Impact of Oil in Gulf Hard for Writer to Grasp
Glynn Harris, Writer
07-08-2010
This is one of those columns I’ve been meaning to write for weeks but somehow I just haven’t been able to wrap myself around the enormity of it.
I sit down at the keyboard with my thoughts and when I try to string together words that fit the horrible thing going on in our Gulf, I just can’t. What can I say that has not already been said in describing the spoiling of this special place, not only for Louisiana residents but for the nation?
I know I need to say something because of what has happened, is now happening and is likely to be happening for months and years to come.
I’m a product of the red clay pine covered hills of north Louisiana, 300 miles removed from the Gulf of Mexico. You would think I’d be insulated from the orange and black sludge the television cameras keep showing washing into the fragile marshes and bays of our southern coast. But I’m not; every time I see the images of a helpless brown pelican, our state bird, sitting in a pool of oil, I’m traumatized again.
On a few occasions I have fished the Gulf of Mexico and written columns about the unbelievable resources I found there. From the redfish, speckled trout and flounder to the alligators, ducks and geese, I’ve experienced a little bit of it all, enough to cause me to realize just what a special place our coast and offshore waters are.
What is it now; two months going on three that what Beverly Hillbilly’s Jed Clampett called ‘black gold” has flowed unabated from that busted pipe? Jed shot at a possum and a gusher spewed forth. Jed’s fictitious oil discovery was on his land; the one in our Gulf is a mile below the surface. Big difference; Jed’s was controlled and he got rich; ours continues to flow and hundreds of commercial fishermen and charter boat captains and others depending on the bounty of the Gulf are going bankrupt.
I reached for a tee shirt from my closet last week, one I’d worn on many occasions but never paid particular attention to its inscription. I picked up the shirt at a writer’s conference a couple of years ago in Morgan City. This time, though, the message on the shirt reached out and grabbed me. The shirt is inscribed with two oversized Gulf shrimp encircling an offshore drilling platform with the inscription…”Shrimp and Petroleum Festival…celebrated since 1936.”
Can you not see the irony in that? For nearly three-quarters of a century, commercial fishermen and shrimpers have been dependent on the oil industry to provide good paying jobs to folks along the coast who spend their money on seafood. At the same time, the oil industry has lived in a symbiotic relationship with the offshore fishing industry for all that time, so much so that an annual festival commemorates their kinship.
Ironically, it’s the run-away gusher of oil and its poison that instead of supporting the fishing industry today, is sucking the very life out of a union that has been so special for decades.
What will tomorrow bring? More assurances from the petroleum giant responsible for this catastrophe, that the leak is on the verge of being plugged? It’s beginning to sound like the fable of the boy crying wolf; we’ve heard so many empty promises and assurances for these months we no longer believe.
The wolf is indeed at the door and appears on the verge of snuffing out not only the fish and wildlife from the Gulf but taking down with it the livelihood of those who depend on these waters for their daily bread.
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