As Keystone XL protesters savor their victory to postpone the pipeline project, another oil policy decision this week did not turn out so well; a plan to expand drilling operations in the oil-damaged Gulf and pristine arctic.
Willie Seaman of Irvington, AL, lays carpet and floors for a living. But last summer, as the BP well gushed thousands of barrels of oil daily into the Gulf, Seaman signed up with the BP cleanup program, working on a shrimp boat several miles off shore.
Mark Stewart is a third generation fisherman from the Mississippi Gulf fishing community of Pass Christian. He's a proud and tough working man of the sea, used to hauling in nets until his arms nearly fall off and fishing all night until his eyelids are crusted shut like a saltine sandwich. That’s the life he knows, the life he wouldn’t have any other way.
And it’s the life he fears he may never lead again.
In Washington today, hundreds of people from all walks of life packed a State Department hearing at the massive Ronald Reagan office building, ready for one last-ditch effort to fend off the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
In the Gulf, new information is confirming fears that fish and wildlife—and millions of people on the Coast—are being seriously impacted by the 4.9 million barrels of BP oil spewed from the ocean deep last year.
Down in the Gulf, oil still is bubbling to the surface near BP’s disastrous Macondo well. Local fishermen know it, environmental watchdogs know it, local journalists know it. Now, five weeks after it was first spotted, the government knows it too. Following repeated BP denials that its well is leaking, the feds have finally taken action. They’ve ordered Transocean to investigate the mile of Deepwater Horizon riser pipeline that lies crinkled on the ocean bottom, blown to pieces by last year’s catastrophic well explosion.
P.J. Hahn has rescued his share of oil-soaked pelicans. As coastal restoration director for Plaquemines Parish, he’s seen the worst of the Louisiana crude that belched uncontrollably from BP’s well a mile below the sea.
When Tropical Storm Lee pummeled the Gulf coast with wind and rain last week, it left more than local floods and wind damage in its wake. Residents from Florida to Louisiana report the slow-moving gale blew in oily residues, thick tar mats and tar balls, confirming fears that the crude from BP’s historic blowout is far from gone.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a climatologist to realize this has been a killer weather year. Snowmaggedons in the east; deadly super cell tornados pummeling towns across the Midwest and South; record spring floods throughout the Midwest and Gulf; droughts and deadly fires racing through tinder-dry towns in Texas. Now we're on track to have a possible record-breaking number of hurricanes; three cyclones now spinning in the Atlantic and Gulf could threaten our rain-soaked coasts and waterways.
In the Gulf, another maelstrom has hit. But the tropical storm Mother Nature has brewed is not the top concern on some resident’s minds. They're more worried about the threat of fresh oil sighted near BP’s Macondo well 40 miles offshore.
As Keystone XL protesters savor their victory to 
P.J. Hahn has rescued his share of oil-soaked pelicans. As coastal restoration director for Plaquemines Parish, he’s seen the worst of the Louisiana crude that belched uncontrollably from BP’s well a mile below the sea. 
