Losing Louisiana: Life in the Disappearing Mississippi Delta

Losing Louisiana: Life in the Disappearing Mississippi Delta

Al Jazeera (2019)

Film Review

This documentary concerns the steady disappearance of the Mississippi delta region in Louisiana. The erosion stems partly from climate change and rising sea levels, partly from channels petroleum corporations have dug through the wetlands and partly from decades of diverting new Mississippi sediment out to sea.

The gradual disappearance of the delta has means many coastal residents have lost their livelihood. Due to salt water contamination of their ground water, farmers are no longer able to grow sugarcane and rice or graze stock. Meanwhile shrimping industry has collapsed. Because shrimp require require freshwater marshes to reproduce, their populations have been have been decimated.

In this remake of their 2009 documentary, Al Jazeera filmmakers revisit an area of the Mississippi delta they first filmed ten years ago. They learn the rate of delta shrinkage has declined from 70 to 15 square miles per year. Subsidence is worst in poor communicates which have no real protection against hurricanes. This contrasts with well-to-do communities, which have built massive hurricane levees.

For some reason the 2019 segment makes no mention of the 2010 Deep Water Horizons disaster and the toxic effect on wildlife of the massive oil spill and the poisonous oil dispersant Corexit BP dumped into the Gulf of Mexico.

Here are 2013 and 2016 accounts summarizing the long term effects on Gulf marine life that will take decades to repair:

Corexit BP Oil Dispersant

New Oceana Report Highlights Long Term Impacts Deep Water Horizon Oil

 

The Cover-Up: BP Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill

The Big Fix: BP Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill Cover-up

Directed by Josh Tickell (2012)

Film Review

The Big Fix is about the extreme corruption in the Louisiana State capitol and Washington DC which resulted in a massive cover-up of the disastrous environmental and health consequences of the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The documentary begins by exploring the ugly history of the Anglo-Iranian oil company, later renamed BP. It describes the efforts by the Iranian people to reclaim control of their oil with the democratic election of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1951. Determined to retain British control of Iran’ oil, Winston Churchill approached President Eisenhower, who instigated a CIA-sponsored coup to oust Mosaddegh and install the brutal dictator Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

It would take the 1979 Islamic revolution to restore the right of the Iranian people to control their own oil.

The Oil Colony Known as Louisiana

Tickell makes the case that Louisiana is an oil colony in much the same way Iran was. Populist governor Huey Long, virtually the only Louisiana governor to stand up to Big Oil, was assassinated in 1935 – two days after announcing plans to run for president.

The Deep Water Horizon Coverup

The film goes on to expose important aspects of the Deep Water Horizon disaster that the corporate media neglect to report on – with special emphasis on BP cost cutting measures that violated safety regulations, including the manual disabling of warning alarms to enable faster drilling.

The role the Obama administration played in lying about the aftermath of the spill is even more shocking. When he opened contaminated areas to fishing, despite the continuing presence of large concentrations of oil, he also participated in a slick PR video him and his daughters swimming in a protected area (St Andrews Bay) unaffected by the spill.

Obama also lied about the health dangers of Corexit, a toxic chemical (banned in Britain since 2002) used to disperse surface oil slicks, as well as claiming BP discontinued aerial Corexit spraying in July 2010.*

The True Extent of Environmental and Human Health Consequences

A highlight of the film is the numerous poignant interviews with fishing families who not only lost their livelihoods as a result of the BP disaster but are suffering life threatening health problems from ongoing exposure to Corexit.

Despite the best efforts by BP and the Coast Guard to keep journalists and scientists out of the spill area, by 2012 a number of scientists (including Jean Costeau) had collected strong documentary evidence that the majority of the oil spill was pooled in enormous oil lakes on the sea bed. These oil lakes, in turn, were systematically killing off all sea life.

When oil geologist Matthew Sims attempted to bring this information to media attention, he mysteriously drowned in his hot tub.

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*Numerous investigators have documented that Corexit spraying continued for at least two years after the spill.