Mennonite Weekly Review

PLAQUEMINES PARISH, La. — Maurice Phillips, a commercial fisher, took a group of disaster management leaders out on a small boat to “see the oil” June 7.

Maurice Phillips takes the group to see the oil. — Photo by Anna Groff/The Mennonite

This is the best way to witness the destruction of the British Petroleum oil spill, members of the Grand Bayou told Paul Unruh of Mennonite Disaster Service. Unruh led the group as part of a listening tour.

After a 30-minute boat ride from homes built by MDS on the Grand Bayou, the group came to where shiny brown oil covers the banks of the marsh and Bay Baptiste. The Gulf of Mexico surrounds Plaquemines Parish, and the Mississippi River runs through it.

At places, the group detected the oil’s odor, and they could make out a sheen on the water as well as orange residue on the top of the 2- to 3-feet-deep water.

Booms set up along portions of the bank absorbed some of the oil. But according to Phillips, this action came too late to prevent the oil from devastating the seafood industry and the livelihood of individuals in the Parish. Just five years ago these same families lost their homes because of Hurricane Katrina.

Since the spill on April 20, the Environmental Protection Agency gradually closed the waters for fishing and shrimping, and now almost all waters are closed to fishers.

“Usually this time of the year,” Phillips said, “there would be 100 shrimping boats out.” That morning, the boat for the listening tour was the only one.

The previous night, at Paul Sylve’s home on the Bayou, Phil­lips described a pelican he found covered in oil — as thick as syrup — in the water. He took the bird into his boat and delivered it to the pelican rescue at Fort Jackson.

Sylve, another fisher and an assistant pastor, said a friend of his put his arm in the water and into at least a foot of oil that felt like gelatin.

Phillips said the dispersants used by BP only sink the oil, and it still damages the marsh and wildlife.