Along Gulf, spill still defines state of mind

In the small brick church just across the road from the chocolate waters of Bayou Lafourche, the Rev. Joseph Anthony Pereira unbuttons his collar as the last parishioners pull out of the lot. Tonight, nearly a year after the BP oil spill began, he's asked his congregation of shrimpers and oil industry workers to think about lessons learned when survival is in jeopardy.

But Pereira doubts that many from the 5pm Mass are ready to take his Lenten message to heart.

"You speak about this to them because they forget what they went through," says Pereira, who pastors at St. Joseph's Church in Galliano, La., a community that ties its fortunes to the Gulf of Mexico. "Because BP has spoiled them, given them all this money, they've gone back to the old ways. They give them big bucks and they forget."

A year after BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 and triggering a four-month battle to contain and cap the gusher, the people who make their lives along the Gulf's coastline face countless variations of the trade-off that troubles Pereira.

They are anxious to banish the spill to memory. But that is very different from being ready to forgive. They are proud to call themselves independent, yet unsettled to be relying on a company and government many distrust. They want nothing more than for their home places to go back to the way they used to be, and in some of the most visible ways, they have. As proof, they point to sand scoured to a dazzling white by cleanup crews.

But uncertainty lingers, and anger, too. What might be hidden under the waves? When, if ever, can people so tied to the water be made whole?

As the anniversary of the spill approached, an Associated Press reporter travelled more than 966km along the Gulf Coast, from Louisiana's bayous to the beaches of the Florida Panhandle, through many twists and turns in the region's ever-evolving state of mind.

At every milepost, there were reminders of the region's bounty and its resilience. People, voicing faith in the Gulf's power, are eager to tell anyone who will listen that that their seafood is safe to eat, that tourists are returning, that the crisis was overblown - that they will not be bowed.

If only, some say more quietly, it was that simple.

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At dawn, the sky south of New Orleans is fringed with violet and pockets of thick fog mix with the odour from Chevron's Oronite fuel additives plant. But another 23km down Louisiana Highway 23, the sun breaks through, and Mark Brockhoeft climbs into a flat-bottomed boat painted camouflage, motoring into a marshland that is its own world.

A flock of mottled ducks erupts from the high grass. The fins of fat redfish slice the water like torpedoes. Brockhoeft, who sports a thick moustache and a Saints cap, has been plying this bayou as a fly fishing guide since 1993. But the familiar scene still kindles a smile.

"You can take it for granted," he says. "We did. Until we were about to lose it."

Before the spill was capped, thick slicks moved into Barataria Bay, connected to the bayou about 16km south. The oil was the last in a series of setbacks for Brockhoeft, who once worked on the water 250 days a year. But that was before the September 11 terrorist attacks prevented tourists from flying down to fish. Hurricane Katrina swamped this part of Plaquemines Parish, putting it off limits for weeks and taking the lodges that accommodate anglers out of commission. The area rebuilt, but the recession kept visitors away.

If oil made it to the marshes, Brockhoeft knew, it would be over. When BP flooded the region with money, Brockhoeft rented out a boat and crew to a cleanup contractor at US$1,560 a day for 82 days. Meanwhile, he sent back customers' deposits and talked with friends about moving.

"Where the hell are we going to go? We were born down here. We spent our lives down here. Our livelihood is here," says Brockhoeft, who is 58 and worked for a mosquito control company before becoming a guide.

Crews kept the oil at bay long enough to keep these backwaters open to fishing and to cap the well. Now, when clients call to ask, Brockhoeft assures them that "it's beautiful. Come on down."

But the guide says he'll be glad this year to get bookings for more than 130 days on the water. And, while he's upbeat about the health of the estuary, he watches for signs the oil and chemicals used to disperse it might eventually filter into a world that sees fish and other wildlife migrate between bayou and Gulf.

"The way things are going now, I wouldn't bank on the way things are going to be five years from now," he says. "We might not even be here."

Across the Mississippi River by ferry, in the hamlet of Pointe a La Hache, oysterman Stanley Encalade is far more certain of the spill's toll. Encalade and others say they are barely hanging on after their shellfishing grounds were flooded by river water unleashed by officials to keep out the oil, but killing the oysters.

Before Katrina lifted his family's boats out of the harbor and into the road a half mile away, Encalade says he made about US$50,000 a year. But BP payments are based on the most recent years' business, when he was climbing out of hurricane-induced debt. So far, he's gotten a US$12,000 check from the compensation fund set up for those whose livelihoods were affected by the spill.

Encalade worries it could be years before the oyster beds come back. So he's refitting his boat, Lady Pamela, with shrimping nets. But that is not a long-term answer, he says, his voice filling with anger.

"You're going to put me out of business for five or six years and you're going to pay me for the worst two years of my life? No man, I don't think so," Encalade says. "It's not over by a longshot."