Newly released photos taken after roughly 5,000 barrels of oil poured through an Arkansas subdivision last week capture the horrific environmental destruction and its clean-up efforts.
Mayflower’s streets are seen turned into toxic black rivers with some slick pools circling around sewer holes among the dozens of photos published by the Environmental Protection Agency this week.
Behind them, backyards are seen soaked black between trees and children’s toys. Incredibly in one photo, rippling waves are seen moving out from one yard fitted with a basketball hoop near its driveway.
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Flooding: Oil pours through a front yard before running down the streets of Mayflower, Arkansas after an ExxonMobil pipeline carrying crude ruptured last week.
Trail of destruction: twenty-two homes were evacuated and at least 60 homes total affected
Efforts: A dam is seen erected to stop the flow of approximately 5,000 barrels of oil that burst into the area, Exxon said on Friday
Soaked: A backyard is seen soaked in black oil collecting in deep pools throughout the property and among children’s toys
The waves, appearing several inches deep, lead from the home’s backyard where the source is said to be.
On March 29 an Exxon Mobil pipeline carrying Canadian crude oil burst, leading to the evacuation of 22 homes. At least 60 homes total are said to be affected.
‘About 600 people are responding to the incident in addition to federal, state and local responders,’ Exxon said in a statement reporting their progress on Friday.
‘Affected wildlife includes ducks, turtles, a beaver and a muskrat. Fourteen dead ducks, one dead nutria and two dead turtles have been recovered. Fish in Lake Conway have not been affected,’ they state.
Before: Rippling waves of oil are seen moving out from this flooded yard fitted with a basketball hoop near its driveway
During: The cleanup continues after an ExxonMobil pipeline carrying crude from Alberta’s tar sands ruptured in Mayflower, Ark., last week.
After: The two homes where the oil was seen previously pouring out from its backyard are seen nearly all cleaned up
Among photos of the aftermath, however, are also pictures of the workers seen attempting to slow the flow with various barriers in the streets, yards, and canals and lakes.
Another photo shows a man in a jumpsuit pumping the oil at a rupture location.
Eighteen vacuum trucks and 59 storage tanks are among those on site, according to Exxon.
On Friday two women who live near the pipeline filed a federal lawsuit against the company seeking more than $5 million in damages.
The women are seeking money to make up for ‘a permanent diminishment in property value,’ according to the complaint. Their complaint says the women are bringing their lawsuit on their own behalf and for other people who live near the pipeline.
Covered: A branch taken from a canal is lifted out of the water, showing it seeped in oil
Wildlife: Fourteen dead ducks, one dead nutria and two dead turtles were recovered from the scene though fish in Lake Conway were said to have not been affected
Running: A canal is seen carrying some of the slick oil across its surface as Exxon says roughly 600 people, in addition to federal, state and local responders, worked to treat it
One of the women’s lawyers, Phillip Duncan, wouldn’t spell out exactly how much money they’re looking for, but their lawsuit stated the multi-million dollar sum in damages for property owners.
The lawsuit said the part of the pipeline that ruptured was ‘in an unsafe, defective and deficient condition presenting an immediate environmental harm’ on March 29.
‘The Pegasus Pipeline running throughout the state of Arkansas is most likely to be similarly situated and maintained …’ Greene and Chunn’s lawyers wrote in the complaint.
An Exxon spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit, but a spokeswoman has previously said its inspections were up-to-date.
Target site: : A neighborhood cul-du-sac identified as being the closest to the rupture is seen during cleanup
The part of the pipeline that ruptured was inspected in 2010 and again in February, according to a corrective action order that federal pipeline safety officials issued Tuesday.
The Pegasus pipeline, which runs from Patoka, Ill., to the Texas Gulf Coast, was originally built in 1947 and 1948, according to federal pipeline safety officials. It is currently out of service.
For that to change, ExxonMobil would need written approval from a federal pipeline safety official, according to the order from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
The cause of the spill is still under investigation.
Dispatches From Exxon’s Spill Zone, Day 2
April 5, 2013
Mayflower, AR, April 4 – We had hoped to interview some affected residents, but they were too sick to talk to us. They live on a street immediately adjacent to the ones which were evacuated. Some homes which were not evacuated are actually closer to the spill than those which were – they’re a couple minutes by car but they’re only separated by a small grove of trees. The residents had not been contacted by Exxon or warned in any way about the dangers of tar sands. Both canceled the interview because they were feeling too sick to meet. Vomiting, headaches, dizziness, burning throats and coughing: the exact same symptoms felt by Kalamazoo residents after the Enbridge tar sands spill there in 2010.
Evacuated residents are being housed in hotels. Exxon says it plans to rent homes for them. Non-evacuated residents who are actually closer to the spill site have been given nothing. No medical attention, no offers of alternate housing, no information.
Exxon finally admitted today that what spilled from the pipe was tar sands. Before that, they had admitted that it wasn’t crude but were coy with the semantics. One evacuee who had asked about the distinction in meetings with Exxon told us that he’d been asked “well what’s your definition of tar sands?”
