From Design Observer, Places. Opinion by Richard Campanella
“Geography addresses the questions of where phenomena are located, and why, and how those spatial patterns affect our perceptions of place. The BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, which has been headline news since April 20, offers clear answers to the first two questions: The drilling of the well in the Gulf of Mexico, which began in December 1998, targeted the Mississippi Canyon 50 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River because millions of years of geochemistry had created a vast deposit of petroleum miles below the sea surface, and because 100 years of diminishing petroleum reserves lured corporate suppliers for an energy-demanding society into drilling that far down and off-shore to extract it. The leak that sprung from that planetary puncture occurred because of a poorly understood sequence of engineering mishaps for which this particular corporation has developed a notorious reputation — and for which eleven men paid with their lives. It is probably true that this disaster could have happened anywhere in the world where these factors aligned, particularly when no relief wells are excavated, when executives cut corners and skimp on safety, when machinery malfunctions, and when government oversight is lax.
Where the disaster did happen sheds light on the third geographical question, regarding how we perceive differences among places. The explosion occurred off the shoulders of one of the world’s best examples of a major river-dominated delta, a geomorphology especially conducive to both the formation and extraction of offshore petroleum. It spewed oil into the same general vicinity that came to world attention five years earlier for the tragic consequences of Hurricane Katrina and its levee-busting storm surge. It took place in the same region crisscrossed by the paths of hurricanes Ivan, Rita, Gustav, and Ike — all major storms making destructive Gulf Coast landfalls, all within four years. It exacerbated the estuarine “dead zone,” an area deprived of oxygen by the decomposing algae spawned by excessive Mississippi Valley fertilizer runoff. It idled the same generations-old crab, shrimp, oyster and fishing operations that saw their infrastructure destroyed repeatedly by the recent hurricanes. It sullied the shores of the single most environmentally beleaguered region on the continent: the eroding, subsiding, drowning, contaminated Mississippi Delta. Add to this a surplus of invasive species, a deficit of river-borne sediments, an excess of salt water intruding inland through a labyrinth of manmade canals, a Mississippi River that “wants” to jump channels into the Atchafalaya — plus rising seas and potentially stronger and more frequent tropical storms — and the Gulf Coast seems to have a hemispheric target draped upon it.”
Read More at New Fuel for an Old Narrative: Notes on the BP Oil Disaster: Places: Design Observer.
