Category Archives: Environmental

Articles, photos and videos all with environmental topics.

Pick Up America – 7 young volunteers picking up trash as they walk 3600 miles across America Reply

Activism, All, Environmental • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pick Up America is a local, regional, and nationwide initiative committed to reducing plastic waste in our communities and waterways. The Pick Up Artists will coordinate community trash clean-ups while walking across the country to encourage alternatives to our nation’s throwaway mentality. The two year trek began on March 20, 2010 from Assateague Island, MD., and will span 13 states to the San Francisco Bay, Calif., sometime in November 2011.

There are 7 volunteers who are doing the entire cross country walk. Along the way, many local volunteers walk along, help pick up and bag the trash. The bags are left alongside there road where the following day, the state’s highway DOT will come by and pick up the bags.

The volunteers seperate the garbage as they go into recycling items which are taken to the local recycling areas. Each bag is weighed so they will have a total amount of trash picked up by the end of their journey.

Most common item is platic bottles, followed by cans, plastic bags and beer bottles. Also common are tires… everywhere.

Mission: Walk across the country, pick up trash, and inspire a transition to zero waste.

One of the goals is to help connect the churches with businesses with students and with environmental organizations. The biggest item is to help build coalitions pushing towards zero waste. To help transition where we are at a place where we’re not taking resources straight from the earth, using them once, then landfilling them.

Most importantly, Pick Up America is trying to get people to understand why we are producing so much trash in the first place.

Let’s all work together in transitioning to a country of zero waste.

Thank you, Pick Up America, for helping build awareness towards our environment and waste problems.

To read more about them, please click here to go to their site/blog, pickupamerica.wordpress.com

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Close-up underwater footage of Fukushima reactor spent fuel pool in debris Reply

All, Environmental, News: International • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

TEPCO released footage for the first time on Wednesday of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant Unit 3 reactor’s spent fuel pool. The fuel rods, covered in debris from the March explosions, weren’t visible in the footage but officials believe they are largely undamaged. In an operation filmed by a robot camera, 40 milliliters of water was collected from the spent fuel pool. The water is contaminated with high levels of radioactive material which needs further analysis for evaluation.

Toxic Justice: 20,000 in India killed from worst industrial accident in history – those responsible go unpunished ruled the courts 1

All, Environmental, News: International • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Seven Indian officials responsible for the worst technological disaster in history, had been released on bail after a court refused to give them stronger punishments. They were found guilty of a huge gas leak in 1984 at a U.S. owned plant (Union Carbide India Ltd), which resulted in the deaths of up to 20 thousand people.  They never did any jail time, and were only fined $2,000.

Following a public outcry, the Central Bureau of Investigation filed the curative petitions for a direction to frame charges against Mr. Mahindra and others for culpable homicide not amounting to murder that would attract a maximum imprisonment of 10 years.  The court just now rejected these petitions stating that it is too far past the time of the event.

The Gas Leak….

During the night of December 2-3, 1984, a storage tank containing methyl isocyanate (MIC) at the Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked gas into the densely populated city of Bhopal, India. It was one of the worst industrial accidents in history.

Union Carbide India, Ltd. built a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India in the late 1970s in an effort to produce pesticides locally to help increase production on local farms. However, sales of pesticide didn’t materialize in the numbers hoped for and the plant was soon losing money. In 1979, the factory began to produce large amounts of the highly toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC), because it was a cheaper way to make the pesticide carbaryl. To also cut costs, training and maintenance in the factory were drastically cut back. Workers in the factory complained about the dangerous conditions and warned of possible disasters, but management did not take any action.

On the night of December 2-3, 1984, something began to go wrong in storage tank E610 which contained 40 tons of MIC. Water leaked into the tank which caused the MIC to heat up. Some sources say that water leaked into the tank during routine cleaning of a pipe but that the safety valves inside the pipe were faulty. The Union Carbide company claims that a saboteur placed the water inside the tank, although there has never been proof of this. It is also considered possible that once the tank began to overheat, workers threw water on the tank, not realizing they were adding to the problem

By 12:15 a.m. on the morning of December 3, 1984, MIC fumes were leaking out of the storage tank. Although there should have been six safety features that would have either prevented the leak or contained it, all six did not work properly that night. It is estimated that 27 tons of MIC gas escaped out of the container and spread across the densely populated city of Bhopal, India, which had a population of approximately 900,000 people. Although a warning siren was turned on, it was quickly turned off again so as to not cause panic.

Most residents of Bhopal were sleeping when the gas began to leak. Many woke up only because they heard their children coughing or found themselves choking on the fumes. As people jumped up from their beds, they felt their eyes and throat burning. Some choked on their own bile. Others fell to the ground in contortions of pain.

