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Seeing the Forests for the Trees and Stopping Illegal Logging

2012-01-20T18:04:26Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

Each year the United Nations selects several common themes for action. Last year, one of the themes was the year of the forests which focused on efforts to combat deforestation around the world. Deforestation is an issue affecting dozens of countries and thousands of acres of unique tropical forest ecosystems where much of the harvesting of these woods is done illegally.

Thanks to amendments in 2008 to the 111 year-old Lacey Act, it is it is illegal to import and trade in illegal timber. When this amendment was adopted, it reinforced some existing laws governing what woods and wood products are allowed into the U.S. and how they must be reported, otherwise fines and possible jail time would follow. The musical instruments industry leader, National Association of Music Merchants, initially supported these amendments, but have since changed their tune and are seeking amendments to Lacey through the RELIEF act, which would dramatically weaken the existing law.

The RELIEF Act is framed as an effort to tweak certain aspects of the Lacey Act, but unfortunately the bill significantly changes provisions of the Act that are fundamental to its effective implementation. The bill undercuts the enforcement of illegal logging across the world. It leaves out the majority of the wood in global commerce by excluding pulp and paper and other non-solid wood and wood products, it turns real enforcement into a small traffic ticket, and it undercuts the signal that companies must take steps to ensure that their supply chains are free of illegal wood and wood products.

I am a big fan of trees. Yesterday, I told NAMM about NRDC’s opposition to amending the Lacey Act when I joined a coalition of international musicians and activists at NAMM’s annual convention in Anaheim, California. We called for NAMM to stop supporting a bad bill that only placates people seeking to benefit from destroying our tropical forests.

Thanks to the Lacey Act, illegal logging is on the decline, as much as 25% worldwide, with reductions as high as 50-70% in some countries. The RELIEF bill’s amendments to the Lacey Act weaken one of the most important and effective international environmental laws in the world and allows deforestation, which is a major contributor to global warming, not to mention a loss of biodiversity when habitat (and the species who live there) is destroyed by logging.

Ensuring that American imports aren’t helping to drive deforestation is a powerful tool in ongoing efforts to curb the many environmental, economic, and social damages caused by the loss of tropical forests. We must speak for the trees.

Make biking to work your 2012 resolution

2011-12-22T17:00:00Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

Making the list for most New Year’s resolutions is a renewed commitment to exercise. In LA, we have the additional benefit of nice weather to encourage residents to stick to that resolution, but usually within the first few weeks of January or early February, it’s easy to let those exercise goals fall to the way side.

One way I’ve found it easier to exercise is to integrate it into my daily routine, which is to bike to work. I live a few miles from work with some slight hills, and getting my blood pumping first thing in the morning is usually about as good as a cup of coffee to wake my brain up for the day.

Even if you live in a part of the country that doesn’t enjoy nice weather year-round, researchers from the University of Wisconsin recently found that “if the Midwesterners ran half of their short-distance errands by bike rather than by car, 1,100 deaths would be avoided each year, and $7 billion would be saved in reduced health-care costs.” These findings only looked at benefits from four months of biking during the year—when it isn’t too hot or cold in the Midwest. The message is, if you can’t exercise every day, at least do it part of the year and you’ll still reap the benefits.

Even better for the people in some southern California neighborhoods looking to incorporate biking into their routines or daily commutes, new bike centers have recently popped up in Long Beach, Santa Barbara and Santa Monica. I stopped by the Santa Monica location recently to check out the facilities.

This is not your typical rent-a-bike-for-a-couple-hours location. Monthly members have 24/7 access to the bike facilities to lock up their bikes, use showers or restrooms onsite and make use of the available lockers. The idea is to provide people with secure options for bike storage and increase feasibility of bike use, not for people to leave belongings on site indefinitely.

The Santa Monica location is headquartered at 2nd and Colorado with a second location on the other side of the Santa Monica Place complex at 4th and Broadway. At both locations you need a key card to get into the members-only areas, but the Colorado location is where people can also rent bikes by the hour, learn about bike maintenance, join up with bike tours of the region, or purchase some iconic sunglasses while out enjoying the sun.

What I heard from the Santa Monica bike center folks is that the plan is to eventually develop more locations for bike sharing across the Westside. Facilities like this one are popping up around the country with bike share programs modeled after those in European cities, and are gaining in popularity in U.S. cities like New York, Washington, DC, Minneapolis, Chicago and coming soon to bike-friendly Portland, OR.

Bike sharing has become so popular in China that at certain metro stations people break out into a dead sprint in order to secure one of available shared bikes. I’ve experienced the bike program in DC and it was extremely easy to use. We paid our $5 by credit card at the bike rack by Logan Circle, cruised around Dupont Circle and eventually dropped the bikes at another station in Georgetown without any hassle. It was also faster and easier to rent the bikes to get to Georgetown than it would have been to hop on the Metro and walk from the closest stop. And cheaper than traveling by cab or trying to find parking.

You might also check with your employer to see if they’ll pay you to ride your bike. Under the Bicycle Commuter Act passed by Congress in 2008 (thanks to the only Member of Congress who bikes to work—Earl Blumenauer), employees regularly using a non-motorized bicycle three days a week to commute between their home and office can receive assistance defraying some of the related costs. As part of NRDC’s comprehensive health and welfare benefits, employees commuting to work can be reimbursed up to $240 per calendar year in bicycle commuting expenses. Reimbursable costs may include the purchase of a bicycle, commuting apparel (helmet, gloves, etc.), bike lock, storage, bike repairs and general maintenance. These items are considered reasonable expenses as long as the bicycle and equipment is regularly used for travel between home and work.

