Earth Equity News

In Oil Spill Saga, Mysteries of The Deep Persist. By H. Josef Hebert, AP, May 29, 2010. “The impatient nation isn't getting answers fast enough in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster. .. Over three weeks, more than a dozen congressional hearings and scores of hours of witness testimony did not get to the rupture's cause or its full effects… Vital clues, such as the burned-out behemoth of a rig and a safety device that was supposed to prevent such a blowout, rest under a mile of water accessible only by remote-controlled vessels. Some of the crewmen who manned the rig at the moment of crisis, including two responsible for shutting the oil flow, are dead. The murkiness isn't just as the ocean bottom. It's now acknowledged by the government that federal regulators were too close to the oil industry and, as a consequence, probably too lax in enforcing safety rules. But did that cronyism somehow contribute to the spill?...’The long term-effects (of the dispersant chemicals) on aquatic life are still unknown,’ said the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson. And this from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar: ‘There are many facts which are still unknown. I know enough to know there were a lot of problems here.’”