Oil, water don't mix

On April 20, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 workers and injuring 15 others of the 126 who were on board at the time. When the rig eventually upended and sank, spewing oil as it went, few imagined that it would take this long for representatives from BP, the U.S. Coast Guard and the federal government to even begin to agree on an approach that could come close to stanching the flow of oil into the water off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

BP gave the most recent attempt at mitigating the disaster — pumping drilling mud down onto the leak to try to force the escaping oil back below the floor of the Gulf, known as a top kill, combined with shooting heavy, dense debris such as golf balls and tires — a 60 to 70 percent chance of success. This, after well over a month of gushing oil into a fragile ecosystem, which ordinarily produces a wide range of seafood, supporting a large fishing industry as well as a self-sustaining habitat of vast importance to the health of the area’s environment. Of course, the top kill approach did not beat the odds, and has failed. BP, which has by far the worst safety record of any oil company now operating, has driven the people of the Gulf region to tears of frustration.

There have been attempts to pass around the blame for this disaster, which is now seen to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. To watch our government officials and the big shots at BP try to point fingers at one another during public hearings while the oil is still gushing into the Gulf is a study in futility and immaturity that would be comical if it weren’t so tragic.

If you want some really enlightening perspective on this ongoing horror in the Gulf of Mexico, go to nola.com, the Web site for New Orleans’ Times Picayune. The folks at that news source had the unfortunate experience of creating timelines and showing graphic depictions of seeping liquid (of course, then it was water engulfing their city) in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Their timeline of events following the April 20 explosion and subsequent spill and graphics showing the oil seepage into the Gulf day by day by day are chilling. This is an environmental disaster of monumental proportions, and depending upon when the oil can finally be stopped, it will surely affect that region for years to come in ways we can only begin to imagine.

It’s time for Americans to be outraged by not only the apparent negligence that led to the disaster, but also by the obvious inability of either the oil industry or the government to cope with an accident of these proportions. The oil to which the Deepwater Horizon was connecting is 18,000 feet beneath the sea floor, according to nola.com. Going down through 5,000 feet of water, then another 18,000 of ocean floor before hitting oil to be pumped to the surface is a project that would take the utmost accuracy and diligence in order to succeed. However, that level of competence did not exist here, and the situation was clearly out of control of those in charge. It still is.

BP has a lot to answer for, and government regulatory procedures surely need to be restructured, which the Obama administration is finally doing. But in light of the fact that one incident has managed to threaten an entire ecosystem off the coast of four states, shouldn’t this environmental, economic and human catastrophe be enough motivation for the United States to finally take seriously the need for a true break from oil dependency?