From the Shores of Louisiana: A letter from a Louisiana fisherman

by Jon Bowermaster on

Among the many I’ve met and worked with in southern Louisiana (SoLa) these past two years, making a film about the relationship between man and the sea, no couple has impressed me more than Tracy Kuhns and Michael Roberts. Committed to family, community, and the environmental concerns of them all, they share many hats: Both work as the Louisiana Bayoukeepers. Mike is a fulltime fisherman and when he’s not fishing, a builder. Tracy runs the local Fisherman’s Association They have kids and grandkids and neighbors along the watery canals where they all keep their fishing boats tied. I shared their story with you a couple Dispatches back, from Barataria

Tracy is usually the front person; she was the one who got the Mayor of Lafitte on the phone the other day when I was visiting, haranguing him to decide if the fishery was open or not. Mike often stands in the background, especially when it comes to journalists. But he was the one who compared BP execs to terrorists, for the damage the local economy and fishing grounds that now appears will last for many, many years. Last Sunday, Mike and Tracy went out from their home on the waters leading to Barataria Bay and the Gulf to see just how bad it is. Below is an email Mike sent me after we’d visited:

The boat ride, out from Lafitte, Louisiana on Sunday to our fishing grounds was like any other I have taken in my life as a commercial fisherman from this area. I have made this same trip thousands of times in my 35 plus years of shrimping and crabbing.

A warm breeze in my face, it is a typical Louisiana summer day. Three people were with me — my wife Tracy, Ian Wren, and our grandson, Scottie. I was soon to find out just how untypical this day would become for me, not unlike a death in the family. This was going to be a very bad day for me.

As we neared Barataria Bay, the smell of crude oil in the air got thicker and thicker. The approach of the fishing grounds, an event that has always brought joy to me all of my life, was slowly turning into a nightmare. As we entered Grand Lake, the name we fishermen call Barataria Bay, I started to see a weird, glassy look to the water and soon it became evident there was oil sheen as far as I could see. Soon, we were running past patches of red oil floating on top of the water. As we headed farther south we saw at least a dozen boats, which from a distance appeared to be shrimping. But we soon realized that shrimping was not what they were doing at all; instead they were towing oil booms in a desperate attempt to corral oil that was pouring into our fishing grounds. We stopped to talk to one of the fishermen towing a boom, a young fisherman from Lafitte. What he told me floored me. “What we are seeing in the lake, the oil, was but a drop in the bucket of what was to come,” he said. He had just come out of the Gulf of Mexico and said, “It was unbelievable, and the oil runs for miles and miles and was headed for shore and into our fishing grounds. I thought what I had already seen in the lake was bad enough for a lifetime. We talked a little while longer, gave the fisherman some protective respirators, and were soon on our way. As we left the small fleet of boats working feverishly, trying to corral the oil, I became overwhelmed with what I had seen.

I am not real emotional and consider myself a pretty tough guy. You have to be to survive as a fisherman. But as I left that scene, tears flowed down my face and I cried. Something I have not done in a long time, but would do several more times this day. I tried not to let my grandson, Scottie, see me crying. I didn’t think he would understand, that I was crying for his stolen future. None of this will be the same, for decades to come. The damage is going to be immense and I do not think our lives here in South Louisiana will ever be the same. He is too young to understand. He has an intense love for our way of life here. He wants to be a fisherman and a fishing guide when he gets older. That’s all he’s ever wanted. It is what he is, it is in his soul, and it is his culture. How can I tell him that this may never come to pass now, now that everything he loves in the outdoors may soon be destroyed by this massive oil spill? How do we tell this to a generation of young people in south Louisiana who live and breathe this bayou life that they love so much, could soon be gone? How do we tell them? All this raced through my mind and I wept.

We continued farther south towards Grand Terre Island. We approached Bird Island. Its real name is Queen Bess Island, but we call it Bird Island, because it is always full of birds. It is a rookery, a nesting island for thousands of birds, pelicans, terns, gulls and more. As we got closer we saw that protective booms had been placed around about two thirds of the island. But it was obvious to me that oil had gone under the boom and was fouling the shore and had undoubtedly oiled some birds. My God. We would see this scene again at Cat Island and other unnamed islands. We continued on to the east past Coup Abel Pass and saw more shrimp boats trying to contain some of the oil on the surface. We arrived at 4 Bayou Pass to see more boats working on the same thing. We beached the boat and decided to look at the beach between the passes.

