President Barack Obama will decide as early as September whether to approve a $7-billion, 1,700-mile long pipeline called Keystone XL to transport up to 900,000 barrels a day of tar sands crude from northern Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast of Texas.

The Alberta tar sands is well known as the largest and most destructive industrial project in human history – causing massive environmental damage to the natural eco-system, killing resident and visiting animal and bird species, irrevocably polluting water and poisoning land and communities downstream of the Athabasca River and trampling on treaty and Indigenous rights in northern Alberta.

In 2008 I traveled with a group of fellow Canadians to the tar sands to understand the impact of bad government policy, corporate malfeasance and US oil addiction at this ‘ground zero’. We created this short video to convey the scope of the project and raise the alarm.

It’s astounding to think that what our small delegation saw in 2008 has continued to expand and wreak more havoc on people and planet. Approval of the Keystone XL would dramatically increase the strain on the tar sands and is a climate and pollution horror beyond description.

THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW!

From August 20th to September 3rd, thousands of North Americans – including Danny Glover, and NASA’s Dr. James Hansen – will be at the White House, day after day, demanding Obama reject Keystone XL. Many protesters will engage in peaceful civil disobedience, day after day to make their voices heard.

Twenty-eight organizational leaders including Global Exchange’s Founding Director Kirsten Moller, have endorsed the days of action and we want YOU to participate.

The Black Tide Book Tour hits Colorado tonight and tomorrow night, then wraps up in California for two final dates following a whirlwind tour that took author Antonia Juhasz throughout the US and over to London, England.

Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill is a searing look at the human face of BP’s disaster in the Gulf. This book tour lands in Colorado Tue 5/3 (tonight) at the Boulder Bookstore in Boulder and Wed 5/4 at the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver. 7:30pm start time both nights. Then on to Moe’s Books in Berkeley, CA on Wed 5/11 at 7:30pm and last but not least, the tour culminates on Thur 5/12 at 7pm at the Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA.

Find more details about these events on our Black Tide Book Tour Dates page.

To get an idea of what to expect at the book launch events, here’s a video of Black Tide author Antonia Juhasz:

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

It is time to learn the lessons of the disaster: neither the technology nor the regulation of deepwater drilling is capable of protecting workers or the environment.

One year ago this month, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. This week we learned that the company’s CEO, Steven Newman, and other executives of Transocean, the owner and operator of the rig, were not only awarded raises, but also millions of dollars in bonuses for 2010 after “the best year in safety performance in our company’s history,” according to the company’s annual report and proxy statement.

News of the bonuses went viral and enraged the public. Within one day, announcements that the executives were donating the bonuses to families of the 11 men who died on the rig soon went viral as well.

While the contributions are certainly welcome, they are little more than a gesture. First, the contributions accounted for but a small fraction of the total bonuses the executives received (approximately $250,000 out of nearly $900,000, according to Fortune), and not a single executive turned down his or her raise.

The fact that Transocean awarded the raises and bonuses is more than an affront to the families and colleagues of the 11 men who died aboard the rig and the millions more who have suffered as a consequence of the 210-million-barrel oil gusher. They are also a warning.

Transocean is the largest deepwater driller in the world, operating nearly half of all rigs in more 3,000 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico. All of the major oil companies rely heavily upon its services. If the ongoing fight for new offshore drilling in places like California (where I live) is lost by opponents, Transocean will unquestionably enter these new waters. Yet, investigations are sure to conclude that Transocean’s operational failures are as much to blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster as are BP’s flawed managerial decisions. If Transocean has not learned the lessons of the largest oil disaster in American history, then we all have great reason to worry.

Since 2008, 73 percent of incidents that triggered federal investigations into safety and other problems on deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf have been on rigs operated by Transocean, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“This event was set in motion years ago by these companies needlessly rushing to make money faster, while cutting corners to save money,” Stephen Lane Stone, a Transocean roustabout who survived the April 20 explosion, told a Congressional committee last May. “When these companies put their savings over our safety, they gambled with our lives. They gambled with my life. They gambled with the lives of 11 of my crew members who will never see their families or loved ones again.”

The results of that cost cutting were apparent all across the Deepwater Horizon — a rig leased by BP and run by Transocean. Of the 126 people on board the rig on April 20, 79 worked for Transocean. More tragically, of the 11 men who died that day, nine were Transocean employees.

