The United States Environmental Protection Agency has a plan for responding to offshore spills. Unfortunately, according to environmental protection advocates, the plan involves the use of chemical dispersants that have been proven to do more damage than good to both humans and the environment. Two environmental advocacy groups have joined forces to file a lawsuit in California. The lawsuit is aimed at requiring the EPA to make new rules regarding oil spill cleanup, rules that would restrict the use of chemical dispersants like Corexit, that have been used to clean up past spills like Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez.
The two environmental groups that filed the lawsuit did so on behalf of other advocacy groups as well as individual plaintiffs whose lives have been impacted by past oil spill cleanup activities. The groups and individuals represented in the lawsuit have all experienced harm from the use of dispersants that were used to clean up oil spills. One plaintiff is a member of a commercial fishing family in Louisiana. She says that she and her family lost their health and their once-thriving fishing business to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The chemicals used to clean up the spill made her, her husband, and their two children severely ill. They have suffered lesions, rashes, and migraines for years, and they have not yet fully recovered. Other plaintiffs represent native Alaskans. An oil spill would threaten native Alaskans’ food security, and if chemical dispersants are used to clean up a spill, illness would add to a lack of food and cause severe problems for tribal communities.
The Clean Water Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to revise our nation’s chemical and oil spill response plans periodically, so that research results and technological advances can be incorporated into them. The last time the oil spill response plan was updated was 1994, and much information about the impacts of oil spills and oil spill cleanup activities has been learned since that time. For example, the results of long-term impact studies following the effects of the Exxon Valdez spill were not available in 1994. All of the studies and information regarding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the cleanup activities that followed it are also not included in the EPA’s current plan. The reason that a revision for the oil spill response plan is desperately needed is that the plan relies heavily on chemical dispersants to clean up oil spills. A growing body of evidence shows that chemical dispersants are neither safe nor effective for cleaning up oil spills, and their use has resulted in grave harm to both individuals and ecosystems.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the resulting cleanup efforts caused damage to many individuals in the Gulf Coast area. To learn more about BP oil spill litigation, call the Mississippi BP Oil Spill Attorneys at Barrett Law PLLC at 1 (800) 707-9577, to arrange an initial consultation.