15 August 2010 By Dahr Jamail The rampant use of toxic dispersants, out of state
private contractors being brought in to spray them,
and US Coast Guard complicity are common stories now
in the four states most affected by BP’s Gulf of
Mexico oil disaster. Commercial and Charter Fishermen, residents, and
members of BP’s Vessels Of Opportunity (VOO) program
in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana have
spoken with Truthout about their witnessing all of
these incidents. Toxic Dispersants Found on
recently opened Mississippi Shrimping and Oyster
Grounds On Monday, August 9, the director of the State of
Mississippi Department of Marine Resources (DMR), Bill
Walker, despite ongoing reports of tar balls, oil, and
dispersants being found in Mississippi waters,
declared “there should be no new threats” and issued
an order for all local coast governments to halt
ongoing oil disaster work being funded by BP money
that was granted to the state. BP had allocated $25 million to Mississippi for
local government disaster work. As of August 9, Walker
estimated that only about $500,000 worth of invoices
for oil response work had been submitted to the state.
Nobody knows what the rest of the money will be used
for. Recent days in Mississippi waters found fishermen
and scientists finding oil in Garden Pond on Horn
Island, massive fish kills near Cat Island, “black
water” in Mississippi Sound, and submerged oil in Pass
Christian. Mississippi residents and fishermen Truthout spoke
with believe Walker’s move was from an order given by
Gov. Haley Barbour, who has been heavily criticized
over the years for his lobbying on behalf of the
Tobacco and Oil industries. Two days after Walker’s announcement, and in
response to claims from state and federal officials
that Gulf Coast waters are safe and clean, fishermen
took their own samples from the waters off of Pass
Christian in Mississippi. The samples were taken in water that is now open
for shrimping, as well as from waters directly over
Mississippi’s oysterbed, that will likely open in
September for fishing. Commercial fisherman James “Catfish” Miller, took
fishermen Danny Ross Jr. and Mark Stewart, along with
scientist Dr. Ed Cake of Gulf Environmental
Associates, and others out and they found the fishing
grounds to be contaminated with oil and dispersants. Their method was simple – they tied an absorbent
rag to a weighted hook, dropped it overboard for a
short duration of time, then pulled it up to find the
results. The rags were covered in a brown oily
substance that the fishermen identified as a mix of
BP’s crude oil and toxic dispersants. Shortly thereafter, Catfish Miller took the samples
to a community meeting in nearby D’Iberville to show
fishermen and families. At the meeting, fishermen
unanimously supported a petition calling for the
firing of Dr. Bill Walker, the head of Mississippi’s
DMR, who is responsible for opening the fishing
grounds. Dr. Cake wrote of the experience: “When the vessel
was stopped for sampling, small, 0.5- to
1.0-inch-diameter bubbles would periodically rise to
the surface and shortly thereafter they would pop
leaving a small oil sheen. According to the fishermen,
several of BP’s Vessels-of-Opportunity (Carolina
Skiffs with tanks of dispersants [Corexit?]) were hand
spraying in Mississippi Sound off the Pass Christian
Harbor in prior days/nights. It appears to this
observer that the dispersants are still in the area
and are continuing to react with oil in the waters off
Pass Christian Harbor.” Ongoing Contamination and
the Carolina Skiffs On August 13, Truthout visited Pass Christian
Harbor in Mississippi. Oil sheen was present, the
vapors of which could be smelled, causing our eyes to
burn. Many ropes that tied boats to the dock were oiled,
and much of the water covered with oil sheen. A resident who has a yacht in the harbor spoke with
Truthout on condition of anonymity due to fears of
reprisal from BP. “Last week we were sitting on our boat and you
could smell the chemicals,” he explained, “It smelt
like death. It was like mosquito spray, but ten times
stronger. The next day I was horse and my lungs felt
like I’d been in a smoky bar the night before.” Oil boom was present throughout much of the harbor.
Despite this, fishermen, obviously trusting Mr.
