Remembering the New England Coast in Oil

I hail from New England and have a long standing relationship with it's coast and the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean. I have walked many of it's beautiful beaches from Maine to Rhode Island and I have lived and vacationed in coastal areas with some of the most breath taking views you can imagine. I have counted hawks during their annual migration from the top of Cadillac Mountain overlooking Frenchman's Bay in Maine. I have whale watched 20 miles out to sea and visited very special places like Monhegan Island on a hot summer day. I have looked for puffins in summer off the Maine coast and bird watched in sub zero weather on the coast of Salisbury Massachusetts. All really special memories of really special people and places.

Why am I telling you about the wonderful times I spent in New England? Well I began to wonder what it would be like if the Deep Water Horizon was happening in that place that I spent most of my life. What if oil was washing over it's beaches and spoiling it's marshes, killing it's birds and devastating the whales and spoiling the Georges Banks where millions upon millions of fish live and breed? What if the oil continued to gush day after day and nobody seemed equipped to do anything about it. Thinking about the possibility that this could happen to my beautiful New England makes me shudder.

What makes me cry however is that it is happening to the Gulf of Mexico and to the people and the wildlife that call that beautiful place home. Thousands of wild creatures are dying horrible deaths, peoples lives and futures are being ruined, entire species are being herded toward extinction. Soon suicide rates will climb, illnesses will overcome clean up workers and the financial impact will grow for generations. A way of life is not dying it is being killed , murdered by the greed and avarice of a corporation that has a lousy safety record and a callous disregard for everything that makes our stay on this earth worthwhile.

BP is definitely the bad guy in all this but so is the culture in Washington that protects big business at all costs even though they repeatedly fail to do the right thing especially when it comes to our environment. Not only is the response to the spill woefully inadequate it is ineffective from the capping of the well to the skimming operations,to the so called "Booming".

Nothing that is being done at this moment is what anyone could call a success.

It's time for the Federal Government to seize complete control of the operations and to deploy all available resources including whatever foreign assistance is available.

FEMA should be directed to immediately begin to assemble the expertise and equipment to handle the next deep water "accident" including developing the next generation of technology needed to mount an effective spill response. Had anyone thought to prepare for this accident we would not be as helpless as we are today. It's time for government to take the lead and for scientists and entrepreneurs to step forward and make sure this never happens again.

I never want to see another Brown Pelican smothered in oil or dolphins dead and dying in their home due to the negligence of an industry that has plenty of money to prevent this from ever happening in the first place.

I also never, ever want to hear a clown like Joe Barton, Congressman from the 6th District in Texas apologizing to a company that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and forbidden to ever drill in US waters again. EVER!