People ran and ran, but they did not know in which direction to go.
Families were split up in the confusion.
Many people fell to the ground unconscious and were then trampled upon.

Estimates of the death toll vary greatly. Most sources say at least 3,000 people died from immediate exposure to the gas, while higher estimates go up to 8,000. In the two decades following the night of the disaster, approximately 20,000 additional people have died from the damage they received from the gas.

Another 120,000 people live daily with the effects from the gas, including blindness, extreme shortness of breath, cancers, birth deformities, and early onset of menopause. Chemicals from the pesticide plant and from the leak have infiltrated the water system and the soil near the old factory and thus continue to cause poisoning in the people who live near it.

Just three days after the disaster, the chairman of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, was arrested. When he was released on bail, he fled the country. Although his whereabouts were unknown for many years, recently he was found living in the Hamptons in New York. Extradition procedures have not started because of political issues. Anderson continues to be wanted in India for culpable homicide for his role in the Bhopal disaster.

One of the worst parts of this tragedy is actually what has happened in the years following that fateful night in 1984. Although Union Carbide has paid some restitution to the victims, the company claims they are not liable for any damages because they blame a saboteur for the disaster and claim that the factory was in good working order before the gas leak. The victims of the Bhopal gas leak have received very little money. Many of the victims continue to live in ill health and are unable to work.

For more details including background, contributing factors, conditions, previous warnings and incidents, etc. please read Wikipedia

From: About.com 20th Century History

Memphis TN Flood: Army Corps of Engineers: No Concern for Levee Failure (Video) Reply

All, Environmental, Natural Disasters, News: US • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Update on my previous post: Flood waters near record levels in Memphis TN (Video footage / pictures)

Forecasters say the Mississippi River could crest late Monday at Memphis, hours sooner than previously predicted, but the mayor says the city’s ready for it. (May 9)

See post – new video added.

Top ten reasons John Muir – the Father of our National Parks – is awesome! Reply

All, Environmental, Lighter side of life • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Often referred to as “The Father of our National Parks,” John Muir (1838-1914) was America’s most famous and influential naturalist and conservationist, and founder of the Sierra Club.

Ten Reasons John Muir Is Awesome

1. He has his own Woods, mineral (Muirite), bird (Muir’s Winter Wren), and minor planet (Johnmuir).

2. While working in a factory at age 29, Muir was blinded in accident. When his sight returned months later, he left factory work to study nature.

3. Muir once described himself as a “poetico-trampo-geologist-botanist and ornithologist-naturalist, etc., etc.”

4. Choosing to go by “the wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find,” he walked 1,000 miles from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico.

5. Muir was a vocal proponent of the awesomeness of dogs, even referring to them as “our horizontal brothers.” (His position on cats has been lost to the sands of time.)

6. Before he took President Theodore Roosevelt camping in Yosemite Valley: 0 national parks. After? Five national parks, 18 national monuments, 55 national bird sanctuaries and wildlife refuges, and 150 national forests.

7. He traveled on every continent (except Antarctica), including exploring the Chilean Andes at age 72.

8. His beard can go toe-to-toe with any beard in history (including Brian Wilson’s).

9. He appears on the California state quarter.

10. Muir loved him some sequoias. He discovered that soaking sequoia pine cones in water turned the water purple. He then used the purple liquid as ink, and also drank it, “hoping thereby to … render myself more tree-wise and sequoical.” Click here to see the Sequoia and Kings Canyon site.

Original post in Charlotte Sierra Club on WP

NC Central Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club
Explore, enjoy, and protect the planet

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John Muir Trail

On the California State Quarter

Flood waters near record levels in Memphis TN (Video footage / pictures) 4

All, Environmental, Natural Disasters, News: US • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Historically high water levels in the Mississippi and Ohio river systems prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to intentionally blow up levees and flood 130,000 acres in Missouri. Now “the most high risk population” is in Memphis, according to Corps of Engineers Col. Vernie Reichling, though the worst danger zone is expected to move further south in the days to come.

“This water that we’re seeing coming by is moving 2 million cubic feet per second,” said Reichling of the situation on Sunday outside Memphis. “To use an analogy, in one second that water would fill up a football field 44 feet deep.”

By daybreak Sunday, the Mississippi had already reached 47.3 feet.

The river is expected to crest at 48 feet — just shy of the 48.7-foot record set in 1937 — shortly after midnight Tuesday, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Bill Borghoff.

