Oil Industry Incestuous Relationships In Louisiana

Cajuns understand the oil industry and it's complex and incestuous relationship with us. It's not the most pleasant of conversations, to explain how Cajuns know the full implications of incestuous relationships. Some might say that we wrote the book. You see, when our Acadian relatives first came to settle Louisiana, we all came from the same sixty-seven Acadian families after the Le Grand Dérangement.

In a time when there weren't a lot of opportunities to find spouses, who weren't in some way related to your own family certain exceptions were granted. Acadians were Catholic. Back then, Catholic church saw fit to grant marriage "dispensations" (exceptions) and allowed our Acadian ancestors to intermarry. For many generations, there was no such modern day concept as "six degrees of separation" among Cajuns. Cousins were marrying cousins was pretty much the norm.

For example, within my own family -- my great-grandparents, Emile Evariste Navarre and Hirma Mary Carmelite Robichaux -- shared the same great-grandparents. Furthermore, their family trees criss-crossed another nine times the farther you went back into their genealogy. My grandfather, Vernon Theodore Navarre and his siblings, were the first generation in ten generations to marry non-Cajuns (Acadians). That makes for a very complicated family tree.

That practice has led to some expected genetic diseases and birth defects in some families. We can't deny it, so there is no sense in not having a sense of humor about it. Perhaps it is that very factor, that makes for a better understanding and acceptance of the oil industry in Louisiana.

As much as we hate the catastrophic mess this BP oil disaster has dealt us, we (and all non-Cajuns living in Louisiana) are intermarried and dependent upon three things:

• Oil
• Gulf of Mexico
• Mother Nature

So while I write articles trying to remind people of what is at stake for Mother Nature in this crisis of great economic and ecological consequences -- I would be remiss to not tell you about our strange history of being in bed with the oil industry and why getting a "divorce" from it would be even more disastrous than the oil spill of current crisis.

Even as early as the late 1970s, Louisiana was permanently losing an estimated sixteen square miles of coastal marsh each and every year to Gulf erosion already. That's without new canals that were constantly being created. The history of Louisiana's troubles began with well intentions on the part of the Corps of Engineers, clear back in the 1930s.

Perhaps as much as half the erosion is believed to be caused by the Corps levees along the Mississippi River which retarded the annual flood situation cycle that first form these low-lying delta areas. However, the remainder of the erosion is believed caused entirely by the extraction and transportation methods used by the oil industry under and through what marsh is still left.

Land subsidence, because of oil and gas extraction, is only one part of the problem. The worst thing we did to Louisiana was the navigation and pipeline canals crisscrossing through the delicate, tundra-like marsh.

These days, older canals have sometimes widened into virtual lakes. Scientists at Louisiana State University have been studying this for years. Even back in 1989, they knew that almost forty percent of the total coastal-zone destruction could be traced directly to pipeline canals.

Furthermore, once dug, these canals tend to double their width every fourteen years. Unlike threats to tundra permaforest, this damage does not freeze at the edge. It continues to eat away at the rest of the salt marsh.

To expand on this, in the fisheries-rich Barataria estuary on the other side of Bayou Lafourche (Terrebonne Parish), an estuary responsible for a full tenth of the nation's annual fisheries harvest, was losing ten percent of the irretrievably lost land mass to these oil industry land masses.

So make no mistake -- the Gulf shores of Louisiana were on the verge of ecological collapse long before this BP oil spill! What is certain, is that all the shrimp, will eventually be gone from Louisiana's estuaries at or before the time of the remaining reserves of oil and gas finally run out.

Unmolested, and carefully husbanded, the wildlife spawned by Louisiana's marshlands might eventually have been enough fish to feed the entire country. Among Cajuns, that dream is as old as Grand Pre, and dream that some will never let go of. Only now, the dream is most likely dead.

There are many among our people who believe that regardless of what happens to Louisiana's fish and people, the "oiligarchs" are well prepared for the day when all the day is gone. The oiligarchs will simply abandon their offshore platforms to hurricanes and refugee colonies of struggling fisherman and the whole area will simply become a rusting forest of rigs and platforms.

Within the Cajun mind is a memory of the time before when Louisiana was Acadian farmsteads, that once stood endlessly green. Oil then usurped the industrial progress and prerogatives of sugar in Louisiana, and also much of its prime land, where living plants once reigned confidently supreme. That hasn't been reality for quite a long time as we have accepted that oil is there to stay.  Such is the ways of progress and mankind.

Before we start tar balling and feathering the oil industry with dead birds and beaming them with dead fish -- please remember -- just like all Cajuns are connected by blood lines, all of Louisiana is intermarried or in bed with the:

• Oil Industry -- who directly employ more than 50,000 people (Note: statistics on this are very vague and probably this is a real low estimate)
• Fishing Industry -- who directly employ over 300,000 people offshore and over 100,000 onshore
• Oyster Industry -- who directly employ over 35,000 people
• Shrimpers -- who directly employ over 30,000 people
• Tourist Industry -- who directly employ over 85,000 people

On the low estimate side, that's easily between a quarter million and a half million people whose way of living is either over, temporarily interrupted, or forever changed by the Deep Horizon oil spill. The whole mess is definitely not going to do a thing for the unemployment situation.

In Louisiana, Cajuns and non-Cajuns alike, all need watch over each other economically (even in those businesses and industries not directly affected) -- just to survive. Everyone there and in the other Gulf coast states, also have everything at stake in the ecological fallout of the BP oil spill disaster.

One thing is certain, with so much and so many depending upon the Gulf coast waters and salt marshes for their very survival -- this oil spill needs to be stopped as quickly as possible. The cleanup needs to be done yesterday and it needs to be done right. There are no second chances.

NEXT -- Oil Spill Big Ideas That No One Notices