I just received a phone call from a member of Testings The Waters a citizen’s initiative to push for independent BP Gulf Oil Spill water testing who told me some alarming news.
He pointed me over to a WKRG news report about independent water tests confirming that Corexit is being found in washing up in Orange Beach Alabama waters.
Transcripts
If tests results are true, the absorbent boom being brought to Margaret Longs house on Cotton Bayou may already be too late.“My chemist found the corexit,” she yells to a neighbor. She first got suspicious when she saw something in the water she had never seen before. She even took photographs, “Some times it’s about the size of a half dollar. Some times it streams along and its like floating sand.”
When the opportunity arose she took some samples. “It was floating in the water. A boat goes by making a bigger wake than its suppose to and it came over the seawall and I had puddles of water along here.”
She got samples and sent them to chemist Bob Naman in Mobile whose tests results show 13 point 3 parts per million of the chemical dispersant corexit.
“I knew I was right,” she says was her first reaction. “I knew that this that I had seen floating was something I had never seen before.”
Margaret Longs tests results of sand and water at Cotton Bayou will not be the last word. The city of Orange Beach, who is already doing their own independent studies, now has more incentive to find out what really in the water.
“It concerns me,” says Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon. “And what it means is that we’re going to aggressively go and try to find that corexit. We’re going to start more aggressive testing in Cotton Bayou and other places and we’re going to up the number of tests we run. Our job is going to be go find it, if it’s there.”
Long has no doubt it is there. “There is an anger yes, very much an anger. I fear what the long term affects are going to be.” Her only question now is what will be done about it.
But here is the inside scoop that story that was revealed to me on the phone call.
The caller informed me he was working with Bob Naman, the chemist who found the Corexit in the water in story above, to perform independent testing of Florida waters.
He told me he just spoke with Bob about the results of water samples taken all the way down to Naples and St. Petersburg Florida which all tested positive for oil contamination.
According to the Federal Government that version of Corexit was a supposedly discontinued for use in the Gulf of Mexico in May.
I was also told that Bob said he was was worried because BP had just called him and threatened him.
I am not certain the reason or nature of the threats or whether they were financial or physical threats, but given the sudden rash of untimely deaths of those with damaging knowledge about BP I would not take any threats from BP lightly.
Not only does BP have the the local police and Federal officials on their payroll but BP also hired civilian mercenaries and it is rumored that the may have even hired the CIA’s favorite Iraqi death squad, Ex Services, the company, formerly known as Blackwater.
People do get removed if they become a problem to the higher-ups within the political class.
The latest round of independent testing of Gulf Coast waters comes from a local Alabama news station WKRG 5.
Just like before the independent water samples once again contradicts the information that the EPA is giving to the public.
The tests found astoundingly high levels of oil in both the sand and water where kids were playing along the Alabama coast even though the water appeared to be clear to the naked eye.
[Another] sample was a spot in Orange Beach, where again, we found kids playing. and we found our highest content of oil and petroleum. 221 parts per million. …
When Naman added an organic solvent to separate the oil from the water [collected at Dauphin Island Marina, near some boom], just like he did with all the other samples, this sample exploded right in his lab. “It was almost instantaneous. Actually, maybe one second. that’s just weird.” The result surprised even our chemist.
“We think it most likely happened, either due to the presence of methanol, or methane gas, or the presence of the dispersant, Corexit.”
MOBILE, Alabama – More than a week has passed since Alabama’s beaches have seen significant oil, and despite warnings along the Gulf Coast, some swimmers are taking their chances.
News Five collected samples of water and sand from Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Katrina Key and Dauphin Island. To our eyes, the samples appeared normal, until we took them to a local lab to be tested.
Water and sand along Alabama’s coast should contain no more than five parts per million of oil or petroleum, according to Bob Naman, an analytical chemist. But, the samples we collected tested much higher.
From 16 ppm to 221 ppm, our results are concerning. Even more disturbing is what happened to a sample collected from the Dauphin Island Marina near oil containment boom.
To watch News Five Investigates: Testing The Waters click on the video box.
The Register goes on to report that BP is refusing to clean up the oil and instead has resorted to calling the local government officials liars.
In a Thursday morning e-mail to local government leaders, a U.S. Coast Guard official acknowledged that what had washed up was being classified as subsurface oil — something that cleanup officials have been slow to acknowledge.
“We’ve been saying there’s submerged oil coming into (Perdido Pass) for some time and (BP PLC) completely dismissed our concerns and our accounts,” said Orange Beach Mayor Kennon. “Hopefully this proves we’re not a bunch of dummies.”
Since early last week BP has rejected claims from Orange Beach that city contractors are regularly encountering and collecting oil from inshore waters, including Cotton Bayou, Terry Cove and Bayou St. John, city officials said.
…
“BP keeps telling us there is no oil, to skim or otherwise, and we keep telling them there is,” said Orange Beach Coastal Resource Manager Phillip West. “We’re skimming it.”
BP spokesman Ray Melick said that company officials “don’t believe what the mayor’s crew is finding is oil.”
The Alabama Register also reports that while BP is denying the oil is present they are also refusing to accept independent water testing confirming the presence of oil in the waters and on the beaches.
Through its routine procedure of denial BP is refusing to clean up the oil the company is denying exists and at the same time refuses to go to the locations where the oil is being found
Besides the threats from BP thugs along with their refusal to acknowledge the independent water tests and clean up their own mess there is another point here worth making.
The Federal Government has claimed that Corexit will biodegrade within days but here we have tests showing lethal concentrations of Corexit 9527a months after BP stopped using that version.
Even if it where the other brand of Corexit according to the Government that hasn’t been used in almost a month and a half so why is it still in the water if it biodegrades in days?
Either that or we are now finding out this toxic soup will remain in the water and corexit will continue contaminating the food chain for some time.
Still want to feed your family from these waters? Here’s more on NOAA’s methodology in this fish-or-famine struggle:
Robert Downs leads the scientists who sniff at fish. Each day, his team of seven sensory experts dip their noses into large Pyrex bowls of snapper, tuna and other raw seafood to test for even a whiff of the pungent oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. This is not Grand Cru wine. “We use specific terms for the aroma,” said Downs, who supervises the seafood smellers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine lab here. “Diesel oil. Bunker oil. Asphalt. Rubber-band-like. Tar.”
Each olfactory analyst has a super schnoz, able to smell oil diluted to one part per million. That’s 40 times more sensitive than your average proboscis.
Proboscis means nose. Had to look that one up myself.
It’s also more sensitive than science can explain. Last month, the team caught a faint scent in a red snapper that chemists and toxicologists could not confirm despite three days of testing at an NOAA marine science lab in Seattle. The result: A rich fishing area off Louisiana’s coast stayed off-limits.
“The nose knows,” Downs said.
“We have found tainted fish,” said John Stein, who runs the BP oil spill seafood safety testing program for NOAA. “It’s not uncommon.”
Under federal law, fishing is banned if oil is seen in the water.
This helps explain another reason for the use of the dispersant, Corexit, in unprecedented quantities. Because if there’s no oil “seen” in the water, Gulf fishermen by law can fish. And if Gulf fishermen can fish, then BP doesn’t have to pay them for sitting at home going slowly mad.
Update: August 25, 2010
Washington’s blog also reveals that BP has hired blackwater like mercenaries who are stilling spraying the toxic dispersant Corexit 9527A at night in an uncontrolled manner.