Officials have looked at the possibility of the river reaching 52 feet, “solely to fall on the high side of caution,” Nations said.
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An explosion lights up the night sky as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blows an 11,000-foot hole in the Birds Point levee in Mississippi County, Mo. on Monday. The breach lowered the flood levels at Cairo, Illinois. Credit: Getty Images, NOAA












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UPDATE: MAY 9, 2011

Forecasters say the Mississippi River could crest late Monday at Memphis, hours sooner than previously predicted, but the mayor says the city’s ready for it. (May 9)

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Forecasters are pushing up their prediction of when the Mississippi River could crest at Memphis. Now, the river could reach 48 feet as early as Monday night. (May 9)

Fukushima is actually the FOURTH nuclear accident – there was one before 3-Mile Island… Reply

All, Environmental • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In light of the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl, which has followed the news of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, I did a bit of poking around and discovered there was a nuclear accident prior to Three-Mile Island (1979).

The SL-1, or Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One, was a United States Army experimental nuclear power reactor which underwent a steam explosion and meltdown on January 3, 1961, killing its three operators. The direct cause was the improper withdrawal of the main control rod, responsible for 80% of neutron moderation in the poorly-designed reactor core. The event is the only known fatal reactor accident in the United States.

The facility, located at the National Reactor Testing Station approximately forty miles (60 km) west of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was part of the Army Nuclear Power Program and was known as the Argonne Low Power Reactor (ALPR) during its design and build phase. It was intended to provide electrical power and heat for small, remote military facilities, such as radar sites near the Arctic Circle, and those in the DEW Line. The design power was 3 MW (thermal). Operating power was 200 kW electrical and 400 kW thermal for space heating. NASA system failure studies have cited that the core power level reached nearly 20 GW in just four milliseconds, precipitating the reactor accident and steam explosion.

The accident

On December 21, 1960, the reactor was shut down for maintenance, calibration of the instruments, installation of auxiliary instruments, and installation of 44 flux wires to monitor the neutron flux levels in the reactor core. The wires were made of aluminum, and contained slugs of aluminum-cobalt alloy.

On January 3, 1961 the reactor was being prepared for restart after a shutdown of eleven days over the holidays. Maintenance procedures were in process, which required the main central control rod to be manually withdrawn a few inches to reconnect it to its drive mechanism; at 9:01 p.m. this rod was suddenly withdrawn too far, causing SL-1 to go prompt critical instantly. In four milliseconds, the heat generated by the resulting enormous power surge caused water surrounding the core to begin to explosively vaporize. The water vapor caused a pressure wave to strike the top of the reactor vessel. This propelled the control rod and the entire reactor vessel upwards, which killed the operator who had been standing on top of the vessel, leaving him impaled to the ceiling by the control rod. The other two military personnel, a supervisor and a trainee, were also killed. The victims were Army Specialists John A. Byrnes (age 27) and Richard Leroy McKinley (age 22), and Navy Electrician’s Mate Richard C. Legg (age 26).

Events after the power excursion

There were no other people at the reactor site. The ending of the nuclear reaction was caused solely by the design of the reactor and the basic physics of heated water and core elements vaporizing, separating the core elements and removing the moderator.
Heat sensors above the reactor set off an alarm at the central test site security facility at 9:01 p.m., the time of the accident. False alarms had occurred in the morning and afternoon that same day. The first response crew, of six firemen, arrived nine minutes later, expecting another false alarm. and initially noticed nothing unusual, with only a little steam rising from the building, normal for the cold (−20 °F or −30 °C) night. The control building appeared normal. The firefighters entered the reactor building and noticed a radiation warning light. Their radiation detectors jumped sharply to above their maximum range limit as they were climbing the stairs to SL-1′s floor level. They were able to peer into the reactor room before withdrawing.

At 9:17 p.m., a health physicist arrived. He and a fireman, both wearing air tanks and masks with positive pressure in the mask to force out any potential contaminants, approached the reactor building stairs. Their detectors read 25 Roentgens per hour (R/hr) as they started up the stairs, and they withdrew.

Some minutes later, a health physics response team arrived with radiation meters capable of measuring gamma radiation up to 500 R/hr—and full-body protective clothing. One health physicist and two firefighters ascended the stairs and, from the top, could see damage in the reactor room. With the meter showing maximum scale readings, they withdrew rather than approach the reactor more closely and risk further exposure.

Around 10:30 p.m., the supervisor for the contractor running the site and a contractor health physicist arrived. They entered the reactor building and found two mutilated men: one clearly dead, the other moving slightly. With a one minute and one entry per person limit, a team of five men with stretchers recovered the operator who was still breathing; he did not regain consciousness and died of his head injury at about 11 p.m. Even stripped, his body was so contaminated that it was emitting about 500 R/hr. They looked for but did not find the third man. With all potential survivors now recovered, safety of rescuers took precedence and work was slowed to protect them.

On the night of 4 January, a team of six volunteers used a plan involving teams of two to recover the second body. Radioactive gold 198Au from the man’s brass watch buckle and copper 64Cu from a screw in a cigarette lighter subsequently proved that the reactor had indeed gone supercritical.

