Baby dolphin
Tagged by BP, and left to rot as the sun sets.
UPDATE
The little body was still laying at the edge of the surf Sunday evening….
The Shadows Gather |
Two weeks ago this is how the beach at Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge looked…COVERED with a thick shelf of oil. Yesterday the NY Times ran an article with this headline: REPORT FORESEES QUICK GULF OF MEXICO RECOVERY. Does anyone notice a discrepancy in the photograph I took a couple weeks ago and the image Mr. Feinburg is painting of the Gulf Coast?
As I sat finishing my breakfast, I read the article posted on Facebook and about jumped off my chair with anger. The report says the Gulf should recover by the end of 2012. Perhaps they are counting on the Mayan calendar’s expiration and the potential end of the world as we know it to make this prediction. Seriously! I spoke with a wildlife biologist last Saturday and she said it takes a minimum of 3 to 5 years for wildlife populations to show the true picture after an event such as this. Maybe Mr. Feinburg–I mean BP–has resorted to wishful thinking as their modus operandi.
Wes Tunnell, a marine biologist at Texas A & M, wrote the report that said some areas will have fewer fish, shrimp and crab but overall regional 2011 catches for blue crabs, shrimp, oysters and fin fishes should be in line with catches before the spill. By the way, he was paid by BP to write the document. And…he doesn’t offer any estimates on how much hydrocarbon residue is expected to be found in said seafood species. Whatever happened to non-biased scientific data collection? Oh, the oil companies run the country…how silly of me to forget.
From the beginning of the spill I have thought the Coast Guard to be a puppet of BP…of oil corporations. From watching Rear Admiral Mary Landree mindlessly nod her head in press briefings by Doug Suttles, the BP spokesperson during the spill, to this latest bogus report by scientists funded by BP (isn’t that in itself a conflict of interest?)…the Coast Guard agrees with anything BP says. Again…I cry FOUL! and….WAKE UP AMERICA!
A voice of sanity is included in the Times article. Dr. James Cowan, a biological oceanographer at LSU said his group has found “troubling signs of apparent oil damage” to shrimp and fish. “In my mind, the long-term, indirect effects are going to be the most insidious and also the most difficult to ascertain,” he said.
This past summer I witnessed local government officials laughing at ‘dumb tourists’ swimming (yes….I have video footage) in crude oil. I heard one mayor say ‘we have to get the clean-up workers off the beach during the day…it is scaring the tourists’ (yep…got THAT on video as well). So should we be surprised at the continued denial of the damage that was done and how it continues to affect the Gulf Coast? Absolultely NOT! No surprise here. So how can an article like this help us? It can give us a renewed sense of purpose to ensure the light of truth be presented through reporting true stories, showing images and video, and through voices that are LIVING IT. Let the TRUTH dispel the shadows before they completely cover-up the real story of what is happening along the Gulf Coast.
This shows a block of hardened crude oil washed ashore mid-January 2011. Who said the oil is gone? It’s over? Hardly any workers were to be seen with hundreds of tons of crude oil imbedded in the beach in the wildlife refuge. BP has not even cleaned up the mess yet they are claiming within two years everything will be great, back to normal? This is the height of insanity.
tracks left at Surfside on January 3, 2011 by a Wingfield harrow
The BP crews have returned after a blessed 9 day respite and the first thing they did was HARROW the beach!
You don’t have to be a Kentucky farm girl to understand the purpose of a harrow, the very definition is, <<a cultivating implement set with spikes, spring teeth, or disks and used primarily for pulverizing and smoothing the soil>> The effect of this equipment on our beach was obvious to all who stopped to watch.
They were pulverizing the tar balls so they could never be sifted or screened and removed.
A few minutes later one of the oblivious speeding 4-wheelers roared past us down the beach in the newly ‘”smoothed” sand….. I wondered if the BP contractors had harrowed this stretch of the beach because they were concerned that some of their equipment might become stuck in the tar balls on the beach (reported Sunday in the Mobile Press-Register), or maybe they were afraid someone had booby-trapped the sand in their absence?
four-wheeler tracks in the wake of the harrow
But, as I watched, another four-wheeler raced back up the beach, narrowly avoiding the poor man walking his dog in the surf, far from the newly-harrowed trail. Poor tourist… braving the BP chaos to walk his dog in the surf.
BP four-wheeler avoiding a tourist
I searched through photos of harrows ’till I found the Illinois company who supplied them to BP, and they have a very interesting account of their recent trips to the Gulf. I doubt they’ll leave it online very long once they realize why BP really ordered 16 of their 10-ft harrows.
http://www.wingfields.com/gulfarticle.htm
BP stations a pair of these 'experts' with nets at 20 - 50 yard intervals along the beach
The relentless BP 'comfort stations' running up and down the beach to service the tar ball experts
My walk on the beach at Surfside this morning
December 9, 2010 by Simone Lipscomb
As I was walking along the shore at Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, I saw a layer of oil exposed from the incoming tide. I was photographing it when one of the four-wheelers stopped and the guy started calling out to me. Because of the wind I couldn’t hear him so I walked over to hear what he was saying.
