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As Train Crash Death Toll Reaches 7, GOP Votes to Cut Amtrak Budget by $250M & Delay Safety Upgrades
The death toll from Tuesday’s Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia is now at seven and is expected to rise. About a dozen passengers are still missing. Authorities now say the train was traveling at about 106 miles per hour, more than double the speed limit, as it headed into a steep curve. National Transportation Safety Board member Robert Sumwalt said the accident would have been preventable if Amtrak had installed positive train control technology on that section of track. Just hours after the crash, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee rejected a Democratic amendment to offer $825 million to speed up positive train control implementation. In addition, the committee voted to cut Amtrak’s budget by $250 million. We speak to Edward Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, which represents two million transportation workers, including the vast majority of Amtrak workers, and David Sirota, senior writer at the International Business Times. His recent piece is headlined "Lawmakers Moved to Delay Rail Safety Rule Weeks Before Philadelphia Derailment."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The death toll from Tuesday’s Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia is now at seven and is expected to rise. About a dozen passengers are still missing. Some 200 people were injured, several critically. Seven cars derailed, with sections of the train so mangled people had to be rescued with the aid of hydraulic tools. Authorities now say the train was traveling at about 106 miles per hour, more than double the speed limit, as it headed into a steep curve. National Transportation Safety Board member Robert Sumwalt said yesterday the accident was preventable.
ROBERT HALSTEAD: I think we’re looking probably at either a signal cause or a human factors cause, probably more likely the latter. So, that being the case, that is exactly the kind of issue that positive train control is designed to address. And as such, if it turns out to be one or both of those causes, positive train control would absolutely have prevented this accident.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The positive train control technology prevents trains from going faster than the speed limit. It was not installed at the site of Tuesday’s crash. Federal rules require the national rail network to have an operating positive train control system by the end of the year, but in March the Senate Commerce Committee voted to extend the deadline for implementing the new technology until at least 2020. Just hours after the crash, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee rejected a Democratic amendment to offer $825 million to speed up positive train control implementation. In addition, the committee voted to cut Amtrak’s budget by $250 million.
AMY GOODMAN: Rail advocates have long called for the United States to greatly increase its spending on the nation’s rail infrastructure. One recent study estimated $21 billion is needed to repair and replace existing rail assets in the Northeast Corridor.
To talk more about the accident, we’re joined by two guests. In Washington, D.C., Edward Wytkind is with us, the president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, which represents two million transportation workers, including the vast majority of Amtrak workers. And in Denver, we’re joined by David Sirota, senior writer at the International Business Times. His recent piece is headlined "Lawmakers Moved to Delay Rail Safety Rule Weeks Before Philadelphia Derailment."
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! David, let’s start with you on that piece, on the issue of safety. Everything is being made of the fact that that train, as it was making that turn, coming out of the Philadelphia train station—it was around three miles out of Philadelphia headed to New York—that it was going at 106 miles an hour, and it looks like, seconds before, it was reduced to something like 102 miles an hour—the media very much laying the blame on the engineer. Can you talk about what could have prevented this from happening?
DAVID SIROTA: Well, there’s a technology called positive train control, which is a pretty, by our standards, low-tech technology. I mean, it’s logistically—it’s a logistical challenge to implement it, but it’s not anything—it’s not rocket science. In 2008, Congress passed a bill mandating that positive train control be implemented on the nation’s rails by the end of this year, 2015. That seems like a long time, but what happened a few weeks ago was, under pressure from the private rail industry, the Congress began moving forward a bill to delay the deadline for the implementation of positive train control. So a couple weeks ago—again, before this crash—senators, in a bipartisan fashion, on the Senate Science and Commerce Committee pushed through a bill to delay the rule. The NTSB has said that if positive train control had been implemented on this stretch of railway, which it wasn’t, that this crash would have been prevented.
And we looked at some of the campaign contributions. The chief sponsor of the bill, Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, has taken $290,000 from the railroad industry. You know, it’s not to say that if the rail—if the bill had passed, or didn’t pass, it would have solved everything, but it shows that Congress has not been really pushing the rail industry to get this implemented. And I should add that in 2011 the Obama administration, in a court proceeding, limited the scope of the amount of tracks that positive train control should apply to under that rule.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Edward Wytkind, could you give us a sense of what the general state of the transportation infrastructure here in the United States is like? The American Society of Civil Engineers gives the nation a D-plus on the state of the infrastructure in its latest report. Could you comment on that?
EDWARD WYTKIND: [inaudible] state it’s been as far back as you can look. This has become the lost generation, a generation that has stopped investing. It’s not because the people around America don’t want to invest. It’s because the people we elect are basically not getting the job done. And so, we have bridges falling down. We have railroads and transit systems that don’t have the money to implement technology, as we hear with this positive train control. We have ports that are no longer competitive with the rest of the world. And we have an aviation system that’s using, you know, 50-plus-year-old technology. And all that adds up to a tremendous challenge to keep our system not only efficient and technology-savvy, but to keep it safe. When you have life-saving technologies like positive train control, those things need to be implemented, and we shouldn’t be extending as far as the eye can see the timetable by which the industry has to implement it. And so, it’s a sad state. I’m not proud of it. We work very hard in Washington to make a different case, but we don’t have enough people elected in the Congress who understand the urgency of the problem or are willing to do anything about it.
AMY GOODMAN: Edward Wytkind, you represent the engineer. You’re the head of the union that represents many rail workers all over the country. Can you talk about, as head of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, what is what you feel needs to be done here, and his response, saying he doesn’t remember what happened? Of course, he hasn’t officially talked. We don’t really know what happened. He was taken to the hospital, and then he was released right away. His lawyer said he doesn’t remember what happened.
EDWARD WYTKIND: Well, look, unfortunately—and you alluded to this in your opening—there’s been a bit of a media frenzy focused exclusively on the engineer. And frankly, a lot of the comments that have been made—I agree with the NTSB—have been inflammatory and over the top. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not going to comment on anything specific regarding the engineer and what happened at the moment, but everybody is attempting to rush to judgment, and that’s the problem with the transportation industry. We focus so much on the human factors that we don’t look around us and see what else could happen in the industry, whether it’s rail or any other part of the transportation industry, to make things safer.
