June coastal scuttlebutt, continued…

in Coastal Scuttlebutt by Admin — June 16, 2010 at 7:38 am | 15 comments

June 30

Houck hits a homer!

Today I’m proud to call your attention to a masterpiece article by my friend, coastal colleague and Tulane Law Professor Oliver Houck. The essay appears in the July 11 edition of The Nation.

This is Ollie-speak at its best, a typically frank and honest, no-holds-barred assessment of Louisiana’s political culpability in the BP blowout. Two thumbs up!

On the same broad subject, the politics of disaster response in Louisiana, Debbie Elliott has a story about Govrnor Jindal on today’s Morning Edition that quotes yours truly.

June 29

35 minutes of Billy Nungesser (on CSPAN)

One of the growing list of LaCoastPost information contributors forwarded this video clip from C-span a week ago featuring Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser speaking to some of his fans from a Chalmette ‘soapbox.’

During his rant against the nattering nabobs of naysayer scientists who oppose his plan to save Plaquemines Parish with sand berms, he asserts that no one has the guts to oppose the project on a yes or no basis. I hereby go on record with a thumbs down on sand berms!

Among his comments, Nungesser says that these fragile 6 foot ‘barriers’ will prevent salt water intrusion more effectively than the critical large scale river diversion at Myrtle Grove! He also thinks that salt-tolerant Mangrove ‘trees’ can help save his land! That’s as much fantasy as planting palm trees.

I was disappointed to see New Orleans City Council President Arnie Fielkow nodding in agreement to everything Billy said. This clip is definitely worth watching.

Keeping an eye on the Corps

Matt McBride is a diligent New Orleans observer of the Corps of Engineers, who manages a web site you can access here. Matt forwarded the following info yesterday:

Last Friday evening, the Corps placed this 88 megabyte file of emails between the state and Corps (as well as intenal to the Corps) up on their FTP site. The file covers the period from June 11 through last Thursday June 24th. It appears to have been compiled by Amanda S Jones, a Public Affairs officer at MVN.

The file has now been taken down and I don’t know why it was put out there, although I suspect it was meant to go to press covering the story in a effort to get the Corps’ side of things out. It makes for very interesting reading!

Anchors Aweigh, Cajun Navy!

The delta we live and work on depends on its connection to and interaction with the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. Thus I’ve been outspokenly critical and dismissive of most schemes to deal with the BP Blowout that involve walling off our delta from the gulf.

The coastal scientific community, of which I’m a member, is unusually united in opposition to the use of ‘temporary’ emergency sand barriers, sunken barges and rocks, the construction of which will add physical and ecological damage to what is already caused by the oil.

On the other hand I’m on board with all reasonable proposals to keep BP oil away from the coast – first by shutting off the well, second by capturing already released oil offshore and third – to the extent that we can – blocking the intrusion of crude oil into the estuary using temporary measures.

Thus, although I can’t speak for my fellow scientists, I support the use of strings of floating barges across tidal passes such as is underway, led by Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle and others. This effort, called the Cajun Navy, was described yesterday in HuffingtonPost. I also advocate the massive application of native biodegradable floating sorbents, such as Louisiana hay.

June 28

Is Holly Beach a new link in a coastal barricade?

A guest post by Paul Conover from Lafayette went on line today. Two days ago he discovered that a wall of sand-filled Hesco baskets was being constructed along the shoreline in Cameron Parish.

Call me paranoid but I smell a ‘Jindal Juggernaut,’ in which individual coastal parishes are quietly making deals with the Governor’s Office to barricade the entire coast of Louisiana under the discretion (and guise) of emergency conditions – with virtually no scientific involvement.

Under this (fantasy?) scenario BP bankrolls a chain of coastal dikes from Texas to Mississippi, including the two controversial pre-B.Pocalypse levee projects Morganza-to-the-Gulf and Donaldsonville-to-the-Gulf, as well as the sunken rock-filled barges in Jefferson Parish and the Jindal-Nungesser sand berms. These locally popular ‘dike deals’ are then used to extract blackmailed permits from the Coast Guard and the Corps of Engineers.

