The original Deepwater Horizon fire (Photo: Flickr/Deepwater Horizon Response)

A new report issued by The National Academy of Engineering, a government-created nonprofit, concludes that the lack of regulation and ineffective safety-management practices that led to BP’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have not been fully remedied — leaving communities in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana potentially vulnerable to another oil spill.

The blowout and explosion of BP’s Macondo well killed 11 workers and led to the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

According to National Academy’s Deepwater Horizon Committee, “companies involved in offshore drilling should take a ‘system safety’ approach to anticipating and managing possible dangers at every level of operation — from ensuring the integrity of wells to designing blowout preventers that function ‘under all foreseeable conditions.’”  In addition, according to the report, “an enhanced regulatory approach should combine strong industry safety goals with mandatory oversight at critical points during drilling operations.”

Some of the report recommendations:

• Expanding the formal education and training of personnel engaged in offshore drilling to ensure that they can properly implement system safety.
• Establishing guidelines so that well designs incorporate protection against the various credible risks associated with the drilling and abandonment process.
• Testing cemented and mechanical barriers designed to contain the flow of hydrocarbons in wells, to ensure that they are effective (and subjecting those tests to independent reviews).

The study, which was sponsored the U.S. Department of Interior, also recommends the formation of a single government agency that would be responsible for integrating system safety for all offshore drilling activities. Current offshore drilling operations are governed by a number of agencies, often with overlapping authorities.

In a press release sent out yesterday, Earthjustice attorney David Guest said that “lax oversight by government” hasn’t changed, putting jobs in tourism, recreation and fishing at risk.

“It’s back to business as usual as if the BP disaster never happened,” Guest said. “The National Academy of Engineering tells us that deep water drilling still has a high risk of disaster, that the culture of corner-cutting in the industry and lax oversight by government haven’t changed. That means that the fishing communities and all the jobs in tourism and recreation in the Gulf region are at risk.”

Earthjustice filed suit against the federal government in June for conducting what it says is “a flawed environmental risk assessment” of Shell’s plan to drill in the gulf. According to Earthjustice, federal regulators have conducted “an irrationally optimistic risk assessment for  Shell Oil Company’s plan to drill for oil in deep Gulf waters near the site of BP’s devastating spill.”

As a flyer advertising the event suggests, the briefing will “explore perspectives from science, economics, business, and industry on restoring the flow of ecosystem services that support the economic vitality of the Gulf of Mexico.”

In addition to economists, oceanographers and scientists, panelists will include Timothy Reilly, a managing partner of CatVest Petroleum. According to its weebsite, CatVest “offers pre-disaster risk financing to manage and transfer the risks of large-scale oil, gas and chemical spill risks from industry to the capital markets using instruments such as catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities.”

A reception held after the briefing will feature remarks from legislators, including Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa. A Senate lunch briefing will be held in the early afternoon, and a House briefing is scheduled for that evening.

The briefing is sponsored by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, Compass Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea and the National Research Council of the National Academies. The Consortium for Ocean Leadership recently hosted a roundtable discussion on its comprehensive preliminary strategy for long-term restoration. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., attended the discussion, which featured a panel with reps from NOAA, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium and the Harte Research Institute.

According to recent reports, BP (the company responsible for last year’s tragic oil spill) will soon begin winding down its cleanup of the Gulf of Mexico, and instead focus on restoring some of the most hard-hit areas.

Via the AP:

About 90 percent of the Gulf coast has been deemed clean, according to officials. The plan spells out protocol for when an area still needs to be cleaned and when BP’s responsibility for that ends.

Louisiana officials wouldn’t give their approval because they were concerned about what they perceived as a lack of long-term monitoring in the document. They also complained that the Coast Guard gave them only five days to review the plan, according to a letter sent to the agency by Garret Graves, a top aide to Gov. Bobby Jindal for coastal affairs.

Fishermen from the Florida panhandle echoed those sentiments, telling the AP that the fish they catch don’t look the same as they did pre-spill. “It’s not OK at all. We aren’t scientists or anything, but we are out there all the time and we can tell things aren’t right,” said one, who added that many species caught off the beach pier “have oily deposits in their intestines when they are carved up for cleaning.”

Coast Guard reps said that cleanup will remain ongoing in especially sensitive areas but, for most of the gulf, cleanup will now move to the next phase: restoration. Edward Owens, a technical adviser for BP, compared the next phase to getting a “nice shine on your car,” but environmental advocates would likely disagree.

