BP oil disaster

Locally here in Mobile, Alabama, it is rumored that things are being put in place that would ensure that by year 2025, Mobile County would be industrialized with "Oil-Based" industries while Baldwin County will be "Water-Based" with beach resorts, fancy restaurants and hotels and lively entertainment.

A motivational speaker by the name of Jane Rubietta once said, "Someone may have stolen your dream when it was fresh and young and you were innocent. Anger is natural. Grief is appropriate. Healing becomes mandatory. Restoration is possible." Almost four years ago my dream was stolen. Is restoration possible for me?

On April 12, 2013, Bridge the Gulf and the Gulf Coast Fund convened a roundtable discussion with people working to bring attention to a public health crisis they have seen unfold since the BP disaster. Participants included a mother from a coastal Louisiana town overcome by chronic illness, a doctor, two scientists and a lawyer.

A cold northerly wind blew through the bayous of Louisiana last night, bringing near-frost like conditions and hastening the end of the worst shrimp season in memory. Only the small fry are left, and they too are on the move with their larger brethren, swimming out to sea to feed over the winter. They will wait for warmer temperatures of spring before they return to their spawning grounds of the marsh.

I first met JJ Creppel last summer while standing in the checkout line of the Buras Dollar Store. It’s one of the few places in this Louisiana fishing town deep down in the bayou where you can buy basic groceries and milk. Nearly all the other stores were destroyed five years ago in the monster storm that roared through here and leveled this community of 5,000 people.

Crossposted from NRDC Switchboard.

Yesterday, on a stormy, rain-splattered Sunday, fishermen and their families from four Gulf Coast states drove to Captain Anderson’s Marina in Panama City, FL. It was the same day the Panama City News Herald front page featured a huge photo of President Obama swimming happily with his daughter in the nearby Gulf. “Dive in, Mr. President,” the headline screamed.

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