There’s all sorts of things that we’re not addressing. For example, we have chronic fatigue in the rail industry. And the rail industry won’t talk to you about that on camera, because they wouldn’t want to admit that their workers are all chronically fatigued, and they’re unwilling to agree to federal measures that would make the workforce better able to do its job and not be so tired every time they come to work. We have a railroad industry, for example, the freight railroads, that are attempting, in some cases, to go to one-person crews. We have pending regulations and a pending piece of legislation that would finally put a mandate that there be no fewer than two crew members on every train in America. Why is that? Because you need backup on trains to make sure that they’re operated safely, and those are the kind of redundancies that two crew members give one another in operations make it much safer. We just had a case in Canada where an entire town was leveled by a train, and that train was being operated by one crew member.
So, there are a lot of issues here, but unfortunately we all gravitate to "Let’s blame the worker, and let’s not look at other factors that contribute to accidents." Now, on this Philadelphia case, I’m not commenting on that case, because that should be the posture that everyone takes. We should not be trying to rush to judgment about what exactly happened at the moment. But, unfortunately, too many electeds are doing that, and I think it’s hurting the NTSB’s ability to do the right kind of investigation here.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, earlier, we heard Robert Halstead of IronWood Technologies talk about the positive train control system. I want to turn now to National Transportation Safety Board member Robert Sumwalt, who said yesterday the accident was preventable.
ROBERT SUMWALT: We have called for positive train control for many, many years. It’s on our most wanted list. Congress has mandated that it be installed by the end of this year. So, we are very keen on positive train control. Based on what we know right now, we feel that had such a system been installed in this section of track, this accident would not have occurred.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Edward Wytkind, could you comment on what Robert Sumwalt said and what the prospects are for the implementation of this technology?
EDWARD WYTKIND: Well, first of all, I obviously defer to the experts, and the NTSB is obviously an expert on it. There’s no doubt that the accident would have been prevented by positive train control. And David mentioned this earlier: There is an aggressive lobbying effort around the country, being led by the freight railroads, to try to get relief from having to implement this technology. And, yes, you were correct when you opened the show, when appropriators refuse money to help some of the rail systems implement this technology—but as the NTSB has said, and as safety experts all around the country, as they’ve done TV interviews, have said, there is no doubt that accidents such as this horrific accident in Philadelphia would be prevented by positive train control. That’s why it’s there. It’s designed to stop trains from colliding with one another, and it’s designed to help the system adjust when a train’s not functioning the way it’s supposed to be. In this case, a train going too fast, positive train control would have fixed that problem. So it is absolutely avoidable. We just have to have the political will to do it in Washington, and we have to resist heavy-handed lobbying in Washington.
AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest spoke about whether the derailment of the Amtrak train in Philadelphia would give new momentum to the Obama administration’s push for more funding from Congress.
PRESS SECRETARY JOSH EARNEST: I will just say, as a general matter, that the administration strongly believes that these kinds of investments in infrastructure make good sense. And, you know, there’s no reason that infrastructure has to be a partisan issue.
AMY GOODMAN: So, David Sirota, let’s talk about this, a couple of issues. One is, for people who don’t know what positive train control is, PTC, this issue of the train communicating with the tracks, and, of course, if it was going too fast, the brakes would automatically be put on, but the Obama administration calling for far more money going into public infrastructure. We’re talking about issues of an old system, the issue of climate change and the wearing down of the current system. Can you start off by talking about how the U.S. compares to the rest of the world when it comes to transportation systems? The Northeast Corridor, doesn’t it fund the rest of—a lot of the rest of Amtrak, because in fact it’s extremely profitable? And if the money is pulled out of it, as the Republicans are pushing to do in the House Appropriations Committee yesterday, if it’s privatized, it would be extremely valuable for some private corporation.
DAVID SIROTA: Absolutely. The stats are pretty stark here. The Economist, not exactly a super liberal publication, looked at some of this, found that the United States spends about 2.5 percent of its GDP on infrastructure. Europe, on average, spends about 5 percent of its gross domestic product on infrastructure. China is spending about 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure. I think the—you know, obviously, in terms of the age of its economy, we should be comparing—the best comparison is probably us and Europe. And the fact that we’re spending a half, roughly half, of our—of the percentage of GDP that Europe is spending on its infrastructure tells you a lot. The World Economic Forum ranked us as number 23 in the world in terms of money and maintenance of our infrastructure and how much investment we put into infrastructure. So, yes, the answer is we are definitely trailing much of the rest of the industrialized world.
And part of that is a safety issue. Part of that is an economic issue in terms of not just maintaining infrastructure, but building new infrastructure to move into a 21st century economy. We’re relying on old infrastructure that we’re not really willing to put the—make the investments to, that experts say is necessary. I mean, experts say that we need to be putting in, at minimum, another $20 billion a year in investments on our infrastructure, and we haven’t done that. And this is not a partisan issue, as I’ve heard said, which is exactly right, that if you look at polling on this, I mean, Republicans, independents, Democrats in the country at large say they support more investment in infrastructure. It’s a political problem in Washington, where this kind of spending, because it’s not sexy, it’s not glamorous, is getting crowded out.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, the comments of the Republican congressmembers yesterday, hours after this train derailment that hurt hundreds of people, killed we don’t how many at this point, but at least seven, saying, "You don’t know what caused this, so we are not going to let it get in the way of cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from last year’s Amtrak budget." Edward Wytkind, the issue of climate change, I mean, mass transportation being a very important answer to that. I think I saw a figure yesterday out of Northeastern University, the U.S. spends $1.4 billion on trains. China spends something like $124 billion on trains. We’ve made a lot of the 106 mile-an-hour train, that the train was going at 106 miles an hour. That is very serious for a Northeast Corridor train making a turn. But, I mean, we were just broadcasting from Japan. The bullet train goes hundreds of miles an hour. What about all of this and this issue of how you see—you represent millions of workers—how you see it turning from a political issue to a popular issue, since, clearly, most people do support this kind of investment?
