-prize winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
It is frightening to envision what could result from a major earthquakc striking the heart of the oil producing region.
The study was based on engineer modelling. Their analysis modeled various characteristics of the underwater structures, the Gulf seafloor, and sea currents, to determine if earthquakes would wreck the system. The model only tested for the amount of shaking associated with smaller earthquake magnitudes normally seen in Zone 1 and Zone 2 areas. Therefore, the study offers no guidance as to the amount of destruction that can be expected from earthquakes of higher magnitudes. The fact that the Gulf of Mexico is rated a Zone 0 is not a guarantee that larger earthquakes will not occur in regions now crowded with underwater oil production and pipeline structures.
GOM Oil Development Boom Crowds The Seismic Risk
The number of subsea systems placed into production during the past 2o to 25 years has increased dramatically. The sheer number alone of developments in deeper water heightens the risk. The exposure of these systems involves earthquake shaking, liquefaction potential, and dynamic impact from soil sliding from nearby slope instability. The expansion in recent years has been in deepwater as technology and discovery of new reservoirs have fueled the rush in development. Recent reports of MMS waiving various environmental impact studies underscores the oil industries’ haste and avoidance of caution in pushing these developments.
The Western and Central Planning areas as of March 2004 for Gulf of Mexico developments chart the vast regions involved.The controlling factors in the design of offshore structures are the effect of environmental loads due to wave, current, wind and geologic activity. The American Petroleum Institute requires that earthquake shaking, fault movement, and sea floor instability be accounted for in the design. However, in Zone 0 seismic risk areas, like the GOM, the requirements for earthquake shaking do not apply to existing and future designs and construction. The two maps below demonstrate the massive underwater pipeline system now totaling 44,000 miles and some 4,000 active wells:
GOM 4,000 Active Oil & Gas Platforms - NOAA 6-8-10
GOM 4,000 Active Oil & Gas Platforms - NOAA 6-8-10
Report Considered Effects of Only Smaller Earthquakes
Low seismic risk does not mean that earthquakes are totally absent. We have already mentioned that a number of earthquakes between 3.0 and 4.9 on the magnitude scale prompted the study. Between 1978 and the date of the report in December 2003 the strongest quake was the 4.9 magnitude. This one occurred near the Mississippi Fan region, which includes oil production systems. It is thought that the cause of the earthquake was related to crustal subsidence due to sedimentation loading. (Frohlich 1982) ”Seismic events in other areas of the GOM seem to be associated with the plate boundaries in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.” (Frohlich 1982) The primary source of earthquake recorded information in the GOM is the website for the National Earthquake Information Center. Their records begin back in 1973 for the Gulf. There have been a total of eight earthquakes ranging from 4.0 to 4.9 magnitudes in the Zone 0 seismic risk area and a larger number of smaller quakes.
The tables 3.1 and 3.2 list the recorded earthquakes in the GOM, and Fig. 3.2 depicts the location of the epicenters of those seismic events taken from the tables. The earthquakes in table 3.2 occurred in the Bay of Campeche area. From 1974 thru 2003 there were 22 earthquakes, which is considered an infrequent occurrence. This report was completed nearly three years before two of the strongest earthquakes occurred in the GOM in 2006. These tables were published as part of the assessment:
Report Conclusions
The report concluded with a summary that was careful to point to the model criteria used for Zone 1 and Zone 2 seismic loads utilized on the subsea structures. With those qualifications, the assessment found that the structures should perform acceptably if exposed to those loads. However, the recommendations were cautious: Recommendations“1. The impact of earthquake shaking on the integrity of a single and multiple casing foundation subsea structures is dependent upon a number of different factors that are specific to site and system requirements. Seismic risk for proposed projects should be investigated for specific site conditions and equipment constraints. Specific design information for a subsea system is critical in making a final assessment of the expected performance under site specific ground motions.
“2. Based on the results from this study, earthquake shaking (within Zones 1 and 2 PGA values) should not dramatically impact the performance of deepwater subsea structures in the GOM. However, further research should be conducted to determine the impact of sliding soil due to soil instability on the performance of these structures in the GOM.”
This assessment did not involve any inspections of existing subsea structures. A note in the report suggests that the oil producing companies maintaining proprietary interests in the subsea structures were keeping them confidential. At any rate, the report and engineering work was strictly done with modeling for the anticipated forces as well as structure installations. The author has not found any further earthquake studies performed by or for MMS following this report despite the fact that two subsequent earthquakes of around the 6.0 magnitude occurred in 2006.
