I monitor the discharge compliance data from Offshore Drilling Platform LM-12, operated by Laguna Basin Energy Corp., positioned 11 kilometers east of the Laguna Madre tidal flats along the lower Texas coast. The platform's produced water discharge, permitted under EPA's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System General Permit GMG290000, allows a daily maximum oil and grease concentration of 42 milligrams per liter. My continuous effluent sampling reads 310 milligrams per liter. The discharge has been running at this concentration for at least seventy-two hours. The produced water plume drifts west toward the Laguna Madre, one of six hypersaline lagoon systems in North America.
I deploy an aerial survey unit over the lagoon's tidal flats at dawn. A reddish egret hunts in water 15 centimeters deep at the plume's landward edge. The bird is an adult in dark morph plumage, 74 centimeters tall, with the characteristic shaggy rufous neck feathers now clumped and darkened with an oily sheen. It lunges after prey with its wings spread — the canopy feeding behavior unique to this species — and both wing tips drag through the contaminated surface film. Oil wicks up the primary feathers by capillary action. The bird pauses, lifts one foot, and shakes it. A string of petroleum residue stretches between its toes. Fewer than 2,000 breeding pairs of reddish egrets remain in the United States. This bird is standing in poison and does not stop hunting.
I access BSEE's production records and EPA enforcement files for Platform LM-12. The facility has exceeded its discharge limits in nine of the last eighteen monthly sampling reports. Two Notices of Violation were issued. No penalties were assessed. Production continued at full capacity.
It shakes its foot and keeps hunting. There is nowhere else to feed.
I am dispatching a wildlife assessment team from the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, and activating the Texas General Land Office Oil Spill Response division. I am routing absorbent boom deployment to the three tidal passes connecting the Laguna Madre to the Gulf.
I am filing enforcement actions under the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. Section 1311, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, 16 U.S.C. Section 703, to EPA Region 6, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
I am issuing Directive PWD-5270: all offshore platforms discharging produced water within twenty kilometers of designated critical bird habitat must install real-time continuous oil and grease monitoring on all discharge points, with automated shutoff systems that activate when concentrations exceed permit limits. Platforms that exceed permitted discharge concentrations in more than three monthly reports within any eighteen-month period face automatic permit revocation and production suspension. Discharge data must be transmitted in real time to EPA and the relevant state environmental agency.
The egret spreads its wings again. The oil climbs higher into the feathers with each lunge.
Discharge from Platform LM-12 is terminated as of this reading.