Monday, April 20, 2015

FIVE YEARS AFTER THE BP OIL DISASTER: A BARRIER ISLAND FOR NESTING BIRDS DEVOID OF LIFE




Julie Dermansky's picture by Julie Dermansky on April 19, 2015
Cat Island, off the Gulf Coast in Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish, was home to a vibrant bird rookery inhabited by brown pelicans, seagulls, spoonbills, and egrets before BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Five years after the largest oil spill in American history, the barrier island has just about disappeared.
Despite ongoing efforts by former Plaquemines Parish coastal zone manager PJ Hahn to restore the island, only the needed building permits and an engineering plan have been completed.
“Cat Island was ground zero of the oil spill,” Hahn told DeSmogBlog.
Photo by Julie Dermansky

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