Black Death (part IX)

This entry is the ninth 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 & please help to share this link with others. You can read all of the current entries here: http://itsjustlight.com/?cat=105

It should be noted that this entry is VERY heavy on photo content (and is very long in general). It may take up to a few minutes for all of the images to load if you aren’t using a high-speed internet connection. You can access a larger version of each image in every entry by clicking on the photo; a new window or tab will open with the larger image, which I highly recommend to see the most detail.

I exited Grand Isle State Park but accidentally made a right turn onto Admiral Craik Drive, which dead-ends just after the gate to Coast Guard Station Grand Isle. The Coast Guard Station is billeted for 46 active duty personnel and 4 enlisted reservists. It’s not a large Coast Guard station by any means, but it directly borders the lagoon where I came across the dolphin jaw in the previous article. Directly to the northeast beyond the lagoon, just a few hundred yards from the station, lies the oil stained beach that was strewn with the bodies of dolphins, left to decay and disappear on the shore.

I made a u-turn and headed back to Highway 1, intent on getting to Elmer’s Island. After seeing the dolphins on the beach in Grand Isle State Park, I had no idea what I might find on Elmer’s. I saw military vehicles parked at a beach entrance and pulled in, parking next to them. There were no soldiers or cleanup workers in sight and certainly no tourists, and as I crossed over the dune separating the parking lot from the beach, I found no one there either. Even as I gazed down the beach in either direction I couldn’t see a single solitary human. The break tents used by the cleanup crews sat empty, flanked by portapotties. Heavy machinery sat idle. I surmised that it must have been lunch time, but I couldn’t think of any reason why the workers should all need take breaks at the same time. It would certainly seem that staggering breaks and even the work itself into shifts would be far more efficient, ensuring that cleanup efforts would be constant, rather than intermittent.

I’ve read more than a few articles which characterize the cleanup workers as downright lazy. Some even go so far as to say that they spend all day under the tents and only scoop a few shovelfuls of sand each day. Undoubtedly there is some truth to these allegations; I too have witnessed many cleanup workers moving slowly and others not moving at all. To imply that all of the workers being contracted by BP are languorous and lethargic would be unfair; many of these workers are locals, equally frustrated by the devastation and motivated to clean it up as quickly as they can. Like everything else raising the ire of anyone watching the tragedy unfold along the Gulf, this is not a black and white issue. The devastation is spread across four states and the response effort I have seen in each is completely different. While there are undoubtedly individual workers who are content to sit in the shade all day, the real problem is management and leadership, both of which seem to be in short supply.

I drove on towards the turnoff for Elmer’s Island, about two miles southwest of Caminada Pass which separates the island of Grand Isle from that of Chenière Caminada and Elmer’s Island. I found the road blocked by two Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office vehicles – one marked Crown Victoria cruiser and a marked pickup truck. Two deputies, a middle aged woman and a younger man sat in the cruiser with the engine running and windows up. I pulled alongside as our windows simultaneously descended. I presented my media pass and told them that I’d like to head out to Elmer’s. The female deputy told me that she’d have to escort me out there and that I’d have about twenty minutes there before I had to leave. She would lead the way on an atv and I would follow behind in my car. Like the official at the command center, she told me that there wasn’t much to see there.

A white delivery truck pulled up as she was about to climb on the atv. She waved for them to stop and approached the truck, asking the driver where he was going and where his pass was. He replied that he was delivering ice and didn’t have a pass. She seemed unsure of whether to let him proceed. As I sat in my car, listening to their dialogue, I wondered what the reason for this roadblock was. Were officials worried that ice trucks filled with journalists or anarchists or foreign soldiers were going to storm the beach? The law enforcement presence on Grand Isle seemed more fitting for a city under threat of terrorist attack than for one experiencing a tragic man-made disaster.

The deputy apparently deemed that the driver of the ice truck was neither a rogue journalist nor an anarchist. She walked back to her cruiser and instructed her younger partner not to let anyone without a pass through while she was gone. Orders given, she set off on her atv, leading our motley parade along a gravel road that cut through the wetlands towards the beach. I could see a small group of people clustered around a truck parked on a side road – they seemed to be gathering samples of marsh grass. Forced to follow behind my escort who I could see checking behind her every few seconds to make sure her charges were still dutifully following, I was unable to stop and explore the wetlands for oil contamination. We continued in a southwesterly direction, the gravel stretching out in front of us for one and a half miles before we reached the beach, a vast area of sand that stretched for nearly four hundred feet to the water’s edge. The ice truck stopped at a staging area and the deputy signaled for me to follow her further toward the water. We drove past several parked cars, military vehicles, tents, and machinery. We kept going until we reached the sand berm and Tiger Dam, several hundred feet away from the staging areas and workers. I exited my car and gathered my equipment as my armed escort remained mounted on her atv.