So while you consider those New Year’s goals and how to make positive changes in your life over the next 12 months, consider whether biking to work a day or two (or more) a week makes sense for you. You might get paid to do it, it’s usually an easy way to get from point A to B, maintaining a bike is cheaper than filling up a gas tank, and extends your life, ensuring there will be more New Year’s resolutions to come.

The Power of Choice to drive an electric car in LA

2011-12-15T01:54:14Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

I consider myself one of the lucky few in Los Angeles who technically do not need a car to get around. I use my bike to cycle back and forth to work, to run errands and visit most friends. While I still own a car, it’s rarely in use, usually only moved from one side of the street to the other on street sweeping days and is sadly covered in a mixture of LA air pollution sediment and bird poop. I may show up a little sweatier to meetings or wear my bike helmet while picking up last minute groceries, but I like the exercise and get a special sense of glee zooming by cars stuck in traffic.

I won’t be ditching my bike anytime soon, but given how little I drive my car, I’ve been thinking about the pros and cons of moving to an all electric or hybrid vehicle since most of the car trips I take are less than 40 miles round trip. Ford has been visiting cities across the country showcasing their Power of Choice vehicle fleet and today landed in LA. I took the opportunity to drive a Ford Fiesta that gets 40 miles per gallon, which is better than the mileage my current car gets.

Today’s event plays into the new 54.5 miles per gallon fleet-wide industry standard spurring the entire auto industry to expand fuel efficiency options—which is a good thing for consumers and the environment. Despite this new MPG standard and the new technologies and savings at the pump that go along with it, some opponents want to deprive consumers of greater fuel efficiency options in the future by blocking 54.5 mpg.

This model isn’t a hybrid, but there are rumors Ford is rolling out an electric model next year. Ford is also coming out with a number of models that are utilizing fuel efficient technology to meet the new federal standards and it’s exciting to see a major American car company invest in a suite of alternative fuel cars. It’s a sign that more people are demanding cleaner fuel options and smarter technology and car companies are beginning to listen.

Ford, as part of its Power of Choice fuel efficiency tour, recently asked Los Angeles residents about their views on everything from daily commutes to fuel economy to electrified vehicles. Some of the stats surprised me, I underestimated the interest in alternative cars in LA where all I seem to see are SUVs.

For Los Angeles drivers, fuel efficiency (43 percent) is by far the most important influencing factor in the vehicle purchasing decision, followed by brand loyalty (17 percent), style (16 percent), safety (13 percent)—to put it another way, across the U.S., fuel efficiency is the most important influencing factor in the vehicle purchasing decision (44 percent), followed by style (16 percent) and safety (15 percent).
Hybrids (44 percent) and smaller cars (40 percent) top the list of vehicles Los Angeles-area residents would most consider purchasing or leasing as their primary vehicle
Sixty-eight percent of respondents expressed interest in purchasing a hybrid or electric vehicle, with savings on gas being the primary purchase motivator; however, gas would need to reach $5 to $6 per gallon to warrant a hybrid or electric vehicle purchase
Eighty-three percent of Los Angeles-area residents surveyed say an electric vehicle would fit their family’s needs;
California driving habits: 68 percent drive to work, 70 percent commute an hour or less each way and 51 percent drive more than 30 miles on weekends

It turns out there are a lot of people in LA who may not be willing to give up their cars, but they will consider owning more fuel efficient vehicles, which is at least a step in the right direction to moving beyond our oil addiction. In order to create cleaner air and meet our fuel efficiency standards, we need to invest in clean fuels, smart car technology and meeting consumer demand for cars that don’t cost half your paycheck to fill up.

Research and analysis conducted by Penn Schoen & Berland, between Aug. 31 and Sept. 13, 2011. Research methodology includes 300 online surveys of licensed California drivers age 18 and above, with breakout data taken from residents within 30 miles of Los Angeles.

Yes, people walk in Los Angeles

2011-07-28T17:13:11Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

July has been a good month for cyclists and walkers in Los Angeles. Turns out, some neighborhoods in Los Angeles are actually considered some of the most walkable areas of the state: WeHo is ranked #1 and Santa Monica is ranked the #4 most walkable neighborhoods in California.

Sure, we aren’t New York City, still listed as America’s most walkable city or our neighbors to the north, San Francisco is #2 and Oakland #10, but the new rankings are proof that you can (and should) walk in LA. Biking around is getting easier too.

Last week, LA City Council adopted a new law the LA Times reports is the “toughest of its kind in the nation” and “makes it a crime for drivers to threaten cyclists verbally or physically, and allows victims of harassment to sue in civil court without waiting for the city to press criminal charges.”

Adopting this law will go a long way to protecting cyclists who are harassed or their lives put at risk by daily interactions with aggressive or negligent drivers. I see this type of harassment every day while riding to work. Some of the harassment is intentional and some isn’t, but I’d like to believe the cars who have slowed or stopped more often for me in recent days may have heard about this new law protecting cyclists.

This law is in addition to the roughly 1,600 miles of bike lanes the city is in the process of installing throughout the city. In some areas, they are creating bike lanes where they did not exist and in other sections, connecting existing lanes to create a continuous path. Some people may consider bike lanes to be purely cosmetic--many cyclists use roads without bike lanes--but I personally believe the lanes serve as a buffer for car drivers to know that they should stay in their lane and I’ll stay in mine and a reminder that I have every right to access the road that they do.

LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently developed a new policy to promote cyclist safety, Give Me Three, following a particularly harrowing bike ride he took downtown last year. He’s also proposing the three feet buffer-zone become California law. It isn’t a novel idea to give cyclists space, but it’s an additional layer of biking rights in a city where car is king and nearly 40 cycling-related deaths have already occurred this year.

And a personal piece of good news for cyclists at NRDC. We’re joining the federal program created by Oregon Representative Earl Blumenauer in The Bicycle Commuter Act, which provides companies with tax breaks “if they offer $20 per month to employees towards the purchase of a bicycle and any repairs or storage costs.”

Yes! I am excited to see my bike repair and maintenance costs reduced by $20 each month. This is a great program that both encourages companies to participate in a healthy program that provides tax breaks and also provides employees who can bike to work with an added financial incentive to get on two wheels.

With these recent cyclist policy changes and walkability studies, our city of cars can become a city of shared roads that allow all forms of transportation to safely commingle. Becoming mobile again and examining our city in a new way is a great alternative to hunkering down in a single occupancy vehicle on the Carmageddon-inspired 405 freeway/parking lot, and avoiding skyrocketing gas bills if you ask me.

The Unlikely Warrior for Generation Extinction

2010-12-01T20:03:01Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

It's not often that you associate vampires (bloodthirsty night-dwellers) with environmental activists (solar-loving vegetarians) but friend of NRDC Ian Somerhalder is trying to bridge the gap by launching the IS Foundation. His new foundation endeavors to empower, educate and collaborate with people around the world seeking to enact change to benefit humanity and protect the environment in which we live.

As a Louisiana native, Ian was down on the front lines of the Gulf oil disaster, wading through marshes and reporting from Barataria Bay and Grand Isle, some of the hardest areas hit by the incoming oil. Since then, Ian developed his foundation to promote the work NRDC and other conservation and clean energy organizations are working toward. He also co-founded Go Green Mobile Power earlier this year as an effort to invest in mobile renewable energy sources that can be used around the world.

Earlier this year, NRDC worked with Robert Redford and Ryan Reynolds, two other prominent actors and activists who are working to shape public awareness of environmental issues here at home. They see how these issues touch their own lives and those of their friends and family and recognize that we as a country can choose a better path, a clean energy path – one that embraces American ingenuity in order to create a stronger, healthier nation.

When Ian grew up in Covington, a small town outside of New Orleans, with family working in the oil and gas industry of the Gulf, I doubt he expected to become a global advocate for clean energy choices, but what he’s doing with his foundation is a public call to action that must take place in our society to protect what we hold valuable and to restore our natural resources before they are gone.

The Horrors Exposed in The Cove Apply to Us All

2010-08-26T18:00:58Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

Last year when I first watched the Oscar-award winning documentary, The Cove, directed by Louie Psihoyos, I walked out of the screening silently, and with a heavy heart over the film that chronicles an annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. For anyone who appreciates animals or seeks to protect them instead of willingly cause them harm or pain, parts of this movie are hard to watch, but thankfully, those images do not overtake the larger message of the film.

The Cove isn’t simply an environmental or emotionally-driven movie to save a species, but communicates a complex story through an Ocean’s Eleven-style mission to uncover the horrors happening in Taiji, a harbor town at the tip of the Kii peninsula south of Kyoto. The film opens with reports that for years the people of Taiji have been rounding up thousands of dolphins and porpoises cattle-drive style, senselessly slaughtering roughly 23,000 of these creatures annually and selling others to international aquariums, at a hefty markup.

The film and even the presence of the team being in Taiji are not sanctioned by the Japanese government and in fact most members of the crew are stalked and harassed by the government or their henchmen throughout the mission. Despite the numerous hurdles and covert operations (some involving night vision and video cameras made to look like rocks) the team must endure, they ultimately get the unfortunate and sordid footage of the slaughter and expose these never before seen images to the world.

While The Cove is known in part for the grisly footage they were able to capture, the film also addresses related human health issues from consuming whale and dolphin meat. The Cove exposed the fact that local school children were being fed the toxic dolphin meat found to be extremely and at times lethally high in mercury, cadmium and the U.S.-banned pesticide DDT. In June 2008, AERA, a Japanese weekly journal, reported that the whale and dolphin meat sold in Taiji contained a level of mercury 160 times higher than normal, and that the hair of a local sample of eight men and women had 40 times higher mercury levels. (Extreme mercury poisoning can cause patients to complain of a loss of sensation and numbness in their hands and feet, losing all feeling in their body, difficulty seeing, hearing and swallowing, eventually leading to severe convulsions, coma and eventually death.)

Ultimately, The Cove also speaks to a larger Japanese whaling issue the international community is continually at odds with. Recently in June, the International Whaling Commission was poised to reverse a 25-year whaling moratorium in the vain hope the international community could get Japan to agree to kill fewer whales each year. See my colleague Taryn Kiekow’s blog about that here.

The question I came away with after viewing The Cove is why the practice of killing 23,000 dolphins and porpoises must continue every year in Taiji. Who benefits from a practice that produces meat that poisons people, and that results in a fraction of the dolphins captured sold to aquatic theme parks for a life of captivity? Japan’s argument is that whaling is part of their culture and way of life, though the majority of Japanese people do not eat whale or dolphin meat. Most people in Japan don’t even know the dolphin slaughter is happening.

The Cove has screened internationally and also in Japan, and there are attempts underway to expand the film’s presence and raise awareness within the Japanese culture to shut down this practice. The film has received international acclaim (it received 24 international film awards after its release in August 2009) and numerous calls to end the annual slaughter.