The scene was one of horror to me. There was thick red oil on the entire stretch of beach, with oil continuing to wash ashore. The water looked to be infused with red oil, with billions of what appeared to be red pebbles of oil washing up on the beach with every wave. The red oil pebbles, at the high tide mark on the beach, were melting into pools of red goo under the hot Louisiana sun. The damage was overwhelming. There was nobody there to clean it up. It would take an army to do it. Like so much of coastal Louisiana, it was accessible only by boat. Will it ever be cleaned up? I don’t know. Tears again. We soon left that beach and started to head home.

We took a little different route home, staying a little farther to the east side of Barataria Bay. As we approached the northern end of the bay, we ran into another raft of oil that appeared to be covering many square miles. It was only a mile from the interior bayous on the north side of Barataria Bay. My God. No boats were towing boom in this area. I do not think anyone even knew it was there. A little bit farther north we saw some shrimp boats with boom, on anchor, waiting to try and protect Bayou St. Dennis from the oil. I alerted them that oil was on its way. I hope they were able to control it before it reached the bayou. We left them and started towards home.

My heart never felt so heavy as on that ride in. I thought to myself, This is the most I’ve cried since I was a baby. In fact I am sure it was. This will be a summer of tears for a lot of us in south Louisiana.

JB: I spoke with Tracy after their exploration. She was no less moved:

“We are heartbroken. The oil has moved into Barataria Bay and is heading north. The southern half of our fishing grounds is closed. Seeing grown, tough men cry and knowing our grandchildren, like Scottie, who’s life and career dreams are related to bayou life, is something to hard to watch or think about. The government, whose sole purpose is to protect the health and safety of its citizens has and is continuing to fail the people. They are allowing BP to kill the Gulf of Mexico and its coastal communities. Shame on them, how can they sleep at night?”

From the shores of Louisiana: What fuels energy change?

by Jon Bowermaster on

Born in the Natal province of South Africa, Ivor van Heerden has been an adopted Louisianan for more than thirty years. During his years here he’s been head of the state’s coastal restoration program, on the staff at LSU, co-director of the state’s hurricane center and a head of Team Louisiana, which investigated the hows and whys of the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina.

Also along the way he’s been branded everything from an expert to a gadfly, an egomaniac to a Cassandra. While he predicted the damage a Katrina-like storm would have on New Orleans several years before it happened – thus his charge to investigate after the hurricane – when he came out very publicly pointing fingers at the Army Corps of Engineers for “shoddy engineering” his job at LSU was suddenly eliminated (“budget cuts” said university officials; he’s still suing to get his job back).

He’s stayed in Louisiana since he was let go from LSU more than a year ago because he’s invested so much time studying its coastline and because he truly loves the state and its wildernesses. Since the Gulf spill he’s been up and down the coastline and in the air above it, consulting with clean-up efforts.

When I find him in his gravel drive in a small town outside Baton Rouge he’s packing his car for Houma, home of one of the spill’s command centers. Despite a reputation as a nature lover he’s no fuzzy romantic and is calmly outspoken on everything from big hurricanes to big oil. He’d spent the day before on two flights over the Chandleur Islands, where oil had just come ashore.

%Gallery-95432%”This is absolutely the last thing we need, being the most important part of the year in Louisiana ecologically. Our wetlands are already in such sad shape and now we’ve got hurricane season approaching. It’s the growing season for the grasses and wetland plants that suck energy out of the surge, which help protect us from storms. And of course this is the time of year when the birds are breeding and the fish larvae are starting to enter the bays and estuaries.”

How bad was the view from the air? “It was truly impressive. Some of the slicks are huge – one we looked at was 10 miles by 2 miles, about a mile off the coast. If something like that came ashore it would be devastating.