He told me he was a supervisor from Crowder, the current BP contractor corporation providing clean-up on the Alabama Gulf Coast. Just today, he said, he found that particular layer of oil at the water’s edge. He had marked it with flags and had shown his crew, who he related wanted to immediately scoop it off the beach. As he was telling me about everything he and the contractors were doing to make the beach better, he stopped talking for a moment, looked down the beach and said, “Those wildlife officers are watching us.” “So what?” I replied. He went on to tell me that the wildlife officers employed by the US Fish and Wildlife agency did not particularly like the contractors. “Oh,” I pondered out loud.
As the contractor was driving off, I looked up and saw the most amazing clouds over the dunes. Like a magnet, they drew me in. While avoiding sea oats, I walked to the base of the dune and took a few photographs. I turned and walked back toward shore and the wildlife officers were wheeling toward me. In a friendly wave, I greeted them.
I had missed the signs professing the area was closed. Maybe it was the rapture of beautiful clouds or my foggy brain still in recovery from food poisoning Sunday night, regardless I was approached by both armed officers who asked if I had seen the signs. The signs are spaced at 100++ foot intervals along the dune line and I had wandered between two signs, no more than 20 feet into the ‘closed’ area.
Okay, of all the people who visit the refuge I’m the last person who would do anything to harm the environment or wildlife there. I’ve walked through 100 degree temperatures for miles through the center of the refuge to get images and video of the heavy machines hauling the beach away during the invasion of the oil. I’ve written passionately about wildlife and wild places and included my work from the oil spill in my recently published book, Place of Spirit. Not intending to do any harm but rather capture the beauty of this place was no excuse. I had entered the NO NO zone. But seriously. Not a warning or verbal reprimand? I wasn’t on the dune, was careful about where I stepped and had barely entered closed area.
When I explained all of this to the officers they said they had a lot of trouble with the contractors and so had to be very strict about anyone crossing the (invisible) line. Oh….so I was being made an example of for the contractors. And it worked. As the officer was writing me a ticket, a tractor driver came up and the officer stepped out of the way…INTO THE FORBIDDEN ZONE. I made a comment about being careful not to step into the closed area, with humor, and he realized he also was in the no trespassing area and so stepped back out of it while continuing to write the ticket…the $75 ticket.
As I walked back to my car I knew that in ‘normal’ times I would have received a verbal warning, not a ticket. I have no issue paying the fine. Each of those 20 feet cost me $3.75, a small price to pay for realizing just how stressed relations are between people trying to protect the environment and those who work for people who nearly annihilated the environment on the Gulf Coast. It seems that wildlife officers have it ‘in’ for contractors, some of whom are careless. And people like me, who adore nature and work diligently to document and share the seriousness of this on-going oil spill event (paying our own expenses) get caught in the middle of some unholy war between the good guys and those who work for the bad guys.
The contract workers are not the enemy Mr. Wildlife Officers (please tell your bosses). Neither are nature-lovers enraptured by beautiful clouds.
When Liz and Betsy were down for a visit we were generally able to avoid the omnipresent BP crews by avoiding their tent cities. We unloaded our kayaks, coolers, and cameras as far from them as possible and took comfort in the knowledge they rarely settled in the same area two days in a row. If they were in Surfside one day they would probably be in Kiva Dunes or Morgantown the next day.
But now there is no escape.
This morning BP entered into a new, more annoying, stage of their ‘cleanup’ operation. They drop pairs of workers (and I use that term loosely) at intervals all along the beach, one stands on the sand with a bag and one in the surf with a net. As I watched, the one in the surf would occasionally swipe at the water (presumably trying to net a tumbling tar ball) then occasionally saunter up to empty the net into the bag on the sand. We walked on the beach about 30 minutes and in that time the nearest pair moved a few yards west, occasionally netting and occasionally emptying.
New BP cleanup crews
But in that time we were passed twice by the new “mobile comfort station” running up and down the beach. BP has loaded a stinky porta-potty, a hand sanitizer unit and a cooler on a trailer and is dragging it with a big diesel tractor continuously, up and down the beach, to service their crews.
Now there is nowhere you can go on our beach for relaxation or peace and quiet.
And, obviously not content with the damage they’ve done to our private beach access, they started taking shortcuts through private property today.
Over the sand dunes and between the houses
I think it’s time for the area Real Estate companies to band together and end this charade. Maybe if Meyer, Kaiser, Reed & Fort Morgan Realty joined forces and confronted Crowder Contracting this new form of tourist torture would end. There are good reasons motorized vehicles aren’t allowed on the beaches here, and those same reasons apply to the BP contractors.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see this new ”operation” is another waste of money and energy, and it shouldn’t take a tourist asking for a refund to motivate the folks who profit from beach rentals to get out and protect their beaches.
