Former EPA official, media outrage Gulf rights defender (video)

A New Orleans Gulf human rights defender has expressed outrage about the Times Picayune's February 20 article and statements made by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assistant director Paul Anastas, boasting about Corexit dispersant used throughout the ongoing Gulf Operation as he left the position Friday. President Obama's appointed EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson says Anastas has held the most important job in the agency after that of hers.

"The article is about Paul Anastas, now leaving the EPA, and apparently the man that made the decision to allow BP to apply millions of gallons of Corexit on the oil spewing from the destroyed Macondo well. The dots aren’t connected," said a New Orleans-based Gulf human rights defender, Elizabeth Cook in an email to this writer Wednesday afternoon.

"As he prepared to depart Washington to return to Yale University, where he directs the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering -- his last day on the job was Friday -- Anastas was upbeat about EPA's mission and accomplishments," reported the Picayune.

Gulf Operation Mission Accomplished

Anastas, the "Father of Green Chemistry," is the man who, as EPA's science adviser and assistant administrator for research and development, decided to apply millions of gallons of the lethal dispersant Corexit on oil spewing from the destroyed Macondo well volcano.

The dots aren’t connected in the article, according to Cook, because no mention was made of: thousands of people already ill from the dispersed oil (up to eleven times more lethal than crude alone); fishermen who worked for and were made ill by BP (some seriously ill from chemical poisoning); unlucky residents living close enough to the water to suffer chronic exposure to dispersed oil who once lived in Sportsman’s Paradise; Dr. Mike Robichaux and other professionals who’ve devoted their time and energy to documenting illnesses (and deaths) and creating a detox program for those “all but ignored by their state and federal government," as Dupré discussed with radio talk show host Vinny Eastwood today. (See Youtube video on page left, "The Gulf Of Mexico Corexit Cover-up! Deborah Dupre and Vinny Eastwood coming soon!")

Paul Anastas is leaving the EPA, and the position he held as EPA's science Adviser and Assistant Administrator for Research and Development, an important position, according to the Administrator Lisa Jackson, says Jonathan Tilove who wrote the article for the Picayune.

“Yet, as much information as Mr. Anastas must have access to, he couldn’t stop himself from crowing about the success of the decision to allow massive dumping of Corexit, a decision that has left thousands of lives in ruin, and oil coating the bottom of the Gulf, according to more than one scientist. Apparently, there are some pieces of information that Mr. Anastas chooses to ignore,” Cook wrote.

"He ignores the very mixed reports on white and brown shrimp catches this past year; that dolphins are washing up in record numbers on the Gulf coast; and that residents are not privy to test results because NOAA has put a clamp on those.

Mr. Anastas said about his own decision, according to the Picayune:

"Does the Gulf today look like 11 Exxon Valdezes crashed into the Gulf? I would suggest the answer is no -- and there's a reason why that answer's no… "Some things were done right… All of the tremendous suffering that people went through, the Gulf today is far, far better than it would have been without an effective response -- EPA, Coast Guard, all the many agencies with people on the ground, the cities, the states, the groups that mobilized. The EPA was only one piece of a really important mobilization. I must say, I think EPA was a very, very important piece…

“And, while testing will go on for some time, what the science is telling us, what the data is telling us is that we don't see a long-term persistence of the dispersants. The analysis is, just as was projected, that it would be degraded and broken down into harmless pieces over time."

“Harmless pieces, Mr. Anastas?," asks Cook.

"Not according to Dr. Samantha Joye, a marine scientist with the University of Georgia. Having explored the bottom of the Gulf one year after the BP oil disaster, her take on the results are quite different.”

According to Dr. Joye:

There are few people who can claim direct knowledge of the ocean floor, at least before the invention of the spill-cam, last year’s strangely compulsive live feed of the oil billowing out of BP‘s blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico. But for Samantha Joye it was familiar terrain. The intersection of oil, gas and marine life in the Mississippi Canyon has preoccupied the University of Georgia scientist for years. So one year after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig, about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana, killed 11 men and disgorged more than 4m barrels of crude, Joye could be forgiven for denying the official version of the BP oil disaster that life is returning to normal in the Gulf.

"The view from her submarine is different, and her attachment is almost personal," Cook wrote.

On her descent to a location 10 miles from BP’s well in December, Joye landed on an ocean floor coated with dark brown muck about 4cm deep. Thick ropes of slime draped across coral like cobwebs in a haunted house.

"The few creatures that remained alive, such as the crabs, were too listless to flee," Cook reminded the Examiner.

“Most of the time when you go at them with a submarine, they just run,” Dr. Joye said.

Cook asserted, “They weren’t running, they were just sitting there, dazed and stupefied. They certainly weren’t behaving as normal.”

Dr. Joye's conclusion? “I think it is not beyond the imagination that 50% of the oil is still floating around out there.”

"One should question why Mr. Anastas’s account of the results of the oil disaster should be so remarkably similar to BP’s account.

"Everyone in this country has seen the million of dollar ads that BP has on television and in print media, claiming all is well with the Gulf coast," said Cook, referring to what the late oil guru, Matthew Simmons had called a sham shortly before his untimely death.

Mainstream press told the world that things were “back to normal.”

"Nothing could be further from the truth; however, you wouldn’t know this reading the Times Picayune, Cook said.

Edward Flattau wrote in Huffington Post on February 6, 2012 a different picture of Gulf coast “recovery”:

“But there is another dimension to the BP spill's aftermath. Cherri Foytlin, founder of a southern Louisiana grassroots group called ‘Bridge the Gulf,’ told a recent Washington rally that ‘dead animals wash up on our coast every day; oil washes up on land every day. People are getting sick every day’." (Emphasis added)

"Record dolphin mortality and fish deformities, including damage to the gills, continue to be documented in the Gulf. Researchers at Louisiana State University have detected long term adverse impacts on marine life's reproductive capacity.

"Since the spill, many once perfectly healthy individuals -- especially kids -- in coastal areas have been reported pulmonary issues, respiratory problems, seizures, skin and eye ailments, and a host of other maladies linked to prolonged exposure to BP oil residues' toxic chemicals. One southern Louisiana school has had to keep a closet full of nebulizers at the ready to help pupils in respiratory distress breathe.

Cook said that although research might be needed to determine long term effects of the Corexit on marine and human life, short term effect "are already well in evidence, with the thousands of folks on the Gulf coast falling ill and showing symptoms of acute exposure to Corexit and oil mixed with Corexit.

"Perhaps Mr. Tilove didn’t catch Dr. Robichaux’s presentation to the Baton Rouge Press Club.

“Gulf coast residents live in a surreal landscape of truth and lies, with our government sounding more like the corporation they were supposed to protect us from," Cook stated.

"Mr. Anastas is a prime example of that, and Mr. Tilove provided a propaganda avenue for the dissemination of these lies.”

"I think few agencies have a better story to tell than the EPA, on the positive impact they make on people's lives every single day," Anastas reported to the Picayune.

For an estimated 20 to 40 million people directly impacted by Anastas and the rest of the petrochemical-military-industrial-complex, EPA's story is a tale of horror.