THE WORST ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER?

Where Gulf Spill Might Place on the Roll of Disasters
Justin Gillis (w/Barclay Walsh), June 18, 2010 (NY Times)

"[President Obama and senior administration officials have called the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.” …The words signal sympathy for the people of the Gulf Coast…And if this is really the worst environmental disaster, the wording seems to suggest, maybe people need to cut the government some slack for failing to get it under control right away…But is the description accurate? …[Scholars] offer an intimidating list of disasters to consider: floods caused by human negligence, the destruction of forests across the entire continent and the near-extermination of the American bison…

"…Perhaps the worst disaster, they say, is always the one people are living through now…Still, for sheer disruption to human lives…no environmental problem in American history [matches] the calamity known as the Dust Bowl… [F]rom the Texas Panhandle to the Dakotas, poor farming practices in the early part of the 20th century stripped away the native grasses that held moisture and soil in place. A drought that began in 1930 exposed the folly…[B]y 1940 more than two million people had left the Great Plains States."

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"…[But what] exactly should be defined as an environmental disaster? How long should an event take to play out, and how many people have to be harmed before it deserves that epithet? …Among sudden events, the Johnstown Flood might be…[the] worst environmental disaster. On May 31, 1889, heavy rains caused a poorly maintained dam to burst in southwestern Pennsylvania, sending a wall of water 14 miles downriver to the town of Johnstown. About 2,200 people were killed…Perhaps a one-day flood is simply too short-term to count as an environmental disaster.

"…[I]f events that played out over many decades are included…Perhaps the destruction of the native forests of North America, which took hundreds of years, should be counted as the nation’s largest environmental calamity. The slaughtering of millions of bison on the Great Plains might qualify…[or] the human overhaul of the Mississippi River Valley…[though they] were not seen as disasters at the time, at least by the people who carried them out. They were viewed as desirable alterations of the landscape…"

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"…Consider the Lakeview Gusher, which was almost certainly a worse oil spill, by volume, than the one continuing in the gulf…[During California’s oil rush] in the early decades of the 20th century…a well halfway between the towns of Taft and Maricopa, in Kern County, blew out…[and] continued spewing huge quantities of oil for 18 months…The ultimate volume spilled was calculated at 9 million barrels, or 378 million gallons…[T]he Deepwater Horizon spill is not yet half that size…Today, little evidence of the spill remains…because the area is desert scrubland, and few people were inconvenienced…

"… The environmental effects of the gulf spill remain largely unknown. But the number of lives disrupted is certainly in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands; the paychecks lost in industries like fishing add up to millions; and the ultimate cost will be counted in billions…"