Liar, liar: 70,000 barrels a day, not 5,000, spilling into the gulf

Well, looks as if the Gulf oil spill is much larger than BP and the U.S. government want to admit-- closer to 70,000 barrels a day.  At the new numbers, the amount of oil is currently twice the amount of the Exxon Valdez. The spill is now the size of the state of Connecticut.

BP keeps saying that it's more important to stop the leak than to measure it.  But it's just not an either/or situation.

“If we are systematically underestimating the rate that’s being spilled, and we design a response capability based on that underestimate, then the next time we have an event of this magnitude, we are doomed to fail again,” said John Amos, the president of SkyTruth. “So it’s really important to get this number right.” New York Times

Apparently two scientists who know how to more accurately measure the flow of oil coming from the ocean floor were set to fly out to the site of the disaster at the invitation of BP-- but the invitation was canceled.

Meanwhile, BP has sprayed more than 500,000 gallons of dangerous dispersants on the oil leak.  This can't go on forever, seeing as BP has already purchased one-third of the world's supply of these chemicals.  An article in Scientific American says the chemicals will create their own set of environmental and health problems.  When weather conditions permit, BP is also burning the oil (see photo).  As I write this, BP is trying to sink a pipe which can siphon off the oil and load it into a tanker.  Don't hold your breathe--although if you live in New Orleans, you sure may feel like it. 


The Center for Biological Diversity has become one of environmental organizations that impresses me the most for their commitment and depth of strategy to preserve life on earth.  (That includes us, folks.)  Their page on the Gulf disaster is a great source of real information.  Check it out.

Conspiracy theories; Website tracking EPA response to BP oil "spill"

For those of you interested in the EPA take on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a new webpage at the EPA site has Q & A's,  air quality monitoring, and government actions.  Not much finger-pointing going on yet at the EPA, at least not that the agency is making public, and not much of the  real sense of catastrophe that many of us feel.  Still, it's interesting reading.

Just what are we to call this catastrophe, anyway?  Calling it a "spill" makes no sense: a spill is an overturned glass of water; a spill is a hole in the side of a leaking oil tanker; a spill is finite.  What we have here is an open faucet to the oil in our earth's crust which we will not be able to turn off for months.

Conspiracy theories:  I don't have to think too hard to figure out how this catastrophe happened, because man-made catastrophes occur whenever profit is placed before people's wellbeing.  Those catastrophes may unfold slowly, like our current recession, or all at once. But almost all could have been predicted.  The Houston Chronicle reports on the fines that BP was fighting for safety violations.  And I know I read-- but now can't find-- an article that says that equipment required in Europe for these rigs is not required in the U.S.  I did, however, find a reference to BP's attempts to avoid additional safety regulations. 

BP's Haywood  'will also be asked to explain more distant actions, including the company's resistance to Washington's attempts to introduce a new rule to make deep-sea drilling safer. A letter from BP to the US government dated 14 September 2009, made its position clear. "While BP is supportive of companies having a system in place to reduce risks, accidents, injuries and spills, we are not supportive of the extensive prescriptive regulations as proposed in this rule," the letter said.'  Independent UK.

 Remember Halliburton from the Iraq War?

Halliburton IS the War Machine: Finally, we come to the most likely culprit in all of this, and a sure sign that indeed this is an act of war. Wherever Halliburton goes, so goes the war machine, and vice versa. From no-bid and no-account contracts in Iraq (and post-Katrina New Orleans, by the way) to a massive corporate presence in the Gulf region, these folks seem to have an acute capacity for making a buck on cataclysms of all sorts. Perhaps more to the point, they appear to be at the nexus of most disaster zones, including the erstwhile Bush Presidency and now the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. As a recent article in the Huffington Post notes:

"Giant oil-services provider Halliburton may be a primary suspect in the investigation into the oil rig explosion that has devastated the Gulf Coast, the Wall Street Journal reports. Though the investigation into the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon site is still in its early stages, drilling experts agree that blame probably lies with flaws in the 'cementing' process -- that is, plugging holes in the pipeline seal by pumping cement into it from the rig. Halliburton was in charge of cementing for Deepwater Horizon."  Huffington Post.

The rest of this Huffington Post article by Randall Amster is worth a read, because apparently the conspiracy nuts are going to have a good time with the Deepwater Horizon event.  Al Gore, eco-terrorists, even North Korea, in a plot to make us use our nuclear weapons to stop the oil leak.  Get ready.  Wonder what the Tea Party folks think, or do I have to ask?

Photo: nesting pelicans on Bretton Island, containment booms behind them.  Alex Brandon, Axis of Logic.

Water main break leaves 37 MA communities without drinkable water

A friend from Springfield called me a few minutes ago to ask if I'd heard anything about a need to boil our water in Springfield because of something that had happened to the Quabbin Reservoir.  I told her I'd check around and it didn't take long to locate the news at Boston.com: a major break in a pipe carrying water from the Quabbin and the Wachusetts Reservoirs  to Metropolitan Boston has ruptured, dumping an astounding 8 million gallons of water an hour into the Charles River. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority is turning to its emergency back-up reserves from the Chestnut Hill and Spot Pond Reservoirs and the Sudbury Aqueduct.

Life would be nothing without ironies, yes?  On Thursday, Concord, Massachusetts became the first city in the country to ban all sales of bottled water.  Concord  is not among one of the 37 communities who now needs to boil its water, or I imagine there would be plenty of "I told you so's" going on in the town right now.

My older daughter is moving today from her apartment in Salem to an apartment in Arlington, which is under the Boil Water order, and I gave her a call.  I can just imagine she and her friends, having just now finished moving furniture, going to the kitchen sink in the new place and getting a nice cold drink from the tap.

I've been waiting to calm down, if that ever happens,  before blogging about what is now being described as a "river of oil" rushing from the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico.  What ought to be clear, though is that we are using 19th and 20th century infrastructures to deal with 21st century life on earth,  and dangerous 21st century technologies to solve energy problems that demand a cutting edge vision.  When will we shift our priorities?

Photo of Quabbin Reservoir from thelehegarets' photostream at Flickr,