The third man was not discovered for several days because he was pinned to the ceiling above the reactor by a control rod. On 9 January, in relays of two at a time, a team of eight men, allowed no more than 65 seconds exposure each, used a net and crane arrangement to recover his body.

The bodies of all three were buried in lead-lined caskets sealed with concrete and placed in metal vaults with a concrete cover. Army Specialist Richard Leroy McKinley is buried in section 31 of Arlington National Cemetery.


Removal of core from SL-1
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Consequences

The remains of the SL-1 building did not go to the Burial Ground. After abandoning early thoughts of restoring the building, GE concluded that hauling the contaminated debris to the Burial Ground, a distance of sixteen miles and partly on Highway 20/26 would subject laborers to too much avoidable risk. Instead, it built two large pits and a trench about 1,600 feet away from the SL-1 compound. The walls of the silo, the power conversion and fan-floor equipment, the shielding gravel, and the contaminated soil that had been gathered during the clean-up all went into the pits. Three feet of clean earth shielded the material. An exclusion fence with hazard warnings went up around the area, the only monument to the reactor.

From the Arlington National Cemetary Records:

HEADQUARTERS
MILITARY DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON 28, D.C.
In Reply Refer To
AMHRC 31 January 1961

SUBJECT: Internment of Radioactive Remains

TO: Superintendent
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington 11, Virginia

1. Radioactive remains of SP4 Richard L. McKinley were interred at Arlington National Cemetery on 25 January 1961.

2. It is desired that the following remark be placed onthe permanent record, DA Form 2122, Record ofInternment:

“Victim of nuclear accident. Body is contaminated with long-life radio-active isotopes. Under no circumstances will the body be moved from this location without prior approval of the Atomic Energy Commission in consultation with this headquarters.”

I have not been able to find more details post-event, such as the health of those that were exposed during the rescue of the three workers killed. Life, news, and facts were handled much differently during these days….


Photo from 1961 of the damaged top of the SL-1 reactor vessel reused in 1981 to convey a safety message
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References:
SL-1, The Aftermath
SL-1.co.tv
SL-1 Wikipedia
Full video on SL-1 from Public Resource Org

Other information of interest:
Measures Relative to the Biological Effect of Radiation Exposure

What a stinker! World’s smelliest flower opens for the first time in a DECADE Reply

All, Environmental, Lighter side of life • Tags: , , , , ,

For botanists, it doesn’t get more exciting than this – after 75 years, the Titan Arum plant has unfurled its leaves and is in full bloom.

For curious crowds who gathered, they perhaps realised that a once-in-a-lifetime look is more than enough – thanks to its pungent odour of rotting flesh.

The flower, nicknamed ‘Corpse flower’, bloomed late on Good Friday at the University of Basel, Switzerland and is expected to remain open until Easter Sunday.


Miracle-Gro: The flower opened for the first time in 75 years on Friday, April 22, 2011
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The eight foot plant, which is indigenous to Sumatra’s rainforests in Indonesia, has the largest unbranched shoot in the world. On average, they bloom once in a decade.

Titan Arum is coveted by collectors and plant enthusiasts around the world because of its strange blooming patterns.


Once in a lifetime: Crowds capture Titan Arum in bloom at the University of Basel, Switzerland
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It produces umbrella-sized petals which open to a diameter of three to four feet.

Its distinctive smell can be detected from half a mile away. The odour, which is usually strongest at night, is meant to attract pollinators such as carrion beetles and flesh flies.


Rare sighting: Botanists love the plant because it blooms so infrequently – despite the smell of rotting flesh
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Twelve of them are housed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the Princess of Wales Conservatory among hundreds of other tropical plants.

When the plants are ready to pollinate, the stem heats up to release a pungent smell, which lasts for about three days.


Beauty: The plant originates from Sumatra in Indonesia
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The largest Arum at Kew gardens weighs 200lb and grows at a staggering rate of a quarter of an inch an hour.

It guzzles liquid fertiliser and potassium each week to keep up its strength while bedded in roomy surroundings.


Captivating: Crowds gather as the plant prepares to open its leaves
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Sir David Attenborough, who invented the name Titan Arum, was the first to capture it flowering on film for his BBC TV series The Private Life of Plants.

He dropped the plant’s original name – Amorphophallus – perhaps because of the reference to male genitalia.
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Can anyone say, “Little Shop of Horrors?”
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By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 1:55 AM on 24th April 2011

‘Spillionaires’: Profiteering and Mismanagement in the Wake of the BP Oil Spill 1

All, Environmental, Keystone XL, News: US • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The oil spill that was once expected to bring economic ruin to the Gulf Coast appears to have delivered something entirely different: a gusher of money.

