How the Gulf of Mexico became the nation’s ‘toilet bowl’
When Nazia Dardar looks at the seemingly endless lake of water behind her stilted bayou home, the 76-year-old sees what once was a farm. Cows roamed there, she says, back when the lake was land.
“C’est le jour et la nuit,” she says in French, the most common language down here on the farthest and swampiest reaches of the Mississippi River delta. “It’s day and night.”
Perhaps nowhere is the protracted death of the Gulf Coast more apparent than in Pointe-Aux-Chenes, Louisiana, and other indigenous bayou communities where, decades before the BP oil disaster, the marsh started disintegrating and environmental problems washed in from as far away as North Dakota and New York.
The Gulf of Mexico became, in effect, the United States’ toilet bowl — known for its seasonal “dead zones,” high erosion rates, dirty industry, ingrained poverty and, now, for the biggest oil disaster in the history of the country. Compare that legacy on the Gulf Coast with the East Coast, with its wealth, and the West, with its more-sterling record of environmental stewardship…
These wetlands, a 20-minute boat ride from the stilted homes of Pointe-Aux-Chenes, provide nearly all the needs of people here. Shrimp, crab, fish and oysters spawn and hide in the protective grasses. Those creatures are the basis for the local economy.
They’re also what everyone eats…
Since 1932, more than 1,875 square miles of Louisiana have shriveled and died, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That’s enough land to nearly cover Delaware…
The Corp of Engineers – BTW – can take credit for the taxpayer-funded portion of the destruction.
As it is now, the levee-strangled river is designed not to flood. It doesn’t deposit enough sediment in the marsh. Each year, it carries 120 million tons of dirt directly into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Reed said. The soil falls to the muddy ocean floor…
This unnatural system can’t replenish itself. Without new soil, the marsh sinks and floats out to sea. And bayou communities watch their land become open water…
Next came the oil industry, which first slurped oil out of the bottom of the marshes, dredging channels for ships and oil pipelines along the way.
There are about 10,000 miles of oil canals in the Louisiana Gulf Coast — several of which dart straight across the finger-like bayous of Pointe-Aux-Chenes. These canals, plus the underground pipelines that carry oil from the seafloor to refineries, can have a devastating effect on the environment, according to scientists.
Not only do they clear marsh, but these arrow-straight channels become pathways for saltwater to be sucked up into freshwater marshes, like soda through a straw…
In an Oval Office address on June 15, President Obama said: “Beyond compensating the people of the Gulf in the short term, it’s also clear we need a long-term plan to restore the unique beauty and bounty of this region.”
The Dardar family has been waiting generations for that to happen.
For decades, Native Americans, Blacks freed from slavery – but, not from racist politicians – have had a joint stake in fighting racism. They had no voice or vote in the destruction of what little land they held in Louisiana – a state which for decades chartered a sovereignty commission with a mission statement to secede from the United States. This is what Tea Party politics is all about in the Deep South.
RTFA. A great deal of detail and history. The sort of article ignored in the rest of the nation – and in Louisiana – for way too long.