This is the intriguing title of an email on the disk I received from ADEM yesterday in response to my Open Records Request. When I open it I get pages of symbols and numbers, but it was sent from an iPhone to someone in the ADEM on Friday, October 8.
There are four folders on the disk: << Air, Land, Water, Field Operations, and Executive–No files >>. There are literally hundreds of files in these folders, but most are “MSG Files” and cannot be opened because they are created by an “Unknown Application”. But I’m working on that.
from the ADEM website
I had contacted the Alabama Department of Environmental Management back in August when I mistakenly believed BP had ended their destructive daily sifting operation. I was looking for someone/anyone who could give me the remediation plan for repairing the staging areas (like our Surfside Shores beach access) damaged by the heavy machinery used in the ‘cleanup’ process.
I was frustrated when they couldn’t even direct me to the right department for my question, so I did a little internet research into the ADEM. A few days later I fired off a Freedom of Information Request reminiscent of those infamous Bourbon Times days when we were on a first name basis with the Attorney General for appealing every Open Records refusal.
I didn’t know the names of the documents I wanted so I mailed a lengthy request for all inspections, monitoring reports, amendments, test results, proposals, site plans, directives, permits and actions relating to the cleanup operation on the Fort Morgan Peninsula. I was fishing. I got nothing.
So three weeks later I called the Director’s office and couldn’t find anyone who had even seen my letter. The next day I received a return call
from the ADEM website
assuring me they were, “working on it.”
After another three weeks I called again and left more messages. The next day I received another call promising to have the disk in the mail that week, and it was. The disk arrived Friday morning. Another interesting email I can’t open is entitled, “Interesting read if it wasn’t for the black helicopter that keeps buzzing around”…
SIT_BRIEF 03-Aug-2010 (I have attempted to upload the Site Briefing for August 3 here)
I was looking for something/anything that could point me in the direction of an answer to my question. But what I received is a collection of seemingly random Daily Summaries, Notes, Observations, Briefings and Reports that cannot be opened (yet). But there are also some interesting PDF files I can see, including: Clean Harbor’s permit to discharge into a sewage treatment plant (in Theodore?), a document from the Corp of Engineers re the Katrina Cut on Dauphin Island, comments on the WKRG news report on water tests, a permit application to use the Magnolia landfill, a Community Relations Plan for Waste Management and, wait for it… THE REMEDIATION PLAN FOR THE MOBILE STREET PARKING LOT. So I am on the right track, the parking lot on Bon Secour at the end of Mobile Street was also used as a staging area and is only a couple miles from here.
The plan itself is not so great, but at least they have a plan:
F r o m : T o m W h i t e h u r s t [ T o m . W h i t e h u r s t @ e r m . c o m ]
S e n t : T h u r s d a y , O c t o b e r 0 7 , 2 0 1 0 8 : 4 8 A M
T o : M c I n d o e , J a n n a
C c : T u c k e r , M i k e E ( H C S C o n s u l t i n g )
S u b j e c t : B o n S e c o u r p a r k i n g l o t r e m e d i a t i o n p l a n
H e r e i s t h e r e m e d i a t i o n p l a n f o r t h e M o b i l e S t r e e t p a r k i n g l o t . S o r r y i t t o o k s o l o n g . T h i s t h i n g h a s c h a n g e d d r a m a t i c a l l y s i n c e t h e l ast t i m e I s a w i t . I n a n u t s h e l l , B P w i l l e x c a v a t e t h e p a r k i n g lot t o 6 i n c h e s a n d t h e n N a t i o n a l P a r k s a n d B P w i l l s u r v e y t o d e t e r m i n e i f s a m p l i n g i s r e q u i r e d . B a c k f i l l i s c r u s h n r u n . R e p a i r s a n d f e n c e ( s n o w f e n c e w h e r e I c o m e f r o m ) a r o u n d l o t . A l l t h i s t o be d o n e w h e n t h e u s e o f t h e l o t b y N P o r t h e i r c o n t r a c t o r s i s c o m p l e t e .
Then Friday afternoon I received a call from Ed Poolos at ADEM. My letter had made its way up to his office and, confused by my broad request, he basically asked, “what in the world do you want?” I told him of my concerns and he promised to get stage 2 and 3 of the STR in the mail to me immediately. He also had Paterson Ogburn of BP contact me about the problem at Surfside.
I am absolutely delighted to finally get a response to my Open Records Request. But, based on my experiences the past few months I don’t think they’ve received many requests for information from the news organizations or environmental groups in Alabama, and that is
Seashells and tar balls on Surfside Shores today
distressing.
Stage Three of the cleanup operation starts tomorrow and, according to a story in the Press-Register today, Dr. Crozier at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab is concerned that, “ all the tilling and digging could harm creatures living in the sand or disrupt the structure of the beach.”
