Carpet-Bombed Gulf Coasters Organize to Ban Corexit

Recent unconfirmed military reports provided to human rights reporter Deborah Dupré say Corexit dispersant is still being carpet-combed over Gulf of Mexico. Photo Credit: Dees Illustrations

Marine toxicologist Riki Ott, PhD announced Friday that she is leading a workshop in New Orleans this month to help empower Gulf Coast residents to successfully pressure the Obama administration to ban dispersants like Corexit, carpet-bombed in the Gulf of Mexico region as a response to BP’s Macondo oil well blow-out.

As an alarming amount of oil continues leaking from the BP-wrecked Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, (Mississippi Canyon Block 252, abbreviated MC252) and officials continue hiding the ongoing human and environmental catastrophe, an empowering workshop is being offered to Gulf Coasters that organizers say will include far more than a single-issue approach to banning the controversial issue of dispersant use.

Deborah Dupré has obtained recent unconfirmed reports that almost daily, Corexit carpet-bombing planes are still flying out of Mississippi. 

“Corexit is being dispersed from planes 14 miles from Texas to 14 miles west of Florida,” the source said under agreement to remain anonymous.

Many coastal residents link the onset of serious human health issues with exposure to the combined air- or water-borne crude oil and Corexit dispersants that began Spring of 2010, days after BP’s deep sea Macondo oil well drilling blow-out began the greatest environmental and human catastrophe the world had experienced. 

Some of those residents have called the deliberate infliction of widespread illness and death chemical genoicide, as this author’s Vampire of Macondo book trailer (below) shows.

Vampire of Macondo book trailer, “First book to reveal BP Gulf Oil Human Rights Abuses”

For almost three years, the Obama administration has steadfastly ignored the people’s demand to ban Corexit dispersants, “while acquiescing to industry demands,” the learning event organizers say. 

The government does, however, now acknowledge a vague “human health risk tradeoff” with dispersant use in the Gulf oil catastrophe response, according to a March 2012 Dispersant Initiative Report. 

In Dec., the public learned that the reported two million gallons of Corexit 9500A dispersant used soon after BP’s 2010 Gulf crime made abuses related to the 4.9 million barrels of crude released from Macondo Prospect after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, 52 times more toxic than crude alone, according to Georgia Institute of Technology and Universidad Autonoma de Aguascalientes (UAA) research.

That research showed the dispersant made crude 52 times more toxic in rotifers, organisms at the base of the food chain.

Dispersants disperse or spread oil. Corexit made BP’s crude invisible from the air. 

While the official amount of Corexit used in the Gulf of Mexico region was two million barrels, Dupre’s sources advise that amount was at least six million barrels.

Before Corexit was used in the Gulf, it was known that it would slow natural bacterial decomposition of crude, making oil persist longer in the environment, and that there were more effective dispersants on the market. (Deborah Dupré, Vampire of Macondo)

It was also known that Corexit’s solubilizing action makes crude more bioavailable, causing it to bio-accumulate, meaning accumulate in tissues of organisms at the bottom of the food chain, and become more concentrated as it works its way up the chain – into our children’s school lunches, onto dinner tables, and in American’s bodies.

Since 2010, 40% of the nation’s seafood supply, the fabled multi-billion-dollar Gulf industry, has been stalled under the torrent of oil and Corexit. In 2010, Americans ate four billion pounds of seafood annually, according to physician Dr. RussellBlaylock. One-third of that was from south Louisiana. That seafood is still heavily promoted and consumed, despite the crude and Corexit contaminated food chain.

Gulf coasters to learn why citizen actions are essential to restoring American values

“Participants will first learn an important back-story relating to the rise of corporate power and the loss of people’s sovereignty in our democracy,” Ott says. 

At a press conference last year in New Orleans for The Big Fix movie that she is in, Ott vowed to help lead a movement that addresses not only the nation’s environmental crisis, but rather a democracy crisis.

“I’m not looking to the court system at all,” Ott said. “I’ve already done that with the Exxon-Valdez. I went and testified in Congress. I did everything right. I worked with the scietnific community. I worked with the legal community. Nothing happened. We lost. I’m not going to do that again.

“There’s a different power in this country. And it’s bgger than all the industry and government combined. And that’s people power.”

Ott says the way to advance democracy and human rights “is simply the people restoring the will to the people.”

“The corporations have captured our government at the highest level,” Ott said. “And we can’t look to the government to hold the corporations accountable.”

Ott  says that at the upcoming workshop, particpants will be afforded the opportunity to “explore a different perspective of American history: the key U.S. Supreme Court rulings that created, then expanded, corporate rights and power through the landmark decision on Citizens United in January 2010––and beyond.”

If learning practical community organizing skills and successful campaign building elements is important to Gulf coasters who’ve felt defeated for alomost three years in their battle for human rights, this is the event to attend, according to the written statement about the learning opportunity.

“They will also identify human values that lie at the core of a democracy, learn how core human values are recognized as rights, and how to drive these rights into the local laws and institutions of your community to maintain rule by the people; i.e., real democracy,” according to Ott.

The workshop is part of a series of Feb. trainings in coastal communities from Florida to Louisiana.

The “Making It Right for Real” trainings are designed to empower people with knowledge and skills to practically and effectively advance their demands from ideas into action. The trainings also offer the opportunity to link local efforts with the larger popular movement to end corporate rule and re-establish a stronger democracy.

The learning event will be at the Unitarian Universalist Church in New Orleans, 5212 S. Claiborne Ave, February 23rd and February 24th. On the 23rd, the workshop begins at 9:00 A.M. and ends at 5:00 P.M. On the 24th, it begins at 2:00 P.M. and ends at 6:00 P.M. 

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Human Rights news reporter Deborah Dupré is author of “Vampire of Macondo, Life, crimes and curses in south Louisiana that Powerful Forces Don’t want you to know,” 450 pages packed with censored stories about the BP-wrecked Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico that continues causing hidden catastrophic human and environmental devastation.

Follow Dupré on Twitter @DeborahDupre. For interviews, email [email protected].