2010 Bp oil spill and impacts on environment and local communities

Student’s Name
Instructor’s Name
Course
Date
Effects of the BP Oil Spill on the Environment and Local Communities
Introduction
It is quite a difficult responsibility to estimate the effects that any oil spill has on the environment or local communities, especially to the magnitude of the British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon. The difficulty is occasioned by numerous reasons: first the economic structure of the United States does not place any value on the death or damage of wildlife; second, it is challenging to estimate the exact physical ecosystems services that are compromised when sections of the ecology such as marshes die from oil spillage. Additionally, even though there are immediate and obvious repercussions to the spillage that can be measured today, there will be continuing, understated effects that are only starting to be recognized. For instance, some species of fish in Alaska only started to crash after three years after the Exxon-Valdez spill.
However, information about the initial environmental damages resulting from the BP spill is not available, including the economic consequence of the spill; and a few estimations of the economic destruction by previous enormous spills. For instance, claims for compensation against Gulf Coast Claims Facility are a representation of a small part of lost earnings of residents who earned a means of livelihood from the Gulf as fishermen or from the ruin of tourism. Payments made to the administration by British Petroleum for the loss of sales and income taxes have affected in a few of the cases.

Economic Damage
BP and the Gulf Coast Claims Facility have made direct payments to enterprises of different kinds and persons amounting to more than $4 billion as compensation for financial destruction. An estimated 100,000 enterprises and claimed for economic destruction; about 405,000 people also place similar claims. The Gulf Coast Claims Facility, however, has made it clear it will not pay attention to health claims, resulting in a different class of injured groups in the region. The facility has only settled a mere 116,000 claims against it out of the more than five hundred thousand claims since the spill. The expense of economic destruction may effortlessly exceed the initial $4 billion by several fold (Klemas, 158).
BP has made payments of $713 million to the state governments of Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, and Texas as for the loss of tax incomes in advance. The government of Alabama launched a case against BP for additional financial damages, a move that is similarly being considered by Mississippi, which can increase the total. The fishing industry has recorded great losses as a result of the spill. The fishermen along the Gulf lost more than $172 million following the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in commercial fish landings 2010 in comparison to the landings through a similar time the previous year. Clearly, the cost incurred throughout the year will be greater: and this figure is for landings that are the initial fish sales and is not a reflection of the additional revenue earned from processing and wholesale sales.
The general population considers that the Gulf seafood is possibly polluted by oil leading to a declined in both demand and prices. A survey launched by the Louisiana Seafood Promotion Board established that about 70 percent of customers interviewed were concerned about the safety of seafood after the spill, and 23 percent has decreased their use of Gulf seafood. It is not obvious if, and when consumption will return to previous quantities.
One of the adverse consequences of the spill, according to authorized figures from the Department of the Interior and Deepwater Horizon Unified Command, is the death of 6,045 birds and about 700 sea turtles and more than 110 sea mammals. It is similarly obvious that several dead or dying mammals were not found as they had either sank, decayed, or perished in hard to reach places. As a matter of fact, the estimation of scientists is that the actual number of dolphin deaths associated with the oil disaster could be fifty times more than the amount of carcasses of dolphins found. In recent months, reports have pointed to an alarming number of the death of bottlenose dolphins after the start of the oil spill in the Gulf, particularly among infant dolphins (Laramore, Susan, William and Amber, 203).