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/10/bps_deep_cleaning_to_start_nex.html
It could be another train wreck…
I had an early appointment last week and I was surprised to encounter a fleet of charter buses just as I crossed the bridge over the canal. A few blocks down I saw more buses leaving the Microtel, a small ‘Inns & Suites’ establishment just north of Gulf Shores.
I knew the BP workers had been staying there in July, I’d heard a funny story from one of the bus drivers about curfews for adults and nightly police raids… but I thought the crackdown on out-of-state workers stealing our jobs had ended that charade.
WRONG.
This is Lower Alabama and evidently everyone there has listed the Microtel address as their ‘permanent’ address… (why am I surprised no one checked on the outrageous increase in numbers of new residents at that address. Perhaps an increase in revenue for new local drivers’ licenses is an unexpected and happy development for the lonely annex in Foley? Who knows? Who really cares? )
One of the workers ‘stationed’ at the fort told me he was actually on the payroll while sitting at the office in Foley to declare he was a resident (he was just happy to have the money to go to Texas every weekend to see his family) so this was obviously a common occurence.
So tonite I took a couple photos at the Microtel as I passed around 5:00 pm, just about quitting time (who cares about those tide charts and when those tar balls are rolling onshore? ) And four buses had already unloaded, I passed more as I returned home and traveled up the Fort Morgan Road.
In my day this would be a terrific opportunity for a reporter hoping to bust a ‘graft & corruption’ story for an ‘above the fold’ byline. It’s soooo obvious, the fleet of buses can be seen if you miss the turn to Lulu’s! But the latest rumor is we’re stuck with the useless Crowder cleanup crews because they rent tents from a local mayor. Same ol’ shit, new day…..
I’m disillusioned…. Perhaps there are too many stories of graft and corruption in Lower Alabama right now and the reporters are looking for happier stories? Can’t really blame them.
God help us – our government won’t
“Additional boat-cleaning facilities are planned in Alabama at Weeks Bay and near Fort Morgan, according to Patterson. “
By Ryan Dezember, Saturday July 3, 2010
ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — BP PLC officials on Friday unveiled a 6,000-square-foot facility at Boggy Point to clean oily boats, the first of 30 that the company plans to set up this summer in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi.
(Press-Register/Ryan Dezember)BP has built a vast boat cleaning facility at Boggy Point in Orange Beach, Ala. But in bringing in a company from Alaska to staff it, the oil company has angered Saunders Yachtwork, which has a facility with similar capabilities only 600 yards away and has asked for the work for two months
Open to any soiled vessel seven days a week between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m., the facility can handle four boats at once. Facility crews need about an hour to clean the typical boat using steam machines that loosen and then suction oil into large tanks.
As BP officials touted the facility’s features, they did so unaware that Saunders Yachtworks, situated at Orange Beach Marina less than a half-mile away, is similarly equipped and has lost substantial business because the oil spill made it nearly impossible for many customers to reach the boatyard.
“We have everything they have, it just wasn’t bought yesterday,” said Saunders President and Chief Executive Officer John Fitzgerald. “We’ve been doing this for 14 years.
“This is essentially direct competition to what we do, with out-of-town labor.”
Employees of Valdez, Alaska-based Bell Tech Inc. have been hired to run the Boggy Point boat-cleaning operation, according to a BP spokesman.
When the spill began, several yacht owners at Orange Beach Marina packed up and headed to the Caribbean for the summer. When regulators banned fishing in much of the northern Gulf, Saunders lost customers who canceled beach trips and repair jobs.
Then, when waters north of Perdido Pass were closed to recreational traffic, Saunders’ customers had difficulty even reaching the boatyard.
“All that leads to a strangulation on our yard,” Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald said that he has lobbied BP for two months for spill-related roles for his 38-employee business.
Fred Patterson, a BP executive in Orange Beach Friday, said he didn’t know for sure why his company built the Boggy Point boat wash with Saunders already down the street.
“I can’t answer that question,” Patterson told Fitzgerald. “But I will find out and get back to you.”
Said Fitzgerald: “We’ve been hearing that for two months and now they’ve put a competitive facility 600 yards away. Their follow-up with local people has been pathetic.”
Patterson later said that it was possible that Saunders could work with the Alaska contractors at Boggy Point. Fitzgerald said that Saunders could provide labor at Boggy Point, but ideally an arrangement would be worked out to let BP’s facility handle smaller boats and send those in the 35- to 70-foot range to the boatyard, which is equipped to hoist large vessels from the water.
Additional boat-cleaning facilities are planned in Alabama at Weeks Bay and near Fort Morgan, according to Patterson.
And, aiming to have 10 boat washes running in the three states by the end of next week, the company is scouting locations. “We’re here to find marinas and any marina we feel will fit the bill, we’ll use,” Patterson said.