Walker’s announcement about the fishing waters being
clear of oil and dispersant, were trying to catch fish
from their boat inside the harbor. Last week oil filled this harbor,” the man, an
ex-commercial fisherman added, “BP has bought off all
our government officials, and shut them up. You can’t
say the oil is gone, it’s right here! Them saying it’s
not here is a bunch of bullshit.” Truthout spoke with another man who was recently
laid off from the VOO program. He also spoke on
condition of anonymity. “Just the other day one of the Carolina Skiffs
passed us spraying something,” he said, “We went west
instead of east as we turned and a group of Carolina
Skiffs was spraying something over the water.” A Carolina Skiff is a type of boat, usually between
13’ and 30’ long, very versatile, and can function
well in shallow or deep waters. They are known for
having a large payload capacity and a lot of interior
space. Alarmed by what he saw, the former VOO worker
called the Coast Guard to report what he believed was
a private contractor company spraying dispersants. “We were later told by the Coast Guard they’d
investigated the incident and told us what we saw were
vacuum boats sucking oil, and they were rinsing their
tanks,” he said, “But we know this is a lie, and that
BP is using these out of state contractors to come in
and spray the dispersant at night, and they are using
planes to drop it as well.” He worked in the VOO program looking for oil. When
his team would find oil, upon reporting it, they would
consistently be sent away without explanation or the
opportunity to clean it. “They made us abort these missions,” he said, “Two
days ago I put out boom in a bunch of oil for five
minutes, they told me to abort the mission, so I
pulled up boom soaked in oil. What the hell are we
doing out there if they won’t let us work to clean up
the oil?” He told Truthout that as his and other VOO teams
would be going out to work on the water in the
morning, they would pass the out of state contractors
in Carolina Skiffs coming in from what he believed to
be a covert spraying of the oil with dispersant in
order to sink it. He believes this was done to
deliberately prevent the VOO teams from finding and
collecting oil. By doing so BP’s liability would be
lessened since the oil giant will be fined for the
amount of oil collected. “BP brings in the Carolina Skiffs to spray the
dispersant at night,” he added, “And they are not
accountable to the Coast Guard.” James Miller, who had taken the group out into the
Mississippi Sound that found the oil/dispersants on
August 11, told Truthout that the Carolina Skiff teams
spraying dispersants were “common” and that it
“happened all the time.” Miller, who was in the VOO, is an eyewitness to
planes spraying dispersants, as well as the Carolina
Skiff crews doing the same. “We’d roll up on a patch of oil ½ mile wide by one
mile long, and they’d hold us off from cleaning it
up,” Miller, speaking with Truthout at his home in
D’Iberville, Mississippi said, “We’d leave and the
Carolina Skiffs would pull up and start spraying
dispersants on the oil. The guys doing the spraying
would wear respirators and safety glasses. Their boats
have 375 gallon white drums full of the stuff, and
they could spray it out 150 feet. The next day there’d
be the white foam that’s always there after they hit
the oil with dispersants.” Some nights VOO crews would sleep out near the work
sites. “We’d sleep out there, and some nights the planes
would come in so close the noise would wake us from a
dead sleep,” Miller added, “Again, we’d call in the
oiled areas during the day, and at night the planes
would come in and hit the hell out of it with
dispersants. That was the drill. We’d spot it and
report it. They’d call us off it, and send guys out in
the skiffs or planes to sink it.” Mark Stewart, from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was
in the VOO program for 70 days before being laid off
on August 2nd. The last weeks has seen BP decreasing
the number of response workers from around 45,000 down
to around 30,000. The number is decreasing by the day. Stewart, a third generation commercial fisherman,
told Truthout he had regularly seen “purple looking
jelly stuff, three feet thick, floating all over, as
wide as a football field” and “tar balls as big as a
car.” He, like Miller, is an eyewitness to planes
dispensing dispersant at night, as well as the
Carolina Skiff crews spraying dispersant. “I worked out off the barrier islands of
Mississippi,” Stewart said, “They would relentlessly
carpet bomb the oil we found with dispersants, day and
night.” Stewart, echoing what VOO employees across the Gulf
Coast are saying, told Truthout his crew would
regularly find oil, report it, be sent away, then
either watch as planes or Carolina Skiffs would arrive
to apply dispersants, or come back the next day to
find the white foamy emulsified oil remnant that is
left on the surface after oil has been hit with
dispersants. Stewart added, “Whenever government people, state
or federal, would be flying over us, we’d be
instructed to put out all our boom and start skimming,
acting like we were gathering oil, even when we
weren’t in the oil.” While acting as whistleblowers, Miller and Stewart
have both been accused of being “troublemakers” and
“liars” by persons in the Mississippi government, and
some of their local media, in spite of the fact that
they are doing so from deep concern for their fellow
fisherman and the environment. Meanwhile, both men told Truthout they live with
chronic headaches and other symptoms they’ve been
experiencing since they were exposed to toxic
dispersants while in the VOO program. Recent trips to
investigate their waters for oil and dispersant have
worsened their symptoms. “Why would we lie about oil and dispersant in our
waters, when our livelihoods depend on our being able
to fish here,” Miller asked, “I want this to be
cleaned up so we can get back to how we used to live,
but it doesn’t make sense for us or anyone else to
fish if our waters are toxified. I don’t know why
people are angry at us for speaking the truth. We’re
not the ones who put the oil in the water.” Miller is bleak about his assessment about the
situation. He pointed out towards the coast and said,
“Everything is dead out there. The plankton is dead.
