On Louisiana Coast, Damage From Oil Goes Much Deeper Than Spill

[unhappycamper]

On Louisiana Coast, Damage From Oil Goes Much Deeper Than Spill
Chris Kirkham
[email protected] | HuffPost Reporting
First Posted: 01/13/11 10:36 PM Updated: 01/14/11 01:50 AM

Last summer's Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico -- the largest offshore oil spill in recorded history -- made the Gulf Coast states the poster children for the enormous environmental risks posed by energy production near their shores.

But while the BP spill was conspicuous, an even more profound wave of environmental destruction has been steadily battering the Gulf Coast with little public scrutiny for most of a century: Continuous oil and gas development has contributed to the disintegration of nearly 2,000 square miles of Louisiana's coastline -- an area larger than the state of Delaware -- making New Orleans far more vulnerable to the flooding inflicted by hurricanes that regularly roll in off the Gulf.

Pipelines and navigation channels meant to ferry oil and natural gas from the vast reservoirs beneath the Gulf have chiseled away at the natural landscape of Louisiana, degrading coastal forests, swamps and marshlands. Many scientists believe the weakening of this formerly protective layer of land enabled Hurricane Katrina to lay waste to key areas of the city.

"These are long term problems that make the effects of the oil spill, even in the worst-feared case, pale by comparison," said Donald Boesch, the president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences who has studied coastal Louisiana and the Gulf for more than 30 years.

Yet despite the damage the oil and gas industry has imposed on Louisiana, the state has received only a minute fraction of the billions of dollars in royalties doled out by oil companies over the years in exchange for leasing the Gulf from the federal government. Instead, most of that money has landed in the coffers of the U.S. Treasury by dint of a decades-old disagreement over who controls the bounty of the sea -- the states, or the federal government?

[rbixby]

1. It seems to me that since the fed reaps so many rewards

They should also shell out for cleanup and mitigation of this stuff