Many audiences probably saw The Cove through special film screenings last year, but if you missed it, Discovery's Plant Green channel is showing this powerful film as part of their “Blue August” month. Despite its difficult subject matter, I highly recommend watching this film. The images of the dolphins will stay with you, but hopefully so will a sense of hope that the more people who see this and become outraged over the practice, the sooner the slaughter will end.

Premiering later this month on Discovery’s Planet Green channel, you will have a chance to view this powerful film. To make your voice known, visit http://www.savejapandolphins.org/ or http://www.thecovemovie.com/. The Cove, premiers August 30 at 9/8c and again in the Reel Impact Documentary Series September 4 at 10/9c

Back when 50 Million Gallons Was A Disaster

2010-08-19T20:44:10Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

In recent weeks, the Gulf oil spill story line has dramatically turned in BP’s favor. “The oil is gone” “There’s no longer a slick” are some of the repeated lines from media coverage. The White House even claims that 75% of the 4.9 million barrels of oil that gushed unabated from the Macondo Well is gone, that only 25% or 50 million gallons of oil is still out in the Gulf. However rosy a picture the White House and BP wants to paint, 50 million gallons is still a lot of oil. In fact it’s more than four Exxon Valdez spills and 21 years later, oil is still affecting the fishing industry and health of the cleanup workers.

Thankfully the scientists are weighing in this week with three studies refuting the “oil is gone” theory. On Monday, researchers in Georgia said “as much as 80 percent of the oil from the spill remains in the Gulf.” On Tuesday scientists from the University of South Florida found “that a lot of crude is lurking deep below the surface, some of it settling perhaps in a critical undersea canyon off the Florida Panhandle.” Tomorrow Science will publish a paper by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who “have detected a plume of hydrocarbons that is at least 22 miles long and more than 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, a residue of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.”

I’m not a scientist, but I believe this means there’s more oil out there than BP and the White House would like you to believe, a lot of it is either settling on the floor of the ocean or compiling these enormous underwater plumes, once measuring the size of Manhattan, and closing in on the Florida coast.

Let’s consider the amount of oil still at large in the Gulf. If you believe the White House report, they claim only 25% or 50 million gallons of oil are unaccounted for in the burning, skimming, collection and general degradation of the 4.9 million barrels of oil that escaped. If you believe the Georgian scientists, that’s 80% or more than 150 million gallons of the oil still unaccounted for, a much more sinister amount that will no doubt cause more devastation to the Gulf than the White House 25% figure. So what does the low-balled 50 million gallons look like?

What 50 Million Gallons Looks Like

In early June, BP was still stone-walling scientists, the government and the public on just how much oil was pouring into the Gulf. We know now that the BP disaster ultimately unleashed 209 million gallons of oil into the Gulf over 100 days, resulting in a shocking 19 Exxon Valdez size oil spills.

By June 11, two months after the disaster started, reports were surfacing from scientists confirming that BP had repeatedly under-reported the volume of oil escaping the failed well head. At that point, 50 days into the disaster, when 50 million gallons of oil seemed catastrophic, some of the first heart wrenching photos emerged, showing Gulf wildlife trapped in sticky swaths of oil, with only their eyes visible. This is also the period when aerial photographers shot powerful images documenting oil sheens as far as the eye could see, in thick tendrils the color of the rainbow.

The situation in the Gulf would ultimately go on to get worse until the well was finally capped in early August. The well itself is still awaiting a final kill from relief wells that took more than 90 days to drill. The fact that 50 million gallons of oil are not seen on the surface of the sea does not mean that the problem is solved. This is what BP wants us to believe. This is what more than two million gallons of chemical dispersant pumped into and on the surface the Gulf waters has done.

Damage is Done

We still don’t know the extent of the damage that amount of dispersant used under water will mean to the sea life that comes into contact with it or whether the oil and dispersant cocktail will become a bioaccumulation problem we’ll be testing for over the next several years and whether that toxicity will destroy the Gulf fishing industry. The dispersants did not cause the oil to disappear from the water column, but may have allowed the oil to sink to the Gulf floor, where it will surround sea life, be perpetually churned up, resurface or be consumed.

To the people of the Gulf one gallon of oil spilled is too much and is an unnecessary disaster causing unique harm to them simply because they live next to an oil and gas playground. This is one of the worst economical and environmental disasters in our history and it could have been prevented. We were told by oil and gas companies that a disaster of this magnitude could never happen, but it did. The technology was fail safe, but it wasn’t.

Thousands of people are out of work and BP is scaling back their clean up operations because workers in bright yellow hazmat suits will only remind the public that the Gulf disaster is ongoing and cleanup will take years. Out of sight, out of mind is what BP wants us to believe so they can get back to drilling new wells in the Gulf, promising it won’t happen again.

The Shrimp and Petrochemical Festival is Still On in Louisiana

2010-07-24T22:55:57Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

While driving down to Chauvin, Louisiana on Friday morning I saw a billboard confirming that “Yes, the 75th annual shrimp and petrochemical festival is still on” in Morgan City, La., on September 2-6. Shrimp and Petrochemical festival, those don’t typically go together you might say? If you didn’t think those two issues were linked before the oil disaster, you can look to this festival as a 75-year reminder of the two industries that dominate the Louisiana coast.

I spent only a few short hours in Chauvin, but this town in big on first impressions. It’s really at the end of the line in terms of where land meets water. I came down for a community meeting and arriving early decided to explore the place a bit.

