Drill Here, Drill Now!!

What a sad story that has unfolded in the Gulf of Mexico this past week. First, eleven oil rig workers were killed on an explosion an oil rig in the Gulf. The environmental disaster that is now playing out is a travesty. I remember back when we were having the drill or not to drill arguments on Cotton Mouth a couple of years ago, there was a canard repeated by most of our right wing visitors that there has never been an oil spill caused by an oil rig. What do you guys think now that our precious gulf is in serious danger of an environmental cataclysm?

CNN

The spill continues to grow as 42,000 gallons of oil leaks from an underwater well that was broken open when a drill rig exploded and sank last week. 11 workers are believed to have died in the blast. Their bodies have never been recovered.

The slick stretches for about 100 miles across the north-central gulf and is about 30 miles wide at some points.
It's within 16 miles of the mouth of the Mississippi, the U.S. Coast Guard reports.

Efforts to cap the well using remote-controlled submarines have failed. Louisiana officials fear the oil could reach the state's shoreline late Friday or early Saturday and damage shellfish and wildlife.

BP, which owns the oil well, is spending $6 million a day trying to control the spill. The company's CEO said today the explosion could have been prevented and he's putting them blame on the rig owner Transocean Ltd. A spokesman for Transocean has declined to respond to BP's comments. But Transocean's Vice President has said the oil rig had no signs of a problem before the blast.

It will be interesting to see how many safety violations have occurred in the recent past with this drilling outfit. One would hope it would be better than that of the mine owners involved in the recent mining tragedy. Sadly I will not be surprised if it is as bad or worse.

Update: CNN reports in a breaking news segment that things look a lot worse than originally thought.

CNN Breaking News

The oil spill from last week's deadly rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico has increased to 5,000 barrels a day -- five times more than the original estimate, said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry.

A third underwater oil leak has been located in the pipeline that connected the rig to the oil well, said Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for BP.

More pollution for us

Speaking of other blogs, I ran across this one today. Apparently the Attorney General's office is going to try to sue the EPA over the new smog standards because they are too tough.

Now a deputy attorney general in Mississippi is seeking other states to join in suing to block the tougher smog standards. (See e-mail, below.) It notes that Mississippi has been told that other states, including AL, LA, TX, ARK, GA, SC, IN, may be interested in joining the suit. (Interestingly, this guy’s boss, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, is a Democrat.) Most of these states had lobbied against tougher standards, using thoroughly discredited arguments.

Check out the Clean Air Watch blog to see the e-mail the author, Frank O'Donnell, acquired.

This Is America

If we say we are going to raise fuel efficiency standards then we will

I went to Detroit and said that.

We need a leader who will tell us what we need to hear, not simply what we want to hear.

Crowd likes talk about proper training for troops and proper equipment

(Iraq) is distracting us from the battle we should have fought.

The war in Iraq was an unwise war.  That's why I opposed it in 2002 and that's why I'll end it in 2009.

Yazoo Pumps

Tuesday’s New York Times featured an editorial on the proposed Yazoo Pumps project. Considering the depth of issues related to coming election cycle, it is important to note that the Times devoted one of their three editorials to an environmental issue here in Mississippi.

What is proposed is a project detailed here by the Mississippi Sierra Club. The details are gory to say the least.

Although the Corps acknowledges that the Backwater Area continues to flood
regularly, the agency wants to drain over 126,000 acres of wetlands to intensify
agribusiness. Such intensification would increase pesticide use in the Delta,
where DDT and other pesticides already contaminate the land and water, and have
been linked to numerous health problems suffered by residents.

According to the Times our governor is attempting to use his political influence to secure approval of this project despite the protestations of the EPA.

Stephen Johnson, the embattled career scientist who runs the Environmental
Protection Agency, seems ready to defy Congress on an issue that his more
politically connected predecessors ducked. Mr. Johnson has all but decided to
cancel the Yazoo Pumps, a flood control scheme in the Mississippi Delta that is
potentially the most environmentally destructive project undertaken by the Army
Corps of Engineers at Congress’s request.

Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor who once ran
the Republican National Committee, may well use his party connections to try to
persuade Mr. Johnson to back off. The administrator should resist this and all
other entreaties to do so.

The EPA has estimated that this project would be more devastating than the eleven other projects that have been denied for environmental reason combined. Dangerous chemical would be dredged up and put into the water supply, causing disease and birth defects..

Haley Barbour leads the fight for the environmentally destructive project of its type. You would hope he would be on the side of all Mississippians here, but as usual he sides with big business. Much like his support of Big Tobacco in the grocery tax issue, Haley sides with those who stand to profit, while leaving the rest of us to pay.

Barbour promoting pollution

Southern Company has recently been named one of the two top polluters in the United States and the sixth worse polluter in the world. A company with strong financial ties to the Republican party and George Bush, once employed our very own governor, Haley Barbour, as its lobbyist.

From The Independent:

Haley Barbour, one of the main lobbyists for Southern Co when President Bush took office, played a crucial role in persuading him to back away from his original campaign promise to reduce CO2 emissions when he first ran for president in 2000. Mr Barbour is a former chairman of the Republican Party, and was reelected governor of Mississippi last week.

According to FrankO'Donnell of Clean Air Watch, after Mr Bush became president, "he was got at by Haley Barbour, who said, 'Hey, Mr President we didn't elect you to have high energy costs'".

Mr O'Donnell said: "Southern Company Lobbyists treated the president as if he was someone to give orders to and he took them. The upshot is that America's biggest polluters used their chequebooks effectively to block actions to stop global warming."

Not Harsh Enought For Endangering Public Health

The Sun Herald:

A man who ran a fake hazardous waste-recycling facility in Yazoo City pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to all six counts he was charged with.

Dennie Eugene Pridemore pleaded guilty to improperly disposing of hazardous metals, then lying to state and federal investigators to cover up the sham.

Pridemore's Hydromex Inc. was supposed to recycle hazardous wastes into useful products. Instead, Pridemore buried waste contaminated with the heavy metals, which leached into soil and groundwater.

He faces up to 30 years in jail and a $1.5 million fine.

The Sun Herald