In April, Gulf Monitoring Consortium (GMC) welcomed Gulf Restoration Network (GRN) and Louisiana Bucket Brigade (LABB) as the newest members of our integrated pollution monitoring and response alliance. These new partners are well-established environmental organizations who bring new expertise and local resources to help monitor and respond to pollution in and around the Gulf of Mexico. To better reflect the capacities of our growing Consortium and identify the forms of pollution that we address, GMC members have voted to update our membership guidelines and key principles in three main areas:
- Expand our area of focus from the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of Mexico and Gulf Coast Region…,” which recognizes land-based pollution issues that directly impact the health of the Gulf of Mexico and that our new partners are specifically qualified to address.
- Clarifies our pollution focus to “fossil fuel and petrochemical” pollution, which incorporates spills from oil and gas drilling offshore, leaks and releases from petrochemical refining and storage onshore, and other fossil fuels such as coal and petcoke transported through and stockpiled in the Gulf Region.
- Identifies our that the ultimate goal of GMC’s monitoring and response efforts is to “reduce pollution” by seeing that reporting is accurate and all of the impacts of these activities are easily understood by all and are accounted for by decision-makers.
For more detail, see our membership guidelines and key principles.