I didn’t hear a word spoken about this new beach barrier project at the recent meeting of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA).

So much for coastal transparency!

On June 25 Governor Jindal vetoed a bill authored by State Senator Robert Adley and passed by the state legislature that would have required him to keep and make public all records that relate to his responses to the BP blowout. Go figure.

June 27

Bobby J.  Superstar

Compare the New York Times photo (left) of Bobby Jindal on the political stage made to order by the BP Blowout with the 1973 photo (below) of Glenn Carter playing Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway. Can you imagine former Governor Kathleen Blanco posing in a Messianic manner post-Katrina? I can’t. The Bobby J. photo accompanied a story by Campbell Robertson and John Collins Rudolf published yesterday, which described a seriously dysfunctional relationship between the state and feds with respect to the BP Blowout response.

‘BP Oilberg’ pics from space

Speaking of scary photographs, click on this link to view time-lapse high def NASA satellite images from April pre blowout through May 24. I can only imagine what the spill looks like today, 33 days after the last shot was taken. I can also imagine with dismay what doesn’t show beneath the tip of this ‘BP oilberg.’

June 26

Approaching storm clouds

Sandy Davis describes in today’s The Advocate the potential impacts of the so-far unnamed tropical storm that by Monday could temporarily shut down the efforts to shut down the gushing Deep Horizon well.

State and Feds read from different playbooks

Yesterday The New York Times published an insightful story by Campbell Robertson and John Collins Rudolf that describes a very serious disconnect between federal and state responses to the BP Blowout. Not surprisingly this disconnect has political roots and it precludes effective coordination.

I plan to post a major piece soon on what I see as parallel but mirror image responses by the state and feds to south Louisiana’s twin Armageddons of Katrina and BP/Deep Horizon. Pardon my repetitive use of the phrase but this is a must-read article.

A complementary story on June 24 by CBS News describes the curious fact that, whereas Gov. Jindal beats up on the Obama administration for what he describes as an inadequate response to the BP Blowout, the governor has not deployed about 5,000 National Guard members that are at his disposal.

June 25

Vindication is sweet – but the results are sour

On May 6 2010, sixteen days into the BP Blowout, The Times-Picayune published my Point of View column entitled ‘How BP pushed the tech envelope,’ in which I suggested that the Deep Horizon drilling project had ventured beyond the point at which safety could be ensured. I said,

It’s comparable to a surgeon working from a room adjacent to the operating theater, using an arthroscopic procedure controlled electronically – while balancing on a unicycle. What could possibly go wrong?

I was widely criticized for this opinion by some drilling techno-experts who grumbled that I should stick to a field in which I had experience. Now, fifty days since offering my opinion and sixty-six days into the ongoing disaster, I’ve learned much more about drilling at such extreme depths and pressures and nothing I’ve heard has changed my thinking about how risky it is.

Yesterday on NPR’s Fresh Air I heard the clearest explanation to date of the highly vaunted technology involved in drilling a well 3.5 miles below sea level. I highly recommend listening to this interview with New York Times science reporter Henry Fountain, who has the experience that I lack. After listening to this interview I feel totally vindicated and would change nary a word if I were asked to write the column again today.

June 24

Running tally of gushing oil

See this widget from PBS that provides a ticker showing the volume of oil released into the Gulf so far and counting. You can adjust the counter to reflect different estimates of rates of flow. Divide the numbers shown (gallons) by 42 to convert to barrels.

