On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded: A tragedy taking 11 lives, injuring 17, and sending 210 million gallons of crude gushing into the Gulf. The effects of the resulting oil spill, regarded as one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, continue to reverberate across the region.
The wellhead was so deep underwater that teams working around the clock could not plug the leak until mid-July, wreaking havoc in coastal communities from Texas to Florida. Those who loved the Gulf could do could do nothing to stop the flow of oil from the seafloor to our fisheries.
In the early days of the disaster, Audubon in Louisiana stepped up to organize the rafts of volunteers wanting to help: setting up transports to move oiled birds from the shore to rehabilitation centers, protecting beach nesting birds from accidental harm by emergency clean-up teams, and planning for future restoration. Despite efforts to burn, skim, disperse, or otherwise contain the spewing crude, an estimated 75% of the oil from the disaster remained in the Gulf environment. In Florida, we monitored for impacts, buffered beach-nesting from response efforts, and advocated for passage of the RESTORE Act to hold BP accountable for fixing what they harmed.
On December 15, 2010, the United States filed a complaint in District Court against British Petroleum Exploration & Production (BP) and several other defendants alleged to be responsible for the spill. A record-setting settlement resulted in an unprecedented $5.5 billion Clean Water Act penalty and up to $8.8 billion in natural resource damages. Additionally, BP paid $100 million for the incidental take of birds under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
“15 years after Deepwater Horizon I have hope for the future of the Gulf in part because of what we have been able to accomplish since that time,” says Audubon Florida Executive Director Julie Wraithmell. “Audubon has invested restoration funding in the stewardship of coastal birds and their habitat, the installation of living shorelines to protect those near-shore environments, as well as policy advocacy to protect the water quality of the Gulf and combat sea level rise.”
As we mark the 15th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster this year, Audubon continues to be a leader in Gulf coast resilience, science, and conservation, investing in multi-state bird monitoring efforts, education programs, habitat protection, living shorelines, and more. We are still working with state and federal elected officials to permanently ban drilling for oil in the Eastern Gulf.