Recommendations
“1. The impact of earthquake shaking on the integrity of a single and multiple casing foundation subsea structures is dependent upon a number of different factors that are specific to site and system requirements. Seismic risk for proposed projects should be investigated for specific site conditions and equipment constraints. Specific design information for a subsea system is critical in making a final assessment of the expected performance under site specific ground motions.“2. Based on the results from this study, earthquake shaking (within Zones 1 and 2 PGA values) should not dramatically impact the performance of deepwater subsea structures in the GOM. However, further research should be conducted to determine the impact of sliding soil due to soil instability on the performance of these structures in the GOM.”
Identification HELP!!!!
This photo was posted to Facebook by Gulf Impact Project.
I can make out...
"Sea and Land"
"Evaporating ?___Cant read_________"
"Dissolves _____Can't read________"
"Produces a Glea or clea... (Can't read)
"For IOF Boats and Seperating catch"
"Please dispose of properly"
Can anyone tell me what this is and what the writing means. If you have a description and use of the product please send ASAP!
I can make out...
"Sea and Land"
"Evaporating ?___Cant read_________"
"Dissolves _____Can't read________"
"Produces a Glea or clea... (Can't read)
"For IOF Boats and Seperating catch"
"Please dispose of properly"
Can anyone tell me what this is and what the writing means. If you have a description and use of the product please send ASAP!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
A Crisis of Democracy: Real Solutions to the BP Oil Spill
A Crisis of Democracy: Real Solutions to the BP Oil Spill
For Gulf residents, the BP oil spill has made the problem of unchecked corporate power painfully clear. Exxon Valdez survivor Riki Ott on why this may be the moment to overcome our political divides and take back our democracy.
posted Aug 23, 2010
— tags: BP Oil Spill, citizens united
- An enhanced satellite image of the Gulf oil spill, taken June 15, 2010.Photo by DigitalGlobe-Imagery
Twenty-one years after the Exxon Valdez, the company has only paid out a tenth of the initial assessment of punitive damages. Ott recognizes many of Exxon’s tactics in BP’s recent behavior: underestimating the size of the spill, downplaying and covering up damages, seeking to cap liability early on. She’s been on the ground in the Gulf since early summer, sharing her strategies for grassroots resistance and recovery. But the real crisis, she says, is bigger than this, or any, oil spill. It’s a crisis of democracy: Corporations have become so powerful that our political system isn’t able to rein them in enough to keep such disasters from happening or to hold them accountable when they do.
For Ott, the realization that corporate power was a fundamental threat came as she watched Exxon continue to profit while she and her neighbors lost their livelihoods, with few options for recourse. Now, in the Gulf, she’s seeing a similar awakening from residents working across political barriers to fight for justice from BP.
Ott believes this could be a breakthrough moment for reclaiming power from corporations. She spoke to YES! Magazine web editor Brooke Jarvis about the best strategies for using—and finally fixing—our democracy.
Brooke: Last week, BP announced that it will stop accepting new claims for damages; national newspapers are asking, “So where's the oil?" Is the disaster over?
Riki: [Laughs] Not if you look at my inbox! It all makes me wonder: Why this charade? Why this intense push to have it all be over? I think the closest analogy is when an insurance company wants to settle as quickly as possible after a car accident. They want to be able to say, "Sorry, you already signed this piece of paper, and we're not liable for that anymore." I think there's a lot of that going into BP's thinking right now. This toxic stew of oil and dispersants that got released into the Gulf is an experiment—it’s untested, so we don’t know yet how much damage it will cause. BP thinks if it settles now, it won’t have to pay for the destruction that becomes clear down the road.
The Exxon-Valdez showed us that oil spills do in fact cause long-term damage. The herring fishery in Prince William Sound is still closed—it's closed indefinitely until stocks recover, and we're talking 21 years now, not to mention a smaller amount of oil.
Brooke: In the Gulf, is anybody having a hard time seeing the oil, or its effects?
Riki: When the infamous pie chart came out, the media interpreted it to mean that 75 percent of the oil is gone. But “dispersed” oil is not disappeared oil—it may not be on the surface, but it’s in the water column, it’s lining the ocean floor, it’s in the food chain. If you add the parts of the pie that say “oil dispersed chemically” and “oil dispersed naturally” to the residual oil, the truth is that 75 percent of the oil is still there, just in a different form. Really, it’s convenient for BP that it’s not on the surface—and that may have played a role in the decision to use these toxic dispersants—because it makes it easier to pretend it’s gone.
Fishermen are finding false bottoms—the depth finder thinks the bottom is 12 feet down, but it’s really just a plume of oil and dispersants. They say, "No, we don't want to fish in this. We don't think the seafood is safe."