Dredging sand from the dying Chandeleurs

Chris Kirkham reported in The Times-Picayune that Governor Bobby Jindal and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser continue to badger the Obama administration for the right to dredge sand close to the already-dwindling Chandeleur Islands, despite legitimate opposition from federal authorities. This morning Laura Jones reported on WRKF-FM 89.3 in Baton Rouge on the same issue. Governor Jindal wants to continue dredging sand that will jeopardize the island chain just to save a few days required to lay over a mile of pipeline to pump sand from a more remote location. Here’s the headline of a press release from Jindal’s office yesterday:

Gov. Jindal to Feds: No Time for More Studies, Act Now & Restart Dredging Operations so LA Can Win this War against the Oil Spill

I’m curious about what studies the governor is referring to. There have been no studies of the sand berm plan. What he meant was, No studies, period!

This pattern of the exclusion of science from both state and federal efforts to mitigate the impacts of the BP blowout is gaining national interest. The Scientist carried a post by associate editor Bob Grant on this issue. LSU School of the Coast Professor Gene Turner and I were both interviewed for the story.

Political oil

This morning NPR’s Morning Edition carried a must-hear story by John Burnett about the historic romance between oil and gas and the fact that oil still rules at the legislature in Baton Rouge. The question is whether April 20 has threatened the stability of this relationship that dates back to Huey Long.  Burnett’s interviewees include well-known political pundit John Maginnis, Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell and Louisiana Midcontinent Oil and Gas President Chris John.

June 23

Expediency trumps responsibility while environmental reps remain silent

Cain Burdeau with A-P reported today in The Sun Herald that in its haste to build controversial and berms the State of Louisiana has overseen the dredging of 450,000 cubic yards of sand in a sensitive area that endangers the Chandeleur Island chain. Governor Jindal apparently acknowledged that fact but argues that it could save a whole five days that would be required to lay a pipeline from a safer borrow area.

I’m dismayed that the environmental community remains silent on this egregious project and the way it’s being carried out. What am I missing here, EDF, NWF and Audubon?

Iconic oyster po’boy – impact index for BP crude?

Yesterday’s Marketplace Morning Report on NPR described the conversion of the iconic Louisiana Oyster Po’boy into a ‘Richboy,’ as the invasion of BP crude oil has closed down major portions of the oyster leasing grounds in the state. Adriene Hill interviewed po’boy purveyor Sharlene Zimmer, owner of Zimmer’s Seafood in New Orleans, who said that shucked oyster meat now costs her $54/gallon, up from $37 on April 20.  This is a 31% increase, or about 3% a week.

On BP Blowout Day (BPBD) a hungry customer at Zimmer’s paid $8.95 for an oyster po’boy, so by this time next year the same formerly modest lunch item could cost you about 42 bucks. I’m not an economist but the iconic oyster po’boy could serve as a crude but effective index of the economic impact of BP crude on the state economy.

Political popularity: Jindal vs. Obama

A survey of gulf coast residents on their reaction to government responses to the BP blowout was carried out by LSU communications professor Kirby Goidel and doctoral student Ashley Kirzinger. The survey results were described by Charles Lussier in today’s The Advocate.

Governor Jindal scored generally high marks, especially among Louisianans.  This was probably the result of his dramatic promotion of a highly dubious ‘Maginot Line’ of sand berms to protect marshes against crude oil.

A far more surprising finding of the survey was that President Obama, sponsor of the highly unpopular moratorium on deepwater drilling that is currently tied up in court, was also viewed positively in the opinion of most Louisiana respondents. Go figure.

June 22

Truth in advertising!

A loyal reader who frequently contributes timely coastal news items forwarded this amazingly prescient advertising slogan and logo that was used by BP several years ago. As was frequently said on the classic British export The Monty Python Show, “Say no more!”

Sand berms and the omission of applied science

On June 16, Kyle Graham with the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities (GOCA) acknowledged at the meeting of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) that Louisiana’s coastal scientists were not involved in developing the state’s plan to construct emergency sand berms in response to the BP oil invasion. He explained this curious decision on the basis of insufficient time for modeling studies.

This ten-minute videoclip exemplifies the kind of advice that is being ignored by state officials.

