BP Builds City For Clean Up Workers Of Gulf Oil Spill

BP Builds City For Clean Up Workers.   We've seen the attempts to ban media from talking to the crews, to keep people from getting photographic evidence of how much damage is being done, to the Gulf, to the wetlands, to the coast, to the sea & wildlife that are washing up dead and dying.  BP has been able to take complete control of this situation and keep a lid on information getting out.  They have done this right from the start and seem to be doing so with the blessing of our own government.  They refused to turn over paperwork, they refused to change dispersant's, they have withheld the ROV footage of the underwater event and efforts to contain and/or cap the well.  They have done everything possible to keep total control over everything revolving around this catastrophe.



CNN has video showing the construction of a small city that BP is building to house the clean up crews. In a two week time frame they took 32 acres and created a "small city".

Based on what is stated in the video, it will hold 1500 workers, with laundry facilities, dining facilities and even its own police force.



This absolutely infuriates me.  In my opinion this time, effort and money could have been better spent elsewhere, especially in light of the piss-poor effort that BP has been putting into the clean up.

These clean up crews could be staying in the motels and hotels that have lost business due to beach closures, and the loss of tourism, which would help those people out tremendously.  The restaurants that are losing business left and right could be feeding these people.  The amount of equipment and effort being poured into building this housing project could be diverted to help with the clean up efforts.

BP is also providing a police presence which in my opinion is going to be nothing more than a security force designed to keep a lid on the flow of information.  

Rules will include no alcohol allowed "in the city".   That seems to be another "control".  Keep people from having alcohol, and then you have better control over them.  But I have to wonder, are they going to prevent people from leaving this city and going out where they can get alcohol?   Are they going to provide transportation out of the "village" for these workers? Will they be able to bring in their own transportation to come and go as they please?

This seems to me to be nothing more than an attempt to keep control of the workers from going out and blowing off steam and potentially talking to the media or the locals. Regardless of what the plan here was, it is obvious that this is a well thought out plan that has been rushed to completion, and yet we are still not seeing this kind of effort put into the clean up of the Gulf.

THIS IS JUST ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT CONTROL.    UNACCEPTABLE

BP Destroying Evidence

BP is trying to cover-up the widespread evidence of the dead birds resulting from the oil spill.  We've known that they have done everything in their power to hide the evidence of the oil coming ashore as well as keep the media from getting those photographs of the dead wildlife and sea creatures that have suffered a cruel death at the hand of BP's greed, but now they are taking it a step further by having clean up crews rake up the carcasses of the dead birds, instead of collecting them for necropsy's in order to determine the cause of death.  In raking up the birds they are separating the heads from the bodies which means it is not going to be autopsied,  according to Dr. Riki Ott, marine toxicologist, who is down in Louisiana.  It is important that all the dead and dying animals be collected as they are needed to evaluate the damages caused by this spill.

The body count of affected wildlife is crucial to prove the harm caused by the spill, and also serves as an invaluable tool to evaluate damages to public property - the dolphins, sea turtles, whales, sea birds, fish, and more, that are owned by the American public. Disappeared body counts means disappeared damages - and disappeared liability for BP. BP should not be collecting carcasses. The job should be given to NOAA, a federal agency, and volunteers, as was done during the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

NOAA should also be conducting carcass drift studies. Only one percent of the dead sea birds made landfall in the Gulf of Alaska, for example. That means for every one bird that was found, another 99 were carried out to sea by currents. Further, NOAA should be conducting aerial surveys to look for carcasses in the offshore rips where the currents converge. That's where the carcasses will pile up--a fact we learned during the Exxon Valdez spill. Maybe that's another reason for BP's "no camera" policy and the flight restrictions.

From the Ground: BP Censoring Media, Destroying Evidence

She also reports that while up in a small plane flying from New Orleans to Orange Beach, the pilot reported that noticed "the thin red line marking the federal flight restrictions of 3,000 feet over the oiled Gulf region had just jumped to include the coastal barrier islands off Alabama".

The reason for doing so?  To keep the media from seeing and reporting on the oil that is reaching the beaches.   It is widely known now that the booms are not being used properly and are thusly ineffective from keeping the oil from reaching its target, which is another reason for BP to keep the media access limited.

The more we see and hear from people, the more obvious it is that BP is in charge of this with the Government playing a minimal role and one of solely deferring to whatever BP wants with regards to the clean up effort.   As stated by Dr. Ott, BP should have no say whatsoever in the collection of evidence, and allowing them to control any aspect of this is criminal.