GULF OIL SPILL - Four Years Later

"After Gulf oil spill, filmmaker returns to see what happened when the cameras had gone" PBS NewsHour 11/19/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Now, the continuing effects of the Gulf Coast oil spill.

It may not be in the headlines as much as it once was, but some communities are still coping with its aftermath.

A new documentary showing in select theaters around the country returns to — the spotlight to those issues.

Hari Sreenivasan talks to the filmmaker.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  It’s been more than four years sense the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history fouled the waters off the Gulf Coast after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded.  Oil gushed into Gulf for almost three months before it was capped.  Eleven people died.

Since then, billions of dollars have been paid in settlements, shorelines have been cleaned, and areas have been restored, but some residents, businesses, and environmentalists say some places along the Gulf Coast have never fully recovered.

A new documentary called “The Great Invisible” highlights some of those issues.  (must see trailer)

MAN:  I’m used to seeing dirt, sand, something like that, but I ain’t never seen no kind of black — like a black, like, oily look.  I just caught these shrimp.  Look how they look.  These shrimp, see the black in them and stuff?  That came out of the water.  Like, that — that came out of that shrimp.  While that shrimp was in the freezer freezing, that is what came out of the shrimp.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Filmmaker Margaret Brown joins me now.

So, what was it that you were trying to achieve when you set out to make the film?

MARGARET BROWN, Director, “The Great Invisible”:  Well, when I started to make the film, it was very personal, because I’m from Alabama.

I grew up on the Gulf Coast. And my father started sending me pictures of his house, which is on the water, and it was surrounded by the oil boom — or the orange boom that the volunteer fire department had put out to prevent the oil from reaching the shoreline.

And there were all these workers working around the house.  It just was really — sort of didn’t look like his house anymore.  And it felt very personal.  And then I started talking to people that I had grown up with, and people just didn’t really know what to do.  Like, in a hurricane, which happens a lot in the South, people know what to do.  There’s, like, a checklist.  But, with this, no one knew what to do.