“A worst case scenario would be that a tropical storm spins out next week and we have five, six, ten feet of surge and it drives that oil in and totally fouls a huge part of coastal Louisiana. In some ways we’re lucky it’s happening now rather than during the height of hurricane season, which is when we expected such a catastrophe to happen because a drill rig had been knocked over.”

Given his ongoing fight with LSU over his job – his request for a trial was turned down just a week ago, though he is appealing – I wonder if he might temper his outspokenness regarding assigning blame for the spill.

“Obviously BP, or Transocean are at fault since it’s their equipment that failed. Whether it was malfunction of equipment or human error, they are ultimately responsible. But we Americans share a fair amount of the blame. Most of us are in denial about the whole energy situation in this country so it is our fault as much as anyone else’s.

“But BP or Exxon or whoever else is not going to go drill in one-mile deep water if they can’t make money. It costs them billions of dollars to sink just one well. But they can make money because of our energy policy. If we could suddenly change it so that we all had solar panels on our roofs, use solar heating and so on, we would reduce the demand for this oil and it would become uneconomical to go into these deep waters and we could eliminate some of these problems. But I don’t think that’s going to happen, I honestly don’t. I think we’re just going to continue down this road until we have a major energy catastrophe when we are all of a sudden forced to change.”

Hyatt Regency to reopen New Orleans hotel

by Melanie Nayer on

The Hyatt Regency New Orleans closed its doors after the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, but five years later the hotel is poised for a grand reopening.

The New Orleans Hyatt was a familiar fixture during the city’s coverage of Katrina. The hotel, located near the Louisiana Superdome, suffered from water and wind damage after the hurricane. In 2007, was purchased by Poydras Properties Hotel Holdings, which includes a Hyatt subsidiary, for $32 million, setting the hotel back on a path to reopening.

According to Hyatt, the multi-million renovations will include all 1,193 rooms and 53 suites. The new restaurants include a 350-seat, full-service restaurant with private and semi private dining rooms; a 210-seat media/action bar with private and semi-private lounges; a 70-seat atrium bar; a 2,000 square-foot full service coffee bar; a 24-hour convenience store featuring fresh food items; and a 7,600 square-foot specialty restaurant.

The reopening is part of an economic development plan designed by the New Orleans Regional Planning Commission and New Orleans Downtown Development District to revitalize the New Orleans business district.

[via Nola.com]

From the shores of Louisiana: The oil spill’s effect on fishing

by Jon Bowermaster on

Barataria, Louisiana – It is the perfect blue-sky, humidity-less spring day in bayou country that makes you feel like everything should be all right in the world. The intercoastal waterway leading to the Gulf of Mexico is calm, the canals that host fishing boats behind each neat suburban home reflect the midday sun and a cool breeze washes away extraneous sounds and smells.

But despite the bucolic day, fisherman Mike Roberts is angry. “Osama bin Laden couldn’t have done a better job of destroying a part of the American economy. This oil spill? It’s like the ultimate act of terrorism. And these guys …” – BP and Transocean executives, and the federal agency that was supposed to police them but appears to have been very cozy with the oil industry (Mineral Management Service) – “should be treated like terrorists.”

As we talk, a leftover shrimp lasagna heating in the oven, we watch soundless oil company heads testifying before Congress on headline news. Mike, and his wife Tracy Kuhns, glimpse at the television as we talk. Their house, a pair of fishing boats tied up on the canal just feet from the backdoor, is a hub this morning for neighbors, friends and relatives looking for information. When this fishing community went to bed last night they thought they were going to be able to shrimp today in the fresh waters of the bayou. But they woke to learn that all fishing along the coast had been shut down.

Tracy Kuhns never imagined a future as an environmental activist. A native of Louisiana, she was living and going to college in Texas – already a young mother – when she discovered the reason the neighborhood kids, and herself, were getting rashes and constantly sick was because they were living next door to a chemical plant’s waste pit. Six years after she began fighting, the area was declared a Superfund site, the houses in her neighborhood were razed, and she moved back to Louisiana.