Professor Irv Mendelssohn, noted wetland ecologist with the LSU School of the Coast and Environment, presents scientific advice for dealing with the oil invading Louisiana’s coastal marshes. This is exactly the kind of specific critical information that was virtually ignored by the governor’s office in its haste to build sand berms to blockade oil from already fouled marshes.

Impetus for the ‘Dutch Dunes’ sand berm project

Another sharp-eyed LaCoastPost reader forwarded this article from the June 16 The Wall Street Journal noting that Boskalis, the world’s largest dredging company (based in Holland) will help build the sand berm project successfully promulgated by Governor Bobby Jindal and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser. Here’s what the company’s web site says about the sand berm project:

In line with the recently approved sand berm plans by the President of the US, the State of Louisiana has contracted Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V. to deliver sand for berms to protect the Louisiana coast from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The Boskalis trailing suction hopper dredger Stuyvesant, which sails under the American flag, has been deployed as the first US hopper as of today. The sand berms, which will be approximately 75 km long, will be positioned to the south of New Orleans, in line with the Chandeleur Islands and stretching from East Grand Terre island to Sandy Point. The sand berms, 6 feet high, will help block the oil from entering the state’s more fragile and harder-to-clean marshes.

Boskalis is also supplying its expertise, supporting the authorities with the installation and deployment of the rigid sweeping arms made available by the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management. Boskalis has years of experience in this field and we have teamed up with the Dutch Ministry successfully in the past to clean up oil throughout Europe.

The Boskalis strategy is designed to benefit from the key macro-economic drivers that are fueling global demand in our selected markets: global trade, increasing energy consumption, expanding population pressures and the challenges of changing climate conditions.

Editor’s note: In the first sentence of their description, Boskalis implies that the sand berm project is the brainchild of the Obama administration. This false implication suggests that potential damage caused by the project can be blamed on the feds!

What’s in a name?

Jim Brown, former State Insurance Commissioner turned radio host and political pundit, interviewed me on June 20 on his nationally syndicated show ‘Common Sense.’ Before going on air, Jim had told me that he wanted my thoughts on Governor Jindal’s controversial sand berm project, now under construction on the east side of Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes.

He then went live and accidentally introduced me as ‘Len Berm,’ rather than Len Bahr. This reminded me that when I started my career as a coastal scientist in 1963 my colleagues often referred to me as either ‘Sand Bahr’ or ‘Oyster Bahr.’ This interview will be available soon on podcast.

June 21

By today’s end the hot air of summer will replace the hot air from the State Capitol

The most important task for the regular session of the legislature each year is to pass two bills known as HB 1 and 2, the Louisiana budget and construction bills, respectively. In today’s The Advocate, Michelle Millhollon describes the passage of HB 1 and the imminent passage of HB 2.

HB 2 pays to build and maintain state highways and bridges. HB 1 for 2011, which takes effect on July 1, is a $26 billion dollar promise to dole out operating funds for public colleges, hospitals, prisons and state office buildings, and to guarantee the retirement checks of former state employees, including moi.

HB 1 promises to keep the lights on in the Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration (OCPR) charged with saving the coast. The latter job now includes the huge additional cost of dealing with BP oil. It’s not particularly encouraging to note that dedicating the entire $26 billion budget to coastal issues, rather than let’s say $0.5 billion, may not be sufficient – whether or not BP writes a big check.

No wonder the public at large is cynical to hear that our state pols spent endless hours this session debating such issues as allowing guns in churches and eliminating the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. I for one was not impressed.

June 20

Happy Father’s Day, fellow dads!

Ranking the B.Pocalypse against other environmental catastrophes

The New York Times published a provocative article by Justin Gillis on June 18 that attempts to rank the environmental consequences of the BP blowout in terms of other ecological disasters in the US.  He quotes a number of environmental historians who cite such disasters as the short-lived Johnstown Flood and the the decade long Dust Bowl. Not listed is the approaching freshwater crisis in the southwest amid thirsty expanding populations, the unsustainable mining of aquifers and climate change that is reducing mountain snowpack.

