Cue pic of crying Indian.

Florida coast suffers first impact from oil spill
     
PENSACOLA BEACH, Florida (Reuters) – Tar balls and sticky oil sheen washed ashore on a northwest Florida beach on Friday, the first apparent impact on the tourism-dependent state from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Oil debris came ashore on Pensacola Beach, part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore which advertises "the world's whitest beaches," as the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history continued to widen.

Florida, the "Sunshine State" with a $60 billion annual tourism industry, had braced for oil from the 46-day-old spill to arrive. Oil had already hit the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to the west.

Beachgoers on Pensacola Beach, many of them children, picked up rust colored tar blobs, ranging in size from a button to a table tennis ball, scattered along the sugar-white sands.

Grace Vondohlen had a sticky substance on her hands from picking up the tar balls. "It's pretty sad because we go here on vacation every summer, and now we won't be able to go any more. I just can't believe it, because it used to be all just white sand," she said.

Buck Lee, director of the Santa Rosa Island Authority, said he could not be sure the oil came from the spill leaking from BP Plc's undersea Gulf of Mexico well off Louisiana "but I'm 90 percent certain that it is."

The oil would be analyzed to confirm the link with the oil spill, the worst in U.S. history.

Of all the states affected so far, Florida has the most to lose. Tourism is its largest industry, generating $60 billion in spending from more than 80 million visitors a year, bringing in 21 percent of all state sales taxes and employing nearly 1 million people.

Near Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island, workers scooped up tar balls with shovels along the high-water line and put them into plastic bags. "They're working in an area that's pretty sensitive and has tern nesting areas," National Park Services spokeswoman Katie Lawhon said.

"I think it's horrible," said Anthony Cross, who was walking along Pensacola Beach with his three daughters, holding a child's fishing net full of tar.

"You see shells and jellyfish and trash but I've never seen oil here. It's crazy," he added.

'JUST BEGINNING'

Florida authorities rushed to implement contingency plans to deal with the arriving oil, sending out cleanup crews and deploying extra protective boom.

"Right now, the state of Florida is seeing impact, it's time to get the game face on," said David Halstead, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

Florida tourism authorities are rolling out an aggressive advertising campaign, partially funded by BP, aimed at stressing that the state's beaches remain open for business, despite the pollution threat.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist has asked BP executives for an additional $50 million to fight the encroaching oil, on top of $25 million already received from the company and spent.

On Friday, Crist asked the British-based company for $100 million more to fund spill response efforts by the Florida Institute of Oceanography, a partnership of 21 universities and other marine science organizations.

Florida tourism officials, promising "100 percent transparency", are using live video and Twitter feeds so visitors can check the situation of beaches before booking.

"We're not going to sit here and say, 'the whole state of Florida is going to be shut down as a result of this', because that's just not true. There are a whole lot of things that you can do in Florida other than on the beaches," said Chris Thompson, who heads the state tourism marketing board.

But he acknowledged the spill crisis was impacting tourism through cancellations and a fall in visitor inquiries.

Investment analysts say that since Florida has no income tax and relies heavily on sales tax revenues, any fall-off in tourism could badly squeeze a state economy still bleeding from a housing market meltdown and the global recession.

Many experts believe crude from the Gulf of Mexico spill may have already been caught up in the powerful Loop Current curling around the Florida Peninsula, which could take it into the Florida Keys and possibly up the East Coast.

They call it "singing sand" because it squeaks when you walk on it. It is as fine as chalk dust.

Its so beautiful. around Destin and GulfShores. The beaches are so pristine.   Looks like coke!?

you want to start I hate Obama thread? the adults here are talking gulf oil leak and envoirmental disaster, not employment and climate change...

Riffhard wrote on Jun 4^th, 2010 at 6:42pm:

You want to talk about the economy?  Really?  Evidently you forget the mess BushCheney left for Barack to clean up.  Unemployment?  Howe much worse would it have been without the stimulus you douche baggers love to hate?  Sure, Barack could have gotten better results if he'd invested in a bigger public works program as recommended by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.  But Repugnicans and economically illiterate Blew Dogs prevented that.  That's the beauty of the obstructionist position; you stop anything from getting done and then complain that Barack is not doing anything (when you're not busy bitching about him doing too much).

And the stock market?  Is it back to that?  It wasn't that long ago that the stock market was rising rapidly; I recall you said that didn't matter.  Before that, when the market was tanking, it was all you wanted to talk about.  So much for any semblance of intellectual honesty.  