Testimony from federal investigations reveals charges of literally hundreds of unattended repair issues on the Horizon. Transocean chief electronics technician for the rig, Mike Williams, described one as “the blue screen of death,” explaining that the computer screens regularly “locked up” with no data coming through, making it impossible for the drillers at those chairs to know what was happening in the well 18,500 feet below.

Williams also reported the failure to utilize the automatic alarm systems. On April 20, as gas rose from the Macondo well into the rig, the crew should have been automatically alerted and operations in their areas automatically shut in. Instead, the automatic gas alarms were intentionally inhibited, set to record information but not to trigger alarms.

More than a year before, Williams asked why. His superiors replied that they did not want people woken up “at three o’clock in the morning due to false alarms.” When Williams tried to fix the alarms, Transocean subsea supervisor Mark Hay reportedly told him, “The damn thing’s been in bypass for five years. Why did you even mess with it?” Hay said, “Matter of fact, the entire [Transocean] fleet runs them in bypass.”

Even without the alarms, the blowout preventer (BOP) should have shut in the well. But when the engineers in the drill room triggered it, the BOP failed to activate.

The rig has two additional backups. The first, the Emergency Disconnect System (EDS), triggers the BOP and separates the rig from the wellhead. The EDS was activated by the crew on the bridge, but again, nothing happened.

Federal regulations require BOPs to be recertified every five years. The Deepwater Horizon BOP had been in use for nearly 10 years and had never been recertified. Getting it recertified would have required Transocean to take the rig out of use for months while the four-story stack was disassembled and examined.

There were several problems with the BOP that were well known on the rig and had been reported in the BP Daily Operations Reports as early as March 10. Both BP and Transocean officials knew the BOP had a hydraulic leak. They also knew that federal regulations required that if “a BOP control station or pod … does not function properly,” the rig must “suspend further drilling operations” until it’s fixed.

When the BOP failed to activate from the floor and from the bridge, there should have been one more backup, the automatic mode function (AMF), but it failed, too. The reason, according to BP, is that the batteries had run down.

All across the Deepwater Horizon, the technology on which everything so dearly depends was failing, and with catastrophic results.

Rather than overhaul its safety system, Transocean declared that in 2010 “we made significant progress in achieving our strategic and operational objectives for the year,” but unfortunately, “these developments were overshadowed by the April 20, 2010 fire and explosion onboard our semi-submersible drilling rig, the Deepwater Horizon.”

Unfortunately, the public has allowed the events aboard the Deepwater Horizon and all that followed its explosion to be overshadowed as well. As we approach the one-year anniversary, it is time to learn the lessons of that disaster: that neither the technology nor the regulation of deepwater drilling is capable of protecting the workers on the rigs, the ecosystems within which they work, or those whose livelihoods are dependent upon those water ways and beaches.

As oil industry analyst Byron King has said, “We have gone to a different planet in going to the deepwater. An alien environment. And what do you know from every science fiction movie? The aliens can kill us.”

Gulf Coast activists showed up at BP’s annual shareholder meeting in London today to speak out against the oil company that is responsible for what is known as the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Despite having proxies and all necessary credentials to attend the meeting, almost all of the Gulf Coast residents were denied entry.

One activist, Global Exchange’s Energy Program Director, Antonia Juhasz was one of the few that made it into the meeting and was able to speak on behalf of the Gulf Coast residents who have since had their lives destroyed since last year’s Deepwater Horizon explosion.

The most heated moment in today’s BP annual shareholder meeting occurred when Antonia Juhasz, took to the mic and confronted BP executives, Chairman of the Board Svanberg and the new CEO Bob Dudley about BP’s ongoing harmful actions in the Gulf, including the corporation’s lack of adherence to the moral, legal and financial obligations to the Gulf and its residents.

Antonia had a few words to share after the meeting:

I was shocked that BP denied residents from the Gulf of Mexico access today to their annual shareholder meeting in London. The residents and victims of the Gulf oil disaster were all legitimate proxy holders and had traveled at great cost to be there. They tried to deny my shareholder rights as well by only permitting me entrance as a guest, without the right to speak or vote. I spoke out anyway.