Writes the AP:

A bit more oil will be allowed to remain on remote wild beaches where intense cleanup could do more damage. On beaches where people live and play, BP will be off the hook once there is no visible oil or oil is “as low as reasonably practicable” to clean up.

Marshes will be deemed clean when there is no thick oil left or when officials decide that it’s best to let nature clean up the mess.

As previously reported by The Florida Independent, sightings of a large volume of oil were reported as recently as September. According to the Coast Guard, the recent sheen is likely a result of last year’s spill — and may be emanating from a riser pipe of the Transocean rig, whose explosion led to last year’s disaster. (That rig now sits on the ocean floor.)

As head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Jackson has faced harsh criticism from House Republicans and GOP presidential candidates who say the agency’s regulations are an undue burden on businesses that have to cut jobs simply to comply with clean water and air rules. Presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann has pledged to end the EPA if she takes office.

“Since the beginning of this year, Republicans in the House have averaged roughly a vote every day the chamber has been in session to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency and our nation’s environmental laws,” writes Jackson. “They have picked up the pace recently – just last week they voted to stop the EPA’s efforts to limit mercury and other hazardous pollutants from cement plants, boilers and incinerators – and it appears their campaign will continue for the foreseeable future.”

In Florida, attacks on Jackson and the agency she represents have been especially harsh.

The agency has mandated a set of Florida-specific water pollution standards that are being decried as “unfair” and “burdensome” by lawmakers and industry alike. Companies that would be forced to comply with the rules have been especially hard on the agency and have fiercely campaigned against their implementation. In his criticism of the rules, Associated Industries of Florida CEO Barney Bishop even went so far as to say Jackson “thinks she talks to God and she’s the only one who knows exactly what is the right thing to do about our environment.”

From Jackson’s op-ed:

Using the economy as cover, and repeating unfounded claims that “regulations kill jobs,” they have pushed through an unprecedented rollback of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and our nation’s waste-disposal laws, all of which have successfully protected our families for decades. We all remember “too big to fail”; this pseudo jobs plan to protect polluters might well be called “too dirty to fail.”

The House has voted on provisions that, if they became law, would give big polluters a pass in complying with the standards that more than half of the power plants across the country already meet. The measures would indefinitely delay sensible upgrades to reduce air pollution from industrial boilers located in highly populated areas. And they would remove vital federal water protections, exposing treasured resources such as the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Erie, the Chesapeake Bay and the Los Angeles River to pollution.

How we respond to this assault on our environmental and public health protections will mean the difference between sickness and health – in some cases, life and death – for hundreds of thousands of citizens.

This is not hyperbole. The link between health issues and pollution is irrefutable. Mercury is a neurotoxin that affects brain development in unborn children and young people. Lead has similar effects in our bodies. Soot, composed of particles smaller across than a human hair, is formed when fuels are burned and is a direct cause of premature death. Nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds contribute to the ozone alert days when seniors, asthmatics and others with respiratory problems are at serious risk if they do nothing more dangerous than step outside and breathe the air.

The “numeric nutrient criteria,” which were mandated under the Bush administration, aim to place stricter limits on phosphorus and nitrogen, which lead to algal blooms and fish kills in state waterways.

Citing a recent decision in Mississippi, the lawmakers write that the EPA needs to “immediately reconsider” its Florida standards.

“It has come to our attention that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently denied the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy’s (MCEA) petition requesting that the EPA set numeric nutrient water quality standards for the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico,” reads the letter. “As representatives of the only state in the nation subject to EPA numeric nutrient standards, we hope that EPA’s cooperative approach to the Mississippi River basin signals that EPA will immediately reconsider its unilateral actions in Florida.”

The letter is signed by Marco Rubio, Vern Buchanan, Connie Mack and a host of others.

Read the full letter:

It has come to our attention that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently denied the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy’s (MCEA) petition requesting that the EPA set numeric nutrient water quality standards for the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. As representatives of the only state in the nation subject to EPA numeric nutrient standards, we hope that EPA’s cooperative approach to the Mississippi River basin signals that EPA will immediately reconsider its unilateral actions in Florida.

In a letter dated July 29th to the Legal Director of MCEA, the EPA outlines several nation-wide efforts the Agency has made to address nutrient loadings throughout the country. The letter states that “the most effective and sustainable way to address widespread and pervasive nutrient pollution in the MARB and elsewhere is to build on these efforts and work cooperatively with states and tribes to strengthen nutrient management programs.” Furthermore, the Agency states it is “exercising its discretion to allocate its resources in a manner that supports targeted regional and state activities to accomplish our mutual goals of reducing N and P pollution and accelerating the development and adoption of state approaches to controlling N and P.” [Emphasis added.]

