Oil Spill: Sobering News For the Gulf Coast

[Sean in New Orleans]

Last week, when the rig exploded and those 11 workers were killed, I thought to myself, "Wow, what a terrible accident and tragedy." It NEVER crossed my mind that a devastating oil spill would follow and lead to an environmental tragedy along the Gulf Coast....everything from wildlife, to livelihoods, to Summer tourism (possibly for more than one Summer) could be affected. They have GOT to seal this leak NOW!!!!

April 29, 2010, 7:53PM

Gulf spill is really a river of oil, environmentalists say

To understand the gravity of the danger facing Louisiana's coast from the oil that began washing ashore Thursday, pollution clean-up veterans offered this starting point: Forget the word "spill."

"This isn't a spill," said Kerry St. Pe, who headed Louisiana's oil spill response team for 23 years. "This isn't a storage tank or a ship with a finite amount of oil that has boundaries. This is much, much worse."

It's a river of oil flowing from the bottom of the Gulf at the rate of 210,000 gallons a day that officials say could be running for two months or more. If that prediction holds, much of the state's southeastern coast will become a world-watched environmental battleground that hasn't been seen in the United States since the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska 21 years ago.

For residents of coastal communities and the vast fleet of commercial and sports fishers that call those wetlands home, that fight will become part of the daily scene. Coastal scientists and clean-up experts say the source and volume of the pollution combined with seasonal wind directions and tides have the potential to push oil deep into local estuaries, bringing the army fighting the oil and its miles of containment booms to much of the marsh. And, it has the potential to spread to every state along the Gulf Coast.

"Oil floats on water, so it goes where the water goes," said Roger Helm, chief of the Environmental Contaminants Division of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "This is going to be big, very big. They have announced it's five times the release they originally thought, and that release will go on for some extended period of time. Do the math."

The timing couldn't be worse, Louisiana clean-up experts said, because the warm weather months will bring stiff southerly breezes, which can push the oil deep into the long, shallow estuaries.


"In a lot of places tides are the key for moving oil but we have very small tides here -- a 2-foot tide is a big deal to us," said St. Pe, who now is executive director of the Barataria-Terrebonne national Estuary Program. "So wind is everything in Louisiana. A stiff southeastern blow will defeat a falling tide here. And we're going into the season when we get strong southeasterly winds.

"So, if we've got a steady flow of 210,000 gallons a day and southerly winds pushing it, it's going to get over the marsh into a lot of areas."

Given the volume and the extended flow period, St. Pe said he would expect oil sheets to invade the marshes on the east side of the river north into the Delacroix area, the western reaches of Lake Borgne and most of the Bird's Foot delta. If stiff winds blow more from the east, the oil could flow to the west of the river, and quickly invade the wetlands in Barataria Basin, already battered by erosion, canal dredging and subsidence.

"If this thing comes west into Barataria, there's nothing really to stop it," he said. "The area from Buras to the (Barataria Seaway) is pretty much just open water now."

St. Pe said the public should not expect containment booms to keep all oil from the wetlands.

"Oil gets through, especially in rough weather - it just washes over these things," he said. "With the volumes we're talking about here, and the length it will be coming into the coast, you can see that almost every area in the southeastern coast could be impacted.'

Birds, fish and shellfish will feel the effects, St. Pe said.

"If you get a thick sheet of oil over a large area, the first thing that happens is it cuts off the oxygen exchange with the water column," he said. "You get low dissolved oxygen in the water, so the fish respond by coming to the surface to try to get oxygen, and of course they get their gills coated with oil, and they die."

Birds become fouled with oil by diving on food in oil-slicks, or wading and walking through contaminated areas, then preening feathers, further spreading the oil.

And while birds, fish and marine mammals are the victims most noticed, there is even more damage going on below the surface, St. Pe said. "Shrimp die and crabs die and oysters die, but they don't float to the top. You just never see them, but the damage is often severe."

And in this case, the impact could be long-lasting.

"The worst spill I ever worked was a 10,000 barrel spill in 1997 that was inshore in Lake Barre, and that was terrible," he said.

"But that was a spill. This is worse. This isn't one spill. It's a constant flow for months. This is something a lot of people will be living with for a long time."

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2...a_river_o.html

[SlidellWeather]

It really is going to be awful. I'm hearing that it could 2-3 months before the leak is stopped. We have already rented a beach house in Pensacola in June, and we're now wondering if we'll be able to even use the beach.

