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A government panel on Thursday essentially doubled its estimate of how much oil has been spewing from the out-of-control BP well, with the new calculation suggesting that an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days.

The new estimate is 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day. That range, still preliminary, is far above the previous estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.

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While the case against the oil company seems fairly clear-cut (BP admits, after all, to being responsible for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history), a lawyer with perhaps the most relevant experience on the matter at hand is painting a depressing picture about the litigation ahead.

"[I]f you were affected in Louisiana," said Brian O'Neill, an attorney with the firm Faegre & Benson, "to use a legal term, you are just f--ked."

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Merle Savage has a wheezy, guttural smoker's cough. But the 71-year-old former Alaska resident and author of Silence in the Sound never smoked a day in her life. She did, however, spend four months as a general foreman during the Exxon Valdez oil spill recovery project in 1989. And she has a message for anyone working at the BP oil disaster sites: "You've got to use your common sense. Breathing crude oil is toxic."

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The Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster unfolding before our eyes. Eleven lives were lost in the initial explosion, and that incalculable loss is compounded daily as oil continues to flow from the wellhead despite efforts on the part of BP and TransOcean to quell it. No one can accurately predict how long it will take to cap the leaking wellhead: it could be a matter of days, weeks, months. And regardless of how long it takes to staunch the flow of oil, the impacts of the oil spill on the people, economy and environment of Gulf coast states will persist for decades.

Here in Alaska, the impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill that took place more than 21 years ago are still being felt by people, communities, and the environment. You can still see a “bathtub ring” of Exxon’s oil in Prince William Sound, and you don’t have to dig very deep to find oil lingering below rocks on beaches. Exxon Valdez oil is still being ingested by wildlife more than two decades after the spill, and many species have yet to recover

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