As you know, the State of Florida is the only state that EPA has overtaken with Federal regulations to address nutrients in water bodies. Notably, all of the national efforts outlined in the Agency’s July 29th letter to MCEA equally apply to Florida. Additionally, in the EPA’s own words, “Florida has developed and implemented some of the most progressive nutrient management strategies in the Nation.”

Recognizing this good work in our state, on April 22nd, Secretary Vineyard of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection formally requested that EPA withdraw its Federal nutrient rules and instead allow Florida to manage nutrient loadings in its own waters. EPA has declined to accept this request, despite the clear evidence that Florida has been a national leader in water quality management. The state has invested millions of dollars into the EPA-approved TMDL program and has seen remarkable water quality improvements because of its work. In singling out Florida for federal nutrient criteria promulgation, however, EPA has continued to ignore the effective steps Florida has taken to manage nutrient loadings to its state waters.

Given your Agency’s recent response to MCEA’s petition and the efforts taken by our state agencies to properly implement nutrient control programs, we question the EPA’s justification for ignoring the work in the State of Florida by declining to respond to the petition filed by the state on April 22nd. While we recognize the geographical differences in setting criteria for a region versus a single state, we fail to see the need for the Agency to continue to intervene in the State of Florida for the very reasons that the Agency denied MCEA’s petition – the issue is best addressed by the states in cooperation with the EPA. The current regulatory scheme in Florida simply does not reflect cooperation. Furthermore and most importantly, it is our understanding that, by declining to simply take action on the DEP petition, the EPA has created further regulatory uncertainty for many of the employers in Florida eager to create more jobs for our constituents.

Consistent with the cooperative federalism envisioned by Congress in the Clean Water Act, we ask that the EPA immediately withdraw its decision to impose numeric nutrient criteria in Florida and place our state on a level playing field with states in the Mississippi River watershed and throughout the rest of the nation. Specifically, and to this end, we respectfully request that you immediately grant the petition filed on April 22nd by the State of Florida so that the state can move forward in protecting Florida’s waters and businesses can move forward in creating more jobs in our state with newfound regulatory certainty.

Given the importance of this issue and the vast economic implications of inaction, we look forward to your prompt response.

The SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes) system models have been developed for seven large regions of the U.S.,  and can be used to compare nutrient sources and watersheds in areas such as the South Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

The model was developed by the Geological Survey’s National Water Quality Assessment Program, which “provides information about water-quality conditions and how natural features and human activities affect those conditions.” Federal, regional and state agencies have used the SPARROW model results to inform water-quality management decisions.

“A majority of the nation’s estuaries are moderately to highly impacted by nutrient pollution which threatens living resource habitats, causes oxygen-depleted ‘dead zones’ and can fuel harmful algae blooms,” said Dr. Robert Magnien, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research, in a press release. “This USGS decision support system represents a major advance in the availability of sound scientific information to enable the effective management of this growing threat to our valued coastal resources and economies.”

The SPARROW system allows users to evaluate sources of nutrients (including industry runoff), and examine how specifically they contribute to water pollution.

“For example,” reads the press release, “the decision support system indicates that reducing wastewater discharges throughout the Neuse River Basin in North Carolina by 25 percent will reduce the amount of nitrogen transported to the Pamlico Sound from the Neuse River Basin by three percent; whereas a 25 percent reduction in agricultural sources, such as fertilizer and manure, will reduce the amount of nitrogen by 12 percent.”

In Florida, excessive nutrient pollution has proven to be an enormous problem — one that leads to large-scale algal blooms and fish kills. Despite the fact that these blooms hurt local economies and can impact the health of Floridians, lawmakers and industry leaders are fighting tooth-and-nail against a set of EPA standards that aim to combat nutrient pollution.

Saying that “we are a nation, not 50 individual states” and that when a disaster hits “we, as Americans, stand together,” Sanders described Paul’s assertion that government should remove itself from the disaster response business as the GOP presidential hopeful being “completely out to lunch” on the issue.

“That’s what being a nation is all about,” Sanders said.

Although Sanders’ comments to CNN (embedded below) came in the wake of Hurricane Irene slamming the nation’s east coast, Paul, a Republican with a distinct libertarian bent, has long held that FEMA and other government programs should be eliminated. His latest remark came on Fox News Sunday, when he told Chris Wallace that “FEMA has been around since 1978, it has one of the worst reputations for a bureaucracy ever.

“It’s a system of bureaucratic central economic planning, which is a policy that is deeply flawed,” said Paul.

