The 2010 BP oil spill has had many unintended consequences. Here's another one: It tends to suck a lot of the oxygen from other serious environmental issues facing the Gulf of Mexico -- especially now with a flood of publicity on the 5th anniversary of the catastrophe. But even before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, 2010, this precious natural resource on America's southern edge was losing thousands of acres of wetlands to human activities, while nutrients from lawn fertilizers and others sources continued to pour in from the Mississippi River, creating giant oxygen-starved dead zones hostile to marine life. That's all on top of drilling activity. The truth is that even before the BP spill grabbed so much attention (and understandably so, with a record leak of 5 million barrels of crude), Big Oil has been taking a steady toll on the Gulf. One site that's long been on the radar screen of environmentalists is the Taylor Energy spill site off the Louisiana coast. My colleague Bonny Schumaker, whose On Wings of Care operation makes frequent flyovers of the Gulf to look for environmental problems, has been tracking the Taylor site occasionally for five years, and she's noted large ...
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