In oil disaster after oil disaster, industry has repeatedly hidden the truth from federal agencies and the public about spill volume and extent of damages, including wildlife kills, ecosystem harm, and harm to worker and public health. This underreporting is done to minimize the spiller's liability -- often billions of...

All six of Julie Creppel's young children are sick. Vomiting. Blisters all over their bodies, even in their throats. Boils. Severe headaches that wake them up screaming at night. Nausea. Fevers. Diarrhea. Stomach spasms that contort their bodies in pain. Skin lesions. Psoriasis. Nose bleeds that gush unexpectedly. Respiratory infections....

Grand Isle, Louisiana. When I returned to Cordova, Alaska, in December 2010 after my first six-month stint in the Gulf coast communities impacted by the BP oil disaster, fishermen greeted me wryly. "See you found your way home."

Fishermen were interested in stories because even then, twenty-one years after...

Recently Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer overseeing the $20 billion Gulf Coast Claims Facility to "make it right" for people harmed by the British Petroleum oil blowout disaster, told a Louisiana House and Senate committee that he had not seen any claims, or any scientific evidence, linking...

Gretna, LA -- As the one-year memorial of British Petroleum's tragic deepwater well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico approaches, federal investigators are gathering evidence to support criminal charges filed against BP and its contractors, as well as civil claims filed for damages to wildlife and public lands harmed by...

Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. When Louisiana fisherman Michelle Chauncy called the BP claim office (Kenneth Fineberg's Gulf Coast Claims Facility) last Friday to check on the status of her claim for Michelle's Crab Shack, the office couldn't find her claim. It had vanished.

Michelle had filed her claim in October...

Ocean Springs, MS -- A grandmother made me rethink all the bio-remediation hype. The "naturally-occurring oil-eating bacteria" have been newsworthy of late as they are supposedly going to come to the rescue of President Obama and BP and make good on their very premature statement that "the oil...

Sam Coleman
U.S. EPA, Region 6
1445 Ross Ave.
Dallas, TX 75202-2733 Via email: coleman.sam@epa.gov

August 27, 2010

Re: Documentation of continued dispersant spraying in near shore and inland waters from Florida to Louisiana (despite contrary claims by USCG and BP) and documentation that dispersants made...

Eight days after returning home from his Gulf oil-spill response job, Jason Brashears has flashbacks of a scene that he witnessed one day in Lake Ponchartrain, Louisiana: Thousands of fish gasping at the surface in a sea of foamy oil and dispersant.

Brashears spent 65 days spotting oil in Lake...

Barataria, LA. -- Bonnie Schumaker slowed her souped-up Cessna 180 from 130 to 50 knots so I could hold open the window for documentary film producer Bo Bodart to shoot the grim scene below us. The oil-laced air rushed in and stung our throats and eyes.

Bay...

Pensacola Beach, FL -- When Ryan Heffernan, a volunteer with Emerald Coastkeeper, noticed a bag of oily debris floating off in Santa Rosa Sound, she ran up to BP's HazMat-trained workers to ask if they would retrieve it.

"No, ma'am," one replied politely. "We can't go in the ocean. It's...

Orange Beach, Alabama -- While President Obama insists that the federal government is firmly in control of the response to BP's spill in the Gulf, people in coastal communities where I visited last week in Louisiana and Alabama know an inconvenient truth: BP -- not our president -- controls the...

Grand Bayou, Louisiana -- The federal agencies delegated with protecting the environment, worker safety, and public health are in hot water in the small coastal communities across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Fishermen responders who are working BP's giant uncontrolled slick in the Gulf are reporting bad headaches, hacking coughs,...

Venice, Louisiana -- Local fishermen hired to work on BP's uncontrolled oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico are scared and confused. Fishermen here and in other small communities dotting the southern marshes and swamplands of Barataria Bay are getting sick from the working on the cleanup, yet BP is...

The following post was written by Paula and Paul Revere, a.k.a. Riki Ott and David Cobb.

Alaska-Colorado-California-Oregon-Washington -- Three-plus weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out limits on corporate spending in political campaigns in Citizens United v. FEC, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found...

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is a radical undermining of our sovereign self-governance. It ushers in government of, for, and by The Corporations. It goes well beyond stolen elections -- which can now legally be bought elections.

But that's not the worst of...

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Citizen United v. Federal Elections Commission case sold America down the river. It opens the floodgates to unfettered -- unlimited! -- corporate and union spending on candidate elections by overturning state and federal restrictions on electioneering. This will affect all elections: school board,...

Cordova, Alaska. Early Sunday morning the Kodiak, an Exxon tanker carrying 25 million gallons of crude oil, lost power in the notorious Hinchinbrook Entrance just as it was leaving Prince William Sound.

Despite 10-foot seas and 15-knot winds - a relatively calm night in Hinchinbrook Entrance - one escort tug...

January 13, 2010

U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, Chair
SENATE HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND PENSIONS COMMITTEE

U.S. Representative George Miller, Chair
HOUSE EDUCATION AND LABOR COMMITTEE

U.S. Representative Edolphus Towns, Chair
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, Chair
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE

Governor Parnell
Office of the Governor
Juneau, AK

Governor Parnell,

The recent Pathfinder accident at Bligh Reef calls into question Alaska's ability to deliver on its promise of "environmentally responsible" oil and gas development. Especially for people in Prince William Sound, this promise is meaningless unless it includes...