EDWARD WYTKIND: Well, thank you. The problem is that, you know, elections have consequences. So when you continue to elect people that don’t understand the importance of these kinds of issues, you get the results that you get. David mentioned some polling. Just on Amtrak, the vast, vast majority of Americans in all parties support more money for Amtrak. We have—for those that don’t know, the tunnels through which we travel in the Northeast Corridor—there are four of them—they’re a hundred years old. While we’re traveling through hundred-year-old tunnels, barely being able to crack 60, 70 miles per hour on much of the network, you have China and Japan preparing to put trains online that go over 300 miles an hour. It’s not because this is some sexy race. This is about the economy. This is about mobility. This is about who’s going to win the economic race in this century. And you’re not going to do it using a 1950s infrastructure. And so, it’s a serious problem.
You know, you got public transit systems, that are seeing record ridership, that are being forced to cut service and jobs. As I said earlier, our nation’s ports, about a third of them can no longer receive the largest vessels coming online, because we’re not investing in the modernization of those harbors and ports. So, it couldn’t be a more serious problem, and it’s about Washington. If you ask the American people what they want, they want more infrastructure investment, yet the people they send to Washington are not getting the job done, and so we end up with these ridiculous markups in the Appropriations Committee, where, on the day of the Philadelphia wreck, you’re seeing $200-plus million cut from Amtrak, which is completely reckless and irresponsible.
AMY GOODMAN: So, David Sirota, what happens from here? That meeting, a couple of hours—what, 12 hours after people were killed and hundreds injured, but that’s the House Appropriations Committee. That doesn’t mean it’s passed all of the House or all of the Senate. And as we wrap up, who are the forces that are pushing to, for example, delay the positive train controls, the ones that are automatic speed controls on the trains, when we talk about the private rail industry?
DAVID SIROTA: Right. Well, look, you have the private rail industry pushing that. The Association of American Railroads—by the way, which includes Amtrak—lobbied against—lobbied for that extension. So you’ve got that set of lobbies. And I also think this brings in larger ideological forces. You have Republicans who don’t want to raise public revenue through raising taxes. So, ultimately, this comes down to an ideological fight, which is: Are we going to raise the public revenue that experts say is necessary to maintain and build out our infrastructure, and are we going to have a discussion about taxes? Right now the Republican Party has said they’re not going to have a conversation about taxes. And so, I think there’s going to be a lot of media. There’s going to be a lot of attention about this derailment. There’s going to be questions about why we’re cutting Amtrak funding right after the derailment. But I think, ultimately, until there’s a discussion about the underlying debate, which is really about are we going to raise public revenue, then not much is going to change.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And could you talk about—David, you mentioned the level of investment in Europe and Asia in trains relative to the U.S. How does this affect rail safety, in terms of the numbers of accidents in Asia, in Europe, compared to here in the U.S.?
DAVID SIROTA: It’s a good question. I mean, overall, train remain—rail travel remains a very, very safe form of transportation. It’s getting safer, in terms of comparing previous years to now, even in the United States. But your point, I think, is a good one, which is, when you look and compare injury rates on American railways versus European railways, we have a much higher rate of injury per mile traveled than people in Europe and countries in Europe. And that’s not according to, again, a liberal source; that is the American Enterprise Institute, which is a conservative think tank. So, part of that unwillingness to spend money on maintenance is a safety issue. Now, of course, conservatives would say—and in that American Enterprise Institute report, the conservatives say—that it would be a safer system if it was privately run. But, you know, the opponents of that say that’s crazy, that this is really a failure of oversight, a failure of regulation, a failure of rule and a failure of investment. The fact is, though, even that debate hasn’t really been happening in a nation’s capital where we’re not willing to really invest even the basic resources to maintain the current system that we already have.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us. David Sirota, senior writer at the International Business Times, we’ll link to your piece, "Lawmakers Moved to Delay Rail Safety Rule Weeks Before Philadelphia Derailment." And thank you so much to Edward Wytkind, who is the president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO. The TTD represents 32 affiliated unions with two million transportation workers, both public and private. TTD represents the vast majority of Amtrak employees.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to Seattle to talk about Arctic drilling to the north, and we’ll be talking about the Gulf and BP and the person who’s come closest to the BP oil spill. Stay with us.
The Obama administration has tentatively approved Shell’s plans to begin oil extraction off the Alaskan coast this summer. Federal scientists estimate the Arctic region contains up to 15 billion barrels of oil, and Shell has long fought to drill in the icy waters of the Chukchi Sea. Environmentalists warn Arctic drilling will pose a risk to local wildlife and exacerbate climate change. They fear that a drilling accident in the icy Arctic Ocean waters could prove far more devastating than the deadly 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill since any rescue operations could be delayed for months by harsh weather conditions. We speak to Subhankar Banerjee. He is a renowned photographer, writer and activist who has spent the past 15 years working for the conservation of the Arctic and raising awareness about indigenous human rights and climate change. He is editor of the anthology, "Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The Obama administration has tentatively approved Shell’s plans to begin oil extraction off the Alaskan coast this summer. Federal scientists estimate the Arctic region contains up to 15 billion barrels of oil, and Shell has long fought to drill in the icy waters of the Chukchi Sea.
AMY GOODMAN: Environmentalists warn Arctic drilling will pose a risk to local wildlife and exacerbate climate change. They fear a drilling accident in the icy Arctic Ocean waters could prove far more devastating than the deadly 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill, since any rescue operations could be delayed for months by harsh weather conditions. Speaking to KTUU, Lois Epstein of The Wilderness Society denounced the government’s decision to greenlight oil exploration.
