Grand Isle, Louisiana, August 20
Beneath the beach on the west end of Grand Isle State Park is thick black oil. The strange goopy objects stuck in the muck are hermit crabs, oiled beyond recognition. They are food for the terns and gulls which flock nearby. Heavy oil is gone from much of the Gulf but on this stretch of Louisiana beach it remains. Park managers, worried the large machines being used to clean beaches would trample bird nests insisted that BP use alternative methods here. This never happened; instead the area was missed completely.
The issue highlights a concern many conservationists have had with the spill response; that it was heavy-handed and near-sighted, environmental guidelines were scrapped and environmentalists themselves were chided as being too soft and too slow. Politicians took advantage of the spill to push through projects in a vacuum of science, like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who hastily had built sand berms off the Chandeleur Islands to block oil from hitting the coast. The barriers are now eroding rapidly.
鈥淟ives and livelihoods have temporarily been ruined and as a result local politicians are really frantic,鈥 says Melanie Driscoll, the leader of bird conservation for . 鈥淎 lot of the cleanup has been political knee-jerk response done for show, and that has led to a complete waste of resources, destruction of beach and in some cases, total fiasco.鈥
Early on a muggy morning, I head to the coast with Driscoll and 探花精选 communications officer . In mid-May, the three of us spent a day searching for oil on Elmer鈥檚 Island; it hadn鈥檛 arrived yet but in later trips we documented and . Now, for my last post, we鈥檒l revisit these spots.
Captain Richie Taranto motors us along a canal lined with boxy mansions. Taranto is a sports fisherman but has been making good money working for BP, $1000-1500 a day. Nevertheless, he doesn鈥檛 trust them. 鈥淵ou鈥檒l see oil out here one day and the next it is gone so you know they鈥檙e spraying dispersants at night,鈥 says Taranto. We weave through the marsh then cross Barataria Bay to the Cat Islands, small grassy knots of land where hundreds of brown pelicans nest, along with roseate spoonbill, yellow crowned night heron, ibis and laughing gulls. In late May I saw dozens of oiled pelicans here, some sitting on eggs. Now, juvenile pelicans crowd the shore, others perch lazily on boom. 鈥淭hey all look clean and happy,鈥 says Ringer.
But Driscoll explains that the interior of these islands are dotted with birds killed by oil. Only after juvenile birds clear out will wildlife officials have a chance to go in and count the dead. Birds face other risks; it is unknown just how the small critters shorebirds feed on have been affected by the spill and we won鈥檛 know how the spill affected sensitive bird reproductive systems until nesting pairs can be recounted next spring.
One sign of recovery is bright green grass sprouting in spots once occupied by grass gunked with oil. 鈥淭his is something we were hoping for but didn鈥檛 know we would find,鈥 says Driscoll. 鈥淚n some ways it feels like the initial crisis has passed and you鈥檝e come out of ICU,鈥 says Ringer. 鈥淏ut the problem is this is a system in catastrophic collapse; we鈥檙e still losing 25 square miles of marsh a year.鈥 Taranto nods in agreement. 鈥淚f you look at the GPS there鈥檚 nothing but land,鈥 he says, 鈥渂ut when you actually get out here there鈥檚 nothing but water.鈥
On the way to Grand Isle we pass a sign that reads, 鈥淒amn BP. God Bless America.鈥 Damning BP sounds good at first glance, but damning BP means damning oil, which means damning cars and damning cars certainly sounds un-American to me. 鈥淧eople wanted to be mad and they wanted to blame BP, but I don鈥檛 think they wanted to look beyond that,鈥 says Driscoll. 鈥淭he same people who live near the coast and want to protect it are driving gas guzzling SUVs and big pickups.鈥
Beyond where Driscoll is digging through oozing oil at the end of Grand Isle State Park I spot a young man with curly blonde hair, wading in the waves. In his hand is a Styrofoam carryout container lined with fist-sized black lumps. They are tar balls, winnowed smooth by the waves. The man, Frazer O鈥橦ara, has spent the past two months volunteering with a group bent on rescuing oiled hermit crabs; they have saved over 5,000 to date, scrubbing them first with castile soap, cleaning inside their shells with Q-tips, then releasing them into unoiled back bays.
We talk for several minutes, the horizon darkens, thunder rumbles somewhere out over the sea. In four months of reporting on the oil spill, O鈥橦ara is one of the few young activists I have met. I ask him where the others are. 鈥淚 feel like people are afraid of the word revolution,鈥 says O鈥橦ara. 鈥淲e have a clich茅d notion of it, we think of violence and going to the hills, but this revolution is within ourselves.鈥
/