[lamsalfl]

my questions.

1) Will we have to shut down the river to commerce not if but when the oil gets west of Southwest Pass? If not, every upriver ship will need to be decontaminated before arriving at the Port of New Orleans and Port of South Louisiana. wiki: The two combined form the largest port system in the world by bulk tonnage, and the world's fourth largest by annual volume handled.

2) What about cruise ships? If they're stuck in port here, they can't make money. In fact, they lose money. Will they need to take a hike until it's cleaned up? This also includes Mobile. Oil to reach Alabama beaches by Sunday, and panhandular Florida beaches on Monday. Tampa and Galveston could be in trouble come June since it's going to take 3 months to even stop the leaks.

3) This will cause extensive coastal erosion as it kills off sensitive vegetation and ecosystems. This will give future storm surges basically an interstate into Barataria Bay and Breton Sound. How will this affect flood control?

I'm going to binge myself on seafood this weekend while I still can.

[FLAWDA-FELLA]

With this oil spill, the price of gas will surely average $3 a gallon before long.

[lamsalfl]

Still waiting for the media to mention plans to block Chef Pass and The Rigolets to prevent the oil from getting into Lake Pontchartrain.......

crickets so far!

[ardamir]

I had a relative on that rig that thankfully got off. He got on a lifeboat that was lowered into the water whilst on fire. Unfortunately the crane operator who saved many lives did not make it

[pwalker]

I hope people realize this is not just a local gulf coast story. Prices for gas and seafood are going to skyrocket. Get ready for the onslaught.

[FLAWDA-FELLA]

I heard this morning that the governor of Florida has declared a state of emergency for portions of the panhandle due to the spill.

[QuantumX]

Miami Herald

Posted on Sat, May. 01, 2010
Gov. Crist arrives in Panhandle to tour oil-spill response
BY AUDRA BURCH, JOHN FITZHUGH AND MARGARET TALEV
aburch@MiamiHerald.com

A flock of least terns flies along the beach in Gulfport, Miss., Saturday, May 1, 2010. Environmentalists are concerned that the approaching oil slick will destroy this generation of the bird that nests along the Gulf coast beaches as part of it's migratory journey. Gov. Charlie Crist has arrived in Florida's Panhandle, where he is scheduled to tour staging areas for response operations to a spreading oil slick.
``I am going to see what is being done to help with this oil spill and how we can protect our shoreline,'' said Crist, who flew from Miami to Pensacola early Saturday. ``We could be facing an environmental and economic catastrophe.''

Crist was joined by Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael W. Sole.

On Friday, President Barack Obama sent Justice Department investigators and military aircraft to the Gulf of Mexico in response to the growing fear of the environmental damage that the expanding oil slick may cause, but he declined to abandon plans for new offshore drilling because of the unfolding disaster.

Crist declared a state of emergency for six Panhandle counties, saying the slick spill from the Deepwater Horizon platform threatens Florida's coasts ``with a major disaster.''

Crist discussed the state's and federal response with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and other federal officials Friday.

State emergency operations officials said that the easterly drifting spill is expected to reach Escambia County by Monday, with a light sheen approaching within 33 miles.

The state plan calls for 30,000 feet of inflatable containment booms in the waters outside of Pensacola. But, according to a briefing report released late Friday, state officials said ``booms are largely ineffective at this time due to chop which washes the spill over the booms.''

As Mississippi officials laid miles of plastic booms to block crude from their state's shores and environmentalists asserted that the spill was far worse than officials have acknowledged, Obama said he'd asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to review what went wrong when the drilling rig exploded in flames April 20 and sank two days later.

Depending on what the review recommends, the president said, ``We're going to make sure that any leases going forward have those safeguards,'' but that, ``I continue to believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security'' as long as it's done ``responsibly.''

Lawmakers from Florida and up the East Coast called on Obama to shelve new lease plans.

Along the coast, Friday remained a day for getting ready. Louisiana officials banned fishing and the harvesting of oysters in some waters east of the mouth of the Mississippi River. In Gulfport, Miss., Navy sailors joined Coast Guard personnel loading oil containment booms onto an offshore service vessel for deployment between the slick and the shore.

``What we're doing now is trying to leapfrog ahead of it,'' said U.S. Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer 3rd Class Pete Davenport of the Gulf Strike Team from Mobile, Ala. ``We're not going to get it all before it gets to the beaches, but with a little luck and help from Mother Nature, we can get it done.''