LOIS EPSTEIN: Their record from 2012 drilling in the Arctic Ocean was a disaster, by anyone’s measure. One of their of drill rigs grounded near Kodiak. There were fires. There were criminal penalties for air pollution violations.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Washington, D.C.—Washington state, where we’re joined by Subhankar Banerjee. He’s a renowned photographer, writer and activist who’s spent the past 15 years working for the conservation of the Arctic and raising awareness about indigenous human rights and climate change, editor of the anthology, Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point. His recent piece for TomDispatch is called "To Drill or Not to Drill, That is the Question." In 2012, he won a Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation.
Subhankar Banerjee, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the Obama administration decision and what this means for the Arctic?
SUBHANKAR BANERJEE: The decision is both irresponsible and reckless. But let me clarify something at the beginning. What the administration has approved now is the exploration plans for Shell to drill this summer, starting from July to October. But this is not the—this is the most significant permit that Shell needs, but not all of the permits. So Shell still needs more permits from, like, NOAA, Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies. So that’s why the activists are working very hard to make sure that some are—some of these permits are not granted, because it’s a reckless decision, as you mentioned, for multiple reasons, the primary ones being a spill in the Arctic Ocean would be far more devastating than what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. And the administration has finally acknowledged, after losing in two federal courts—one in 2010 and one in 2014—that there is a 75 percent chance of one or more major spills if exploration leads to production. So a spill is inevitable.
And if a spill does happen, as you mentioned, that, let’s say, a spill happens late in the season, like in October, then that oil will have to be left in place for like nine months, because the sea ice gets covered, covers the Arctic Sea, until the ice melts the following year, when effective cleanup can begin. But even if the spill happens in the summertime, it is a real problem, because the Arctic Sea always has constant dangers of large ice flows—and Shell already encountered that in their 2012 drilling season—as well as deep fog that severely restricts visibility, and the storms have become more violent and more intense. You combine that with the fact that there is absolutely no deep water port in U.S. Arctic—the nearest Coast Guard station is a thousand miles away—and there is no infrastructure in place. Like in your previous segment, you were talking about infrastructure. There is absolutely no infrastructure in place to respond to a large spill. So that’s the spill site.
The second site that we need to understand, that Arctic is what is called the integrator of world’s climate systems, both atmospheric and oceanic. Just to give you a couple of examples, what happens in the Arctic affects not just the Arctic, but the whole planet. The severe—recent years, severe winter weather in the Northeast of U.S. as well as the severe ongoing drought in California both have now been linked by recent scientific studies to slowing down of the Arctic jet stream, because the Arctic is warming at a much faster rate than the lower latitudes. And the second one is the Gulf Stream, where you have the warm water from the Gulf of Mexico and the southern latitudes go up to the Arctic, goes down into the deep ocean, gets cold and comes back. It’s called the Gulf Stream, that maintains, again, our oceanic and atmospheric process. That, too, is slowing down. And its impacts are not yet very well understood, but one thing is that it will further contribute to the increase of the sea level. So what happens in the Arctic affects us all, but also to the indigenous people up there. And you mentioned the ecology of the region. If the American public knew what is in those Arctic seas of America—Beaufort and the Chukchi—they will not allow drilling there, because it is truly a national and an international ecological treasure.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, according to this ad by Shell, the oil company has developed unprecedented Arctic oil spill response contingency plans.
SHELL AD: Shell’s Alaska exploration program is defined by its remoteness, and Shell has gone to great lengths to make sure a worst-case scenario, such as an oil spill, never takes place. But in the unlikely event that one did, Shell’s on-site oil spill response assets would be deployed and recovering oil within one hour. The recovery effort would be aided by nearshore response equipment and onshore oil spill response equipment. This kind of 24/7 response capability is unprecedented.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Subhankar, could you comment on what the Shell ad says and also tell us a little about Shell’s record in the Arctic region?
SUBHANKAR BANERJEE: What you just mentioned, Nermeen, is nothing new. It is sugarcoating on an old rhetoric that Shell has been peddling for the last few years. In 2010, Shell spent millions of dollars on an ad campaign called "Let’s Go" to pressure the Obama administration to grant them the various permits, and then towards the—and also another ad called "We have the technology—Let’s go." So Shell has been saying this for the last at least five years now. Nothing has changed. All of the things I just mentioned previously has not changed. The government acknowledges it, that there would be a major spill. And if it does a spill happen, this whole idea of "We have the technology" is nothing but a PR campaign with no truth behind it, as industry and government would acknowledge, that if a spill does happen in the icy waters, the cleanup would be very ineffective compared to the Gulf of Mexico.
And then I forgot the second part of the question—oh, Shell’s record in the Arctic. So Shell went up there with, again, a conditional permit from the Obama administration in 2012, conditional because they were not allowed to drill all the way to the oil-bearing zone, only a top hole drilling to prepare for the following season. And what ended up happening? The very first day they started drilling, they encountered an ice flow the size of Manhattan, 30 miles by 10 miles long, and had to immediately halt operation and disconnect from the sea floor anchor. When they were coming—while they were going up to the Arctic, their drill ship, Noble Discoverer, almost ran aground off of the Dutch Harbor in Southwest Alaska. And then, while coming back, the Noble Discoverer caught fire, and the engine suffered damage, while the other drill ship, Kulluk, was grounded in the Gulf of Alaska, near Sitkalidak Island. And the reason they were bringing the Kulluk back was—actually, to the Seattle waters, Puget Sound water—is because Shell tried to avoid Alaska taxes. So it all goes back to the fact that right now the price of oil is low. And it is truly incredibly irresponsible, when price is—price of oil is low, and the technologies don’t exist, the infrastructure don’t exist, to send Shell up there, because Shell will try to cut costs, as they did in 2012. And the company and its subcontractor, Noble Drilling, was fined a total of $12 million, Noble Drilling, and $2 million to Shell, for violating numerous environment laws, including the Clean Air Act, as well as the Clean Water Act.
