Black Death (part VI)

This entry is the sixth of a several-part installment on my coverage of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Feel free to comment and ask questions. You can read all of the current entries here: http://itsjustlight.com/?cat=105

I made my way back through the overgrown field to my car and headed south toward Venice. One might expect to see people lining the streets, protesting and lamenting the slow death of the Gulf in their own backyard, but the streets were silent and the people even more so. In this part of Louisiana, there are two types of people; those whose jobs are oil related and those whose jobs are fishing related. Much of the industry in Venice is related to service and transport for the offshore oil platforms, and it’s easy to understand why few from the oil industry are breaking formation to bite the hand that feeds. Harder to understand are the fishermen, now jobless, but still largely silent. It becomes easier to understand once you realize that they too now rely on BP for a paycheck.

I pulled into the parking lot of the Lighthouse Lodge and Villas, whose website proclaims, “Venice…It’s Where You CATCH Fish!” Two large US Coast Guard Mobile Incident Command Center trailers were parked on the north side of the hotel and two trailers belonging to the US Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 Emergency Response Team were parked to the east. I continued south, passing by another trailer parked at the intersection of 23 and Jump Basin Road, this one emblazoned with the catchy logo, “Jails on Demand.” A tall pile of plastic bags sat to the right of the trailer, filled with oil-absorbent boom.

Everybody's here.

I continued south on Jump Basin Road, which curves into Tide Water Road. On my left I passed by Chevron Road and then Halliburton Road and then Coast Guard Road. I continued south, entering an area of unspoiled natural beauty. The bayou extended in all directions, cypress trees rising out of the water and birds winging their way overhead. It was high tide as I drove south and the last few bends of the road were submerged, the bayou attempting to reclaim, at least for a few hours, what once belonged to it. Venice Boat Harbor Drive led me to Venice Marina, a sprawling complex of docks that sits on the last spit of land before the mighty Mississippi River rushes into the Gulf, it’s murky water spreading out in all directions like tendrils of a curling vine. Time moves differently in Louisiana and nature is always fighting against mankind in a battle to consume the abandoned remnants of civilization. Cranes, houses, cars, and boats can be seen scattered throughout the bayou, rusting as they slowly sink into the rich mud. Abandoned and forgotten by their human owners, this detritus quickly becomes as much a part of the landscape as the herons that wade slowly through the reeds.

Even as hundreds of shrimping boats sat idly in their slips, the marina was alive with activity. News crews stood on the docks and under the pavilion, on boats, and near the marsh, all of them elaborating to their distant viewers the dire situation. A boat docked next to me, discharging another news crew. It’s hull was streaked with brown, the merit badge of a voyage into the floating sea of crude oil. Cameramen shook their heads in disbelief.

Crude oil clings to the fiberglass hull of this boat, having just taken a news crew offshore into the sea of oil.

Oil sheen in the harbor

BP has been compensating fishermen here with $5,000 monthly payments, a sum that many shrimpers and fishermen were able to earn from their catch in just a few days; that is, before the crude oil started to contaminate and kill the marine life, rendering vast areas of the Gulf off-limits to fishing. The shrimp season in Louisiana lasts for only 90 days, but these three months of income provide for the fishermen and their families (and ultimately for the local economies) for the remainder of the year. While the $5,000 checks have ensured the silence of many angry fishermen, there is obvious fear about what will happen if the checks stop coming. Some fishermen and their families are tired of silence, and have been speaking out vocally against BP and what they consider to be a grossly insufficient response.

I talked with a young man named Ben for a few minutes; he used to work as a photojournalist in New York City and was now an inventor. He briefly described a product that he had developed, an environmentally friendly oil dispersant. He had been traveling all over Louisiana trying to find someone in charge who could actually listen to him for a few minutes and consider his product for use or even allow him to test the product on a sample of the crude oil. Like countless other inventors, many of them with legitimately brilliant ideas, he was getting the run-around, being bounced from one “official” to the next, none of them quite official enough to make a decision. This seemed to be the general trend that was beginning to make itself apparent to me – there were lots of people in charge, too many even, but no one had any power to do anything useful. Halfway through a sentence, Ben spotted his business partner waving him over to where he and an environmental officer were talking. Ben sprinted off, hopefully to an ear more receptive to his ideas.