The Air Force also began using two C-130 Hercules cargo planes to drop chemicals over the oil spill in an effort to disperse it. The planes -- half the military's fleet of aircraft capable of dropping liquids from the air -- came from 910th Airlift Wing at Youngstown, Ohio, which flew similar missions during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to spray mosquito repellent over devastated communities.

With the slick still offshore, the most active battleground was legal and political, however.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he had sent a team of Justice Department prosecutors to the Gulf Coast to monitor the unfolding disaster and determine whether any laws were broken in the operation of the rig or the response to the disaster.

``While we appreciate the White House's announcement that no additional offshore drilling will be authorized until a full investigation of the accident is complete, we urge you to go further and reverse your decision on proposed new offshore oil and gas drilling for the outer continental shelf,'' said a letter from four New Jersey lawmakers, Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg and Reps. Frank Pallone and Rush Holt.

``The best assurances and technology of the oil industry have not been good enough to either prevent or contain this oil spill,'' said Catherine Wannamaker, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center. ``No known, available technology fully cleans oil from wetlands and marshes that protect Southern coastal communities in storms and shelter valuable wildlife and seafood nurseries.''

Attorneys who led the fight against insurance companies after Hurricane Katrina filed a class-action complaint in federal court against multiple defendants, alleging ``gross negligence'' caused the massive oil spill.

The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory and punitive damages against corporations involved in the operation of the rig: Transocean, BP Plc., Halliburton and Cameron International Corp., the manufacturer of a device designed to prevent such accidents.

There's been no official cause given for the explosion.

The Obama administration appeared determined to show that it had responded quickly to the unfolding disaster in hopes of avoiding the missteps that plagued President George W. Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina.

Obama said that officials had set up five staging areas for shoreline protection and laid 217,000 feet of protective boom. He said 1,900 federal response personnel had been deployed along with more than 300 vessels and aircraft operating around the clock.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs suggested a Gulf Coast visit from Obama may be in the works, but he said no such travel would happen this weekend.

At the 210,000-gallon rate, in about 50 days the total spill would surpass the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, when 11 million gallons were dumped into Prince William Sound.

Environmentalists said that even before the oil hits land, damage already has been done. ``We are very concerned about the marine mammals in the area,'' said Doug Helton of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The National Wildlife Federation reported that more than 400 species of fish, birds and wildlife could be harmed. Salt marshes in Louisiana are breeding areas for the larva stages of marine life, including crabs, shrimp, redfish and menhaden, and also are full of oyster beds.

Miami Herald staff writer Mary Ellen Klas contributed to this report.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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http://www.miamiherald.com

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[Trae]

And hurricane season is coming up...

Hopefully no storms develop.

[I-275westcoastfl]

This going to be very nasty for the entire Gulf coast; a week from now its possible that the spill would be along west coast Florida effecting Tampa Bay and heading south. This is an economic and environmental disaster that will really do some damage.

Originally Posted by FLAWDA-FELLA

I heard this morning that the governor of Florida has declared a state of emergency for portions of the panhandle due to the spill.

Beaches in Pensacola are closed because by tomorrow the oil will be onshore.

[spencer114]

I have a hard time breathing when I read about this spill. It is beyond horrible and is utterly heartbreaking. I would be so friggin upset if this spill was encroaching on Virginia (I am upset that it is encroaching on LA, MS, AL and FL but I‘d be going absolutely crazy if any of these were my home state). I don't know how those of you in the region are keeping your wits. Good luck with this and keep your liquor close at hand.

[QuantumX]

Miami Herald

Posted on Sat, May. 01, 2010
As oil blob triples in size, Florida fears nightmare
BY AUDRA D.S. BURCH, JOSEPH GOODMAN AND CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com

Alex Brandon / AP Photo
Dr. Erica Miller, with Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research, works to give a dose of Pepto-Bismol to a Northern Gannet bird, normally white when full grown, which is covered in oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, at a facility in Fort Jackson, La., Friday, April 30, 2010. PENSACOLA -- Florida environmental and emergency managers acknowledged Saturday that the state can't protect every stretch of coastline threatened by an uncontrolled undersea gusher spewing a massive oil slick that has spread across the Gulf of Mexico faster than expected.
Gov. Charlie Crist, who traveled to the Panhandle to inspect preparations, warned the state could be facing an economic and environmental catastrophe.

