Commentary By Ron Beasley
I posted on this over at The Moderate Voice the other day but I think it's worth repeating. Dave Cohen reminds us that the Gulf was already dying, albeit at a slower rate, before the Deepwater Horizon.
The oil leak on the Mississippi Canyon seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico
proceeds apace. It is now
clear that BP's recent plan did not succeed in plugging the leak. The
widely dispersed petroleum is a great disaster, but I get the distinct
impression that this oil is seen as despoiling a pristine
environment. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have this
impression because, to my knowledge, the sorry state of the Gulf of
Mexico before the oil spill is not being discussed. Before the
oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico was being ravaged by�
- coastal erosion
- hypoxia(very low oxygen)
- harmful algal blooms (red tides)
The levies that the federal government started building on the
Mississippi River in the 30�s are destroying the marshes and wetlands by
depriving them of new material. Nitrogen and phosphorus from extensive
agriculture in the Mississippi River basin have resulted in large areas
of low oxygen, �dead zones� and increased blooms of toxic algae.
As Cohen points out even before the toxic oil volcano in the Gulf it
was a toxic waste dump being slowly killed.
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