Shirley is incredulous. “Why would anyone bring their children here and put them in water that has had millions of gallons of toxic chemicals dumped into it, not counting the oil itself?” she asks. “Why would you want to eat seafood that has been living and dying in the water, with all those contaminates?”
Truthout has earlier reported on other fisherman in the area, James “Catfish” Miller and Mark Stewart, who have reported being eyewitnesses to the contractors in the Carolina Skiffs spraying dispersant as well.
Meanwhile, local, state and federal authorities continue to claim that dispersant was only used south of Mississippi’s barrier islands and that the Carolina Skiffs and the large tanks they carry are only used to “skim” oil.
“If dispersants were only being sprayed South of the islands, why would these 330 gallon hazardous goods tanks be located at two different work sites, right by the tank skiffs?” Shirley asks. “Why would the skiffs tanks be so clean if they were really skimming oil?”
The Tillmans and thousands of other fishermen and residents along the Gulf of Mexico are deeply concerned about local, state and federal government complicity in what they see as a massive cover-up of the oil disaster by using toxic dispersants to sink any and all oil that is located.
Dr. Riki Ott, a toxicologist and marine biologist, is a survivor of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster in Alaska. She recently submitted an open letter to the US Environmental Protection Agency expressing many of these same concerns.
Ongoing government denials of this problem neither fool nor dissuade Shirley. “I know what I have seen,” she told Truthout. “I know what I have been told. I know what I have experienced. I know what I have documented. I also know that I have taken hundreds of pictures to verify what I am saying.”
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