Driving down Main Street I saw boats, large shrimping boats with nets and booms parked along the canal draped with Cypress trees and Spanish moss. Boats were parked along the canal at the end of docks leading up to backyards as you would park a car in your driveway and walk to your front door. I saw people wearing galoshes to pull their garbage cans out to the road because their front yard is under water. And there are also the abandoned and teetering buildings on the verge of collapse, left over from Katrina or another recent storm. But from all other accounts, the Main Street of Chauvin seemed pretty busy. Busier in ways of commerce and community action I didn’t see in Buras or Venice.

The landscape is different here. Chauvin seems like more of the mysterious bayou I’ve heard about, with its leaning, mossy trees lining the choked river banks with lily pads poking up in clumps from the canal bank. Venice is right at the mouth of the marshes, but it’s also next to the Mississippi, which is such a wide, expansive and powerful river. Driving to Chauvin you drive over draw bridges and moats and see backyards half submerged.

The canal running through Chauvin is clearly the thoroughfare for the numerous boats sitting outside residences along its banks and I saw several large boats chugging up stream, but the pace of the boats and the flow of the water are much diminished in comparison to the Mississippi. I guess both types of waterways get you where you need to be, but they both have very different personalities, at least to an outsider.

The Chauvin meeting was between Gulf Coast Fund beneficiaries, the charity NRDC is directing our Gulf recovery funding to. The GCF represents all five Gulf states and is responsible for administering grants to various on the ground organizations helping to sustain Gulf communities. Much discussion was had the morning I attended, mainly about how to come together as a region, not just separate communities or states.

There was a concern that in the haste to develop recovery plans for each of the five Gulf states that those states may not be coordinating with each other and working to the benefit of recovering the region as a whole, that some recovery projects might be done by piecemeal.

One local mentioned that in Chauvin, it isn’t like their community was in that great of shape before this oil disaster started. You’re looking at the epicenter of the highest amount of annual land loss in the world, going back to the flood of 1927 and the first oil wells drilled in the 1930s.

Louisiana is losing the most land by coastal and marsh erosion than anywhere else in the world. This is clearly a problem that affects the state (if not especially during hurricane season) and is an example of a regional priority that must be taken into account in any recovery plan designed to make the Gulf region whole again.

The participants also started to list their priorities in recovery efforts and I’ll share that list when it becomes final. Those priorities will be presented to EPA Commissioner Gina McCarthy at Monday’s meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Riding the Mississippi

2010-07-24T22:43:30Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

I knew it was going to be an adventure getting to the second of two Plaquemines Parish open house events this week when I saw that Google maps projected a 2.5 hour drive and ferry ride back and across the Mississippi. The directions simply said “Take Belle Chasse Ferry” and in small print “Check the time table.”

So here I was sitting on the ferry getting paddled across the Mississippi River, my first introduction to the famous river that cuts through our country. That experience was probably the highlight of the trip.

When I got to Phoenix High School in Braithwaite, an empty auditorium met me. Where was the outraged or inquisitive community? The tables and contractors from HHS, Coast Guard, local government, BP and EPA were all set up and waiting to talk with locals and answer their questions. The chairs were all set up in the middle of the gym and the sound guy seemed ready for someone to take the mic, but no one was sitting in the chairs and the officials were about 20 minutes late, I’d driven by a couple of them giving broadcast interviews along the road on the way there.

About 20 locals were seated in the bleachers and eventually another 10-15 people either joined them or took advantage of the prime gym seating real estate, but it was nothing compared to the electric night in Buras on Tuesday.

As on Tuesday, Billy Nungesser took on the role of trying to straddle the fence between being an advocate for his parish in the face of the oil disaster, but also trying not to paint BP as the enemy of the people. In taking the mike Billy said “It’s been a long 80 days. Hopefully we will get some answers tonight.”

He went on to say that he’s found these forums to be the best way to get the most accurate information to as many people as possible, that too many people are getting inaccurate second-hand information and tonight he wanted to clear up some misconceptions people may have heard about the cleanup operation and who is being hired to do what.

EPA was there and strangely out of the hundreds of tests they had completed since the oil disaster started, they have found nothing out of the ordinary in terms of water or air pollution, nothing that they can attribute to the oil directly. If this is the kind of air and water quality that isn’t out of the ordinary after a major oil spill, what does that mean for the long-term health exposure this community has been dealing with for years?

As one speaker said at the meeting, this is a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe. Many people are still healing from Katrina, 5 years later. It’s probably helpful to offer these open houses so at least people are getting a chance to get accurate information from the source, but I’m not sure how helpful it is to their livelihood to hear there aren’t any more jobs to be had and there won’t be any for the foreseeable future.

How a few individuals are helping the Gulf heal

2010-07-22T14:42:14Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

I stopped by the Buras auditorium yesterday to check in with a couple women I met yesterday at NRDC’s Gulf Resource Center. They work for Plaquemines Parish CARE Center a non-profit dedicated protect children, victims, the elderly and disabled of Plaquemines by providing a professional, compassionate and coordinated approach to individual and family needs. This week they set up shop in the auditorium which has become the make shift community command center for Buras.

The CARE folks are serving lunch to whoever comes in around noon on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays through August in hopes that providing these free meals and a place to come and talk to counselors and other people who might give them assistance will be of help to the community. Just like Tuesday night’s town hall, there were a few people staffing tables lining a couple walls of the auditorium. The Lousiana Social Services Department, Catholic Charities and the group that handed out those same stress balls at Tuesday night’s meeting were all there, though not a lot of people were actually coming up to talk. Most people were interested in filling up on the hot dog and red beans and rice lunch and handing their kids over to the free child care for a few minutes.