Some people profiteered from the spill by charging BP outrageous rates for cleanup. Others profited from BP claims money, handed out in arbitrary ways. So many people cashed in that they earned nicknames — “spillionaires” or “BP rich.” Meanwhile, others hurt by the spill ended up getting comparatively little.

In the end, BP’s attempt to make things right — spending more than $16 billion so far, mostly on claims of damage and cleanup — created new divisions and even new wrongs. Because the federal government ceded control over spill cleanup spending to BP, it’s impossible to know for certain what that money accomplished, or what exactly was done.

Some inequities arose from the chaos that followed the April 20 spill. But in at least one corner of Louisiana, the dramatic differences can be traced in part to local powerbrokers. To show how the money flowed, ProPublica interviewed people who worked on the spill and examined records, including some reported earlier by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, for St. Bernard Parish, a coastal community about five miles southeast of downtown New Orleans.

Documents show that local companies with ties to insiders garnered lucrative cleanup contracts and then charged BP for every imaginable expense. The prime cleanup company, which had a history of bad debts and no oil-spill experience, submitted bills with little documentation or none at all. A subcontractor charged BP $15,400 per month to rent a generator that usually cost $1,500 a month. A company owned in part by the St. Bernard Parish sheriff charged more than $1 million a month for land it had been renting for less than $1,700 a month.

Assignments for individual fishermen followed the same pattern, with insiders and supporters earning big checks.

According to sales tax collections, Louisiana made out better than anywhere. Sales tax collections from Plaquemines Parish rose more than 71 percent, while St. Bernard saw the biggest jump of all. The parish collected almost $26.8 million in sales and lodging tax receipts in the six months after the spill, almost twice as much as over the same period in 2009. Flush with cash from cleanup and claims, many fishermen bought new toys, boats and trucks. Sales at the nearest Chevrolet dealer rose 41 percent.

Some of the influx of money can be traced to the efforts of St. Bernard’s parish president, Craig Taffaro Jr., a 45-year-old psychotherapist with a wrestler’s build, a cue-ball head and a trimmed goatee.

Just days into the crisis, Taffaro did what many parish presidents did: He invoked a Louisiana law that allowed him to declare a 30-day emergency and handle the crisis without most normal government checks and balances. But Taffaro used his powers more broadly than most, saying that he wanted to put money back into the community. Unlike the leaders of other Gulf communities, Taffaro — not BP — chose the prime contractor that supervised the cleanup. He and his allies also decided which fishermen would be hired to put out boom and search for oil. At one point, Taffaro hired his future son-in-law to work in the finance department and help on the spill.

In some ways, parish residents seemed to view the disaster and BP’s culpability as a way to recover from earlier blows. More than other coastal communities, St. Bernard bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina, which flooded almost every home in August 2005. The population dropped almost in half, from about 67,000 in 2000 to about 36,000 in 2010, largely because people didn’t come back after Katrina and the hurricanes that followed. Before the spill, the parish slashed its budget by 11 percent, cutting garbage collection, the fire department and mosquito control. There was just no money.

The spill changed that. Fishermen were paid to lay out protective boom, the floating material used to corral the oil. Contractors were hired to manage the cleanup and provide security. Claims money began flowing to people who said their lives had been upended by the crisis.

The parish government was among the first to benefit, snagging a $1 million check for oil-spill expenses. Parish employees went shopping for cameras, printers, a file cabinet, staplers, six pairs of children’s scissors and 712 shirts emblazoned with the parish name. Some of the money also went to overtime pay for more than 40 parish employees, including three who claimed overtime for picking up dog food for the animal shelter. St. Bernard’s homeland security director, David Dysart, a salaried employee and Taffaro’s good friend, was paid almost $23,000 for working 497 hours of overtime in less than seven weeks. That meant he was working an average of more than 16 hours a day, including weekends.

As the money flowed, complaints spread. Some beneficiaries didn’t necessarily suffer from the spill but had social or political connections. Subcontractors said those at the top of the cleanup creamed off money for doing very little, while those at the bottom earned much less for doing the actual work.

At first, everyone was angry with BP. But as the months wore on, some St. Bernard residents directed their frustration at Taffaro, blaming him for handing out jobs and money to a small group of insiders.

Meanwhile, Taffaro was attacking BP and the federal government in the media, appearing on TV alongside Gov. Bobby Jindal and testifying in Congress. His outrage was palpable. There wasn’t enough boom, coordination or respect for the local government. BP wasn’t making good on its obligations.

The pressure paid off. Taffaro at one point boasted that St. Bernard had doled out more BP cleanup money to commercial fishermen than any other Louisiana parish. His claim is impossible to verify, because neither Taffaro nor anyone else would provide details about the spending numbers.