So, pointing out your Know Nothing position on global warming is a straw man?  Howe about your support for $i$ter $arah?  Drill, dummy, drill?  Mark Levin?  Name me one reputable constitutional scholar from any point on the spectrum (Larry Tribe to Richard Posner) who pays any attention to that Rushbot.

I assume you hold the Bobby Jindal position on deep water drilling.  Money--even $4.7 billion a day--can be replaced.  This planet cannot.  This is a good place to apply Cheney's 1% principle; if there's even a one percent chance of irreversible environmental damage, it's just not worth the risk.

BP is Cheney's Katrina.  The Great Recession of 2008 was the crowning achievement of the Reagan Revolution.  Harry Reid is looking tough and Kendrick Meek  is coming on strong.  In the immortal words of Dr. Howard Dean, "yeehaaaaw!"

Brainy

yay!

the politics thread is back.

Riffhard wrote on Jun 4^th, 2010 at 8:08pm:


they responded, to you... you're an army of one pretty much, i admire your tenacity... oh wait, no i don't, i find it annoying, tenacity is an asset, you're just being stubborn... but no, i didn't like the pic of palin, thought it was rude, just like you're postal post last week... but BJ's response was a funny and a perfect hit and sink against your battleship... you started a new politics thread... i'm sure voo and gaz are wet with pleasure.

riffsmooch, come on. you won't back out. you never do.

do you not see the negativity that you espouse? other conservatives such as nankopotomus are able to convey their complete and utter contempt for the current administration and not do it in a negative way or come off as such a condescending dink. the thing is, you are right in a great many of your opinions....but when you broadcast your opinions as clear facts, and those that don't agree with you are #@$king drone simpletons, it is more insulting than bringing a bottle of jack daniel's to an AA meeting.

cut the crap, OK? some of us would actually be interested in discussing politics, and you ruin it for everyone else.

riffsloops?

you say this:
Quote:


...and continue with this:

Quote:


you're like the drunk who says, "one more scotch before I leave. please give me six, and btw i'm staying all night."

you say, "i'm leaving!" and you don't leave. if you're not going to leave, then don't say, "i'm leaving!" you dig?

2000monkey wrote on Jun 5^th, 2010 at 2:03am:



we are dealing with someone who flies off the handle, and he was correct in saying I gave him shit, and not you... so you got your shit too...

Meet Ro Mayer, the founder of the Krewe of Dead Pelicans
By Doug MacCash, The Times-Picayune
June 05, 2010, 5:00AM
Chris Granger / The Times-Picayune


Ro Mayer, a local artist, costumer and real estate agent, finds herself in the unlikely role of radical after using Facebook to organize the Krewe of Dead Pelicans, an informal, Carnival-style krewe that tonight will protest the BP oil spill. Mayer’s sculpture of a cracked earth seems to underscore her concern for the environment.
An unlikely radical hopes for an impressive turnout Saturday for an impromptu oil spill protest

A New Orleans real estate agent and costume-maker hopes to provide her fellow New Orleanians with a Crescent City-style catharsis as the second unimaginable manmade catastrophe in five years seizes the region. Using nothing more than an Internet social networking site, she’s invited all comers to protest the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill by joining a Carnival-style krewe and gathering for a symbolic funeral parade Saturday (June 5) at 5:30.

Ro Mayer is a happily married 57-year-old real estate agent who lives on a picturesque oak-lined Uptown street. By her own account, she’s not the street protest type — at least not in the past. Mayer spent most of May simmering with anxiety as the unparalleled ecological disaster unfolded day by day on the front page of the newspaper. She said her sense of helplessness was familiar.

“It made me feel like Katrina,” Mayer said recently as she sat on her breezy front porch, the sounds of bird calls and wind chimes filling the spring air. “This is happening. The thing is out there in the Gulf circulating and we don’t have any power. We’re not even able to go anywhere to get out of the way. Nobody appears to be doing anything about it, and I don’t have the power to do anything about it, and I don’t know anyone who’s stepping up, saying they have the power to do anything about it.”


Chris Granger / The Times-Picayune
Ro Mayer, founder of the Krewe of Dead Pelicans

Mayer said that as a Realtor, she fears the cascading effect a disaster such as the BP oil spill can have on a regional economy.

“A lot of people, they’ve gone and made mortgages, rebuilt their businesses; they’ve borrowed to the hilt. They believe in this city. They believe in this area. They wanted to come back, and now, to what?”

“I’m not Bruce Willis,” Mayer said. So she was not able to dive to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in a submarine like a Hollywood action hero and single-handedly staunch the geyser of crude oil erupting from the damaged well head, she explained dryly.