We pulled up loads of dead plankton on our trip on
Wednesday. There are very few birds. We saw only a few
when there are usually thousands. We only saw two
porpoises when there are usually countless. We saw
nothing but death.” Coast Guard Complicity “Lockheed Martin aircraft, including C-130s and
P-3s, have been deployed to the Gulf region by the Air
Force, Coast Guard and other government customers to
perform a variety of tasks, such as monitoring,
mapping and dispersant spraying,” states a newsletter
published in July by Lockheed Martin. An article by the 910th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
Office, based in Youngstown, Ohio, states that C-130H
Hercules aircraft started aerial spray operations
Saturday, May 1, under the direction of the president
of the United States and Secretary of Defense. “The
objective of the aerial spray operation is to
neutralize the oil spill with oil dispersing agents,”
it says. Joseph Yerkes, along with other Florida commercial
fishermen and Florida residents, have seen C-130s
spraying dispersants on oil floating off the coast of
Florida numerous times. But the Coast Guard denies it. At a VOO meeting in Destin on August 3, Lt. Cmdr.
Dale Vogelsang, a liaison officer with the United
States Coast Guard said, “I can state, there is no
dispersant being used in Florida waters.” The room, filled mostly with commercial fishermen
who were current or former members in BP’s VOO
program, erupted in protest and disbelief. When
Vogelsang was immediately challenged on his statement,
he replied, “I’ll investigate the C-130s.” Two BP representatives, along with Vogelsang, found
themselves confronted by a large group of angry
fishermen for over an hour. At times the meeting
resembled a riot more than the question and answer
session it was intended to be. Yerkes, who lives on Okaloosa Island, has been a
commercial fisherman and boat captain most of his
life. For the last 12 years he has owned and operated
a commercial live bait business. Employed by BP as a VOO operator for more than two
months, Yerkes, along with many other local commercial
fishermen in the VOO program in his area were laid off
on July 20 because BP and the Coast Guard believed
there was no more “recoverable oil” in their area of
Florida. Yet residents, fishermen, swimmers, divers, and
surfers in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and
Louisiana, have been reporting oil floating atop
water, sitting on the bottom, and floating in the
water column, in oftentimes great amounts, for the
last two weeks. There have been many reports of
various kinds of aircraft, including C-130s,
dispensing dispersants over oil. Yerkes provided Truthout with a letter he wrote to
document his witnessing a C-130 spraying what he
believes to be dispersant. “I witnessed [from my home] a C130 military plane
flying and obviously spraying” over the Gulf of Mexico
on July 30, “flying from the north to the south,
dropping to low levels of elevation then obviously
spraying or releasing an unknown substance from the
rear of the plane. This substance started leaving the
plane when it was about ½ to 1 mile offshore, with a
continuous stream following out of the plane until it
was out of sight flying to the south.” The substance, Yerkes wrote, “was not smoke, for
the residue fell to the water, where smoke would have
lingered.” He added that “this plane was very low near
the water and the flight was very similar to viewings
I made over the past few weeks when dispersants were
sprayed over the Gulf near our area.” A member of the VOO program provided relevant
information of a “strange incident” on condition of
anonymity. He was observing wildlife offshore the same day
Yerkes witnessed the C-130 when he received a call
from his supervisor. He told his supervisor he and his
crewmember were not feeling well, so he was instructed
to return in order “to get checked out because a plane
had been reported in our area spraying a substance on
the water about 10- 20 minutes before.” The employee complained of having a terrible
headache and nasal congestion while his crewmember
said he had a metallic taste in his mouth. After filling out an incident report, both men were
directed to go to the hospital. The following day the
two men were “asked to go to the hospital for blood
tests.” One week after the aforementioned meeting, The
Destin Log quoted Vogelsang as saying he had contacted
Unified Command who “confirmed” that dispersants were
not being used in Florida waters. Vogelsang added,
“Dispersants are only being used over the wellhead in
Louisiana,” a statement that Truthout has heard
refuted by dozens of commercial fishermen from
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Yerkes told Truthout that he too was aware of the