If the residents of Mobile Bay still had delusions their state government was working to protect them from the insidious oil after local mayors fiddled and fought while the first big oil slick slid past the ‘vessels of opportunity’ yesterday, they’d better think again.
Site of the Historic BP boat cleaning station
Early this morning contractors for BP rolled in with construction materials to construct a ‘decontamination unit’ for cleaning boats on the Historic Fort Morgan property, around the Mobile point and inside the bay. Not only will oil-drenched boats be churning into the ‘protected’ bay waters, but somebody will be washing these boats with something that will, presumably, end up in the bay.
The contractors assured us they were layering fabric with absorbent material that would collect the toxic brew, but they had no answers to our questions about emptying or replacing the material daily, or any solution to our frequent summer squalls.
And this afternoon more contractors roared in for a pre-bid meeting about dredging, constructing a seawall, and building boat slips for the soon-to-be finished ‘boat washing station’ .
When this nightmare began we were promised any boat cleaning stations would be located outside the bay at a platform where skimmers could corral and remove the muck. Who decided to abandon the bay and allow this decontamination unit to be located on the backside of the peninsula on the historic site owned by the state of Alabama?
The people of Alabama have worked and paid to lovingly renovate and maintain this historic site since the army gave it to us in 1946. It is the highest grossing state park in Alabama. Has anyone asked us if we want to abandon the plans to save the bay and give Fort Morgan to BP?
I would encourage anyone who has ever enjoyed Fort Morgan to visit soon before BP destroys our history. They have already blocked the Spanish-American batteries and within a week it will be difficult to visit the Civil War fort.
file photo from 'State can't find rape kit in Thomas Arthur case' http://lethal-injection-florida.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
The buck stops at Governor Riley’s office, so he evidently approved BP’s attack on Fort Morgan. I guess he thinks we’ll all sleep just fine knowing he won the war today on bingo…
The Captain of the Mobile Bay Ferry told me yesterday, June 30, he was suspending operations because oil was coming into the bay and he did not want to run his boat through it. That is the first time in this 72-day nightmare he closed the ferry because a slug of floating oil endangered his boat.
View from the ferry in better times
He told me he would reevaluate at 3:00 pm and hoped to reopen once the oil slick floated through.
Over at the little snack shop Pat packed up and went home, she would have even fewer customers than normal (and normal this summer isn’t good).
We anxiously looked out at the bay for some sign the shrimp boats and tankers anchored there would burst into action and pull booms across the entrance to capture and skim the oil.
You would need a camera with a panorama lens to capture the 'vessels of opportunity' anchored in the bay Wednesday, but you can 'zoom in' to see some of the shrimp boats & tankers
But nothing happened so I guess the oil passed ‘safely’ through into the bay?
I learned later that afternoon, from one of the captains based at the marina, the infuriating reason for the lack of action to protect the Bay of Mobile.
No, it wasn’t because the surf was up in the gulf – the water was calm in the bay. The boats could not respond because of a stupid political squabble.
The crews had been released for the day so the boats could be moved to Orange Beach. Evidently the mayor there, Tony Kennon, had ‘persuaded’ the BP contractors to move their boats from Fort Morgan to Zeke’s in Orange Beach because of lost revenue. Fortunately, the Coast Guard vetoed the stupid plan before the flotilla could get underway yesterday, but too late to call the crews back to battle the oil slick.
file photo from: http://blog.al.com/live/2008/08/baldwin_judge_to_orange_beach.html
So I guess we have the Mayor of Orange Beach to thank for the oil in Mobile Bay today? Hundreds of crewmen were affected by the proposed move yesterday, so this story would be easy to verify…. but it has not been reported in the local media.
But to be honest, we haven’t seen the ‘vessels of opportunity’ move from their anchors in the bay for more than a week. There is a small fleet of ships rounding the point every morning and afternoon, but many, many more that never move.
Again, my camera is not capable of taking a good panoramic view of the bay, but more detail can be seen by ‘zooming in’ on the photos. These pics were taken Monday and Tuesday when the surf was ‘light chop’ ( the download was time/date stamped by my computer).
Tuesday, June 24
Monday, June 28
So while some of the country is celebrating the decision to waive the Jones Act and allow foreign boats to participate in the gulf cleanup,
those of us with a view of Mobile Bay are asking why our own boats aren’t participating in the efforts. Maybe because they look good on camera for BP?
Brian Williams ended the NBC news with an aerial shot of the bay and a comment on the boats idled by Hurricane Alex.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#38027394
I’ve got a news flash for you, Mr Williams, it looked just the same on Tuesday night, Monday night, Sunday night….
Tide pool on Wednesday, June 30. No sign of life
Tide pool on Wednesday, June 30. No sign of life.
.
The oil on my beach had not been cleaned today, day three (3) since it was reported.
I went down to see if I could take Sophie on a short walk before work, but obviously it wasn’t possible, and I suffered her withering glare while I packed my lunch. The beach is my old dog’s paradise, we walked every day in better times. 