I demanded an immediate response to BP’s denying the voice of those that had traveled from the Gulf to tell the truth about what has really been happening to their health, livelihoods and home. I also demanded a response to the failure of the corporation to provide for the safety of its deep water operations and read a statement that Keith Jones, whose son, Gordon Jones, was killed when the Deepwater Horizon exploded, gave to me and asked me to read.

The Gulf Coast Fund, the organization that sponsored the residents’ travel to London released a statement of their own about the five Gulf residents that were denied entry. Tracy Kuhns, Director of Louisiana Bayoukeeper spoke out,

“We aren’t here to cause trouble. We came to deliver the message that BP needs to take responsibility for the drilling disaster. The oil is not gone… BP must be held accountable.”

Stay tuned to Global Exchange’s page on the BP Disaster for news updates about the shareholder meeting and Antonia Juhasz’ upcoming book, Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill, set to be released a few days before the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

In the meantime, you can see a clip of Antonia telling the BBC in front of the BP shareholder meeting that the ‘Gulf spill is not resolved’.

Coverage from The Independent:

“Protesters dragged from BP annual meeting,” April 14, 2011.

The Guardian:

“Protesters target BP annual meeting,” April 14, 2011.

More on the Energy Program site where you can also read statements by Gulf Coast residents intended to be shared with BP shareholders and executives.

On August 28th, 2005 a Category 5 hurricane called Katrina hit the shores of the Gulf Coast. On the morning of August 29th, 2005 the levees broke in New Orleans flooding the city, killing over 2,000 people, displacing countless families and resulted in billions of dollars in damage.

Five years later, New Orleans still has not fully recovered from the tragic event and with the BP Oil Disaster that took place earlier this year in the Gulf Coast, the long term damage continues to mount and a full recovery seems even more distant.

Global Exchange stands with the people of New Orleans and over 40 local and national organizations including the Hip Hop Caucus who are commemorating the 5th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina by supporting the Annual Commemoration March and Rally. The March and Rally will be remembering the lives lost and addressing the lingering crisis that New Orleans faces 5 years removed from Katrina. The connection to the BP Oil spill and lack of federal oversight, coupled with the greed of big business, continue to adversely affect the Gulf Coast’s citizens and the environment.

If you are in New Orleans area, please visit Hip Hop Caucus to find out how you can join the rally and get involved.

For those of us in the Bay Area, you too can stand in solidarity with Gulf Coast communities to Make Big Oil Pay. For two days, August 29-30th, Bay Area communities will host two days of resistance beginning with a brief teach-in on BP, Big Oil and Local Impacts and will culminate with a march on BP and Big Oil’s SF locations. Join us in taking action to stop Big Oil’s destruction and support clean energy and positive solutions. We’ll be demanding:

  • Moratorium on New Offshore Drilling. No Use of Dispersants.
  • Full Access to Media and Civil Society.
  • Big Oil corporations pay their debt to all impacted communities – Gulf Coast to Richmond, CA and around the world.
  • Big Oil pay for community livelihood and ecosystem restoration, clean energy, public transportation, and healthcare for impacted communities.
  • Big Oil Out of Politics!

Big Oil Corporations destroy our health, environment and the livelihoods of our communities. From the Gulf Coast Oil disaster to the Niger Delta, from the Canadian Tar Sands to Richmond, California – these corporations pollute our communities and cause climate change, destroying the environments we depend on. Big Oil makes billions, while buying and lobbying governments for subsidies, against public oversight, and against solutions to climate change.

As BP tries to spin the ongoing Gulf of Mexico worst-environmental-disaster- in-US-history out of view, Gulf Coast communities ask us to keep the spotlight on and to increase the pressure for justice.

Take a moment this weekend to reflect and stand in solidarity to imagine positive solutions in order to heal our communities in the Gulf Coast and beyond.

(This article was originally posted on Huffington Post.)

“The fish are safe,” declared LaDon Swann of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This should have been good news to the audience at Alma Bryant High School in Bayou La Batre, Alabama.

Virtually all of the 150 people attending the August 19 community forum made their living in one form or another in the Alabama fishing industry, and most had for generations, until the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon.

