“Private Practice” star Kate Walsh will visit the nation’s capital on Wednesday to reflect on the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill that devastated the Gulf of Mexico.
The Bay area native teamed up with Oceana to mark the anniversary of the disaster, which resulted from an explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling unit. Walsh will be in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday to recognize the Gulf Coast’s continuing fallout, which she says Americans are already forgetting.
“We live in a very 15-second culture where people easily forget what happened last year,” Walsh told Politico of the tragic accident. “But the effects of the BP disaster are still prevalent and it’s still costing us — I think the bill is at $40 billion — and it’s increasing by the day. I want to make sure people remember.”
Walsh says she is opposed to off-shore drilling.
“We’re hoping to … let Congress know that we don’t trust big oil to drill and drill safely, and [that] it’s better to invest in forms of green energy rather than drilling,” Walsh said.
The actress, who continued her role of “Grey’s Anatomy” character Addison Montgomery in spin-off show, “Private Practice,” said she was raised around bodies of water.
“I grew up in northern California and spent a lot of time on the coast and going to beaches and oceans,” Walsh said. “It was a big part of my childhood, and when I moved to Arizona we’d go to the Gulf of Mexico for holidays. At one point I thought I might be a marine biologist when I was in college. This is the first anniversary of the BP disaster and I feel very passionately about not drilling, for myriad reasons. “