Dear Friend and Reader:
There was a point during President Obama’s press conference on the Deepwater Horizons oil spill last Friday when I knew the answers we were about to get from him were not going to be enough. Not lies or secrets. Just not enough. I think even he felt the same way. There was an air of impatience, irritation, and overwhelm at that press conference making me sense even he knew he could not provide the answers we needed or even the ones that we wanted to hear, as much as we clamored for him and the federal government to lead on this disaster.
While waiting for results of ‘Top Kill’, BP’s most failed recent effort to stem the oil-gushing wound in the Gulf’s seabed, we prayed for the oceans, the Gulf eco-sphere, and for the EPA, the Coast Guard, the President and everyone involved to find answers. We wanted something to work. We wanted the gulf restored. We wanted this month-long disaster miniseries to end. We wanted something, or someone to save us.
Since then, ‘Top Kill’ has failed several attempts, along with the Junk Shot and the Top Hat and all the other half-baked methods that the oil giant has tried. Today, the diamond-blade saw being used to cut the welded pipe at the spill is stuck. BP, whose stock is tumbling as we speak, is still technically in charge of this mess, though nervously covering its tracks while grasping for diminishing answers to stem the toxic flow, and attempting to hide evidence.
The federal government, slowly encroaching, is making its inexorable march towards BP’s criminal indictment. There is still no schedule, no time frame, no clear-cut solution, an unclear trajectory towards justice for those injured and no happy ending in the face of the expanding ecological tragedy called “Deep Water.”