The BP Oil Spill - An "Unprecedented Environmental Disaster"?
US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stopped short of calling the BP oil spill "an unprecedented environmental disaster", but clearly, she and other Obama Administration officials are thinking that this problem could be the Nation's worst environmental calamity --- even dwarfing the Exxon Valdez spill.
"The possibility remains that the BP oil spill could turn into an unprecedented environmental disaster, says the Secretary. “The possibility also remains that it will be somewhat less…we don't necessarily want to predict Armageddon."
President Obama already has suggested that this Gulf of Mexico oil spillage will be like nothing we’ve ever seen. "We're dealing with a massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster" said the President earlier this week.
Many fishermen and others whose livelihood depends on the Gulf and related waterways are predicting that the BP spill will be Armageddon for their lives. With confirmed sightings of oil across a 50-mile chain of islands that line Louisiana’s southwestern coast, government officials have ordered the affected area closed to public entry. The feds also expanded an earlier ban on fishing in the area east of the Mississippi River. Who will pay for this monumental damage? How will those injured be made whole? More on this subject in a later blog.