We started the day at Lake Conway, trying to get more footage of the neighborhoods and ecosystems affected by the spill. We got permission from a woman in the neighborhood to go into her back yard and take pictures from her dock, which goes into the body of water, adjacent to Lake Conway but not technically part of it, which was most affected by the spill. It’s easier to see it in this aerial video, taken by a photojournalist who later become ill from exposure to the plume of toxins.
While we were taking pictures of the dead lake, two Mayflower police officers approached us. Once we explained that we had permission to be there, they left. Shortly afterward, two Faulkner County sheriffs approached us and told us to leave immediately or we would be arrested. At this point, the homeowners were outside and also explained that we were allowed to be there. The officer, Deputy Sweeney, said that we were “too close to the scene” and that we had to leave.
The American flag flies over a dead lake
Out of earshot of the residents, Sweeney told us to leave. We reiterated that the landowner gave us permission. Sweeney said that we didn’t have his permission. We said that it was the landowner’s property. He responded “It’s my property now.”
We returned to our car. It seemed like it would be okay to get more footage from the public road running between Lake Conway and the smaller body of water. Two of us walked along the road with a camera and tripod. Officer Sweeney crossed the road and bodily grabbed one of us, telling us to leave immediately or be arrested. We said that it was a public road and that we weren’t trespassing or breaking any laws. Sweeney said that it was his road today. We started filming the encounter, but Sweeney grabbed us again and forced the camera down.
Afterward, we reentered the woods to access the lake from a different angle. We were able to get near where some of the tar sands-soaked booms were anchored to trees.
Suddenly, we scared up a duck completely covered in tar sands. It was totally black so there is no way we could guess at the species. It was clearly distressed, flapping and stumbling rather than walking. Having talked with some graduate student biologists helping with the cleanup, we knew that the duck would likely die without help. The volunteers had explained that tar sands cause more irritation that crude oil, and that ducks they had worked with were completely red and blistered underneath their feathers. The oil also goes through their whole digestive tract.
We immediately informed the HAWK Center (Helping Arkansas Wild “Kritters”) about the duck, but it fled into the water before we could catch it for cleaning and rehabilitation.
Next, we went down the road to another cleanup site at the edge of a plaza parking lot for a Subway, Dollar Tree and other businesses. A stream running behind the Subway was partially fenced off, and workers in yellow hazmat gear were milling around, occasionally doing something to adjust a pump or hose down a streambank. Subway and the rest were open for business. Neither Exxon nor local authorities have been warning shoppers about the dangers of tar sands exposure. There isn’t even a sign indicating what’s going on.
We decided to return to the wetland area because we heard that crews had begun digging. Driving past on the highway, we saw dozens of trucks, construction vehicles, and police vehicles along the frontage road. The crews were clearing trees and digging big pits. For tar sands, “remediation” means completely removing every living part of the ecosystem. Unlike crude, it sinks. Water is drained, forests are cleared, and soil and sediment are scraped off in a somewhat grisly reenactment of the clear-cutting, strip-mining excavation of the Athabasca tar sands on the other end of this pipeline system.
We wanted to see up close what was going on here. We turned down the frontage road to get closer. The road is public, and there were no signs indicating that it was closed to traffic. It became one-way for a few hundred meters because of the line of trucks, but traffic was being waved through by flaggers.
One of the sheriff cars pulled us over. A very large officer barked commands at us, checking identification and making the driver get out of the car for interrogation. At one point, the cop said to the driver, “If it were up to me. I wouldn’t mind y’all being out here, but I’m getting paid a lot of money to keep you out of here.”
The cop threatened the whole media crew with trespassing and interfering with a government operation. This seemed strange, considering that Exxon and its contractors are overseeing every aspect of the spill and no government agencies are at the scene. It’s not surprising to us after seeing TransCanada hire local police officers as high-paid private security to guard our sustained 90-day tree sit against the Keystone XL pipeline.
This was our sixth encounter with the police in two days of filming and trying to talk to residents. We had even been kicked out of the adjacent neighborhood which was never evacuated. In four of them, the officers stressed (as police often do) that they understood what we were doing or didn’t have a problem with it, that they were following orders. Remarkably, they were unapologetic and open about the fact that those orders came directly from Exxon.
This is all standard practice when the dirty energy barons accidentally kill or sicken large numbers of people and eradicate whole ecosystems. Limit media coverage at all costs and deny everything. Once it becomes impossible to deny something, admit it and continue to deny everything else. We saw the same thing after over a million gallons of tar sands spilled in Kalamazoo, Michigan and Enbridge initially denied that the pipeline was carrying tar sands and continues to insist that peoples’ symptoms are not caused by the spill.
No one knows how to clean up tar sands, and no ones knows the extent of their health impacts. Mayflower, Arkansas is never going to be the same. One evacuee told us that several people don’t want to move back. He says he’s worried it’s broken the community. Stay tuned for more updates as we have them.
http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/exxonspill-dispatches-2/