The Port of Seattle has voted to seek the blockade of rigs used by the oil giant Shell for its planned drilling in the Arctic this summer. Shell has signed a lease to station its rigs in the Puget Sound while it drills for oil in pristine and highly remote waters in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska. The Port of Seattle’s board called for a legal review of Shell’s plans and a temporary postponement of its docking. The move came after a wave of activism in Seattle challenging Shell’s effort. On Tuesday, activists set up a tripod to block work at the site of a fuel transfer station. Meanwhile, thousands of kayakers will try to block the arrival of a Shell rig on Saturday, the start of a three-day Festival of Resistance.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, the Port of Seattle voted to seek the blockade of rigs used by the oil giant Shell for its planned drilling in the Arctic. Shell signed a lease to station its rigs in the Puget Sound while it drills for oil in pristine and highly remote waters in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska. The Port of Seattle’s board called for a legal review of Shell’s plans and a temporary postponement of its docking. The move came after a wave of activism in Seattle challenging Shell’s effort.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: On Tuesday, activists set up a tripod to block work at the site of a fuel transfer station. Meanwhile, thousands of kayakers will try to block the arrival of the rig on Saturday, the start of a three-day Festival of Resistance. Organizers are calling the flotilla the "Paddle in Seattle."
For more, we’re joined in Seattle by Zarna Joshi, an organizer with the sHell No! Action Coalition. She’s also a volunteer with Rising Tide Seattle.
Zarna, welcome to Democracy Now! Could you talk about the action that you’ve planned?
ZARNA JOSHI: So, we’re going to have three days that we’re calling the Festival of Resistance. The first day is Saturday, May 16th. That’s the flotilla. And we will have many, many kayaks, canoes, barges on the water, and we will be sharing a massive show of numbers of people power on the water, showing that we can and we will stop Shell from going up to the Arctic. The second day, Sunday, is going to be a family day, a potluck in the park. And then Monday, May 18th, is going to be the day of mass direct action, when we take land—land-based actions in order to show Shell that we can shut them down on the water and on the land. They cannot hide.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Zarna, there was also an earlier Greenpeace action against the rig. Could you tell us about that?
ZARNA JOSHI: Yeah, I believe it was six Greenpeace activists, and they boarded the rig as it crossed the Pacific Ocean, while it was actually moving. So, it was an incredible feat of bravery and skill. And they did it to highlight what Shell is doing and this just diabolical plan that Shell has to actually go and drill into the Arctic, from which we could never survive, because we know that the Arctic is what—is our air-conditioning system. And so, what the Greenpeace activists were doing was that they were shining a spotlight on what Shell is doing, so that the rest of the world can actually understand what is happening right here, right now, and that they were heading right toward Seattle at the time, so it really galvanized so much of the movement right here in Seattle.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally—we have 20 seconds—the Port of Seattle decision voting to seek the blockade of rigs used by the oil giant Shell for its planned drilling Arctic—in the Arctic this summer, your response to that?
ZARNA JOSHI: So, the Port of Seattle wants to pretend that it’s listening to the people, but actually the Port of Seattle is completely corrupt, and they are bought and paid for by Shell, by Foss, and they are not listening to the people. They have had thousands of calls, thousands of emails. We have showed up en masse to meeting after meeting after meeting, and they are ignoring the will of the people. And they are supposed to be our democratic leaders, and they’re refusing to listen to us. And that is why we are taking action May 16th to 18th in order to protest this corrupt system, this greedy capitalist system, that is utterly failing the people.
AMY GOODMAN: Zarna Joshi, we want to thank you for being with us, part of the sHell No! Action Coalition and volunteer with Rising Tide Seattle. And Subhankar Banerjee, renowned photographer, writer and activist, spent 15 years working for the conservation of the Arctic. That does it for this segment, but we’re going to go from Seattle down to the Gulf of Mexico. Stay with us.
We turn now from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling has resumed near the site of the BP-operated offshore oil rig that exploded five years ago in the worst industrial environmental disaster in U.S. history. On Wednesday, Harper’s Magazine revealed a Louisiana-based oil company purchased the area from BP and is now drilling into the Macondo reservoir. The report also looks at the ongoing impact of the 2010 spill. We speak to reporter Antonia Juhasz, who spent two weeks on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico as part of a scientific research mission exploring the impacts of the BP Gulf oil spill. She participated in a dive in the Alvin submarine nearly a mile below the ocean surface, getting closer to the site of the blowout than anyone had ever been.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling has resumed near the site of the BP-operated offshore oil rig that exploded five years ago in the worst industrial environmental disaster in U.S. history. On Wednesday, Harper’s Magazine revealed a Louisiana-based oil company purchased the area from BP and is now drilling into the Macondo reservoir. The report also looks at the ongoing impact of the 2010 spill. BP insists most of the oil has now dissolved or evaporated and did not settle on the ocean floor.
AMY GOODMAN: But that’s not what our next guest found. Antonia Juhasz spent two weeks on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico as part of a scientific research mission exploring the impacts of the BP Gulf oil spill. She participated in a dive in the Alvin submarine nearly a mile below the ocean surface, getting closer to the site of the blowout than anyone had ever been.
Well, Antonia Juhasz joins us now to describe what she saw. Her report is in the new issue of Harper’s Magazine. It’s headlined "Thirty Million Gallons Under the Sea: Following the Trail of BP’s Oil in the Gulf of Mexico." She’s also author of Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.
Welcome back to Democracy Now! What did you see? How did you do this?
ANTONIA JUHASZ: A pleasure to be here. You know, it was an amazing adventure, to say the least. The Alvin submarine is—celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. It’s an incredibly important—the first and the last human-occupied submarine still available for research, so it’s an incredible experience to be able to go down in it. And Dr. Samantha Joye, one of the leading experts on oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico, who has led the research looking at the impacts of the BP disaster, was my guide, with our pilot, Bob Waters, who’s both, thank goodness, an engineer and a pilot, so if anything goes wrong with the sub, he’s there with us.