There were maybe about 50 people there, mostly women, children and the elderly. One man I met was Mike Brewer, he’s running for Councilman in District 8, which is in Plaquemines Parish. I spoke with Mike at length about a number of his concerns. He certainly feels like people aren’t getting the resources they need and everyone seems very concerned that BP is trying to buy off the community, but people are also so desperate for money.

To raise the community’s spirits, he’s trying to organize an event at the site of the former Buras middle school on July 31 as a way for people to take a day to stop thinking about how the oil spill is ruining their lives. He’s billing it as a family fun day and trying to get a number of donations for medical supplies that can be distributed to the community and free food and fun events for the kids. Mike says it seems that every meeting being held on the spill right now centers around BP and money and people just need a day off from all of that and in this hope, will begin to heal.

I also spoke with Lisa Becnel, who works with the CARE center. She expressed her concern for the mental health of the Plaquemines Parish residents. She isn’t a counselor, but knows there’s been an increase in the number of people calling her organization and asking for help. And that’s what her group is trying to do. They had about a dozen people at the auditorium, cooking and serving lunch, talking with residents about their concerns or about their lives.

A lot of people here just want someone to vent to, to hear them and to understand what has happened to their community. Lisa mentioned that Buras as a city didn’t come back at Katrina, like other small towns did in the region. She said there can be a disconnect between south Plaquemines Parish residents and those in the northern part of the district, mainly because there are more amenities in the north and sometimes residents in the south can’t get to them. Case in point is NRDC’s Gulf Resource Center. We’re currently housed out of an abandoned dentist office, one of the few buildings that survived Katrina. There’s no longer a dentist in Buras. If residents crack a tooth or need a routine cleaning, they need to drive an hour or more up to Belle Chasse or New Orleans.

Having CARE, an organization out of Belle Chasse set up shop in Buras means something to the people of this community. The oil spill in some ways still seems selective. Yes, oil is being found in more marshes everyday and has hit all five Gulf states, but in Belle Chasse, they may not be feeling the burden as much as the Buras and Venice communities are. These are the communities almost entirely dependent on the fishing and shrimping industry, they have very few other means of survival, but their neighbors to the north are trying to help ease some of their shared pain.

As I was talking with Lisa we heard some children singing. We’d heard drums and a tambourine off and on while we talked and after we finished up, Lisa brought me over to see what was happening. It was a songwriting workshop that had been set up to help the kids in Buras write a song that expressed their feelings about the oil spill. The two women teaching the kids, Misty Marshall and Jessica Guillory are performers themselves, and wanted to help the kids work through whatever anxieties they were feeling about the oil spill through music. They both talked about how therapeutic music can be, and that they hoped this experience would remind the local youth that there are alternative, healthy ways of dealing with their pain or stress.

This was day one of the CARE Center operating out of the Buras auditorium and already it seems they are touching lives. If only to provide residents with a free lunch a few times a week let them know they aren’t alone, there are others in the parish who are willing to uproot themselves and help them get through this united.

Handing Out Toys in Louisiana

2010-07-21T20:22:05Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

Nearly 200 stress balls and more bad news are what they handed out at last night’s open house in Buras, Louisiana. The open house was meant to provide the community of fishermen with new opportunities to become engaged in the oil recovery effort, but the event fell far short of its expected outcome.

It was standing room only as I walked into the Buras Auditorium last night. People were busy wheeling in more chairs as groups of locals milled about outside in the sweltering heat, talking with local law enforcement and other community members. Sets of blue and yellow balloons were tied to the front and inside of the auditorium, somehow trying to create a festive atmosphere in a town that has seen only devastation recently. Eventually, the crowd quieted down to hear what Plaquemines Parish president Billy Nungesser and U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin had to say about the fate of their community.

Entering the auditorium, there were tables set up along two out of four walls, like a job fair, though no one was actually hiring. Representatives from BP, Vessels Of Opportunity, Coast Guard, the Environmental Protection Agency, Health and Human Services, Plaquemine Parish government, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Office of Emergency Preparation among other agencies were there to offer support or educate the community on opportunities to help with the recovery effort. A group of people also handed out stress balls and a flier on reducing stress to whoever walked by their table. Fishermen and their families carried these objects around with them during most of the event though more than a few of the stress-relievers were eventually left on chairs or on the floor, apparently abandoned.

Surgeon General Regina Benjamin kicked things off by telling the crowd about her connection to the region began when she attended undergraduate school at Xavier University in New Orleans. She talked about stress taking a toll on your health and that she was here to talk with people about how they were dealing with the stress this disaster has caused to the community. Billy went next and had the difficult job of clarifying how people were going to be compensated by BP.

Billy confirmed to the large audience that he may have been told inaccurate information or been misled by BP when he said people who worked on the clean up would be paid on top of any earnings while they were hired by BP. The truth as it currently stands is that if you make $30,000 working for BP right now and you eventually agree to a $100,000 settlement with them, they will only pay you the remaining $70,000. He rhetorically asked the crowd “Is it fair that BP is doing this?” Before Nungesser could respond, the audience did it for him as people shouted a resounding chorus of “No” back to him. Listening to Billy it was clear he felt badly about the information he was delivering and knew it wasn’t going to make people in his community “whole” as BP continues to say they will do for people affected by the disaster they caused.

Much of the crowd seemed pretty skeptical about what Billy and Regina had to say and once the opportunity was presented to make their views known, a few outspoken and visibly angry fishermen went right up to Billy to engage him on the issue of payment. From what I saw Billy tried his best to placate and diffuse the numerous fishermen who wanted to give him a piece of their mind. In many ways it seemed like his hands were tied in how he could help them and the best he could do was listen to their concerns.