``It's simply unbelievable, the magnitude of this,'' said Crist of a looming mess that has more than tripled in size since he surveyed it earlier in the week and is now larger than Miami-Dade and Broward counties. ``It's not a spill, it's a continuous ooze.''

President Barack Obama planned a Sunday visit to the Gulf Coast, where the first shimmering traces were already building into black clumps clinging to marsh grass in the biologically rich Louisiana Delta and darker and far more damaging slop loomed just offshore. Mississippi, Alabama and Florida all were bracing for a nightmare cleanup from the sunken drilling rig that has belched the biggest U.S. spill since the Exxon Valdez and may soon, if not already, exceed that notorious 1989 accident.

With crews struggling to contain the sloshing oil as booms failed in rough seas and chemical dispersants and burning oil showed promising but still-limited success, the Coast Guard and British Petroleum were scrambling to find some way to cap a blown-out well a daunting mile beneath the surface.

``The first thing is to stop this thing at the source,'' said Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen, tapped Saturday by the Obama administration to take charge of containment forces. ``To continue to fight this thing on the surface and shore is not the way to do it.''

MINIMIZING DAMAGE

Florida environmental chief Michael Sole, traveling with the governor, echoed that view, saying the state's strategy would focus on minimizing damage to coastal marshes, estuaries, seagrass beds and habitats for endangered species.

``You can't boom an entire state,'' Sole said, ``and as you can see with the rough waters, the oil can easily go over or under it.''

In Bay County, one of six western Panhandle counties Crist declared under a state of emergency, there will be nothing arrayed along the famed sugary sands of Panama City Beach.

`It's not a prevention effort because you can't keep it from making landfall on the beaches,'' said Mark Bowen, director of Bay's Emergency Management Center. ``It's a clean-up effort.''

The top priority in Bay was to keep oil out of St. Andrews Bay, a fragile system ringed with shallow marshes, he said. Crews planned to employ booms, but Bowen also had requested that BP supply an oil-skimming vessel stationed at the mouth of the bay.

Bowen said he was hoping favorable winds that had pushed the slick from its closest point of 89 miles back to 127 miles on Saturday would continue.

``There's still a chance that the worst might not come,'' he said.

The official forecast track from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration kept the oil off the Panhandle for at least 72 hours, but Allen warned winds were shifting and state emergency managers considered the weather merely a postponement, not a reprieve. They predicted some impacts by Wednesday. It could affect South Florida if the oil gets swept imto the Gulf's powerful Loop Current, which could steer it into the Florida Keys and then north up the East Coast.

RIPPLE EFFECTS

Some business owners in Panama City Beach were already feeling the ripple effects.

Bob and Nelly Elia, owners of Sunny Sands Motel on Panama City Beach, said two families had canceled stays.

``They're calling now, already, wondering what's going to happen and talking about refunds and all that stuff,'' Bob Elia said. ``The timing couldn't be worse because the season is one month away.''

At the Russell-Fields Pier, which extends 1,500 feet into the Gulf in Panama City, Sheila Sawyer of Dothan, Ala., came toting a fishing rod and a lot of anger.

``We knew we had to come,'' said Sawyer. ``This might be our last chance for awhile.''

In Pass Christian, Miss., 61-year-old Jimmy Rowell, a third-generation shrimp and oyster fisherman, told The Associated Press, ``It's over for us. If this oil comes ashore, it's just over for us. Nobody wants no oily shrimp.''

With estimates escalating of how much oil was flowing from the severed well of the Deepwater Horizon, there were growing concerns over the speed of the response by both BP and the federal government and the inability of an industry that has long boasted of its sophisticated technology and safety record to simply turn off a well.

One huge question -- and a major complication for emergency managers -- is just how much oil has escaped since the floating rig exploded on April 20, leaving 11 workers missing and presumed dead. The Coast Guard's estimate shot from 1,000 barrels a day initially to 5,000 barrels or about 210,000 gallons.

Environmentals have scoffed at those estimates as low-balls. Some scientists tracking the spill agree it has grown larger -- and potentially much more catastrophic -- than containment crews predicted.

SATELLITE IMAGES
Hans Graber, director of the University of Miami's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing, said satellite and radar imagery shows the spill swelling from about 1,000 square miles to 3,500 in two days. Florida State University oceanographer Ian MacDonald, used satellite images and photos to estimate the spill at eight million to nine million gallons of oil -- as of Thursday.

