 |
| credit: Washington Post |
The flow rate from BP's blowout on Mississippi Canyon Block 252 is critical to determining
the amount of damages BP could be forced to pay under the Clean Water Act. A federal employee watchdog group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), filed a Freedom of Information Act suit on September 16th to release hundreds of documents and e-mails in the possession of
Obama & Folks, Inc. that are behind the government estimations of the size of the
Deepwater Horizon spill. Currently, the consensus figure is around
4.4 million barrels, making it the largest accidental spill in history or
17 times the size of the
Exxon-Valdez disaster.*
Estimates rose five times as officials worked to minimized the size of the spill. The government panel established to estimate the size as part of its spill response command, the Flow Rate Technical Group, was chaired by USGS director Dr. Marcia McNutt. PEER claims in its suit that McNutt mislead the public by releasing only the minimum estimates of the panel while deleting any information or wording indicating the existence of much higher estimates. PEER also claims that the documents behind the various estimates are being withheld by the government in violation of the Freedom of Information Act. McNutt issued an order directing group members from releasing any information related to the work of the technical group. Despite formal requests for the group's papers only 26 documents have been released. The director of PEER accused
Obama & Folks, Inc. of taking steps to
falsely minimize the impact of the spill, and manipulating the science used to arrive at the low estimates as well as
the government claim that 75% of the oil dissipated or was removed. University of Georgia scientists say 70 to 79% of the spilled oil has not been recovered.
*only the deliberate release of oil during the Persian Gulf War is larger at 8.8 million barrels.