%Gallery-95432%Once back home in bayou country, married to Mike, she found it impossible to look the other way when she saws signs of trouble in her new backyard. When her fishermen neighbors started bringing back stories from the nearby fishing grounds of pollution left behind by oil and gas companies who’d come in, exploited and left – leaving spills, pipelines and infrastructure behind, fouling the estuaries – she had to get involved. Joined by her husband Mike Roberts today they are the official Louisiana Bayoukeepers and she also works with the local Fisherman’s Association in Barataria, counseling on everything from health insurance to, now, recovering from the loss of income due to the oil spill.

“They have got to make up their mind,” says Mike, who put hundreds of dollars he doesn’t have into gasoline for his boat the day before and filled the on-board ice chests to the brim. “I just wasted that money.” They had just come from town hall, where fishermen had gathered for news from the mayor’s office. “I’m surprised there wasn’t a fist fight.”

Tracy wears multiple hats, as the Louisiana Bayoukeeper – affiliated with the international Waterkeeper Alliance – that monitors the environmental health of local waterways. She also looks after the Jefferson Parish Association of Family Fishermen, which has meant her living room in recent days has hosted a non-stop line of fishermen with questions. As we talk she helps an old friend, a fishermen for 40 of his 57 years, fill out the forms necessary to get his boat in line to help skim oil. “They’re going to put your boat to the top of the list,” jokes Mike, “because you got that Karaoke machine. I’m serious, he does! He gets out there fishing and just cranks it up and sings all day long.”

As Tracy and her neighbor wade through the multi-page form, she cautions him, “If you do go out there, I’m going to give you gloves, rubber sleeves, and a respirator with replaceable filters. Initially they were sending people out with nothing, no preparation, and they were coming back covered with oil after spending a day trying to scoop it up and breathing it in. We don’t want you getting sick on top of losing your jobs.”

The economic hit caused by the spill has stunned this community, its ripples being felt already. Most of these fishermen live month to month and this would normally be the middle of their biggest season of the year. On a typical mid-May day, the canal leading to the Gulf would be filled with boats; today the only movement is crab men returning from having collected their empty traps.

“I don’t know how we, or anyone here, is going to make it,” says Tracy. In one of many ironies, some of her neighbors are just now getting checks from the federal government for loss of livelihood because of Hurricane Katrina. “And those checks come with the condition that the money cannot be spent on your mortgage or food or bills, that it has to be spent on your ‘business,’ which for these guys is their boat or supplies for fishing. But if they’re not fishing … what are they supposed to do with the money?”

Each of the fishermen she counsels gets the same advice about protective gear and she walks them through a petition the fishermen’s group is preparing to make sure that any federal or state payments of support while the fishery is closed due to the spill is made in timely fashion. “We can’t wait years for help, they are going to need it right away.”

Along these quiet canals and across southern Louisiana the impact of the closed fishing grounds is already being felt. The seafood processing plants that line the intercoastal are shut; boat repair shops and supply stores are not bothering to open; in New Orleans, restaurants are scratching shrimp off menus (despite that they have shrimp in some cases, but worried buyers aren’t buying, wrongly afraid the seafood on hand is already dirty). At Veleo’s, a restaurant across the intercoastal in Lafitte the owner admits he’s stocking up with frozen fish.

Mike and Tracy have a handful of kids, one daughter lives across the street; none are in the fishing business. “We’ve got one grandson who insists he wants to be a charter fishermen,” says Mike, “But he’s only twelve years old. I don’t think that’s going to be an option for him.”

Just after noon their cell phones start buzzing. Apparently the governor has signed a waiver re-opening shrimping in Region 2, their fishing grounds.

“C’mon,” says Mike, “they’ve got to quit jerking us around. Open. Closed. Open. Closed.” But he jumps on the phone, alerting neighbors who may not have heard the news and hustling his crew back to the boat. Within the hour they’ll head out for a 24-to-48 hours run. It’s the height of a young shrimping season and if they’re able to bring back a $5,000 haul, it could be the last income from fishing they see for months, or years.

