Bp Deepwater Horizon Environmental Issues

About one-third of the total land area of the United States is classified as public land, which are managed by public agencies and charged with serving the public interests and must balance conflicting claims concerning the use of the public land. A big issue with this is how should the public lands be used and how is it decided what the public interest is? One example of this is the ocean water that borders the United States, 12 miles out to sea is considered sovereign property of the United States and has the right exploit the resources for up to 200 miles. There are many public agencies that manage the way that the waters are used, such as the Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Defense, the National Marine Fisheries, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The United States uses more than 21 million barrels of oil each day, the uses are gasoline, heating oil, jet fuel, and diesel fuel. On April 20, 2010 an explosion damaged the oil rig of the coast of Louisiana and over the next three months, a total of 5 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. The spill caused environmental damage and thousands of animals and their habitats died as a result. BP did take responsibility and paid for the clean up and compensated the victims. After the spill, the U.S. Department of Interior issued and then later overturned a moratorium on off-shore drilling, but critics argued that it would cause thousands of workers to be laid off, but they were still suffering from the recession and the loss of jobs caused by the oil