It isn’t up to him how BP pays the fishermen or tries to get their lives back to normal, but he sees the people of his community every day and will be the focus of their outrage much longer than BP stays in the area. It seemed that many fishermen considered Billy their advocate and someone they could trust in a crisis situation where they were continually told something different by BP, the government and other authority figures that don’t seem to have the community’s best interest at heart.

Providing the community with a forum to give voice to their concerns and outrage is a step in the right direction and provides a uniting sense of community to a group of people being torn apart by a man-made disaster. I’m not sure how handing out stress balls to a community that currently feels like they’ve been left with nothing and with no sense of normalcy will actually help them get their lives back on track, but the overall message of locals helping locals is a message everyone should get behind.

Photos courtesy @NRDC. More photos from the town hall event can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nrdcpix/sets/72157624426835225/show/with/4814949627/

Back in the Bayou Two Months Later

2010-07-20T20:23:47Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

As I was flying into New Orleans yesterday, I started questioning what I would see when I went back to Buras and Venice. The weather is oppressive and more petulant than when I was first here in May, I say this as I watched lightning dance across the sky on my drive down yesterday and then open up into perfect weather. The heat down here is the kind that acts like a sedative and makes you not want to move an inch. And it’s the middle of hurricane season, though I bet the residents would choose this weather any day in lieu of a tropical storm or worse.

So much seems changed in the Buras/Venice area and yet much is the same from May. There are still overturned cars and boats in the trees from Katrina, same friendly locals, but this time there is a sign directing people to the Venice marina and signs dotting Highway 23 pointing people to the various command centers for Plaquemines Parish, the local disaster relief building or sheriff’s operation.

In many ways the community seems pretty quiet right now. When I went to the Venice marina last night around 6pm I expected to see the same crowd of people hanging around watching the boats come in with the fishing catch of the day or enjoying a $10 tub of Bud Lights on the restaurant deck, but I only found 4 people and a dog that couldn’t be bothered to move without good reason. There was however, a new, official-looking beer stand where I imagine people would have congregated had there been any reason to be there.

But there wasn’t. Fishermen weren’t off loading their catch because more than a third of the fishing in the Gulf is now off limits due to the BP oil disaster. People weren't buying beers because they're concerned about making rent and buying groceries on what BP is paying them.

Sure, the cap is on the well for now, but officials have located what could be a leak in the well and that might mean they have to open the cap back up again. And there’s also the nearly 200 million gallons of crude churning in the Gulf, washing ashore and into the marshes, being eaten or coated by fish and crustaceans, and fouling much of whatever the locals would be catching anyway.

There are still large numbers of people supplying their boats through the Vessels of Opportunity program, with several shrimpers I met last time still out on the water and boat captains we’d chartered for tours to the oil now supplying their boats. However, the same sentiment is circling about how effective those boats are and whether many people hired by BP are actually getting the chance to collect the oil. Some people are also being let go by the cleanup operation, having somehow reached their max on compensation from BP. I’ve been told the max is supposed to be what that individual would have made in a typical shrimping/commercial fishing season, but don’t know how that’s entirely decided and if it’s based on a good season or just a set rate.

Regardless, the community down here needs money they'd normally be making during the shrimping season and the concern is that BP won't help them past the initial clean up if some of these guys are already reaching their payout limit. Given the amount of oil reaching all five Gulf states and continuing to wash in, cutting this community off now seems irresponsible considering the disaster will permeate their way of life for years.

It’s a somber vibe down here. People gather in groups to hash out plans to map where the oil has just hit, talk about the BP compensation process, and at times, distract themselves with other news unrelated to the unfolding disaster that will be living with them when everyone else goes home.

Shrimpers Fighting Red Tape and the Oil Spill

2010-05-22T19:25:32Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

I recently had a long conversation with a shrimper-turned-oil-spill-worker about the cleanup conditions his task force and several other task forces he's observed are experiencing. Generally, it sounds like the cleanup worker conditions are incredibly badly managed, they don't have regular sources of food, fuel or water and the supply ships with these items and additional workers are generally at least 50 miles from where they are cleaning up the oil. Man cannot subsist on baloney sandwiches and canned Vienna sausages that have been sitting sun exposed for hours on the decks of boats alone.

The lack of food and adequate sources for refueling and water are issues in themselves enough to declare the at sea cleanup efforts badly managed, but the main point in our conversation came down to how BP was requiring people to jump through hoops to be paid for their work.

It was told to me that BP is requiring all cleanup workers to submit invoices at least once daily for the work they're doing, this first requires the workers to actually have invoice books and materials, which it sounds like most don’t. It also requires two trips to various boats for one person’s signature (this guy then faxes the invoices somewhere) and as far as my contact can tell his task force is the only group actually submitting the proper paperwork each day in order to get paid. It’s also not possible to bundle the invoices and be paid after coming back to shore, they must all be signed off and completed each day.

He said there are numbers of boats with people just sitting around not sure what to do (there are also language barriers in some cases) and still they expect they'll be paid by BP because they signed a contract with them to clean up the oil. I haven’t seen the contracts they signed but I’d be curious to know how explicitly it’s written that the contractors will be paid outright for any day they are at sea to clean up the spill.

I don’t know if any of these guys have come in yet to try and collect paychecks but my contact was told that everyone needs to submit these invoices and have proper sign off every day they are out at sea or they won't get the $1,500 BP has agreed to as the daily rate.