They had all been right, there wasn’t much to see here. Not because there was no oil on the beach or in the marshes – there may well have been (and I’m certain there was), but because I was unable to see either from my vantage point, still at least one hundred feet from the shore and even further from the marsh. There were only a few solitary workers nearby, none of them on the beach itself. A few hundred feet away to my right I could see a  tent with National Guard soldiers milling around and beneath it. What looked like a Kawasaki Mule 4×4 utility vehicle was parked beneath the tent, it’s occupants still seated and taking respite from the merciless sun. It seemed to be lunchtime there on Elmer’s Island too. I asked my escort if I could walk towards the staging area, but my request was denied. I was told that I could only stay in this one area and had to make due with photographing from only one vantage point.

When I was first told that I would have only twenty minutes to take pictures on Elmer’s Island, I found the time limit to be ridiculously short. How can a photographer possibly document environmental devastation in twenty minutes? As I stood there on the beach, my movements confined to only a small area in front of where I had parked, the twenty minute time limit began to seem more like an eternity. If I had been free to roam about, photographing where I wanted, the time limit would have quickly expired. Confined to only one spot on the sand with absolutely nothing to see from that spot, the time limit was unnecessary – a cruel joke. I took all the photos of nothing that I could possibly take and still had fifteen minutes remaining. I chatted with the deputy for a few minutes. She was a nice woman but her words seemed guarded and carefully chosen. I felt that I could sense an unhappiness with the whole situation – surely no one, law enforcement officer or not, could be pleased with the way BP was handling the disaster. Forced to toe the official line though, she wasn’t willing to say much.

pardon the sheep.

The birds and marsh I wasn't allowed to see.

As I followed my escort back toward Highway 1, I reflected on what I had encountered in Grand Isle, trying to sort out my thoughts and feelings. The trouble with photography is that it’s very easy to tell a story that perhaps differs from the truth, simply by selecting which photographs to show. Perhaps it’s not possible to ever show the truth with any medium; the truth varies depending upon perspective. My experiences in the Gulf have brought me to beaches inundated with thick oil and to beaches nearly devoid of it. I’ve seen workers sweating and shoveling furiously and I have seen workers doing as little as possible. Many news outlets choose to show only photographs that show the cleanup workers relaxing in the shade of tents and only the beaches covered with thick oil, but this is as dishonest as showing only clean beaches and hard working cleanup crews. The late novelist Robert Parker wrote these sage words, “…you probably can’t figure out the truth, if you think you know ahead of time what the truth is supposed to be.”

It’s easy to set foot on the beach with preconceived notions expecting to find conspiracies, but more difficult to separate what constitutes conspiracy from inefficiency and apathy. Rage is a natural response after seeing this sort of annihilation – of wildlife, habitat, culture, and economy. It’s easy to blame and point fingers, and undoubtedly some people deserve whatever blame they receive. More difficult though is the task of questioning ourselves and our own actions.

In America, the citizens are the government, the corporate employees, the cops, the soldiers. The BP security guards blocking the beaches and trying to keep the media out, the police who threaten us with arrest, the Coast Guard officers who seem more interested in protecting the interests of BP than those of the American people, the government officials who are content to look the other way and not dig deeper into the murky reality…..these people are all family, neighbors, friends, fellow citizens, politicians we elect. Their actions are deplorable and perhaps even evil, but they too are citizens.

These man made tragedies continue to occur because these people are afraid of losing their jobs and instead of standing up to the unlawful instructions they are given, they blindly follow them. They are little different from the majority of the populace, who, while perhaps not actively participating in denying access, is certainly content to let it be denied with little more than a whimper. We are quick to affix the blame to faceless entities, CEOs and presidents, and government agencies but we must remember that we are America, we are the citizenship which continues to choose profit and convenience over principle.

“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.” Robert Maynard Hutchins