Others Have Noticed

The key to a successful lie is to have everyone on board and reading from the same script, otherwise people might suspect a lack of veracity.

When I read the story by Bettina Boxall of the Los Angeles Times, Scope of environmental impact of oil spill remains elusive, and see this:

“Quicker than anyone thought,” oil and gas levels in most of the spill area have returned to normal levels, said David Kennedy, an assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with 30 years of spill experience.

I have to wonder why NPR is running a story, In Cleaning Oiled Marshlands, A Sea Of Unknowns, that tells me this:

On a coastal marsh south of New Orleans, oil still saturates a 30-foot-wide stretch. Where hip-high grass should be, the oil has formed a hard, dark mat. If you dig though that crust, you find a thick, oozy layer of oil.

“It hasn’t weathered or degraded much since it came ashore in early June,” says scientist Scott Zengel, a contractor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who is overseeing the marsh survey crews.

A year ago, after the Deepwater Horizon exploded, one of the biggest fears was that BP oil would inundate the coastal wetlands that produce so much of the country’s seafood. Some oil still can be found on about half of the 1,000 miles of marsh and beach that got hit by BP oil.

Given that the NPR story includes pictures of the conditions described, I have to think that David Kennedy, an assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, hasn’t been in the field lately, isn’t reading the reports of the people who are in the field, and doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

BTW, these marshes are the hatcheries for Gulf fish. This is where the fry grow to a size that will help them survive in the open water. No marshes, no fish.

This is why people don’t believe that Gulf seafood is safe [me included] – there has been too much lying.