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Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, front left, holds up a tar ball while Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro, front right, begs BP and the U.S. Coast Guard to deploy more booms to protect fragile wetlands at a press conference in Hopedale, La., on May 7, 2010. (Mira Oberman/AFP/Getty Images)

Many companies and people earning big money from the spill had connections to parish powerbrokers, according to court documents, parish records and interviews done by ProPublica.

Amigo Enterprises Inc., which for years leased land to one of the busiest marinas in the parish, got in early. BP based the cleanup operation at the marina in Hopedale, which made sense. But the price Amigo charged BP for the land was astronomical. Amigo had been leasing the land for less than $1,700 a month from the Arlene & Joseph Meraux Charitable Foundation Inc., according to the nonprofit’s most recent tax returns. The company billed BP more than $1.1 million a month, said BP spokesman Joe Ellis.

Amigo wasn’t just any company. One of the owners was St. Bernard’s powerful sheriff of 26 years, Jack Stephens, who also sat on the board of the Meraux Foundation. According to the most recent ethics form Stephens filed with the state, he earned more than $100,000 from Amigo in 2009.

The company that benefited most from BP’s checkbook was Loupe Construction and Consulting Co., Inc., a small, family-owned business in a nearby parish with few employees and a bare-bones website that misspelled the company name. On May 5, Taffaro chose Loupe to manage the cleanup in St. Bernard, a job that would eventually be worth as much as $125 million.

Owner Paul Loupe had a long history of debts and lawsuits. Four lawsuits, three of which have been settled, accused him of not paying his bills after Katrina and Hurricane Rita, when he and another small Louisiana company joined up to clear debris in nearby Jefferson Parish, the company’s only major experience responding to a disaster. Loupe’s website says the two companies performed more than $100 million worth of work for Ceres Environmental Services Inc., the Minnesota-based company that hired them.

“There was a lot of gouging,” said David Northcutt, who worked for a Loupe subcontractor and has since sued for unpaid wages. “Everybody had their hand out, of course. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a lot of people.”

F.J. Campo, who ran the boat launch at Shell Beach that provided fuel for BP boats, said one man who had been trying to sell his fiberglass yacht in Florida brought it back to the parish, got it hired by Loupe, parked it behind the docks and came into the launch every nine or 10 days to bill BP for fuel for the generator.

“They used to hide it behind the docks over there, and it never worked,” Campo said.

In July, Loupe hired a Washington state company, Farrow Construction Specialties Inc., to set up marsh-washing systems on barges. Almost immediately, a Farrow consultant named Larry Howell, who had once pleaded guilty to a federal bank fraud charge, set up his own company with people from South Carolina, Texas and Arizona to take over the Farrow contract.

Tim Henson, who had years of experience cleaning up oil spills and worked with a company that partnered with Farrow, said Loupe positioned 13 or 14 skimmer boats around each marsh-washing barge, even though the barges themselves functioned as oil skimmers.

“BP was being billed for all the man hours of all those boats,” said Robert Brown, an engineer who helped out on the project. “One would disappear to go take a break or take lunch. Then another one would fill in and do nothing. It was the Keystone Kops.”

During a squabble over the Loupe subcontract, Mike Turner, who had initially partnered with Howell and Farrow, said rumors began spreading that the FBI was investigating him. He hired a lawyer and called the FBI. He said he was told he was not being investigated, but he spent hours talking to a New Orleans-based FBI agent about allegations of payoffs and overbilling.

“I spilled my guts. So now, it’s my understanding they are being investigated,” said Turner, referring to the parish and the businesses that were hired for the cleanup.

As the cleanup dragged on, Loupe faced a cash-flow problem. For help, Loupe turned to Park Investments Ltd., a local company that primarily develops shopping malls and other commercial properties. Park Investments and its related companies had done business with plenty of parish powerbrokers in the past — Stephens, the sheriff, had been a partner in at least one development.

Park Investments and companies run by its president, Lewis Frank, and owner, Joseph Georgusis, are major political donors in Louisiana. And one of the politicians they frequently donate to is Taffaro, the parish president.

In essence, the cleanup company chosen by Taffaro was now being financed by some of Taffaro’s biggest supporters.

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Melanie Burford/Prime for ProPublica

St. Bernard was certainly not the only community where markups flourished.

In another Louisiana parish, a BP supplier hired more than 20 vessels a day, paying at most $2,500 a day for each vessel but charging BP $15,000 a day. The supplier pocketed at least $250,000 every day for months, according to someone who saw the bills.

Bills from another Gulf state showed that BP paid a subcontractor $36 an hour for workers to clean up oil along sandy beaches, according to the same person. The subcontractor hired a temp agency, which provided workers for about $14 an hour, leaving the subcontractor with the $22-an-hour difference. The temp agency then made its own profit, hiring workers for about $10 an hour.

