How Is BP Putting Its Clean-up Dollars to Work?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

East Bay, Louisiana. As Kate Sheppard reported earlier today, the government has spent $93 million on the Gulf clean-up so far, and BP has yet to pay any of it back. Here’s what I found BP crews working on Saturday near the end of South Pass, the shipping channel closest to the spill site, in the remote southernmost reach of the Mississippi River. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every kind of boat known to southern Louisiana—airboats, pirogues, pole boats, trawlers, skiffs, crew boats, river barges—were assembled here laying boom, ferrying men back and forth (have yet to see a single woman working any crew anywhere), ferrying bagged sand from the beaches to the barges, dragging absorbent boom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The guys scraping the oil—and probably some kind of absorbent chemical—off the beach (top photograph) were shoveling the contaminated stuff into plastic bags. These bags were ferried offshore by airboats, whose crews tossed them onto this barge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They may have stayed, but we ran like hell when this waterspout came after us, tearing water—and oil?—off the top of the ocean, carrying it further into the marshes.