Additionally, I was told that BP is trying to avoid paying workers overtime and because a number of workers are stationed on land or on these boats far from the spill, in the travel time it takes to get to boats collecting oil there's only about 4 hours of cleanup work being done each day. I can’t imagine they’re collecting a lot of oil in that short window.

Many of these shrimpers seem frustrated with the amount of red tape and regulations it takes to do what they feel is an increasingly futile job given the wide swaths of oil in some places up to four inches thick at the surface stretching for as far as the eye can see. They don’t think there are enough ships out trying to collect the oil, there isn’t enough manpower supplied to the boats doing the clean up, they don’t have the materials they need to do the job properly and the entire process seems to be stuck in a red tape parade of bureaucracy that isn’t designed to collect the maximum amount of oil.

What’s the point of sending these shrimpers and fishermen out to an oil-soaked sea if it will become impossible to actually pay them the wage BP has offered? Why send them out without the proper materials and direction? It appears BP is trying to do right by the community and industry their oil catastrophe has just wiped out for years if not decades, but based on my conversations with people out on the spill, they think it’s all a stunt, which is not what the people of Louisiana and the Gulf states need right now. They need to know the actual amount of oil spewing from the leak, they need to know BP will cap the leak and do everything possible to collect the greasy, gooey mud-like consistency of oil entrenching on the marshes daily, not just send people to sea to sit around or collect a minimal amount of oil in the 4 hours they’re allowed to work each day.

On a related note, I’ve also heard from one of BP’s boom suppliers who believes BP is screwing up the boom situation, that they want to buy up as much boom as they possibly can instead of leasing it from booming companies, which I’ve been told is the normal practice. None of the boom suppliers want to sell BP their entire arsenal of boom material and BP apparently doesn’t want to rent or lease the boom, they just want to own it all.

Louisiana local official says Kevin Costner will fight Gulf gusher

2010-05-12T21:02:01Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

My last day in Venice – just hours before heading to the airport after a week and a half on ground zero of the Gulf oil rig disaster – I stumbled upon breaking news at the Cypress Cove Marina.

Coming in off a morning boat trip out to the spill with NRDC senior scientist Gina Solomon where we saw more tar balls at an island in South Pass, we found a crowd gathered at the dock awaiting a press conference from Governor Bobby Jindal, the Plaquemines Parish President, and actor Stephen Baldwin.

I decided to stick around and see what the buzz was about – and was glad I did, for two reasons.

First, Governor Jindal made strong remarks about dispersants – publicly questioning their use and effectiveness at cleaning up the spill and echoing concerns NRDC has raised since the beginning. Instead of leaving the oil on the water’s surface where it could be cleaned up, he said the dispersants are hiding the oil in the water, out of reach. And they’re causing a troubling amount of tar balls to roll up on the island beaches marking the entrance to Louisiana’s wetlands. If we’re seeing them here, he said, he worried what it means for the thousands of miles of wetlands that line the state’s coastline.

(This photo is from an earlier press conference with Governer Jindal, but I'll upload footage from today's as soon as I can.)

It was reassuring to hear the Governor back up our concerns about dispersants, but this much we already knew. What was perhaps more surprising was the second bit of breaking news announced by Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.

He announced they will be demoing a new filtration technology tomorrow – funded by none other than actor Kevin Costner and designed with his brother, who Mr. Nungesser said is a scientist. From what I understand based on Mr. Nungesser’s description, it sounds like a water filtration device that traps oil. Looking forward to more details as the emerge!

All in all, it was an eventful end to my last day here on the Bayou – leaving me with hope that people are continuing to come up with interesting alternative solutions and everything is on the table. Being here over the last week I’ve met people from various walks of life, and I’ve seen first-hand that this disaster will impact all of them. I'm hopeful the governor & federal government will continue to look for solutions unique to the Gulf’s ecology to help revive this important region of the country. Clearly this spill will have lasting effects for weeks, months and years to come. I know NRDC will continue our commitment to supporting local groups as the region tries to rebound.

VIDEO: Oil clumps wash ashore in the South Pass in Louisiana

2010-05-11T20:02:21Z

Jessica Lass, Senior Press Secretary, Santa Monica

The boat ride from Cypress Cove in Venice, La., took about an hour over choppy water and being stopped by the Coast Guard and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. We faced a southwesterly wind before we making landfall at an island along the South Pass, the very southern tip of the Louisiana bayou. NRDC’s crew has taken a few boat trips in the past 10 days and seen oil in various forms, but so far we’d only seen it dispersed or floating in red streams along the top of the water. Just a few days ago, on Friday, the team had visited this island without finding oil, but we heard reports that large clumps of oil had washed ashore here Saturday and Sunday and on Monday we found what we were looking for.

After getting out of the boat, we poked around the reeds dipping in the water to see that up to 1-2 feet above the waterline oil covered the intricate and threatened reeds. Once we knew what to look for, we found dozens of quarter-sized oil clumps on the beach. Initially the clumps looked like clay or pieces of rock typically found on some beaches, but when we poked some of the blobs, they broke apart and upon squeezing parts of the oil ball between my fingertips, the residue left behind was clearly oil-based.

We saw these reminders of the oil’s presence and the pools of thick, gooey red liquid at the base or roots of the reeds dotting the sandy beach only a few feet from the low tide. In some places, we found oil 20 feet inland, covering the reeds. When scraping some of the oil off the reeds, I found that it came off, but left a residue behind that no amount of scraping or cleaning could fully remove.

Photos taken May 10, 2010 by NRDC, click for captions and more photos