ACT OF GOD OR OIL ?

. . . .The damage doesn't stop with the canals. For example, U.S. Geological Survey scientists say the sucking out of the ground of so much oil and gas likely caused the land in many places to sink by half an inch a year. In oil's heyday 30 years ago, Louisiana's coastal wells pumped 360 million barrels a year, an eighth of what Saudi Arabia ships to the market today.
Oil wells also discharged about a billion gallons daily of brine, thick with naturally occurring subsurface chemicals like chlorides, calcium and magnesium, as well as acids used in drilling.
"It was poured into the marshes," said Virginia Burkett, a longtime researcher of the Louisiana wetlands and the chief scientist for climate change at USGS. It contaminated soils and killed plants and animals, she said, before brine dumping was finally regulated in coastal marshes in 1985. . . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ..
Still, when politicians in Washington or Louisiana talk about Katrina guilt they blame the Corps of Engineers, global warming and the French for building a city in low-lying swamps nearly 300 years ago —BUT NOT THE OIL COMPANIES. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"It's the elephant at the dinner table and nobody wants to say there's an elephant there," said Luke Fontana, a New Orleans lawyer for Save Our Wetlands, one of the state's oldest grassroots environmental groups that has fought the draining of swamps and oil company activity since the 1970s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .THE BLAME GAME CONTINUES . . .. . . . . .WHO'S TO BLAME FOR ALL THE DAMAGE INFLICTED ON NEW ORLEANS AFTER HURRICANE KATRINAS VISIT ? . . . . .THE OIL INDUSTRY . . . . JUST . . .AN INNOCENT . .BYSTANDER ? . . . . . .I DON'T THINK SO . . . . . . A LONG AND DETAILED REPORT ON SOME OF THE PROBABLE CAUSES CAN BE FOUND ON YAHOO (ASSOCIATED PRESS)(JAN20/08)

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