Excerpted from a message of The Sustainer Project:
This is a personal note offering two helpful options to boost economic and environmental protection for our coastal industries and marine life in light of the Deep Horizons Gulf spill.
I just congratulated President Obama on his 1st step, six month drilling moratorium and asked him to shut down BP Atlantis - the oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico that's operating daily without proper safety documents and drilling at a depth of 7,000 feet - 2,000 feet deeper than the Deep Horizons well. (Here's a timeline of their apparent "pass" on investigation from the MMS - http://www.spillthetruth.org/ [scroll below the fold])
Even BP admits it could have a "catastrophic operator error." Pumping 200,000 barrels of oil each day, a spill from BP Atlantis could be many times worse that the current tragedy unfolding in the Gulf.
I found out that the fantastic moratorium he declared on 37 new wells in the Gulf, NC and Alaska yesterday, applies only to developing projects, not to existing wells currently in operation.
Can you ask President Obama to Shut Down BP Atlantis until proven safe? http://www.spillthetruth.org/
Thanks!
Here's option two -
Could you call or email your congressional representatives to support HR 5355 recently introduced by Rep. Raul Grijalva of AZ? The "No Cap" bill will eliminate the existing oil company protections capping their liability for disasters that their failed operations produce in US waters.
Here's a link to Rep. Grijalda's article on Huffington Post -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raul-m-grijalva/hr-5355---lets-tell-big-o_b_593164.html
Beyond the catastrophic losses to our marine and coastal life, our economy and tax-base just can't shoulder the result of non-existent regulation in the face on another spill.
This is unfolding quickly and without broad support from us for earnest action, the little known non-profits and low-ranking congress people will easily be brushed aside while we run the risk of a disaster even greater than the one we are footing the bill for at present.
I know a bunch of you know that I spent time in Valdez, AK...even 12 years after the Exxon spill, our guide took numerous opportunities to show to my kayaking partner and me evidence of remaining oil damage (under rocks, in rookeries and still registered in the minimized fish and sea otter populations among species that never bounced back... at that point in time, nobody in the know up there ate mussels as those beds were sitting atop 74-80% toxic concentrations of sedimentarily sequestered oil). [http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Publications/misc_pdf/peterson.pdf]
Knowing that this same loss of life and functional habitat will now be the case all along the Gulf shoreline I grew up on is prompting my request. Hope you don't mind me sharing some of what I'm learning.
Thanks a lot for reading and/or acting!
In Hope and Appreciation,
Janna Olson
The Sustainer Project
