View Full Version : Oil spills suck
As some of you may have heard some Brits spilled a little bit of oil in my backyard. :)
What you didn't know is that from last September to March of this year I was the oil spill liason for my agency. We had a reorganization and that job went to someone as 100% of their duties. With this spill they brought my boss and myself back in to help.
My duties primarily are part of the NRDA team for Fisheries in LA. NRDA is natural resource damage assessment. Its a law that is part of federal legislation governing how oil spills are "paid for" by the companies. Our job is find out how much damage has been done and then work with the responsible parties to build a restoration project to restore the loss natural resources. My duties include developing work plans to find out how to study the losses and determine the impacts. Along with providing technical expertise on other developed work plans. I was also working in response helping our field staff report oil, hurt birds and directing them to survey for fish kills.
For the first 87 days, I had 1 complete day off....July 4th. Since then things have slowed down a bit for me with the addition of new staff and now my weekends are free after a 50 to 60 hour work week.
I have some photos and will be posting them as I have time. I have some nice aerials photos of an early May flight I took. Things are as bad as they say in some cases and not in others. I am no way an expert on all things involved in this and some things I cant talk about...publicly( ie on a forum).
I will try to check back and answer questions or give updates depending on my time.
barbu1977
31-07-2010, 03:18
I guess working is better than not. I've heard many fisherman lost their job.
Keep up the good work!
'Brits' did not spill anything. BP spilled some oil. Not the same thing.
grahamiam
31-07-2010, 05:49
I am no way an expert on all things involved in this and some things I cant talk about...publicly( ie on a forum).
Sorry, but when a publicly traded company fucks up, it should be talked about publicly! These types of BS rules piss me off to no end and just give nut-jobs their conspiracy ammo, not that the recent Union Carbide judgements help either.
Sorry, but when a publicly traded company fucks up, it should be talked about publicly! These types of BS rules piss me off to no end and just give nut-jobs their conspiracy ammo, not that the recent Union Carbide judgements help either.
I am right there with you....
Difference is...things I say could hurt our case, so we keep quiet and wait for teh right moment. This whole case is strange compared to others. We are talking restoration where as I have other cases years older than we havent even decided in what state the restoration meeting should take place
BC....just figured I was gonna get you to reply. Honestly, this could have been any company. BP at least is big enough to handle the responsibilities.
Nice to see someone at CDZ is close to the fire so to say. Nasty spill indeed and what baffles me is that apparently there's no pre-thought-off plan on BP's site. From my outstander POV they're just on the trial and error path while millions of barrels of oil flood in the see. Really worrisome.
Love to see some aerial pics.
It seems to me if these big corporations and government put as much effort into avoiding or fixing problems as they put into trying to avoid blame or taking responsibility then these problems would not get to be as big as they do.
That said from what i've seen it looks like you have a lot of work ahead of you robboo get everything sorted out
Well in this case... I got lucky.
I have a background in toxicology. A very diverse background in biology form molecular engineering of plants, animal physiology, biogeochemistry to wetland ecology. Might sound like I am touting my own horn here...but my skills are very very much in need right now.
Right person at the right time in the right place.---my luck is usually a complete 180 from that.
I also love my job before the oil.. I call it the best job in the state. Still think that way, wouldn't leave for unless someone increased my salary by 100k more a year. And then I would have to think about.
socralynnek
04-08-2010, 09:48
Somehow I have to link to this:
http://xkcd.com/757/
Do your best to make them pay for this...
And I am afraid that a lot of the oil is below water and still floating around for a long time...just because you can't see it from above the water level doesn't mean it isn't there...
Love xkcd. Hate the whole spill story and the media muzzling. I get the part where people would panic if they knew, but shouldn't panicking be part of their liberties?
Anyways, I'm really not looking forward to the point when currents drag this out of the peninsula, nor to the day a hurricane gets along. Best wishes to anyone down there. Move to Canada.
Love xkcd. Hate the whole spill story and the media muzzling. I get the part where people would panic if they knew, but shouldn't panicking be part of their liberties?
Anyways, I'm really not looking forward to the point when currents drag this out of the peninsula, nor to the day a hurricane gets along. Best wishes to anyone down there. Move to Canada.
Funny you should say this to move to Canada....
This job came up for my wife down here. A research group in Canada was trying to get her up there. Timing is the only reason I am here and not there. Its too late in her career to start over. She is next in line to run the whole research lab.
read xkcd almost daily even through this. I hit 3 or 4 webcomics to keep me sane and provide a mental break.
grahamiam
05-08-2010, 22:04
read xkcd almost daily even through this. I hit 3 or 4 webcomics to keep me sane and provide a mental break.
dinosaur comics are also good, but websense don't like
Shabbaman
06-08-2010, 10:07
Is this still the same job you had some years ago? I remember you had some serious worries about job security after the start of the financial crisis.
yeah same agency. A vacancy and promotion helped. So far no one has loss their jobs, but we loss raises/travel money/ any purchases short of office supplies and they stopped replacing vacant positions.
This was one of the few. We reorganized and now 2 of us do the job 5 did before, as they have moved to fill other "more critical" jobs. I think we are due for one of those positions to come back.
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