Having spent four months with a severely reduced, or nonexistent income, all are now desperate. Even the lucky few able to participate in BP’s Vessels of Opportunity (VOO) program are now largely out of work as BP has all but shut down the program in the area. Many can no longer afford rents or mortgages, pay medical bills, or even, in growing numbers, provide food for their families.

Even so, none appeared relieved at Swann’s words. They simply did not agree with him, as far too many continue to see far too much evidence that both oil and dispersant remain in their waters. As scientists at the University of Georgia concluded on August 17 using the federal government’s own data, as much as 79% of the 4.1 million barrels of oil BP spilled in to the Gulf “remains in the Gulf in varying forms of toxicity.”

Less then 24 hours later, in a small boat captained by Pat Carrigan, we encountered an oil slick within 15 minutes of setting off from Carrigan’s backyard on Dauphin Island. We were in the Mississippi Sound heading toward the Katrina Cut, a shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico opened when the storm split one portion of Dauphin Island off from the rest of the island five years earlier.

Photo: Sandy Cioffi and Greg Westhoff

Photo: Sandy Cioffi and Greg Westhoff

“That’s dispersed oil,” Carrigan said as we passed through a slick of light brown foamy goo. Carrigan has fished these waters for more than 20 years and is a former VOO worker. Glint Guidry, Acting President of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, shared Carrigan’s assessment. Looking at a photograph of the slick I showed him the following day, Guidry said, “That’s oil, oil with dispersant.”

Photo: Sandy Cioffi and Greg Westhoff

The shrimpers view the slick as cause for concern because these waters were reopened to shrimping on August 8.

But, as LaDon Swann had reminded the audience at Alma Bryant, the federal government and Gulf States have established specific protocols for re-opening these waters to fishing.

These protocols state that the visual observation of oil or “chemical contaminants” on the surface of the water is cause for the recommendation that the fishery be closed “until free of sheen” for at least 30 days in federal waters and seven days in Alabama state waters.

“These waters should be filled with shrimpers,” Carrigan explained to us on the August 20th trip. Instead, there was not a single boat on the water shrimping during the several hours of this trip. “They’re just not shrimping.”

And the oil was not limited to the water.

After passing through the sheen of dispersed oil, his passengers were more than a little disconcerted when Carrigan took off his shirt and jumped into the water to pull the boat ashore as we landed at a western strip of Dauphin Island accessible only by boat. We were even more concerned when he told us to do the same as we disembarked.

After trekking through a completely untouched and unpopulated strip of wild brush, green grass, and blue flowers, we came upon a landscape opened to clear blue sky, white clouds, and a stunning white sandy beach.
Rocky Kistner of the Natural Resources Defense Council, who had arranged for the trip, looked ecstatic as he gazed at the beach — that is, until he looked down.

Huge tar balls, some as large and as thick as an outstretched hand, stretched in a line where the waves had left them, as far as the eye could see down the beach.

A baby’s sippy cup lid covered in tar sat in a bed of white sand. A Dawn dishwashing soap bottle lay covered in the sticky goo. Using a piece of bark he found on the beach, Zach Carter of Mobile’s South Bay Community Alliance bent down and started scooping tar balls into a white bucket.

Photo: Sandy Cioffi and Greg Westhoff

Photo: Sandy Cioffi and Greg Westhoff

“It’s not only on the beach, it’s in the water,” Carrigan said, looking stricken. He stood in the ocean, bent down, gathering more tarballs in his hands as they washed up.

Most disturbing was that the beach, accessible only by boat, was deserted. “There used to be BP workers up and down this beach cleaning it up, constantly,” Carrigan said. “Now, nothing. Just oil.”

Photos by Sandy Cioffi and Greg Westhoff (please do not reprint without photo credit)

Oiled Grass

Oil soaking into the wetlands, the last defense against hurricanes, and vital to the health of the coast. The root system of the wetlands and marshes are rotting from the oil.

Why can’t BP be responsible for “fixing what it broke?”

In part it comes down to the law. Within our current legal structure, corporations, which are fictional, non-living entities, are recognized to have the same rights as individual people. In fact, the law provides corporations to have more say in our lives than we do: decisions made in far away corporate boardrooms about GMOs, mountain top removal mining, fracking and more have real implications for local people and nature.  And we are powerless to say “no”.