So we went within two miles of the site of the blowout, which is as close as you can get, because the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon is still there. And we—it took two hours to get down. We then made a curve around the site of the disaster, taking sediment samples all along the way. And when we got down there, you know, really, the most stark thing to report was that it—there’s basically nothing there. It’s a moonscape. Basically, all of the sea life that could get out of the way of the oil got out of the way of the oil; everything that couldn’t was just, in Dr. Joye’s words, nuked and killed. And there is a blanket of oil, as much as two inches thick, covering 3,000 square feet of the ocean floor.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, BP insists most of the crude oil that leaked in the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion dissolved or evaporated before it reached land, and did not settle on the ocean floor. In February, Politico published an article titled "No, BP Didn’t Ruin the Gulf," that was written by BP Senior Vice President of Communications Geoff Morrell. He wrote, quote, "Natural oil seeps release up to the equivalent of nearly six Exxon Valdez spills in the Gulf each year, and microbes in the Gulf have adapted over time to feast on oil." Morrell also noted the spill occurred in deep water and, quote, "more than 40 miles from shore in a temperate climate. That allowed a lot of oil to dissolve, evaporate, deteriorate or be physically removed before it reached land." Antonia, could you respond to that?
ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, my article responds to it really well, so let me do the short version, because there’s so much to unpack there. So the first thing is, yes, there’s naturally occurring seeps that exist in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a teeny tiny bit of oil across the ninth largest body of water in the world, and it seeps out over millennia, and natural environments do exist around them, and they’re actually quite beautiful. But that is such a small amount in comparison to the huge, momentous, enormous shock of 170 million gallons of oil being released at once at the bottom of the ocean floor. There’s absolutely no comparison.
But he’s right that there is such a thing as naturally occurring microbes that eat oil. There’s a number of problems, though. The first thing is, microbes did eat some of the oil, but they only ate what they could, which means that, according to Dr. Joye, they left about 30 million barrels still behind, which is the equivalent of—excuse me—three Exxon Valdezes. But what they left behind is what they didn’t want to eat, which is also the most toxic part of the oil. And that most toxic part of the oil is what remains on the bottom of the ocean floor. In addition, the Corexit, the dispersant that BP just expelled into the Gulf of Mexico, Dr. Joye found, is actually a deterrent, which kept away the microbes that would have eaten more oil. So the Corexit, in addition to being—so the Corexit is toxic, the oil is toxic, and studies have found that the combination of the two is 50 times more toxic than either alone, both of which are still at the bottom of the ocean floor, because the Corexit stays there, too. But the Corexit also inhibited the presence of more of those naturally occurring microbes. And also what Dr. Joye’s science has found is that the microbes are long done eating. So, what’s left is going to be there forever, because the bottom of the ocean is cold and dark. It’s a refrigerator. It’s a naturally preserving environment. So that most toxic part of the oil and the Corexit is now a permanent feature of the Gulf of Mexico and continuing to cause harm permanently, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk about the story you are breaking in Harper’s about where BP is planning to drill.
ANTONIA JUHASZ: So, this isn’t BP—I guess that’s the one good piece of news out of it. But while we were down there, in the midst of nothing, we saw these two horizontal tracks running along the ground, clearly man-made, and we followed them for a while to try and figure out what they are. And we figured they must be seismic cables, which are actually used to determine how much oil is in the ground. And then, once I got back to shore, I spent much of the last year investigating what these cables meant.
And what I uncovered was that the Department of Interior had very quietly, without anyone knowing—no press attention, no public attention—broken up BP’s lease, so that BP now only owns basically the wreckage, the area of the wreckage. And all the rest was sold to another company, LLOG, a Louisiana-based company, very active in the Gulf of Mexico, and it was given the rights to drill for oil and gas there. And it submitted plans in October. Those plans are—you know, I have to say, it sort of nearly brought me to tears in how similar they were to BP’s original plan. And within a month, they got approval to start drilling, and they are now drilling at an adjacent site, cutting over under the ground, and they’re already underway at the adjacent site.
And this is just part of the business as usual in the Gulf of Mexico. Basically, everything is not only back to normal, but you’ve got a company drilling in this most treacherous and still unbelievably harmed part of the Earth, and you have even companies, including BP, but in particular Chevron and Shell, moving way farther out in the Gulf of Mexico, drilling twice as deep—twice as deep as the Deepwater Horizon was drilling and 150 miles further out into the ocean.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But are the regulations in place now that make that drilling safer?
ANTONIA JUHASZ: The Obama administration has made changes, and they’re welcome changes. But they’re piecemeal. They’re tiny changes in response to a huge problem. So, you know, thank you for putting in place regulations—that’s great. But the regulations are—you know, the companies make a mistake; the regulation sort of chops a little piece off of what was identified as a problem, and a little piece here and a little piece there. But nothing addresses the systemic problems of just the incredible inherent risk and difficulty and technological, you know, profoundness of how difficult it is to do this type of drilling. But that’s just getting at the drilling.
What hasn’t been addressed is, basically, neither BP nor any other company operating in the Gulf really knows what to do when a blowout happens. They don’t really have the tools to deal with it. And in the most recent legal findings, the judge, looking at this disaster, said, yes, BP is responsible for causing the disaster, but basically, because federal regulators don’t make them know what to do after a blowout, and none of the other companies know what to do, basically nobody’s to blame. And if nobody’s to blame, then nothing is likely to change. So we’re still in the same place we were before the blowout.
AMY GOODMAN: So what do you think needs to happen?
ANTONIA JUHASZ: You know, the United Nations has told us very matter-of-factly, as has every climate scientist in the world, just about, that 80 percent of fossil fuels need to stay in the ground, if we’re to avert the worst of climate crisis. To me, that means that there are just certain areas that have to just start being checked off the list as just no-go zones, that it’s too risky, we don’t need it that badly, and the risks are too profound. And to me, offshore drilling belongs on that list. Instead, the Obama administration, in addition to okaying—almost okaying the Shell project, has opened up for the first time drilling off the Atlantic coast, from—you know, up to Virginia, where new, for the first time, oil and gas development would take place off the Atlantic coast starting in 2017.