By comparison, the Exxon Valdez poured 11 million gallons of light crude into pristine Alaskan water. The Coast Guard's official estimate since the April 20 explosion of Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was 1.6 million gallons.

MacDonald said he wasn't trying to play gotcha with the government's effort but simply answer a basic question: How much oil is out there already?

``This unfortunate emergency is going to test our level of preparedness,'' he said. ``The days and weeks to come will determine that. Right now, we have some catching up to do.''

Allen said it was impossible to precisely determine how much oil has fouled the Gulf but called it critical to cap the continuing flow. A permanent fix, a relief well that BP plans to soon begin drilling, could take three months to complete.

``The continued leakage of anything for that period of time is going to cause an extraordinary amount of problems.'' he said.

ROBOTS DEPLOYED
In one new test Allen called promising, BP began pumping dispersants deep underwater, which blend with the oil and sink it. An array of other measures were being considered to keep the oil from washing ashore, including increasing water flows down five rivers feeding Mobile Bay to keep the slick at bay.

BP's efforts to trigger shutoff valves with deep-diving robots have failed so far, but the company is rushing to complete an underwater dome designed to capture the oil and pump it to the surface, an approach that has worked in shallower water.

Other options include crimping the metal wellhead to reduce flow, or cutting it off and slipping a new blow-out preventer over it. Allen cautioned that crushing 5,000-foot depths added significant challenges to any repair plans and said he had asked the Department of Defense to lend help and technology for deep-sea repair. Military planes already are being used to drop chemical dispersants.

Allen and John Brennan, assistant to the president for Homeland Security, defended the Obama administration's efforts in a conference call with reporters, saying the Coast Guard and BP had ramped up efforts as the scope of the crisis became clear, shifting from fighting the rig fire and searching for missing workers to containing a fast ballooning slick.

``As the president has observed this volatile situation,'' Brennan said, ``he has directed that no effort be spared.''
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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[dmoor82]

I just heard on The Natl. news that all fishing off of The Gulf Coast is Banned!WOW,thats huge! This area is still reeling from record Hurricanes, and now has to deal with this!

[ManAboutTown]

Hopefully this will be the nail in the coffin of the domestic fossil fuel industry and send the USA on a path to a more sustainable future. It's important to put a silver lining on a disaster that will cost the Gulf Coast thousands of jobs and decades of environmental cleanup. Drill Baby Drill, right Republicans!?!?!?!

[lamsalfl]

Originally Posted by ManAboutTown

Hopefully this will be the nail in the coffin of the domestic fossil fuel industry and send the USA on a path to a more sustainable future. It's important to put a silver lining on a disaster that will cost the Gulf Coast thousands of jobs and decades of environmental cleanup. Drill Baby Drill, right Republicans!?!?!?!

You can't just not use oil anymore. I guess you don't need gas, diesel, heating oil, jet fuel, fertilizers and pesticides, plastics, rubber, paint, detergent, medicine, make-up, and candles?

Nah, we'll run those jets on batteries!

One accident in how many oil-rig years and the whole thing should be shut down. That's ludicrous. How about just having as much scrutiny over oil rigs as we do with nuclear power (which is cleaner than oil but everyone is so much against)? How about having more safeguards, more options if the first method fails as it did here? Improve the technology. Sure improve large scale transportation (cars and trucks) with other sources of power, but you can't just say we don't need ANY oil for anything.

It's amazing to me how people are so fast to say "we don't need no stinkin oil!"! when they don't realize that the very products they use every day come from it...and I live in New Orleans. That keyboard you use to type your anti-oil comments is made of what? PLASTIC! I guess we'll just make plastic with solar power in the future.

[QuantumX]

Double post.

[QuantumX]

I'm not trying to make a pun here with the gravity of this situation, but there is something fishy to me about the timing of this disaster. We may never know what is really beneath all this.

[I-275westcoastfl]

Originally Posted by QuantumX

I'm not trying to make a pun here with the gravity of this situation, but there is something fishy to me about the timing of this disaster. We may never know what is really beneath all this.

Yea the timing is ironic.

[massp88]

This really is a tough situatiomn and tragedy. The loss of life on the platform and the large affect this is having on the area is too bad.

BP has already said they are going to pay for the entire cleanup. A cleanup that will easily cost over $1 Billion USD.