Unnatural Disasters

On April 21st - the day before Earth Day- a BP leased offshore oil rig which works to extract crude oil from beneath the Gulf of Mexico, exploded - an unnatural disaster. In the days that followed the story quickly shifted, from trying to locate eleven missing oil workers who at this point are presumed dead, to the 200,000 gallons of oil a day that were continuing to be spewed from the ocean floor.

I find the coverage troublesome.

At this point, most of the attention is on the effects that the oil spill will have on the wildlife in the surrounding Gulf Coast region, particularly on the shrimp and seafood industry. There are passing references to the fact that the spill is threatening the Louisiana coastline—home to 40 percent, 3.5 million acres, of the coastal wetlands found in the continental United States, and specifically to the risk posed to 10 nearby wildlife refuges. However, No one is asking why we have placed, according to a 2006 NOAA map, some 3,858 oil and gas platforms in such an environmentally sensitive region. So I'll ask: "Why have we placed nearly 4,000 oil and gas platforms in such an environmentally sensitive region?" Natural disasters can't always be prevented, but unnatural disasters such as these can be avoided.

My other source of contention is that many news outlets are hinting that this maybe the worst US oil spill in decades - since what is often referred to as 'the worst oil spill on US land'  the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

This statement is troublesome in its inaccuracy.

This recent oil spill and Exxon Valdez may very well be the worst catastrophic oil spills in US history in recent memory. I am going to confess that I have a limited knowledge of the oil industry, but I live a stone's throw (ok, ok more like a short bike ride) from the community which has suffered the worst recorded oil spill in US history.

Where do I live? New York City. And the spill in question is in the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn. Most people haven't heard of the spill, because unlike an oil rig going down in a bang, it drizzled into Newtown Creek, into the land under the houses and parks of the surrounding community over decades… rather like a whimper.

Newton Creek, located in the northeast industrial section of Greenpoint, Brooklyn has been home to oil refineries since the 1840's, many of those were incorporated into Standard Oil Trust which eventually became ExxonMobil. What is now ExxonMobil used the areas refining facilities until 1966 and operated a bulk petroleum storage facility and distribution terminal on site until 1993. For decades residents complained of an oily smell, coming from their basements but their complaints went unnoticed. That is until 1978, when a US Coast Guard helicopter patrol, the US Coast Guard discovered a large plume of oil flowing out of the banks of the creek. Says the non-profit organization Riverkeeper:

At approximately 17 million gallons and 55 acres, the [mostly underground] spill is at least 6 million gallons larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. The spill is the result of leaks in the 1940s and 1950s. ExxonMobil neglected the spill for more than two decades, as it slowly migrated under the community and into the creek.

My point is not that Greenpoint deserves more attention than what is currently occurring in the Gulf Coast, but rather that pollution of this nature is not the exception but it's the rule in many of the communities within which most of us live. In New York alone, Maspeth Creek and Gowanus Canal are also heavily polluted, with the latter also having received Superfund designation. Unfortunately, most pollution, from the mercury in our fish, the result of coal fired plants, to polluted ground water courtesy of agricultural runoff that haunts most of the Midwest, does not occur suddenly, but rather over months, years, or decades.

Clean up, typically only occurs not when the entities creating the mess recognizes the errors of their way, but rather when social pressure to fix the problem becomes too loud to ignore. When the community's economic fate is intimately tied up with the polluting entity (as is the case in coal country, and to a certain extent in the Gulf Coast),  short term economic gains are put ahead of long term environmental harms.

The press, however, does a lousy job of creating this narrative for us. Of connecting the dots so that we recognize that these industries upon which we depend on for economic revitalization, for energy, cost us as much, or more than they contribute. This environmental catastrophe facing the gulf coast, for example is not the first one: post- Katrina there were at least 44 oil spills, totaling 7 million gallons. It's also a clear cut example of how a natural disaster (a hurricane) can trigger an unnatural disaster: oil spills.

New York's Maspeth Creek will cost over 1 billion dollars to clean up. That is 1 billion dollars that is not going to education, to supporting sustainable agriculture, that is not going to the things that we as a society value, but rather to clean up the mess of companies that made their millions and then got the heck out of dodge the exact opposite of corporate social responsibility.

Sustainable Development is hard - much of it is about trying to make sense of shades of gray and choosing from a set of very difficult choices. It doesn't help when the press does little to un-muddy the waters, to help us recognize those systemic links and thus clarifying the need for change.