That day, I was at a meeting in Gulfport, Miss., with about 100 fisherman from four different states. People’s phones were lighting up with stories coming in of boats and planes spraying dispersants at night, of people sprayed and exposed and sick—I mean, sick to the point of throwing up brown and peeing brown—and stories of fish kills and bivalve kills. To be in Gulfport Miss., at the moment when this disaster is declared over while fisherman from four different states are getting phone calls from back home saying, "Oh my God, oh my God”—it was an amazing juxtaposition. The reality of harm was still happening even as BP and the federal government started the game of "It's all over."That was a horrible week. I was trying to get people to emergency rooms and to find doctors who would diagnose their symptoms properly. People are sick, and what I find totally inexcusable is pretending all these illnesses are really something other than they are. My God, I talked to boom workers who were diagnosed with food poisoning and heat stroke back in May, who are still sick with the exact same symptoms. Do food poisoning and heat stroke last for three months?
- Photo by U.S. Coast Guard.
Brooke: It must be infuriating to actually watch people turn away from you while there’s still so much suffering. What are people doing about it?
Riki: The bottom line is we’re still in the middle of a war here, trying to document as best we can this unfolding horror that’s being covered up. We’re trying to get people's spirits up, saying: "This is all part of the game, we've just got to take this to the next level now, keep hanging together, and exposing what’s happening. Get the photographs, get the stories, just keep documenting. There have been lies all summer. The only thing that has changed is the intensity ramped up. So, let's just keep out there.”
People down here wondered, "Why is the industry that pays a penalty based on how much oil it spills left in charge of saying how much it spilled?"
We’re putting a lot of our energy into community-based environmental studies. By that, I mean collecting data about air quality, water quality, public health, toxins in people’s blood. Many people don’t have confidence that their illnesses—the headaches, the sore throats, the blisters—are connected to the chemicals, simply because the federal agencies are telling them that there aren’t air or water quality issues. We’re doing sampling to prove that there are. We’re also trying to get a community health clinic set up in each of the affected states, and to help care providers recognize chemical illnesses.Brooke: You wrote recently: "This contest is about far more than dollars or damages. It's about our country's ability to hold big, corporate criminals accountable to the public interest, and ensure that they follow the laws we enact." What does it mean to move beyond the immediate question of accountability for this one disaster to the bigger question of corporate accountability?
Riki: This BP disaster, like the Exxon-Valdez, is more than an environmental crisis—it's a democracy crisis. Right now we’re playing the game: going through regulatory arenas, tightening some laws. But that’s not good enough. The real question is, how do we get control of these big corporations?
It didn’t take long for people to start looking at this bigger issue, asking what we can do about corporations that are totally out of control. I would say, "Does anybody think the federal government is in charge?" And nobody would raise their hand. “OK, then who is?” I’d ask. “Is it ‘We the People,’ or ‘We the Corporation?’” Here, it is so clear that it’s the corporations. People are getting shoved off their beaches, told they can't have cameras, told they can't go near carcasses. It's like, "Wait! I thought this was America?"
Want to help support grassroots groups in the Gulf? Here are Riki's picks:
Louisiana Bayou Keeper
Hurricane Creek Keeper
Louisiana Bucket Brigade
Louisiana Env. Action Network
The Gulf Coast Fund
People are really connecting the dots about corporate power and the way this disaster’s been handled. First, there were the exemptions and the waivers that allowed BP to use improper equipment, which led to this oil spill. Then, it came out that BP wasn’t being honest about what, and how much, was really gushing out of that hole—they’d had high resolution images for a month that they’d never shared with the federal government. So people down here wondered, "Why is the industry that pays a penalty based on how much oil it spills left in charge of saying how much it spilled?" Then there’s the way they’ve kept the media—and ordinary people with cameras—away from the shorelines and the water and the carcasses. It’s a joke around here: People see the dead animals on the beach, or they see them collecting in ocean currents by the thousands, and they know they aren’t counted. People get threatened with arrest for even going near. The carcasses are not being kept for damage assessment, like they were after the Exxon-Valdez. Or when people report oil on the surface of the water, they’re not seeing it skimmed and collected; they’re coming back the next day and seeing these tell-tale bubbles where dispersant was sprayed.Louisiana Bayou Keeper
Hurricane Creek Keeper
Louisiana Bucket Brigade
Louisiana Env. Action Network
The Gulf Coast Fund
People have started to ask, “How did BP get this much control? Why is the Coast Guard being used as a public shield—against us? Who’s in charge?”
Corporations have really learned to control these situations. They didn’t expect the environmental movement that resulted after the Santa Barbara blowout in 1969, which helped push legislation like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act. But since then they’ve learned how to manage the fallout better and better. Really, that’s the biggest difference I’ve seen between the Exxon-Valdez and the BP blowout: Corporations know how to intentionally operate to get control of the government, the people, and the media. They’ve been very successful at it, and it shows.