“I’m trying not to be overly pessimistic,” says Tracy, as Mike scoops steaming shrimp lasagna into bowls, “but given what we’re hearing about the mess out there I really don’t see fishing coming back.” A neighbor had made the thirty-mile motor out to the Gulf the day before to see the spill up-close and reported back that “you could run for four hours at top speed and you’d never get clear of it.” And a mile below the surface, the well just keeps pumping.

“We’re used to spills around here, but usually they’re small and you won’t be able to fish in that area for a couple years. This is something totally different. This is something they (the oil company) can’t control and it’s just heartbreaking and infuriating.

“What they’ve done here is wiped out these coastal communities. We have no idea what kind of impact it’s going to have over the long term, but we know right now it has essentially put us all out of business — the marinas, the charter captains, the commercial fishermen, nobody can do anything.

Like many fishermen along the Gulf coast Tracy is very worried that fishing as we know it along the Louisiana coast may be finished. For good. “I’m not a biologist, I’m not a scientist, but I know that if you kill off all your little marine creatures, even the bacteria and the algae that they eat, then how do you restore that stock? Even if you are able to clean it up, if the sediment covers all the oil and hides it, how do you recover everything that you’ve lost?

“The federal government has allowed this to happen by relaxing the regulations on the oil companies. Because if they’d kept those regulations in place, which would have forced them to spend that extra $500,000 (on mandatory blowout preventers) out of their billions in profit that they make every few months, this probably wouldn’t have happened. And we wouldn’t be faced with billions and billions dollars of of damage to our resources, our communities and our social structure

Since is mostly worried about her neighbors, many of whom are turning to her for advise. “They are angry and they are scared. Everybody is shell-shocked, nobody knows what to do.If there had been booms available everyone of these guys would have jumped out and started boomin’ that oil … they are desperate to try and do something to save this place they love.”

Top Fourth of July fireworks spots across the US

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Here are ten of the biggest and best (as well as some smaller and more regionally or otherwise distinctive) fireworks displays to anticipate this Fourth of July across the United States. And even if you can’t be in ten places across a continent in a single day (you can’t? weird!) these spots might just provide a good reference list for your next decade of Fourth of July vacation planning.

1. South Lake Tahoe, California.

The largest synchronized fireworks display west of the Mississippi will kick off on the southern end of South Lake Tahoe, starting around 9:45 pm. Lake Tahoe provides a mesmerizing surface for reflected pyrotechnics.

2. Seward, Alaska.

Seward, south of Anchorage, is flooded with tourists on July 4. The town’s festivities get off to an early start with Seward’s waterfront fireworks, which begin at 12:01 am on the morning of July 4.

3. Washington, DC.

A display over the Washington Monument is one of the country’s most distinctive. Fireworks are set off from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after 9:00 pm.

4. New York City, New York.

The Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks show, set along the Hudson River, will kick off at 9 pm with Justin Bieber tasked with the job of getting the patriotism flowing. (How’s that for Canadian-American cross-border good will?) This year’s display is graced with a score titled “American Harmony,” performed by the New York Pops and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

5. Amarillo, Texas.

The largest fireworks display in the Texas panhandle gets started at 9:30 pm at John Stiff Memorial Park. 10,000 people are expected this year.

6. Salt Lake City, Utah.

Jordan Park, on the arty west side of Salt Lake City, hosts a 10 pm fireworks display.

7. Ala Moana Center, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Hawaii’s biggest fireworks display kicks off at 8:30 pm at the Ala Moana Center shopping mall in Honolulu, following several hours of musical entertainment.

8. Tacoma, Washington.

Tacoma’s fireworks will get going at 10 pm on the city’s Commencement Bay, the grand finale of Tacoma’s annual Freedom Fair. The bay provides a glorious expanse for the fireworks display.

9. St. Louis, Missouri.

At 9:15 pm, a fireworks display will close out 2010’s Fair Saint Louis at Gateway Arch. The St. Louis display is regarded to be one of the best in the country by hardcore fireworks fans.

10. New Orleans. Louisiana.

The Big Easy’s Dueling Barges Fireworks Extravaganza makes for an especially vibrant and exciting fireworks display.


Don’t see your city listed? More great destinations here!

[Image: Flickr/Clearly Ambiguous]