On Aug. 21, Loupe delivered 139 invoices to Louisiana’s main incident command post in Houma — the first time the finance team said it had seen any of the invoices. All told, Loupe claimed BP owed it $34.7 million.

On Saturday, Aug. 28, Paul Loupe, Taffaro and Dysart met with BP officials in New Orleans. Loupe, unable to pay his subcontractors, asked BP to pay him something within two days. BP officials refused. Loupe and BP then agreed to review the invoices together.

“As we discussed at the meeting, all of the invoices reviewed to date lack certain critical information that, in accordance with well accepted business practices and BP’s code of conduct, BP requires before it can approve an invoice for payment,” the letter said.

BP also began balking at other bills. Parish Oilfield claimed to be owed $900,000 for sheriffs’ deputies, BP’s Ellis said. At $45 an hour, that meant the deputies had clocked as many as 20,000 hours since the spill.

If Parish Oilfield pocketed $15 for every hour worked — given that the normal off-duty deputy rate was $30 an hour — that would have meant $300,000 for the company itself.

In addition, Amigo Enterprises, run by the sheriff, his cousin and a third partner, claimed to be owed millions for equipment, rent and fuel at the Hopedale base.

Within days, the spill cleanup ground to a halt. Amigo refused to provide fuel for the cleanup. So did Campo at Shell Beach and another fuel dock on Delacroix Island, because Loupe hadn’t paid past bills.

On Aug. 31, the sheriff’s office signed an eviction notice for BP at the Hopedale site because BP had not paid rent to Amigo. “Landlord wants possession of his property,” the notice said, without clarifying that the sheriff’s company was the landlord. That night, Taffaro held a press conference, highlighting the eviction notice and accusing BP of not paying its bills, including more than $3 million owed to Amigo and more than $34 million owed to Loupe.

“We are calling on BP to step forward to make this right,” Taffaro said.

BP paid Amigo. The cleanup resumed.

****

While contractors fought for BP’s cleanup money, commercial fishermen jockeyed for BP-financed jobs to replace their lost income.

As long as oil poured into the Gulf, the fishermen were unable to work and unqualified for most other jobs. Some went on anti-depressants. Others started drinking too much. Nearly all tried to join BP’s “Vessels of Opportunity” program, which was supposed to provide a lifeline for commercial fishermen by hiring them and their boats for cleanup work. Boats could make $1,200 to $3,000 a day. Crew members often earned $200 a day, while captains earned as much as $360 a day.

The program was so lucrative, if disorganized, that people throughout the Gulf, including some nonfishermen, started fighting over the slots for boats. As complaints grew, Landry, the St. Bernard council chairman, and another council member pulled together a committee of fishermen and seafood dealers to create a list of bona fide fishermen. Then they drew names to set up assignments.

“That list was posted,” Landry said. “And the next day everything changed. Craig Taffaro took over.”

Using his emergency powers, Taffaro set up St. Bernard’s version of Vessels of Opportunity. Now Taffaro, not BP, controlled who got the coveted jobs.

Soon after the cleanup began, commercial fishermen also started complaining that a small group of favorites got more work than anyone else. ProPublica’s analysis of parish checks paid to fishermen over the first six weeks, filed as part of a court case, seems to bear that out. A small group worked regularly, earning $24,000 to $34,000. Although Taffaro and Dysart said those fishermen performed additional jobs, the same fishermen got and kept those additional jobs throughout the entire cleanup. Meanwhile, Eric Melerine, a top fisherman from Delacroix Island, earned only $5,260 during those first six weeks. His younger brother Jason, also a full-time commercial fisherman, earned just $4,560. Another fisherman, Donald Campo, failed to get hired on the BP cleanup at all, despite signing up.

“Sometimes with things like that, it’s all about who you know,” Campo said. “It’s about connections.”

Cisco Gonzales, who owns an air-conditioning company and runs the Louisiana Crawfish Festival, got his boat on the cleanup by lending it to his nephew, a fisherman whose own boat broke down. Many fishermen complained about Gonzales earning money from the spill, especially fishermen who couldn’t get a boat hired. Gonzales said he felt bad about all the animosity against Taffaro.

“Me and him’s good friends, to tell you the truth,” Gonzales said. “With Craig, he’s done a more than fair job in our community.”

On June 1, fishermen showed up at a council meeting to complain about the selection system. They complained that some fishermen worked seven days a week, while others hadn’t worked in 30 days. Stacy Campo, a fisherman’s wife, said the inequities were ripping apart the community.

“You are the one we look to for the answers,” she told Taffaro. “You are breaking up families and friends because you can’t get an answer. Why is it that we have some big boats on the job that’s been on the job since this started? My husband’s been on rotation once. Why is that? We want the answers. This is going to kill a community that has been together for hundreds of years.”