Yet while this may seem absurd, what is even more abstract is that while these fictional beings have the most voice, and are the same ones engaging in the most environmentally destructive of operations–all other non-human living beings, forests, rivers and ecosystems have no recognized rights.

Regulatory environmental laws in place do not look at the right for a river to flow, fish to regenerate or the right for an old growth forest to exist. Regulatory law actually legalizes damage – it only regulates how much. Unfortunately regulators turn to the “experts” – that is, the industry to be regulated – for guidance on setting those standards.

More washed up oil in the wetlands

Take the BP spill for example.

The oil spill has shown the ramifications of our regulatory system’s failure to protect people and ecosystems, in that it allows damaging practices–whereby corporations use the regulatory system to legalize harmful practices. And then the regulators turn to BP for answers on clean-up, including disbursement.

And who decides how much BP should pay for clean up? Seems BP executives have a hand in setting that standard too. And it won’t be enough, not nearly enough to return the Gulf to the way it was before the spill.

But what if — just what if —nature itself could sue BP for damages and ensure that the damages paid were enough to restore the Gulf to health?

Thomas Linzey, Executive Director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund explores how rights for nature would fundamentally change the way we deal with the crisis in the Gulf, and how this legal concept has been already implemented in various US municipalities, and the nation of Ecuador. Read his exciting article in the Daily Comet here.

Check out more on Rights of Nature on our Global Exchange Rights Based Organizing site.

Or join our list serve to get the latest on rights of nature!

Authors: Karen Swift and Shannon Biggs

Oil in grass between Oyster Bayou and Taylor's Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

On August 26th, 12pm, PST Antonia Juhasz, Director of Global Exchange’s Chevron Program and Kevin Danaher, Global Exchange Co-Founder will present a 60-minute report back from the Gulf Coast. Antonia will have just come back from long visits to the Gulf Coast and Washington, DC interviewing people and researching for her new book. Juhasz wrote an article to Huffington Post and was interviewed by Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman about the effects of the BP oil spill. She’s been working extensively to report on the oil spill and has a lot to share with us.

Antonia and Kevin will lead an interactive webinar conversation and Q&A about the impacts of the BP Oil spill and what it means for the Green Economy. They will discuss what really happened and what is truly going on in the Gulf Coast; how this environmental disaster affected the communities; what BP oil spill has to do with the Green Economy; and how Washington, DC is dealing with this situation.

Don’t miss the opportunity to know what the media is not telling us. Please join and invite your friends to participate! To attend please register now at http://bit.ly/ciVOBQ Cost: Only $7.

For other Global Exchange’s webinar visit the first and second Green Careers webinars.

If you would like to know more about Antonia Juhasz background, visit: http://www.tyrannyofoil.org/article.php?id=43
Follow Antonia on Twitter and Facebook

If you would like to know more about Dr. Kevin Danaher’s background, visit: www.globalexchange.org/getInvolved/speakers/56.html
Follow Kevin on Twitter and Facebook

Global Exchange’s Chevron Program Director, Antonia Juhasz appeared on DemocracyNow! this morning to speak about her recent Huffington Post article on BP’s “missing oil” washing up in St. Mary’s Parish, Louisiana.

We speak with independent journalist Antonia Juhasz, who is just back from Louisiana, where she found what she calls some of BP’s “missing oil” on the wetlands and beaches along the waterways near St. Mary’s Parish, where no one is booming, cleaning, skimming or watching. [rush transcript]

You can also read Antonia’s article on the Chevron Program blog, as well as keep up on other updates on Antonia’s work in the Gulf as she writes a book about the Gulf Coast disaster.
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For an interactive reportback from the Gulf Coast, join Antonia Juhasz and Kevin Danaher as they host a webinar conversation and Q&A about the impacts of the BP Oil Spill and what it means for the Green Economy. August 26th, 12pm PST.

BP’s “Missing Oil” coats wetlands and beaches along the waterways near St. Mary’s Parish, Louisiana, where no one is booming, cleaning, skimming, or watching.

(This article was originally posted on Huffington Post.)

I am traveling the Gulf Coast writing a new book on the Gulf oil disaster.

