It can happen here
According to the New York Times, British Petroleum’s path from application for permits to operate a well at the site of the Deepwater Horizon to the recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was full of shortcuts, permitory waivers and environmental assessments based more on high hopes than solid science.
As we have clearly seen, that path led to a disaster of unprecedented proportion, and all the rosy environmental projections were so far removed from reality as to be a work of creative fiction. Human error, it appears, has conspired to create one of the most calamitous man-made disasters in history – one that goes on and on and on despite every effort to end it.
I have long been suspicious when anyone says “Don’t worry about that – it can’t happen.” That kind of statement almost begs whatever event is being discussed to occur. And clearly, when financial gain enters the equation, it can become a case of predictions lie and liars predict.
And while the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is far removed from the north country, the glib response that leads to bad ends is not unknown here. Up on the St. Lawrence, a succession of directors of Save the River have fought valiantly to have environmental controls tightened on the shipping industry. Jennifer Caddick, current director, has even marched on Washington to force the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. directors to explain to us how it makes the decision to open the seaway each spring.
Caddick and her group have fought both early openings and year-round operation because of unanswered questions of how ships traveling through channels cleared of ice will affect the St. Lawrence shoreline and ecology. Reminiscent of the BP debacle, Save the River has said that as difficult as it is to fight an oil spill in open water, battling one under ice is flat-out impossible. And it is impossible to fault that position – the traditional methods including booms and skimmers would be completely useless if the oil was in the water under ice.
Save the River has also noted that wave action under ice would likely be magnified and concentrated and could do significant shoreline damage, both to private property and to significant ecological assets.
Yet seaway management has said that Save the River’s concerns are irrelevant. It has rudely rebuffed the organization’s request for information on how it makes the decision to open the seaway each spring, and it has loudly mocked environmental concerns over shipping through ice-covered water. It has pretty much stated that oil spills aren’t even worth considering.
Really? This sound a little like BP to you, too? While the seaway may say “it can’t happen here,” it has happened here, with major spills in both 1974 and 1976, and lesser spills off and on since then. And it can happen again.
The natural world is a dichotomous combination of extreme power and brittle fragility. While nature can, over time, overcome and nearly eradicate the presence of man (as you know if you’ve ever come upon a long-abandoned structure that nature has pulverized and consumed), it does so at some cost. Those costs can include the complete loss of species, both flora and fauna, and I don’t think we were put here on Earth to make nature pay such dear costs.
We should act as stewards of the planet that hosts us. To do that honorably, we need not to ignore the potential consequences of our actions. Environmental assessments are important; they are not mere inconveniences to write some fiction around so that we can get along with making money. When organizations like Save the River demand accountability, they are simply enforcing our responsibility of stewardship. They shouldn’t be ignored, and we should never, ever accept the answer “It can’t happen here.” As BP has so horribly shown us, it can.