But I was excited about the impending Presidential visit today so she got an extra treat and I headed out with my camera charged.
The day went as usual, except for the concrete barricades placed in the parking lot of the ferry beside the admission booth for Fort Morgan.
Many of the summer tourists were excited about the Presidential visit and asked if they could remain on site. Having heard nothing since the hushed rumors Friday, we did not dissuade them. 
Until 1:45 PM… as verified by my cell phone calls to Administration.
We were ordered off the property as though we were trespassing. A small young man in khaki told us to leave immediately.
No one, not our impotent Governor (does Bobby Jindal have a brother?) traveling with the President, nor the Montgomery Historical Commission, who asked us to take photos of the historic event, and especially not the state or local law officers running down the road, (because they could today) at 100 mph gave us any advance warning that we needed to vacate.
We left, but we all pulled off the road somewhere along Highway 180 in the hope we could demonstrate our hope/outrage for the historic visit. Our website photographer, Janice Neitzel, spent the entire day in a futile attempt to get a single photograph at the request of the Fort Morgan administration.
Evidently President Obama crossed Mobile Bay on the ferry (a photo op, but not for locals) then jumped in a limo and fled down the Fort Morgan Highway at 75 mph (the road was officially closed from 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm, I have the recorded message on my answering machine about the closing to prove it)
There were many people withering in the sun along the Fort Morgan Highway for hours who wanted him to slow and read their signs. I just wanted to tell him to stop at an undesignated site to see how we live when BP isn’t cleaning for a Presidential visit. 
According to news reports he blew through Gulf Shores, windows rolled up tight and is spending the night in Pensacola.
I guess we were hoping, against hope, someone would stop and visit our beaches and listen to our stories.
Was this just another PR event? Did he even get out of his car to see an oil soaked beach in Alabama?
Did he accomplish anything here he couldn’t have done at home in Washington, or was this just another disruption of our already disrupted lives?
I hope when the tide rolls out in Pensacola tonite, he gets a glimpse of the reality of life on the gulf, and I hope the cameras are rolling….
Thank you, Mr. President, for coming to the gulf coast to talk to us, I guess we have a better understanding of what we can expect from your administration.
The BP cleanup crew ran over Blanton Blankenship’s dog and ordered his wife off the property this week.
Historic Fort Morgan
Blanton Blankenship has been the Director of Fort Morgan, an Alabama Historic Site, for many years and he and his family reside in a small house on the property. In fact, there are two families living on site and it’s not an easy assignment. You only need to read the letters in the museum to know how inhospitable conditions can be at our end of the peninsula.
But 4 weeks into the occupation of the fort by the BP crews, they claimed not to know anyone lived on the 480 acre site.
As of today, the little dog is in the veterinary hospital and Blanton’s wife is, understandably, outraged.
If you don’t live on the gulf coast, you might ask yourself how this could possibly happen. But if you live here, you’re living with the nightmare every day.
Who closed the public access beach road at Fort Morgan & why?
The BP folks from Maine, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, etc. are arrogant and obviously consider the local residents to be merely obstacles to their operation and their PAYCHECKS.
Every day we dodge them as they zip down the beach and over the fragile sand dunes in 4-wheelers. At the fort they wave their badges and most don’t even slow at the STOP sign at the admission booth.
BP crews
Last week Blanton confessed no one has told him if the BP crews will pay any rent for the many acres they have requisitioned, or restitution for our decrease in admissions this summer. We do know, however, they want to close out little boat launch, so popular with local fishermen and bird watchers.
We have not been told what they are doing, how long they will be here (although I did learn from Kevin of Clean Harbor they plan to be finished with their part of the operation by June 19) why they’ve installed giant stadium lighting or the reason for round-the-clock guards at their encampment. Why all the secrecy if they are just here to pick up tar balls?
BP encampment at the WWI battery
And this Tuesday both Blanton and Mike Bailey requested a meeting with representatives from all four crews stationed on site… this is Friday and no one has even extended the courtesy of a phone call in response.
In the face of all this secrecy, rumors are rampant in Fort Morgan. Maybe if the President visits Alabama next week we’ll get some answers
Sophie enjoying her morning swim
My beloved gulf will not be the same in our lifetime. I am sick for my Louisiana brothers and sisters when I watch the news, and I know the future of the Fort Morgan peninsula could well be the same.
And today, although the sand was still white and the surf was still clear on my beach… I can already see terrible changes here.
We pay an extraordinary premium to live in this paradise, but the quality of our lives has been irreparably damaged by BP’s man-made disaster. And I know BP will never reimburse us for our ‘cost of living’ although our ‘way of living’ is now a memory.
Every day the very reasons we bought homes and moved here are disappearing.