Gillis’ article includes the following passage that caught my eye:

Craig E. Colten, a geographer at Louisiana State University, nominates “the human overhaul of the Mississippi River Valley,” which destroyed many thousands of acres of wetlands and made the region more vulnerable to later events like Hurricane Katrina.

I would agree with Dr. Colten. The US Department of Agriculture abetted and subsidized the conversion of the Mississippi River watershed from floodplain and bottomland hardwood forest to tile-drained row crops, especially corn and soybeans, partly to meet a hungry Chinese market.

This massive change in land use piled on top of the impacts of tens of billions of dollars worth of plumbing modifications overseen by the US Army Corps of Engineers for dams, channelization and flood levees. Such government-sponsored changes converted the ‘Big Muddy’ of Mark Twain’s day into today’s ‘Big Sewerpipe.’

On April 19, 2010, the Mississippi River delta, already a candidate for life support, if not the Last Rites, was poised for what the future may recognize as a coup de grace administered on April 20 by British Petroleum.

The article concludes that it will take decades to judge the impact of BP’s assault on and insult to the largest delta in North America. George W. Bush says that pundits should await future historians to judge the true impacts of his eight years in the White House. My sense is that rear view mirror accounts of neither Bush 2000-2008 nor BP 2010 will be kind.

June 19

BP oil and PTSD

While the bulk of the discussion about the B.Pocalypse is focused on the ecological and economic toll of the disaster, relatively little has been said about its psychological impacts. Marc Siegel wrote an informed article for  Slate Magazine that focuses on the special vulnerability of gulf coast residents in general and south Louisianans in particular to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from the blowout.

For a case in point, yesterday’s The Washington Post carried this heart-wrenching story by Dan Zak about what appears to be the imminent demise of Leeville, Louisiana, near the southern end of Hwy 1. The first time I drove along Bayou Lafourche in 1974 I seem to remember seeing standing live oak trees along the roadside as far south as Leeville (perhaps they had already succumbed to ocean salt) – in what is now open water.

Commander Cody Billy

Josh Levin posted a dispatch yesterday about Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser in Slate Magazine that’s worth a read. The tenacious and pugnacious Billy has become a media star, and Anderson Cooper’s go-to guy for his nightly program on CNN. Whether you agree or disagree with what he’s doing to mitigate the BP oil invasion, Billy will never be accused of inaction. Among this action is, of course, promoting with Gov. Jindal the controversial sand barrier project now under construction. In his dispatch Levin mentions the scientific concerns about and challenges to what I maintain are nothing but feel-good Sandy Band-aids.

June 18

Louisiana opposition to the Obama drilling moratorium

Josh Levin wrote an excellent dispatch carried in Slate Magazine yesterday about the special vulnerability of the Louisiana coast that long predated the unforeseen arrival of who-knows-how-many tons of BP oil (not contained within pipelines). He noted the irony of the strong opposition to the temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling despite the devastation in Barataria Bay.

On yesterday’s All Things Considered Melissa Block with NPR interviewed Mark Davis, director of the Institute on Water Resources Law & Policy at Tulane University Law School,about the incestuous relationship between the oil and gas industry and Louisiana politics. This long term love affair has led state officials to ignore the obvious coastal damage caused directly and indirectly by oil and gas exploration and the production and transport of petroleum products. You can listen to the interview here.

A story by Bryan Mann on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning continues the theme of local opposition to a temporary halt on drilling until the risk of another blowout can be ensured.  Fishermen are among those clamoring for unrestricted drilling, despite the direct dependence on coastal fisheries to healthy marshes.

Who owns the coastline?

The addition of dredged sand to protect ocean front property has become controversial in Louisiana, thanks to Governor Jindal’s much hyped $360 million sand berm project. Coincidentally, beach nourishment in Florida was considered by the US Supreme Court yesterday. In today’s Morning Edition on NPR, Nina Totenberg describes the implications of the Supreme’s decision that allows the State of Florida to widen beaches by adding sand, despite opposition from beach-front property owners. This ruling has implications for thirty-five coastal states, including Louisiana.