Taffaro promised to fix the job list and make sure assignments were fair. He also emphasized that St. Bernard was handing out more money to the fishing industry than any other Louisiana parish. In the next two weeks, he said, parish fishermen would earn $4.5 million working for BP. By early September, that would reach $7 million.

One fisherman complained that BP was putting absurd amounts of money into the parish and said he wanted his own piece of the action.

“This is ungodly amounts of money,” Taffaro agreed. “Many people are making more money than they’ve ever made in their entire lives. I don’t have a problem with that, and I agree with you: that I want everybody to share the wealth in this situation.”

At the end of the meeting, Landry asked Taffaro for an accounting of how the parish had spent the BP money.

“Not a problem,” Taffaro replied.

But Taffaro and the parish turned over only some of the records, despite four public-records requests by Landry and the council clerk. Landry had to get a court order to obtain more. The council shared some records with ProPublica; others were in the court file.

One man who earned $67,000 in 2009 fishing crabs and hunting a swamp rat called nutria got $100,000 for his six-month emergency claim. That was on top of $90,000 he earned working on the cleanup and $20,000 he received in initial BP claims. In the eight months after the spill, he earned a total of $210,000, more than three times as much as he earned in all of 2009.

The distributions seemed crazily disproportionate.

Thomas Gonzales, who said he filed $90,000 in taxable income in 2009, received only $22,000 in his six-month payment. “They’re giving the money to the young generation,” said Gonzales, who is 73. “They figure I got one foot over the hole, the other one on the edge.”

Jason Melerine, 28, who said his income was about $90,000 in 2009, received a six-month emergency compensation check for $180,000. To support his claim, he submitted invoices showing that his boat sold $280,000 worth of seafood the year before, an amount that didn’t reflect his expenses.

His brother Eric Melerine, who earned $111,000 in 2009, received just $60,000. To support his claim he used his 2009 tax return, which did reflect his expenses.

Eric Melerine’s deckhand Mikey Labat, who made about $70,000 in 2009, initially received $6,900 for his six-month claim. His wife, Laura, was so upset that she filed an appeal and got the family another $18,000. Later, after hearing rumors of waitresses and hairdressers earning big money, she said she went to the claims office and sarcastically asked if she could file her own claim because her husband wasn’t paying her an allowance for cooking and cleaning.

Many fishermen fretted that businesses that were suffering from the recession, not the spill, were getting BP money. A hairdresser at Dorene’s hair salon received $8,000 for her emergency claim. Waitresses at the World of Wings Café and Wingery received between $5,000 and $7,000; the restaurant’s owner got $50,000. A valet car parker at a five-star hotel in New Orleans that was 98 percent full received $1,000.

Felesia Carter, a manager at St. Bernard’s only off-track betting parlor, said she heard customers talking about how they were gambling away claims money. Her business was so good, she said, that employees worked overtime and weren’t allowed to file for claims.

“I don’t understand how BP is just giving its money out like this,” Carter said. “Give it to the people who deserve it.”

****

In September, Randy Nunez, one of Loupe’s lawyers, invited people to an event hall in New Orleans’ historic warehouse district to raise money for Craig Taffaro’s re-election campaign, two invitees said. Nunez did not return later calls from ProPublica.

The stakes are high for the October election, because the parish council recently bumped the next president’s salary from $70,000 to $128,000, a hefty sum in a community with a median household income of about $38,500 a year, about $13,500 below the national median.

More than 200 people showed up for the fundraiser at The Chicory, including Paul Loupe and his wife, witnesses said. Records filed by Taffaro’s campaign committee show that he pulled in $207,400 — more than his combined donations from the previous two years. No other president or presidential candidate in St. Bernard has ever reported raising that much money in a single night, according to Louisiana records available online.

At least $45,800 of that money came from people and companies that ProPublica has linked to the cleanup effort, including Loupe, Nunez’s law firm, Park Investments and people and businesses connected to Park. The amount is likely higher than that, but no list of companies that worked on the spill is available for comparison with Taffaro’s campaign filings.

Through his spokeswoman, Taffaro said all of the contributions were legal.

Is BP shortchanging contractors? Are contractors trying to scam BP? Because none of the records are public, it’s impossible to know for sure.

The last interview ProPublica had with Taffaro was in November. He complained that the BP emergency claims were not distributed fairly and said BP and the federal government should have listened more to local authorities.

When pressed about how he selected Loupe and picked the boats for cleanup, Taffaro abruptly ended the interview.

“We’re done,” he said, escorting the reporter to the door. “I will not allow you to do this to St. Bernard Parish.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY IN PROPUBLICA

by Kim Barker
ProPublica, April 13, 2011, 1:05 p.m.

ProPublica’s research director, Lisa Schwartz, and researchers Kitty Bennett, Sasha Chavkin and Liz Day contributed to this report.