Obviously if you dialed in you have noticed that the "coast", "marsh" and the "health" of south Louisiana and it's residents are in jeopardy. I know that if you are here you do care about the people who will be affected for years on end by the catastrophe that occurred off the coast of Louisiana.
OK, I guess I have many issues. I have lived here my entire life, well, off and on, but this is my home. I live north of the lake but the gulf is how we eat.
See ya on the other side....
I promised a partial so let me give you a piece of my heart.
, the marshes and bayous of Louisiana produce and support any number of wildlife. The estuaries of fish, shrimp, crab, oyster, the fact that birds from either spectrum of the flyway congregate here is amazing. Birds from as far away as the southern tip of Chile, fly the length and breadth of South America to the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula, for the over thirty hour flight, due north to the marshes alone is astounding. This is without taking into account the birds that winter, from as far away as northern Canada. After all this is where John J. Audubon found so many of the birds that he so loved. There have been over three thousand different species documented in the swamps and marshes of southern La. The Everglades, Chesapeake Bay, and the Great Northwest pale in comparison.
Economically south Louisiana is irreplacable. Consider, the state's coastal wetlands, the largest in the continental United States, nourish huge industries that serve all Americans, not just residents of southeastern Louisiana. It has been estimated that twenty-five to thirty percent of America's oil and gas travels through the Louisianas coastal waterways, serving half of the nation's refinery capacity, few states would be willing or have the capacity to accept this responsibility, also it would take years to relocate the type of infrastructure needed. Ports along the Mississippi River, including the Port of New Orleans and the Port in LaPlace, handle over half of the countries grain shipments. And the estuaries now rapidly turning to open water produce half of the shrimp and about a third of the oysters and crabs are grown. Estimates of the destruction of the wetlands protecting this area, serving these industries would put over $100 billion at risk.
Today I cry because I know and will have to explain o my grandchildren why this year we will have no crab boils or why we can't head to Grand Isle for the tarpon rodeo. Sorry baby pawpaw can't afford the shrimp for a boil and the extra or an ettouffe.
Maybe I'll point them in this direction..
"They lied to us. They came out and said it was leaking 1,000 barrels when I think they knew it was more. And they weren't proactive," he said. "As soon as it blew up, they should have started wrapping it with booms.
Just another taste of what I was feeling even before this happened.
As you can see this is somewhat of a personal matter to me. When I think back so few years ago running those "ridges", hunting and fishing the marshes and lakes of southern Louisiana it feels almost as if I have lost a piece of myself. Sitting deep in the swamp under a massive cypress, surrounded by the live oaks, gum, chinaberry and beechnut trees. With the sounds and smells assaulting my senses. The lighthouse that once stood on solid ground, that now is crumbling and washing away, the nearest tree some one hundred yards distant, bleached white by salt, the lone skeleton where once there were many. There is the feel of a dreadful loss.