The real change has been for the people who believed the government was going to take care of them.
All over the Gulf, people are saying: “I feel like a veil has been pulled off my face.” They’re ready to get to work to create a country that we thought we had.
Brooke: But with the spill and its effects really highlighting the impact of unchecked corporate power, is there a possibility for a breakthrough moment, a real movement to control corporations?All over the Gulf, people are saying: “I feel like a veil has been pulled off my face.” They’re ready to get to work to create a country that we thought we had.
Riki: I’ve noticed that when there’s a disaster like this, people all tend to band together in defense of their way of life. The political frames start to get kind of wobbly. Reality is changing so fast right in front of their noses, and the way they thought the world worked all of a sudden doesn’t. There’s an opportunity to penetrate the frames that are normally pretty hard and tight and fast, keeping us divided as red or blue, liberal or conservative.
For example, when I was in Fort Walton, Florida—and this is just one example—we drafted a petition to get the EPA the authority to delist products the public doesn’t like (right now products can’t be unapproved, and that’s made it hard to get traction on banning Corexit, the dispersant). Everyone was wildly enthusiastic, including some people who asked for an electronic version so they could share it with their network of 70 tea party groups throughout the state of Florida. I about fell over. And they’re surprised, too, to find how much we have in common—I’ve had people in audience after audience say, with shock, “Nothing you said offended me.” Then they’ve asked me to come and speak about the evolution of corporate personhood and the demise of democracy. Groups in Tallahassee, Fla., and Jackson, Miss., have said they’d like to join Move to Amend, a national coalition to amend the U.S. Constitution to affirm that only human beings have Constitutional rights and non-living entities—or as I tell fifth-graders, things without belly buttons—don’t.
I think this BP disaster has really pushed people’s tolerance for accepting the myth that we live in a functioning democracy—whether they’re red or blue of Tea Party or whatever. After Citizens United was decided, 80 percent of Americans across the political divide said that they don’t think corporations should have the rights that people do. But now it’s becoming painfully clear why that’s so important.
You know, it’s the socially vulnerable people who see the corporate threat first, because it affects them first—they know who the law protects, because it’s not them. The real change has been for the people who believed the government was going to take care of them, and that the laws were going to work to protect them. They’re now saying, literally, the same things we were saying in Cordova after the Exxon-Valdez: “I feel like a film has been pulled away from my eyes, and I see how the world really works.” I’m hearing those exact same words in the Gulf: “I feel like a veil has been pulled off my face.” People are now waking up, and they’re ready to put their shoulders to this wheel, to work to create a country that we thought we had.
Brooke: What does that mean, in the communities you’ve been in in the Gulf coast? What are people doing to create a different kind of country?
We wanted a democracy by and for the people, and that means everybody has got to get out of their chairs and figure this out.
Riki: Well, many of them are joining the fight to curb corporate power. But it’s about more than theory and trying to pass a Constitutional amendment—it’s also about doing democracy in our own communities. Just doing it. Building the vision. I think enough of us realize where we need to go, and so it’s a matter of sitting down and figuring out, community by community, how we can be more self-reliant and more resilient. Starting Transition communities, getting our towns to sign the Kyoto Protocol, making our individual communities more self-reliant. Regional energy, regional food, local water. Growing gardens, strengthening neighborhoods, growing our businesses horizontally rather than vertically.Let’s face it: Corporations are going to try to smash anything we build in the political arena. But if we do it in our communities, under their radar screen, we’re capable of so much. People always seem to think the change is outside of them. Really it’s about your own backyard. Democracy is messy, but it really does work when we all sit down and start listening to one another. And there’s no excuse for not doing it! We wanted a democracy by and for the people, and that means everybody has got to get out of their chairs and figure this out. Many hands make light work.
Brooke Jarvis interviewed Riki Ott for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Brooke is YES! Magazine’s web editor.Interested?
Thousands of dead fish reported at mouth of Mississippi
AFP/Getty Images/File – Waves wash oil onto the beach in May 2010 near the south pass of the Mississippi River into the Gulf … 
Play Video The fish were found Sunday floating on the surface of the water and collected in booms that had been deployed to contain oil that leaked from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Times-Picayune reported.
"By our estimates there were thousands, and I'm talking about 5,000 to 15,000 dead fish," St Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro was quoted as saying in a statement.
He said crabs, sting rays, eel, drum, speckled trout and red fish were among the species that turned up dead.
Taffaro said there was some recoverable oil in the area, and officials from the state's wildlife and fisheries division were sampling the water.
But he added, "We don't want to jump to any conclusions because we've had some oxygen issues by the Bayou La Loutre Dam from time to time."
Monday, August 23, 2010
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