Although I’m still paying the same bills, I can rarely hear the ocean when I walk out on my deck. This morning I counted more than 23 helicopters and small planes ferrying the coast guard, news crews, politicians, and BP execs up and down the coast. Every time they fly low over the lagoon beside my house the Green Herons flee, squawking, and the turtles disappear.
The view from my deck
We must keep our doors closed against the ocean breezes because sometimes the smell of crude oil is enough to make me run inside and my dog sick. My electric bill is soaring.
And, although I’ve only found a couple tar balls on the beach, I know the oil spill is the reason we’ve had no turtle tracks in SurfSide this spring.
Until last month, the only vehicles allowed on our beach were the NFS rangers looking for turtle tracks at dawn
We do have tracks on the beach, but they are tire tracks from the loud, smelly 4-wheelers running up and down the sand dunes waiting for signs of the spill. The crew I talked to last week was from Mississippi and they were well paid to spend the past 4 weeks on our beach.
The ugly plastic porta-potties and hand sanitizers BP installed for their crews in the middle of our beach access has blocked one of the three handicap parking spots for local property owners. This is not a small inconvenience for some of our retired elderly, or young parents with small children.
If BP hired the locals, they could use their own bathrooms!
And the price of local shrimp and seafood has doubled… we can no longer afford to host shrimp and crab boils for our visiting friends and family. The seafood we enjoyed must now be imported from the safer waters of Asia.
It’s Memorial Day weekend and there should be towels hanging from every house, but there are many, many vacant vacation homes on the beach today. BP hasn’t reimbursed these property owners or agencies for their loss in rental income yet, but their mortgage payments are due every month.
To put our homes in the market and try to escape before the situation worsens is laughable. It’s too early for studies on the impact on property values on the gulf, but it’s safe to say we are all ‘upside down’ now and drowning in crude oil.
New foreclosure signs will be appearing in my neighborhood soon and I’ll be losing treasured friends. Some of my neighbors are staying because they must, and some because they love this wildlife sanctuary and hope to help.
BP’s promise to pay all ‘ legitimate’ claims is laughable. Everyone who lives within miles of the gulf has a legitimate claim. This includes the shop in Foley where menus were printed, the nursery in Summerdale where homeowners bought sea oats for their dunes, and all the restaurants and stores where sunburned tourists spent their vacation savings.
Our economy is sinking fast…
At this point it looks like the attorneys and television stations who run their relentless ads are the only ‘parties’ in this mess who will clean up.
BP is spending lots of money hiring crews to stand around and look good on the news. So, based on the amount BP has spent recovering the tar balls that have washed ashore in Alabama, I’m guessing the two I found on the beach would easily be worth thousands of dollars – a whole new definition of ‘black gold’.
The burned tar balls I found tumbling in the surf this week
There is, of course, no way to compensate for the devastation to the ecology of the gulf. How could we possibly count the bodies of birds, fish & turtles sinking to the bottom in the 60683 square miles now closed to fishing because of the toxicity of the dispersant and/or crude oil. And there’s absolutely no way to estimate the long-term damage to the estuaries and shoreline. Evidently the Exxon Valdez wasn’t a memorable lesson for us?
We know now that a single $500,000 valve could have prevented the eleven deaths and this catastrophic oil spill.
So I propose that anyone at BP, Halliburton, DeepWater Horizon or the U.S. Department of Energy who makes more than $500,000 should be forced to move here with their families and experience the life we’ve been sentenced to live… for as long as it takes them to clean up their oil and return our dolphins and osprey to a safe, clean habitat.
And they should send those useless crews of ’environmental engineers’ back to their home states and just offer bounties for tar balls.
I’d feel a little better about my increasing bills and my job security if I could redeem my tar balls for funds. And I’m pretty sure tourism would pick up if vacationers knew BP would underwrite their trip if they spent some time walking the beach, scooping tar balls, like poop, into ‘safe’ plastic bags.
But, if BP continues to put more effort and money into their PR battle than a fight to save the gulf… I really, really like the suggestion Charlie Pierce made on NPR today! Just tell me how I can help!
A California vintner is laughing all the way to the bank after the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board sent letters to restaurants and liquor stores across the state demanding they pull the Pinot Noir from their shelves.
According to a story in The Los Angeles Times, an attorney for the ABC Board claimed the label depicted “a person posed in an immoral or sensuous manner.” The label at the center of this controversy is a copy of a 1895 French poster advertising Cycles Gladiator bicycles.
Hahn Family wines
The ABC Board moved quickly to protect bartenders and liquor store patrons across Alabama but have not issued a statement regarding their plan to locate and confiscate the 1500 cases sold throughout the state over the past 3 years.