The truth is, she said, there really was nothing she could do.

But she had to do something anyway.

“I just needed a place to channel my frustration,” she said, “and I felt like, ‘If I feel that way, other people must feel that way.’ ”

To vent her irritation, she shifted to her creative side. Mayer, who grew up in Crowley and moved to New Orleans in 1974, studied fine art in college and has practiced her skills ever since as a watercolorist, collage maker, and, most recently, by designing elaborate Mardi Gras costumes. Splendidly adorned as Marie Antoinette, Mayer appeared in a 2006 Times-Picayune Carnival photo spread.

So it’s not surprising perhaps that the oil spill protest she envisioned would take the form of a costumed Crescent City street procession held in the arts district.

Once the idea struck, Mayer said, everything moved quickly. Late on May 22, she created a Facebook page inviting readers to join the Krewe of Dead Pelicans — she chose the state bird as a symbol because it once was threatened, had bounced back and now is threatened again. Krewe members will gather on Julia Street amid the art galleries during the already scheduled First Saturday Art Walk block party tonight from 6 to 9. By May 26, an astonishing 3,000 Facebook members had added the Krewe of Dead Pelicans to their lists of online friends.

VIDEO: http://tribeca.vidavee.com/advance/doc/F6D89D070D130D19662483830D6F8F55?AF_deliv...

“I threw it up on the Facebook wall, and it stuck,” Mayer said.

Mayer’s Facebook page describes a do-it-yourself costume, consisting of black pants and blue shirts or blouses, meant to represent the unfortunate mixing of oil and ocean, plus a blue umbrella blotted with black paint. Mayer suggests that a plush toy pelican ride atop each umbrella.

“Shrimp boots will be worn,” she said.

Mayer said she plans to include a cardboard coffin in the parade, with an effigy occupant representing the Gulf of Mexico. She’s heard that other krewe members plan to parade in pelican skeleton costumes.

Mayer said that a week after the original Facebook posting, 400 people had confirmed that they plan to attend the event. She hopes to arrive at what she calls a “critical mass” of those critical of the BP ecological disaster.

“We will either proceed or we won’t,” she said of the parade. “It just depends on what the reaction is and how many people show up.”

Gallery director Zack Smith, who has volunteered his Canary Gallery on Julia Street as a Krewe of Dead Pelicans headquarters before tonight’s parade, said he discovered the loose-knit organization on Facebook. The parade, he believes, offers a creative antidote to the anger so many residents of the region are feeling.

“In Katrina,” Smith said, “you could pick up a chain saw and cut a tree or drag a refrigerator out of a house.”

But during this disaster there’s no way to lend a hand, he said, so people’s energies are being wasted. The parade might provide a welcome outlet. Instead of just being outraged, “Dead Pelicans incorporated art and positive energy,” Smith said.

Loyola University professor Cynthia Garza said that she and five friends are finishing a set of papier-mâché pelican heads for Saturday’s procession. Like Smith, Garza said she was having trouble channeling her frustration until she spotted KoDP on Facebook. The parade, she said, will give her and her friends an opportunity to “pay homage to the pelican and make a statement about what’s being lost.”

Mayer points out that although she has put herself at the forefront of a public protest, she still isn’t particularly radical in her point of view. Far from it.

“I’m a comfortable, middle-class American, used to my cars and my oil,” she said. “I think we need our oil. But we need to see it better regulated.”

Mayer, who refers to herself as the “Miss Manners” of political action, said she has no use for any sort of confrontation.

“I’m not interested in being ugly or angry,” she said. “But I couldn’t not say something. I couldn’t not say it once I thought of it. I stuck my neck out. Remember, I was Marie Antoinette.”

THE KREWE OF DEAD PELICANS

What: An informal Carnival-style krewe, open to all, protests the BP oil spill during the First Saturday Art Walk on Julia Street.
Where: Meet at Canary Gallery, 329 Julia St.
When: Saturday (June 5), 5:30 p.m.
Recommended costumes: Black pants and blue shirts or blouses, plus shrimp boots and a blue umbrella blotted with black paint. Organizer Ro Mayer suggests that a plush toy pelican ride atop each umbrella.

VIDEO: http://tribeca.vidavee.com/advance/doc/982F51F15BD99494F369EDA26A33FA50?AF_deliv...

are  we seeing improvements there?

this thread needs a relief well

Nellcote wrote on Jun 7^th, 2010 at 8:59am:

all just stunned and waiting for a miracle