The charges are the first to be filed in what the Obama administration has called the worst environmental disaster in American history, and they are significant because they target an individual employee for his actions.

According to an affidavit and complaint filed today in a Louisiana court, Kurt Mix, a former drilling and completions engineer, deleted email and text messages he had sent to senior BP managers estimating that the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf was many times greater than the amount stated publicly. Mix was specifically instructed by attorneys contracted by BP to retain his records before he deleted them, the affidavit states.

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The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement approved the plan in May. The plan also includes three previously approved wells 72 miles off Louisiana.

Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council claim in a petition filed Thursday in the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta that the decision violates the law and that the environment would be harmed if it stands.

New regulations for deepwater drilling were imposed following last year's deadly rig explosion and Gulf oil spill.

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A year after the rig explosion that triggered the worst offshore oil spill in American history, President Barack Obama vowed to hold BP and others accountable for "the painful losses that they've caused."

For its part, BP filed a lawsuit alleging negligence by the rig owner and by the maker of the device that failed to stop the spill. Both of those companies filed their own claims, a reminder that lengthy court battles lie ahead.

The disaster began on the night of April 20, 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon rig burst into flames and killed the 11 men. The rest of the crew evacuated, but two days later the rig toppled into the Gulf and sank to the sea floor. Over the next 85 days, 206 million gallons of oil -- 19 times more than the Exxon Valdez spilled -- spewed from the well.

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Marcus Barum writes in the Huffington Post, that "despite introducing more than 150 bills to improve the safety and oversight of offshore drilling and holding more than 60 hearings to discuss the spill's causes and consequences with regulators, oil company officials, grieving relatives and Gulf-area fishermen," no bills have been adopted, and only two made it to the Senate.

"The oil industry has a veritable army at its disposal. They spend tens upon tens upon tens of millions on federal lobbying and campaign efforts," David Levinthal of the Center for Responsive Politics told Salon.

In 2010 the oil and gas industry spent $146.5 million on federal lobbying. This is almost three times the $52 million spent on lobbying in 2004.

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The BP oil spill flushed upwards of 4 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico between April and July, 2010. But by August, the once-vast sheen of rust-colored muck had mostly disappeared from the ocean's surface. Official reports claim that marine life is returning to normal.

According to an optimistic Weekly Standard:

If there was an unexpected hero to the story, it was Mother Nature...The Gulf oil spill is, indeed, much less of a calamity than most people expected. Said one environmental scientist in late July: "Mother Nature is doing what she is supposed to be doing and we're losing most of [the spilled oil] to microbial degradation in the open ocean."

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Meanwhile, on land, vigils were scheduled in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to mark the spill.

On the night of April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon, a rig owned by Transocean Ltd., burst into flames after drilling a well for BP PLC, killing 11 workers on or near the drilling floor. The rest of the crew evacuated, but two days later the rig toppled into the Gulf and sank to the sea floor. The bodies were never recovered.

Over the next 85 days, 206 million gallons of oil -- 19 times more than the Exxon Valdez spilled -- spewed from the well. In response, the nation commandeered the largest offshore fleet of vessels since D-Day, and BP spent billions of dollars to clean up the mess, saving itself from collapse.

"I can't believe tomorrow has been one year because it seems like everything just happened," Courtney Kemp, whose husband Roy Wyatt Kemp was killed on the rig, wrote on her Facebook page Tuesday. "I have learned a lot of things through all of this but the most important is to live each day as if it were your last ... what matters is if you truly live."

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• Five-year-old Jesse Koczon was inconsolable after learning he was "too small" to be governor of New Jersey. Koczon became a viral star after video of the episode hit the Internet, and now Gov. Chris Christie has made the boy honorary governor for a day. (CBS News)

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Those familiar with the inquiry said the Justice Department is not ruling out the possibility of bringing manslaughter charges against companies or managers responsible for the explosion aboard the rig that killed 11 workers last April.

These people added that the department also is examining congressional testimony by company executives, including former BP CEO Tony Hayward, to determine whether their statements were untruthful.

They cautioned that the investigation is still far from complete and they spoke on condition of anonymity about the ongoing investigation.

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That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

At a science conference in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

"There's some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn't seem to be degrading," Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil.

"Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 percent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don't know," Joye said, later adding: "there's a lot of it out there."

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The Obama administration's lawsuit asks that the companies be held liable without limitation under the Oil Pollution Act for all removal costs and damages caused by the oil spill, including damages to natural resources. The lawsuit also seeks civil penalties under the Clean Water Act.

An explosion that killed 11 workers at BP's Macondo well last April led to oil spewing from the company's undersea well -- more than 200 million gallons in all by the government's estimate. BP disputes the figure.

The department filed the suit in federal court in New Orleans.

The other defendants in the case are Anadarko Exploration & Production LP and Anadarko Petroleum Corp.; MOEX Offshore 2007 LLC; Triton Asset Leasing GMBH; Transocean Holdings LLC and Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling Inc. and Transocean Deepwater Inc.; and BP's insurer, QBE Underwriting Ltd./Lloyd's Syndicate 1036.