According to the story, Florida has the longest coastline in the US. I suspect that Louisiana could challenge that statement given our highly irregular deltaic coast.

An expanded gulf dead zone this summer?

An important story in today’s Huffpost describes new evidence from oceanographers at Texas A&M (including my friend Steve DiMarco) that extremely high concentrations of natural gas (Methane) in the gushing oil threatens to dramatically expand the summertime hypoxic zone that had become characteristic of the northern gulf coast long before BP’s blowout.

During the Wednesday meeting of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) Kyle Graham, with the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities was asked about gulf hypoxia. I was astonished to hear him admit that no one involved in discussions on blowout response had even considered the issue! This shouldn’t be surprising, however, in that since I retired in September ’08 there is no longer a coastal scientist in the governor’s office.

Prayer and the coast

As a non-religious person I was nevertheless heartened to read this piece in Huffpost about an evangelical organization that is focusing on environmental stewardship and that is calling for weaning the US economy off of our addiction to oil and gas. Spokespeople from this group have visited coastal Louisiana to see the BP devastation and to pray for relief. Pray on, folks!

June 17

Sand berm criticism mounts

On her show last night on MSNBC Rachel Maddow interviewed Western Carolina University geology professor Rob Young on his concerns about the sand berm project now underway at the northern end of the Chandeleur Islands. For what it’s worth, this video clip gets my highest rating for view-worthiness.

Sharon Begley wrote this essay published on the Newsweek web site on June 10 highly critical of the Jindal sand berm project.

In today’s The Advocate Amy Wold noted scientific concerns about the sand berm project expressed at the June 16 meeting of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) meeting.

Changing the flow regime of the lower Mississippi River

Scott Horsley presented this important 4+ minute story on NPR’s Morning Edition that provides a little more detail on a proposal for the massive redistribution of flow of the Mississippi River. This represents the centerpiece of the Gulf restoration plan announced by President Obama on Tuesday night. Interviewees include Tulane Law Professor Oliver Houck and UNO Geology Professor Denise Reed.

June 16

The biggest coastal news today seems to be reaction to the president’s 17-minute speech on the BP Blowout last night.

Most of the folks interviewed in Pensacola on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning focused on immediate actions planned by the administration. Louisianans, such as Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph, are saying that the moratorium on drilling will have more impact on Louisiana than will the oil.

I strongly disagree but, as a retired ecologist whose livelihood is not directly dependent on the viability of a south Louisiana business, I can afford to be dispassionate. I very much appreciate the panic of those who face the terrible Sophie’s choice of food on the table today vs. the future loss of the entire delta system.

I wanted to learn whether or not our President sees the disaster as an unexpected golden opportunity to make lemonade from the biggest and sourest lemon to ever land on the Mississippi River delta. The unfolding devastation of the BP blowout could trigger two (long overdue) paradigm changes in thinking, one philosophical and one technical.

From a philosophical perspective, the unimaginable scope of the blowout could serve as a teaching moment to finally convince Americans about the reality of anthropogenic climate change and global warming – and the serious need for a sustainable national energy policy. On a technical level, effectively mitigating the impacts of the encroaching oil will not involve using the delta as a sandbox but will require ‘watershed’ changes in the traditional Corps of Engineers management policy for the lower Mississippi River and its drainage basin.

With respect to the latter issue I was pleased by the announcement that former Mississippi Governor Ray Maybus will lead the development of an aggressive coastal restoration plan for the northern gulf coast – including massive redistribution of Mississippi River flow. On the other hand, the president mentioned using dredged sand to mitigate oil impacts, a concept with which I strongly disagree.

The president’s concluding remarks compared the traditional blessing of fleets of gulf coast shrimp boats and the importance of prayer on dealing with the BP blowout. To me this sounded like grasping at straws and signaled an unintentional sign of desperation re dealing with devastation of unprecedented scale and uncertain ultimate impacts.