Carolina Skiffs coming in from out of state to
dispense dispersants over the oil. In the recent VOO meeting in Destin, Vogelsang was
asked about the out of state contractors being brought
in to work in Florida waters. He replied, “The only
vessels we are using in the program are local, vetted
vessels.” His response caused an uproar of protest from the
crowd, with various fishermen and VOO workers yelling
that Carolina Skiffs were being brought in from out of
state. To this, Vogelsang responded, “Vessels that are
from out of the area are contractors with special
skills.” Vogelsang went on to claim that the amount of
“product” [oil] being found in Florida is decreasing
daily. This too caused an uproar from the room full of
fishermen. “I can take anybody in here out and show them oil,
every single day,” David White, a local fishing
charter captain responded, “I was in the VOO program,
driving around calling in oil, telling them where it
is, and nobody ever came. I never saw any skimmers
there, and I’m talking about some serious oil. I can
show you tar balls going across the bottom like
tumbleweeds.” Yerkes provided Truthout with a written statement
from Lawrence Byrd, a local boat captain who was a
task force leader in the VOO program from June 4 to
July 21. On July 27 and 28, Byrd took BP officials, Coast
Guard officials, and an EPA official on a fact finding
mission in search of oil. “The Coast Guard told us if we could show them the
oil, they’d put us back to work,” Yerkes told Truthout,
“So Byrd took him, and other officials out on his boat
and showed them the oil.” Byrd’s statement contains many instances of the
group encountering oil on the trips: “Within 30 minutes in the Rocky Bayou and Boggy
Bayou we found 4 different football field sized areas
of oily sheen on the water…We moved east from there in
search of weathered oil, just past Mid Bay bridge we
found a 2 acre oil slick with a water bottle full of
crude oil. At this time the Coast Guard Lt. had seen
enough to warrant a 2nd trip with BP officials and
EPA.” The next day, July 28, Byrd wrote: “On board were BP officials, a Parson official, 2
Coast Guard Lts and EPA. First stop Crab Island Destin
where we found tar balls, dead fish, and plenty of
dead sargasm grass. All officials seemed very
concerned about all of our findings.” The report goes on to list further oil findings,
and added, “In the eyes of BP officials, Coast Guard
Lts. and EPA, this was more than enough oil product to
warrant the need for more VOO boats to serve as a
first line of defense against this toxic pollution. To
this day Destin VOO is still operating with ½ task
force in the bay and ½ task force in Gulf with Walton
County being completely unprotected! I feel all
parties have good intentions but nothing is being
done!” “Somebody is stopping that process,” Yerkes told
Truthout, “Thad Allen stood up at Tyndall Air Force
Base the same night that they sprayed dispersant on
the oil in front of Destin, and he said we are going
to use local fishermen in each local area to do the
jobs, even beyond the cleaning of the oil. The day
after he said that at Tyndall…every one of the
Carolina skiffs is loaded to the hilt with boom.
Nobody else got reactivated.” Yerkes expressed his frustration further. “They are lying about this whole thing and it’s got
me in an uproar,” he said, “I’m by myself. I’m the
only one willing to stand up. I have a lot of friends
who want to stand up and speak out. They know the
Coast Guard and BP are lying, but they won’t talk
because they are getting paychecks and don’t want to
jeopardize that. They are saying they are finding new
oil all the time, but the Coast Guard claims they are
testing it and saying it’s safe. I know for a fact
they are not testing it, and we watched and heard
C130s fly every night in July.” There is a clear pattern that VOO workers in all
four states are consistently reporting: -VOO workers identify the oil. “There are surfers coming in with oil on them,”
Yerkes continued, “There are divers telling us it’s on
the bottom. We have VOO workers coming in after
finding oil three inches thick atop the water as of
last week, and they go back out there and it’s gone.” “There are stories of people getting notes on their
cars, verbal and phone threats. I don’t want to become
one of those people. I’m trying to heighten my profile
so they don’t want to mess with me,” Yerkes added, “I
want the truth to come out so the public knows. I’m
trying to make BP and the government come out and tell
the facts instead of lying to the public about what is
going on. I want to know how much dispersants they are
using, where all the oil is, and the effects these are
having on all of us. Somebody is lying, and we want
the truth.” Comments 💬 التعليقات |