Anadarko and MOEX are minority owners of the well that blew out. Transocean owned the rig that BP was leasing.

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Attorney Kenneth Feinberg said Monday that the new option, which would pay claimants within two weeks, is for people who just want to get on with their lives.

Feinberg says that individuals who have already received compensation from the fund can now get a $5,000 check, but they would have to relinquish their right to sue BP PLC and would not be eligible for a final settlement. Businesses would receive a check for as much as $25,000.

The other options are to seek quarterly interim payments for losses, or file for a lump sum final settlement, also giving up the right to sue BP over its April 20 oil well blowout.

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The area that includes the waters off Florida's coast had been considered for drilling as part of the management plan for the Outer Continental Shelf. Just a month before the April spill, the Obama administration had announced plans to allow drilling in the eastern Gulf.

"In light of the BP spill, we've learned a lot and understand the need to elevate the safety and environmental standards," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision hadn't been announced yet. "We took a second look at the announced plan and modified it to remove the Eastern Gulf of Mexico from leasing consideration."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar planned to discuss the decision Wednesday afternoon.

The eastern Gulf of Mexico -- an area stretching from 125 to 300 miles off Florida's coast -- was singled out for protection by Congress in 2006 as part of a deal with Florida lawmakers that made available 8.3 million acres to oil and gas development in the east-central Gulf. The protected region is to remain off limits to energy development until 2022.

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A new analysis released Tuesday says the controversial chemicals helped break up about 32 million gallons of oil -- about 16 percent of the spill. That's about twice as much as a federal team figured in August. Scientists say that is mostly due to the unusual method of injecting the chemicals so deep, about a mile down near the busted well.

Study author Bill Lehr (LAYR) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says injecting the chemicals a mile deep proved to be roughly four times more effective per gallon of oil as spraying the chemical on the ocean's surface.

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With its Macondo well dead and few visitors on the coast during the offseason, BP has launched its biggest push yet to deep-clean the tourist beaches that were coated with crude during the worst of the Gulf oil spill. Machines are digging down into the sand to remove buried tar mats left from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The work is getting mixed reviews. Many are anxious to see the beaches cleaned as quickly as possible by whatever means are available. Others say BP may be making matters worse by bringing heavy equipment onto beaches and spreading the petroleum stain.

Some fear fresh environmental damage from the work itself, which can kill tiny creatures that live in the sand. Even BP acknowledges that fresh tar balls are still hitting the coast, meaning some of the work might be premature. Still, local officials have given the company a Jan. 1 deadline to be done.

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Life was good at the kid table. What did we care that the grown-ups kept the yucky old oyster pie at their table? It took me a few years to catch on to what they were up to, the sneaks. I was probably 12 or so before I got to taste that masterfully simple creation. The combination of tender oysters in deeply flavored roux gravy, scallions, red pepper and tender pastry helped me decide some things were worth growing up for.

We had a magical connection through food, my grandmother, Miss Alice, and I. Her house was across the street from my grade school and I went there for lunch every day. She worried that I was too thin, too delicate, so she fed me up.

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The Interior Department's inspector general says the changes resulted "in the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer reviewed." But it hadn't been.

Still, the report said the administration did not violate federal rules because it had offered a formal apology and already publicly clarified the nature of the expert review.

The Web site Politico was first to report the inspector general's findings. The Associated Press on Wednesday obtained a copy of the report, which has not been publicly released.

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The San Ramon, Calif., oil giant said Thursday it plans to file an application for drilling permits in the next several days for various deepwater projects in the Gulf.

The government says it hasn't received any new applications for drilling permits since the Interior Department lifted the ban earlier this month.

A Chevron spokesman didn't specify which projects would be included in the application. But the company said it will devote $7.5 billion toward two new fields in about 7,000 feet of water off the Louisiana coast.

Projects at those depths were halted for several months following an explosion on a BP operation that killed 11 people and led to the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

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In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission's staff reveals that in late April or early May the White House budget office denied a request from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to make public the worst-case discharge from the blown-out well. The Unified Command -- the government team in charge of the spill response -- also was discussing the possibility of making the numbers public, the report says, citing interviews with government officials.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But Jerry Miller, head of the White House science office's ocean subcommittee, told The Associated Press in an interview at a St. Petersburg, Fla., conference on the oil's flow that he didn't think the budget office censored NOAA.

"I would very much doubt that anyone would put restrictions on NOAA's ability to articulate factual information," Miller said.

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The co-chair of the panel, U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Hung Nguyen, told a packed hearing room Tuesday in a New Orleans suburb that members have been trying for two months to get Transocean to turn over materials related to its compliance with international safety management codes.

Nguyen says the panel also has been unable to get a specific Transocean manager to come in and testify about safety.

Transocean lawyers say the document request is too cumbersome. They say whether the witness testifies isn't within their control.

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