While scientists are still examining the reasons for the death of the dolphins, it appears possible that there is a relationship between the oil disaster and the consequent pollution of their ecology and food. The loss resulting to the tourism industry in the Gulf has been estimated at between $7 billion and $23 billion in the course of the next three years, basing on the tourism losses from previous oil disasters around the planet and the recovery time before the resumption of previous holiday and recreation patterns (Gill, Liesel, Picou, Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Long and Shenesey, 183).Effects on the Environment
Unlike previous oil spills that happened on the surface of the ocean, the one involving BP took place a mile underneath, and dispersants were introduced into the spurting plume of oil with the purpose of breaking up the oil into small, effortlessly detached drops for most of the spill. The small drips are increasingly accessible to living organisms than they are to nondispersed oil. Even though a small percentage of the oil reached the surface of the ocean, most of it remained deep down owing to great pressures and reduced temperatures and the application of dispersants. The implication is that the spill resulted in the usual types of damage accompany oil spillage, for instance, oiling beaches, coating birds, resulting in the death of marsh grass and pollution of wildlife that feed on and try to remove the spill from their bodies by licking. The other implication is the effect the disaster had on unusual places to the Gulf. Surveys done at the bottom of the ocean has revealed large coverage of oil as well as the detection of plumes of oil and natural gasses a few kilometers from the frame in the water pier. The presence of oil in the water pier can lead to four kinds of effects: harmfulness to the living things at the bottom as well as in the water pier, suffocation of the living things at the bottom in the event that it settles out, and secondary consequences on the food chain (Jernel, 57).
Effects on local Communities
As the severe stage of the Gulf oil disaster shifts to a long-lasting period, occasioned by continuing complications to the public well-being, the surrounding and economy, academics from the National Centre for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University cross-examined more than 1,200 grown-ups staying within 16 kilometres of the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Mississippi, in partnership with the Children’s Health Fund. The study, carried out by telephone in July following the covering up of the Deepwater Horizon well, established confirmation of the momentous and possibly long-lasting effect of the spill on the wellbeing, psychological condition, and financial fortunes of inhabitants and their families and on the manner in which they spent each day of their lives. The conclusions have suggestions for well-being and economic guidelines going forward (Gill, Liesel, Picou, Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Long and Shenesey, 183).
As indicated by the outcomes of the study, conducted after the well had, there is a substantial and tenacious public well-being predicament accentuated by the big percentage of children diagnosed with health and psychosomatic complications connected to the oil spill. These apprehensions will have to be evaluated and controlled in these coastal societies where there are a limited number or no pediatricians and immensely inadequate mental well-being professional capability. The assessment established a dramatic connection between economic susceptibility and health repercussions. Grownups with family earnings below $25,000 were by far the most probable to be diagnosed with physical and psychological health impacts for themselves in addition to their children (Fattal, Maanan, Tillier, Rollo, Robin, and Pottier, 84).
In conclusion, the BP oil spill had adverse effects on the areas surrounding the Gulf as well as on the health and incomes of the communities around the area. The fishing industry has recorded great losses as a result of the spill. The fishermen along the Gulf lost more than $172 million following the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in commercial fish landings in addition to having substantial and long-lasting effects on the wellbeing, psychological condition, and financial fortunes of inhabitants and their families and on the manner in which they spent each day of their lives. Lastly, the spill resulted in the death of 6,045 birds and about 700 sea turtles and more than 110 sea mammals.
Work Cited:
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Top of Form
Fattal, P, M Maanan, I Tillier, N Rollo, M Robin, and P Pottier. “Coastal Vulnerability to Oil Spill Pollution: the Case of Noirmoutier Island (france).” Journal of Coastal Research. (2010): 879-887. Print.
Gill, Duane A, Liesel A. Ritchie, J S. Picou, Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Michael A. Long, and Jessica W. Shenesey. “The Exxon and Bp Oil Spills: a Comparison of Psychosocial Impacts.” Natural Hazards : Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards. 74.3 (2014): 1911-1932. Print.
Jernel, Arne. “The Threats from Oil Spills: Now, Then, and in the Future.”Ambio: a Journal of the Human Environment. 39.6 (2010): 353-366. Print.
Klemas, Victor. “Tracking Oil Slicks and Predicting Their Trajectories Using Remote Sensors and Models: Case Studies of the Sea Princess and Deepwater Horizon Oil Spills.” Journal of Coastal Research. (2010): 789-797. Print.
Laramore, Susan, William Krebs, and Amber Garr. “Effects of Macondo Canyon 252 Oil (naturally and Chemically Dispersed) on Larval Crassostrea Virginica (gmelin, 2011).”Journal of Shellfish Research. 33.3 (n.d.): 709-718. Print.
Bottom of Form