Monday, June 14, the Louisiana House of Representatives voted against creating a medical-monitoring program designed to assure that Gulf Coast residents exposed to oil-related chemicals will have their blood tested.
House Bill 389 by Rep. Patrick Connick, R-Marrero, was intended to address challenges faced by people who signed their rights away to BP in return for a immediate cash payment. In effect, the bill voided those agreements.
Since illnesses resulting from chemical toxins sometimes develop as slow-growing cancers, Rep. Connick said he was concerned that Gulf Coast residents could later develop ailments related to crude oil and dispersants.
“Knowledge is power, and this gives those impacted by the spill the knowledge of their rights," he told the House.
Rep. Joe Harrison, R-Napoleonville, said he had concerns that the bill would create a predatory law. “Some of the language opens this up to more than just the oil spill,” said Harrison, who voted against the measure.
Rep. Connick addressed that specific question in discussion immediately prior to the vote, saying he would personally work to defeat any extension of the bill’s rights to other disasters.
The irony of state legislators’ fearing to benefit the state’s citizens, not just the residents of the Coast, was apparently altogether lost on those involved.
The bill urged the state Health Department to “investigate any health conditions suffered by responders to the Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion and provide direction for the long-term health care of these individuals.”
In apparent support of the bill, Rep. Gisclair said, “Offshore-vessel crews, shoreline-cleanup workers and others are now facing long-term health problems.”
The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry lobbied against Connick’s proposal. The bill lost 79 to 15.
The next day, June 14, similar news came out of the Senate. Louisiana State Senator A.G. Crowe of Slidell is personally committed to banning toxic dispersants, specifically Corexit, in state waters. He had introduced SB 97 which requires that dispersants used in oil spill response and cleanup operations be “Practically Non-Toxic.”
The bill passed out of its first committee hearing with support of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network and the Sierra Club. The bill was opposed by lobbyists from Louisiana Chemical Association, the ammonia producers, and Mid Continent Oil and Gas Association. The Senate defeated the bill 21 to 10.
So our Louisiana legislature gives the appearance of being largely vassal to the petroleum and chemical industries of the state and indifferent to the fate of the residents of the state’s Gulf Coast.
In other terms, the legislature is focusing only on the fabulously profitable extractive industries while ignoring the traditional maintenance industries of the state.
In February, 2011, Dr. Riki Ott stated in an interview available on YouTube, “We have documented the continued use of dispersant, and it’s not just dispersant. It’s also genetically engineered bacteria with absolutely no thought of what this will do to the population of humans living in the area, let alone the ecosystem.”
Legislators who voted “Nay” on these two bills deserve no support from the residents of the Coast, or for that matter from the residents of Louisiana, given that a similar catastrophe could occur anywhere within the state.
SIGNED
Robert Desmarais Sullivan
Emergency Committee to Stop the Gulf Oil Disaster
Social Justice Team of the First Unitarian Church of New Orleans
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