AMY GOODMAN: Final comments, as you come from this very unusual dive that you did, in the last 30 seconds, and you come up now for air?
ANTONIA JUHASZ: You know, I think it’s—I didn’t appreciate the significance of the cycle of life that exists from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the ocean to us. So, there’s little creatures, like tube worms, that are supposed to live on the bottom of the ocean, but most of them don’t anymore, as a result of the oil spill, that break down food particles. And those food particles are critical for phytoplankton, which needs to eat it. And the phytoplankton provide 50 percent of the oxygen on the Earth. So if they don’t have food and they can’t live, then we can’t live, either. And as Dr. Joye said, you know, if you kill the Earth—I mean, if you kill the oceans, basically, none of us can live. And that was an important message to take forward for me.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Antonia Juhasz, we will link to your report in Harper’s Magazine headlined "Thirty Million Gallons Under the Sea: Following the Trail of BP’s Oil in the Gulf of Mexico." Also, Antonia is author of the book, Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.
Headlines:
Amtrak Train Traveled at Twice the Speed Limit Before Derailment
Safety officials say an Amtrak train that derailed in Philadelphia Tuesday night was traveling at twice the authorized speed. The engineer applied the emergency brakes when the train hit 106 miles per hour just moments before the train went off its tracks. The locomotive and seven passenger cars derailed, with sections of the train so mangled people had to be rescued with the aid of hydraulic tools. Seven people were killed, and more than 200 were injured. After visiting the crash site, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said the toll could have been worse.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter: "To see it in the daytime is almost indescribable. It is painful. And it is amazing, it is incredible, that so many people walked away from that scene last night. I saw people on this street behind us walking off of that train, and I don’t how that happened but for the grace of God."
The engineer driving the Amtrak train has been identified as 32-year-old Brandon Bostian from New York. According to his attorney, Bostian has no recollection of the crash itself and "no explanation" for what happened.
House GOP Votes to Cut Amtrak Funding
Less than 24 hours after the crash, House Republicans voted to cut about a fifth of Amtrak’s budget. They also rebuked attempts to provide funding for an advanced speed-control technology that federal investigators said would have prevented the accident.
Senate Reaches Deal to Vote on Fast-Track Trade Authority
The Senate has agreed to advance President Obama’s effort to finalize a global trade deal. Under a compromise, the Senate will vote on three separate trade measures, including the fast-track authority Obama seeks to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. The agreement was reached one day after Senate Democrats blocked debate on fast track.
House Approves Curbs to NSA Bulk Phone Collection
The House has overwhelmingly approved a measure that would rein in a key NSA surveillance tactic exposed by Edward Snowden. The USA FREEDOM Act calls for ending the bulk collection of telephone records by requiring the NSA to make specific requests to phone companies for a user’s data, rather than vacuuming up all the records at once. The vote comes just days after a federal appeals court found the bulk collection of phone records is illegal. The measure now goes to the Senate, where top Republicans are leading an effort to keep the bulk spying. Congress faces a June 1 deadline to reauthorize the phone records collection program before it expires.
House Approves Revised GOP Ban on Abortions After 20 Weeks
The House has also approved a revised version of an anti-choice measure withdrawn by Republicans earlier this year following a loud outcry. The bill would ban most abortions after 20 weeks. Republican leaders dropped a requirement that rape and incest survivors seeking an exemption first report to police. But they instead imposed mandatory counseling or medical care for such women at least 48 hours before they have an abortion. Minors would have to report rape or incest to law enforcement or child protective services. In a statement, the Center for Reproductive Rights said the measure is "cruel and unconstitutional."
Afghanistan: 14 Killed in Attack on Kabul Guesthouse
In Afghanistan, at least 14 people have been killed after gunmen attacked a guesthouse in the capital Kabul. The attack at the Park Palace Hotel took place during a party for foreigners, and the dead include people from multiple countries, including a U.S. citizen, several people from India and Afghan civilians. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying it had timed the attack to target "important people and Americans."
Clashes Erupt in Burundi After General Claims Coup
The head of Burundi’s armed forces says an attempted coup against President Pierre Nkurunziza has been thwarted. An army general has claimed to have ousted the president after more than two weeks of protests. Scores of people have died and thousands have fled their homes since unrest broke out over Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term. On Wednesday, large celebrations erupted in the capital after the announcement of a coup. But the jovial scene was followed by heavy clashes between rival forces. Aides to President Nkurunziza have denounced the coup attempt as a "joke" and have vowed his return from a regional summit in Tanzania.
Dozens Killed in Philippine Factory Fire
Dozens of people have died in a fire at a rubber slipper factory near the Philippine capital of Manila. At least 72 people have been reported dead, and the toll is expected to rise.
Obama to Host Gulf Leaders at Camp David Summit
President Obama is hosting leaders and top officials from Gulf allies today in a summit at Camp David. The meeting was apparently convened to address the countries’ concerns over the nuclear deal with Iran. On Wednesday, President Obama welcomed the Saudi delegation at the White House.
President Obama: "This gives us an opportunity to discuss some of the bilateral issues, including the crisis in Yemen and how we can build on the ceasefire that’s been established to restore a process for an inclusive, legitimate government inside of Yemen, and it will also give us a chance to discuss some of the broader issues that will be the topic of the GCC-U.S. summit tomorrow."
In an apparent snub tied to displeasure over the Iran deal, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman is skipping today’s summit. The White House says it will announce new initiatives on integrating ballistic missile defense systems and increasing joint military exercises.
Vatican Recognizes Palestinian State in Treaty
The Vatican will officially recognize the state of Palestine in a new treaty. The treaty concerns the Vatican’s interests in the Occupied Territories. Earlier drafts referred to the "Palestine Liberation Organization" rather than the "State of Palestine," but the Vatican has referred to the state of Palestine in other contexts since at least 2012, when the United Nations voted to recognize Palestine as a non-member observer state.