Paul has previously argued that FEMA assistance following hurricanes in along the Gulf of Mexico created a sense of dependency that helped ruin local economies — a charge he repeated on Sunday.

“We’ve conditioned our people that FEMA will take care of us and everything will be OK, but you try to make these programs work the best you can, but you can’t just keep saying, ‘Oh, they need money,’” Paul said, adding “this country is bankrupt.”

Instead of continuing to provide assistance through FEMA, Paul suggested an immediate end to U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, earmarking half of the funds saved for deficit reduction and the other half to “tide people over until we come to our senses.”

Dead zones come about when oxygen levels are so low that marine life in bottom and near-bottom waters cannot be supported. The gulf’s dead zone has become notorious and has been, at times, an obstacle for Florida’s commercial fishing industry.

According to the Geological Survey study, “state and federal partners serving on the Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force are striving to decrease nutrients transported to the Gulf to reduce the size of the hypoxic zone to less than 5,000 square kilometers (about 2,000 square miles) by 2015.”

Among the major findings of the study was that nitrate transport to the Gulf of Mexico was 10 percent higher in 2008 than 1980, which is in part due to the flow of the water.

From the study:

Nitrate transport during the spring is one of the primary determinants of the size of the Gulf hypoxic zone. At times of high spring streamflow during the period studied, the concentration of nitrate decreased at the study site near where the Mississippi River enters the Gulf of Mexico, indicating that some progress has been made at reducing nitrate transport during high flow conditions. However, during times of low to moderate spring streamflow, concentrations increased. The net effect of these changes is that nitrate transport to the Gulf was about 10% higher in 2008 than 1980.

Earlier this week, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the dead zone wasn’t as large as had been previously estimated. But, at 6,765 square miles wide, it’s still larger than the state of Connecticut.

The gulf is responsible for about 40 percent of the seafood harvested in the lower 48 states, and the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has conservatively estimated(PDF) that dead zones and harmful algal blooms cost U.S. coastal economies about $82 million a year.

The Geological Survey study examined concentrations and transport of nitrates at eight major study sites in the Mississippi. The results of the study are published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

The full report (PDF) begins with a letter to shareholders that acknowledges the April 20, 2010, event, before going on to absolve Transocean of any liability in connection to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent gush of oil that resulted in 11 deaths and 205.8 million gallons of oil in the waters off the Gulf Coast.. The report states:

It remains our view that Transocean is contractually indemnified against all claims stemming from the environmental and economic impacts of the hydrocarbons spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from the Macondo well after the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon.

The report goes on to detail the “bonus targets” made available to its executive officers in part to honor the company’s “exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate.”

Based on bonus percentages and salary figures given in the report, a breakdown of executive bonuses follows:

The executives were also awarded stock options, adding to the millions in stocks that each holds in the company. The report goes on to detail $380,000 in raises for the executives that went into effect in February of this year.

The news that Transocean higher-ups are doing just fine for themselves comes on the heels of reports that BP is set to restart drilling on its 10 Gulf of Mexico deepwater oil rigs. The drilling will begin under stricter safety regulations this summer.

In a joint statement with Michael Bromwich, director of the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, U.S. Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar said, “This exploration plan meets the new standards for environmental review and marks another important step toward safer deepwater exploration.”

Bromwich added, “Shell’s submission has satisfied the heightened environmental standards that we are now applying and I am confident that other operators can satisfy the same standards.”

Shell intends to dig three exploratory wells. The company’s plan was the first to be approved of 14 proposals to re-initiate deepwater drilling in the Gulf. WGNO, New Orleans’ ABC affiliate, reports that the approval will likely lead to many more proposals coming in.

The news comes on the heels of reports of a 30-mile-long oil slick on the surface of the water off the coast of Louisiana. Late last week, several locals reported seeing what they thought was oil creating a sheen on the coastal waters outside New Orleans. Those early reports have since been confirmed by the appearance of petroleum and tar balls washing up on the shores of several barrier islands near New Orleans. Officials are puzzled as to the source of the oil and are currently testing samples to see if it might have a connection to the Deepwater Horizon spill, it it’s leakage from a Coast Guard oil well plugging project or if it’s from some other source.

Update: The AP:

The Coast Guard says a miles-long patch of discolored goop floating in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be caused by river sediment.

The Coast Guard tested the patch Sunday and found only trace amounts of petroleum that were well below the state of Louisiana’s standard for clean water. A news release says The Coast Guard believes the discoloration is the result of sediments brought down the Mississippi River.