Read the full story entitled,
The story goes on to say, “Bill Leigon, president of Hahn Family Wines in Soledad, Calif., said Thursday that visits to the company’s website increased tenfold since news of the ban broke late last week, and that callers from across the country have been asking where they can buy the wine…”
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wineban31-2009jul31,1,1079588.story
I am reminded of a story we published in The Bourbon Times several years ago when the celebrated artist, Celeste Susany, had a studio on Main Street in Paris (that’s Paris, Kentucky…. not Paris, France) It became embarrassingly clear this southern town was more provincial than Provençal when Jerry Brady, the county attorney, demanded she cover the breasts of a portrait visible from the sidewalk. The bust (no pun intended) was classic, not erotic, and it drew more even attention because of the drapery demanded by the moral Mr. Brady. (okay… in response to the phone call that was facetious, or facétieux!)
Celeste has moved on from Paris and is considered a premiere equine artist. http://www.celestesusany.com/
"Ruffian" by Celeste Susany
To quote the Grammy-nominated Barenaked Ladies, “Everything old is new again….” (yeah, that’s a pun)
Christmas Eve Cookin'
And I happily realized the aroma and colors of my my food are, unintentionally, as tropical as the weather today. My Prickly Pear infused vodka is the color of the sunset,although I may have filtered out the magical, medicinal properties when I triple strained it through coffee filters in my paranoia about those invisible spurs. I refrigerated the jelly-like substance left in the funnel and it looks like electric fuchsia jello shots today (I’ll filter again and save that for Betsy’s next visit).
I candied the kumquats given to me by a patient last week, and I will serve them with the fragrant ‘ginger buttermilk’ cake for desert.
The beaten biscuits are All-Kentucky, of course. This is my first attempt without a Biscuit Break and they are not bad…. almost worthy of the Critchfield Country Ham sent to me by Buck and Lane from home. (recipe to follow) “Sister” Strong is the only one who claims to have eaten a beaten biscuit and I hope these somewhat resemble the biscuits she enjoyed in the past.
"Sister" Strong
I am having Christmas Eve Dinner on Strong’s Bayou, “Sister” Strong is cooking quail and I look forward to meeting her. Anne’s mother is a fascinating lady, I’m told she is the first woman from the Democratic party to be elected to the State Senate. Her childhood nickname, “Baby Sister” was shortened to “Sister” as she grew up, and it stuck (typical Alabama!).
When she was a delegate for Al Gore at the DNC a newscaster misunderstood and reported a story about Catholic nuns voting for Gore! I love it!
It’s time to put the Bread Pudding in the oven and start making the Hard Sauce, my house will start smelling like Kentucky in a heartbeat.
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons lard — or vegetable shortening
1 3/4 cups water — up to 2 cups
Its execution is best described by Joanne Pritchett, whose great-great grandmother was a cook on a St. Mary’s plantation: “Honey, every time I know I’m going to make these biscuits, I get myself good and mad. Normally I think about my sister-in-law, Darlene, who ran off with my husband right after Granny Pritchett’s funeral. That was years ago, but it still galls me into making some of the tenderest biscuits around.”)
“It’s very simple. I just sift the flour and salt together in a bowl. Some people, nowadays, like to use Crisco or something like that. But I believe in lard. It gives it that certain taste.
”So then, I cut the lard into the flour with the tips of my fingers, working it real quick. During this step I make believe I’m putting out Darlene’s eyes.
“Then, little by little, I pour in the cold water, until I get a good stiff dough. Put it on a real solid table with flour. Now if your table is weak, honey, the legs’ll fall right off. I’ve seen it happen!
”Depending on my mood, I use an axe or a big old mallet. I make a ball out of the dough to look like Darlene’s head and, baby, I let her have it. Use the flat side of the axe or mallet, and beat the hell out of the dough till it blisters good. Takes about half an hour, but honey, it makes them tender as butter.
“Form the dough into balls, the size of little eggs, and flatten ‘em a bit on the board. Put a few pokes in the center with a fork, then bake in a hot 425øF oven for about 20 to 25 minutes. Serve hot and put some liniment on your arm, or it’ll be acting up the next day.”
Makes about 3 dozen biscuits
I accepted, next-to-the-last-minute, Ann & Brad’s invitation to accompany them and their friends to the Happy Hooker’s annual Halloween Party & Costume Contest. So I was in need of a costume….
I didn’t bring much from home that would make a good costume, so I decided to work on something really scary this year. I went to MalWart (after stopping at every grocery and drug store on the way and they had nothing) to get the perfect hat. Then I adorned it to make it the scariest hat ever seen on the planet.
I didn’t bring any of my stand-by wigs, capes or kimonos (who knew I would be trick-or-treating at my age in Alabama?) but I did bring a funny jacket I bought a couple years ago. It’s black, and I guess I thought it was my favorite suit when I grabbed it and put it in the box……. but that suit is still somewhere in Kentucky. Damn.
So I decided to pair it with the scariest hat on the planet for my costume and I will be…..
Drum roll (can you guess before you scroll down?)
I will be the PANIC BUTTON all the talk shows are talking about when they talk about the economy! TA DA!
Please mail candy and caramel covered apples to Fort Morgan!
Hope y’all get more treats than tricks!
