"With the Deepwater Horizon well capped, federal officials have turned their energies toward holding BP accountable for the environmental damage caused by hundreds of millions of gallons of oil loosed into the Gulf.
An army of federal scientists 300 strong is focused on the area surrounding Mobile. Hundreds more work in Mississippi and Louisiana.
The goal is to create an official reckoning of the environmental toll, from the most obvious -- 3,761 dead birds and counting, according to BP -- to losses so subtle that no one is even sure how to measure them. How, for instance, do you attach a dollar sign to trillions of dead planktonic organisms that can be identified only with a microscope?"
Ben Raines reports for the Mobile Press-Register August 16, 2010.
Comments