Memphis for the Night - Part I

"Here's the plan," I said to Tom Hutchings, SouthWings pilot, "we take the Cessna out of Mobile Sunday, over to New Orleans, and run up through Cancer Alley, photographing all the polluters in that notorious stretch. We make it all the way to Memphis and spend the night; catch some great music, have nice southern supper. Then Monday, we take off and hit all the coal ash dumps in Tennessee, ending in Knoxville that night. Tuesday we edit the pictures, lay out a poster, take it to Kinkos and have posters printed up, which we display Wednesday at the last EPA hearing on the coal ash ruling."

"That just ain't gonna work boy," he said, "we got weather coming in, and I don't think we'll be able to fly Sunday."

"Well then," I say, "we roll up the River whenever you say we have to, so we can catch the good weather all the way across Tennessee. We need to get all of the coal power plants in the state, especially the high failure hazard ones and known groundwater contaminators."

"I think you better get down here Thursday night and we'll fly Friday," he says.

"But I'll miss the opening at Hasted Hunt Gallery where they will be serving MacAllan single malt scotch," I responded.

Silence on the other side of the line said that duty should come before drinking, not what I wanted to hear.

Then I called my friends at EarthJustice and NRDC, proposing the idea, and asking if they could arrange the display at the hearings and a press conference.

Conversations with Emily Enderle at EJ uncovered the fact that both of us felt that even the more stringent of the proposed regulations for coal ash was insufficient to protect the public from the known toxicity of the waste. The weaker option, Subtitle D had been further emasculated by an even weaker industry proposal, leaving Subtitle C to appear more radical.

We agreed that I should come in arguing that Subtitle C still left citizens at risk from the mercury, lead, arsenic, and other contaminants in this waste, and that every dump site should be lined, monitored with walls around them, and covered so that dust could not threaten neighbors. With luck we could get another major environmental organization to propose it as well, giving it credence, and offsetting the industry efforts to walk with essentially no regulation.

As the date approached, Smithsonian Magazine decided they wanted to document the project; meanwhile, the weather man irritatingly seemed to support Tom's assertion. Friday morning dawned like a bluebird, and off we went, heading west over the disastrous Dauphin Island reconnection project (cut in half by Katrina). Knowing we had a full day, we opted to start at New Orleans, and leave more southern sites for another day. The refineries around that charming city are old, dirty, and gross. The day was slightly windy, which makes positioning the plane difficult, but Tom is good, and shooting from the same side of the plane makes working together smoother; usually one works from the window on the opposite side from the pilot.

I've flown this area of the River many times, drawn by the cultural and historical role the Mississippi plays in our culture and our industry. Huck Finn and his merry band are some of the longest-lived and strongest cultural icons in the USA. Subjugation of the River is symbolic of the conquest of the wild, implicit in American folklore. Of course we now know that conquering nature is a death knell for ourselves, but practice is hard to change. I had recently found and read an old family copy of Life On The Mississippi, and could not help but compare Twain's observations and mine on this day, all against memories of past trips.

The water is very low on this trip, giving the River a completely different feel. When the water is high, there is a pervasive feeling of boiling rage, everything pushed to the limits. With low water, there is a sense of hidden danger, every turn a cause for concern.

See some pics here.

More to follow...

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

28 May 2010

Some days pass with hardly a thought of it. Other days are literally oppressed with the weight of the oil and gas pumping into the Gulf.

Our real Gulf crisis has begun. Perhaps it will be the first sea to die. Completely.

And the sight of the various guilty parties sputtering denials and accusations makes me think of teenagers caught red-handed at some obnoxious prank.

Hearing Tony Hayward (CEO of BP) say, "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," makes one either apoplectic or catatonic (depends on the day). The insight here into total corporate control of the regulatory process and government is a discussion of its own.

Three things confound in this situation:

-Corporate arrogance, greed, and short-sightedness

-Our blundering non-understanding of the natural world, its complexities and frailties

-Public indifference

The first two are to be expected, but the indifference of the public is staggering. We have managed to totally divorce action and consequence in our minds. Every time we start a car, every plastic bottle we buy contributes to this disaster, but like true schizophrenics, we do not connect cause and effect. We wring our hands in concern about the oily birds and beaches, and then wash our hands with soap from a plastic pump dispenser.

We are the problem, not BP, not the US Government, not the MMS.

And of course, the long-term battle of hearts and minds has already been lost with BP’s clever application of vast quantities of dispersant and tight control of media coverage coming from the battlefield. Corexit broke up and sank the oil, so the impact on the Gulf Coast beaches will be a fraction of the reality. The undersea flora and fauna, however, will never recover. The Gulf, already severely wounded from the phosphates pouring down the Mississippi, is really a large bowl, with a circular current fed from the Atlantic. As those submerged oceans of oil swirl around and sweep past Florida, they will be caught up in the Gulf Stream, and ultimately be deposited in the Georges Bank, thus finishing the decimation of the world’s greatest food source.

But the public won’t see it, thanks to the dispersant and BP’s adroit image control, and this will drop off our radar like all the other clarion calls warning of the imminent collapse of the natural world that sustains us.

Drive on.