Aid Ship Departs Sweden to Break Gaza Blockade
Meanwhile, a ship has departed from Sweden in a bid to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The Marianne of Gothenburg is carrying medical equipment and solar panels as part of the third Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
Report: Top Banks to Plead Guilty to Fraud, Antitrust Charges
Five of the world’s top banks are reportedly set to plead guilty to a number of fraud and antitrust charges in the United States. According to The New York Times, Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and the Royal Bank of Scotland will together pay billions of dollars in fines and plead guilty to rigging the price of foreign currencies as early as next week. UBS is also expected to plead guilty to charges and pay a $500 million fine. The Justice Department is voiding a previous non-prosecution agreement with UBS over its apparent violations of the terms. The guilty pleas aren’t expected to impact the bank’s operations. The Times said the Securities and Exchange Commission will likely approve waivers that would let the banks "conduct business as usual despite being felons."
Port of Seattle to Seek Blockade of Shell Rigs for Arctic Drilling
The Port of Seattle has voted to seek the blockade of rigs used by the oil giant Shell for its planned drilling in the Arctic this summer. Shell has signed a lease to station its rigs in the Puget Sound while it drills for oil in the pristine and highly remote Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska. On Tuesday, the Port of Seattle’s board called for a legal review of Shell’s plans and a temporary postponement of its docking. The move came after a wave of activism challenging Shell’s effort. In a move denounced by environmentalists, the Obama administration granted Shell conditional approval this week to begin its offshore oil drilling in the Arctic.
"Gasland" Director Josh Fox Among 21 Arrested at Gas Storage Facility in Upstate New York
Josh Fox, director of "Gasland," the documentary which exposed the harms of the fracking industry, has been arrested along with 20 other people after forming a human barricade at a natural gas storage facility in upstate New York. The action was part of a long-standing campaign against plans by Crestwood Midstream to expand gas storage in abandoned salt caverns at Seneca Lake, a drinking water source for 100,000 people.
Military Drops Probe of Nurse Who Refused to Force-Feed Hunger Striking Gitmo Prisoners
The military has dropped punitive measures against a Guantánamo Bay nurse who last year became the first known prison official to refuse to force-feed hunger-striking detainees. The unidentified Navy medical officer faced potential disciplinary charges that could have led to a discharge and loss of benefits. But the Pentagon announced Wednesday it won’t take action.
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“Pacifica Station Bombed Off Air,” read the Houston Chronicle’s banner headline on May 13, 1970. KPFT, Houston’s fledgling community radio station, had been on the air for just two months when its transmitter was blown to smithereens. “An explosion which demolished the transmitter of Houston station KPFT-FM (Pacifica Radio) was no accident and apparently the work of experts, authorities said today,” George Rosenblatt of the Chronicle wrote. “The blast occurred at 11 p.m. Tuesday. The station was playing ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ and at the precise moment of the explosion, Arlo Guthrie was singing, ‘Kill, kill, kill’ as he spoofed the draft.”
The attack on KPFT was no spoof. Someone had placed dynamite and destroyed the transmitter. The KPFT staff and volunteers rebuilt the transmitter, and got the station back on the air — this time with a concrete-reinforced transmitter shack. But by October, this time with 15 sticks of dynamite instead of just one, the anonymous attackers again destroyed the transmitter. KPFT remains, to this day, thankfully, the only radio station in U.S. history to have been blown up.
Recovery from the second, more serious blast took longer. When the station went back on the air in January 1971, Arlo Guthrie was there in Houston, picking up where he left off, finishing his famous song “Alice’s Restaurant” in person. KPFT had been blown up twice, but the bombers did something for KPFT that, with no marketing budget, it couldn’t have done on its own: The station was blasted into the consciousness of the potential listening audience in Houston.
An investigation after the bombings led to the conviction of Jimmy Dale Hutto, the Grand Dragon of the local Ku Klux Klan. Hutto said blowing up KPFT was his proudest act. When you consider the Pacifica Radio network and its rich history, it is no surprise that a hate group like the KKK would target it. Pacifica Radio provides a forum for people to speak for themselves, breaking down stereotypes and caricatures that fuel hate.
Pacifica Radio was founded by Lew Hill, a pacifist who refused to fight in World War II. When he came out of a detention camp after the war, he said the United States needed a media outlet that wasn’t run by corporations that profit from war, but instead run by journalists and artists — or as the late George Gerbner, former dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said, not run by “corporations with nothing to tell and everything to sell that are raising our children today.”
KPFA, the first Pacifica station, began in Berkeley, Calif., on April 15, 1949. Pacifica Radio tried something no one thought would work: building a network based on the voluntary financial support of individual listeners, a model later adopted by all of public radio and television. The Pacifica network grew to five stations: KPFA in Berkeley, KPFK in Los Angeles, WBAI in New York, WPFW in Washington and KPFT in Houston.
The Pacifica network broke important stories and never shied away from controversy, especially when covering social movements. Luminaries from the civil rights movement, like Paul Robeson and Harry Belafonte, were regularly heard on the airwaves. African-American writer James Baldwin was broadcast debating Malcolm X on the value of nonviolent sit-ins. WBAI in New York City sent reporter Chris Koch to North Vietnam in 1965 as the first U.S.-based reporter to cover the war from the North. Musicians like Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead got their first over-the-air broadcasts on Pacifica stations.
Forty-five years after the bombings, KPFT continues to broadcast in Houston, serving the public as a beacon of alternative perspectives and a hub of local news and culture. Some say the bombings weren’t aggressively investigated because of the close relationship between the local KKK and the Houston police. Today, we are facing a crisis of racial profiling and police targeting communities of color with seeming impunity. While there has been a significant spike in hate-group activity since Barack Obama was elected president, more significant and enduring change has taken root over the decades.
Five years before the first bombing of KPFT, on Feb. 26, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the Temple Israel of Hollywood in California, saying, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” He went on, “We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right: ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.’” KPFT, Pacifica’s radio station in Houston, was crushed to earth, twice in 1970. But it rose again and again, and has been using the public airwaves to help bend that arc of the moral universe toward justice, for 45 years.
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