The good news is that the cap is holding. The bad news is that, with the well no longer gushing, the oil is out of sight and out of mind and BP is pulling up boom and pulling back workers, skimmers, cleaners, and the rest of the clean-up apparatus all across the Gulf. Even without new oil, the 40,000 barrels a day that spewed from the Macondo well for nearly 100 days continue to wash up on shores, including ones which no one is protecting or cleaning.

There is no shortage of people desperate to do this work. On Wednesday, July 28, Mayor Ron Davis of Prichard, Alabama took me to visit a packed Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) training class required for anyone involved in BP clean-up efforts. The city offers these classes for free. With unemployment at over 14% and poverty reaching 40%, the students who filled this, the tenth class, were effusive with gratitude. Although there is a waiting list over two months long to get in, as the the cleanup jobs shrivel away, this is the last class the city will offer.

The next night I attended a BP community forum in St. Mary’s Parish, Louisiana with representatives from BP, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other agencies available to talk to the public.

Here I met fishermen desperate to be put to work as part of BP’s Vessels Of Opportunity (VOO) program, using their boats to fish for oil instead of seafood by laying boom and absorbents and skimming. When the Parish President announced that St. Mary’s Parish did not, does not, and would not have oil, he was immediately surrounded by local fishermen, one of whom said loudly, “then why does Kermit have oil in his bag right now?” At which point the President turned off the mike and, in Kermit’s words, “all hell broke lose.”

Kermit Duck’s (yes, that’s his real name) grandfather, great grandfather, and so on, have been fishers in St. Mary’s Parish since Morgan City was founded. Kermit had spent that day looking for oil. He found a lot of it and brought some to the meeting in a ziplock bag to prove that it is out there. He is not a part of the VOO program, although he has spent two months on a waiting list trying to get hired. Instead, thanks to BP, he is four months unemployed and desperate to see a real clean-up effort take place so that one day he might be able to fish again.

On Friday Kermit took me out on a boat to show me the oil.

We spent five hours on the water traveling between Oyster Bayou and Taylor’s Bayou. We saw a lot of oil. With the exception of a small amount of boom outside of the Mouth of East Bay Junop, we saw no boom, skimmers, absorbents, or clean-up crews. The Juno boom was coated with oil, as was the area behind it.

We saw plenty of freshly oil-soaked grass and beach. The strong harsh smell of crude filled the air as we neared. The oil had washed up in waves, covering a large patch of grass here, leaving a clean patch beside it there. Fields of oil glistened as the sun picked up the oil’s sheen.
We walked along a shell beach on the south end of Oyster Bayou speckled throughout with fresh tar balls that reached from the reeds to inside the water’s edge. Kermit’s friend Buddy used an oar to dig below the beach surface, revealing more oil beneath.

Over the last months I have traveled the coasts of every state affected by the spill. Until this trip, every time I walked an area with oil, clean-up crews were never far behind. The oil would wash up, the crews would clean it, and the oil would wash up again. It was a sad dance to watch.

This is far more disturbing. BP’s oil continues to coat the Gulf Coast. The oil I saw yesterday was washing up into Louisiana’s vital wetlands, the last barrier of protection from hurricanes. If the grass remains unprotected and unclean, the oil can enter the root system, killing the grass forever. The oil was also at the mouth of Oyster Bayou, at the heart of St. Mary’s Parish’s way of life.

Before I left, Kermit assured me that his Parish President would now act and hold BP accountable to clean up the oil. Hopefully, he will not be alone in his efforts.

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For an interactive reportback from the Gulf Coast, join Antonia Juhasz and Kevin Danaher as they host a webinar conversation and Q&A about the impacts of the BP Oil Spill and what it means for the Green Economy. August 26th, 12pm PST.

(Do not use pictures without attaching tag line and photo credit)

Oil in grass between Oyster Bayou and Taylor's Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil in grass between Oyster Bayou and Taylor's Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil in grass between Oyster Bayou and Taylor's Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil onshore and in waters' edge at South end of Oyster Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil onshore at South end of Oyster Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil South end of Oyster Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil from reeds onshore between Oyster Bayou and Taylor's Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Kermit Duck, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz

BP Community Forum, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 29, 2010, Photo credit: Antonia Juhasz

Prichard, Alabama, HAZWOPER Training Class, July 28, 2010, Photo credit: Antonia Juhasz.