Hurricane Katrina Pictures

BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster

Today is day 44 of the BP-Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico just 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. It is also day 2 of the 2010 hurricane season. This area of the world is my home and a vital part of my home state, Louisiana.

Our wetlands are a world treasure of diversity of plant and animal species, including much of the seafood and fish eaten in America. Our coral reefs are vital to the survival of many more species from every layer of the food chain. Our wetlands are the marsh equivalent of rain forests. If our area were its own economy, it would be 29th in the world. It’s a huge part of the state and a huge part of America.

Wetlands aren’t only a diverse national treasure and a means of survival of an entire region, they are also the sponge that soaks up hurricane energy before the storm reaches populated areas. Four linear miles of wetlands soaks up 1 foot of storm surge. If a severe hurricane comes ashore with a 30 foot storm surge, it takes 120 linear miles of wetlands between the shore and populated areas to stop the storm surge.

As we lose land to natural forces, our populated areas become much more vulnerable. New Orleans used to be on solid ground more than 20 miles inland from the marshes. It was well protected with a crude and rather small levee system to cover the lower lying areas of the city. As land washed away, New Orleans became more vulnerable by the year. In the last 30 years, even with the complex levee system and new pumping capacity (that was under-designed and under-built by the Army Corp of Engineers for the forces it must withstand), there are not enough linear miles of wetlands between the Gulf and New Orleans to protect New Orleans.

Baton Rouge and other areas well north of the Gulf now get significant hurricane rain, wind and damage. The kind of severity we’ve seen over the past 5 years is far worse than anyone living can remember. For Baton Rouge, Gustav was the worst storm ever seen in anyone’s memory; worse than Betsy (1965), and Betsy was our worst storm until 2008. We saw significant rain, wind and damage with Andrew in 1992, Katrina and Rita in 2005, and Gustav in 2008. Baton Rouge was spared Ike, but coastal Louisiana was severely damaged along with coastal Texas.

Our wetlands are once again facing a severe threat to their survival, just as they were beginning to fully recover from the hurricane seasons of 2005 and 2008 (Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike).

Representative Charlie Melancon told the story of the devastation and showed the emotion we all feel about our coast being hit again by man’s greed and lack of care of the environment:

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BP is responsible. But right now it doesn’t matter who is at fault. What matters is containing the spill, finding the plumes and collecting them, protecting the marshes, and plugging the well, getting the relief wells drilled and getting that well permanently sealed. None of the attempts so far to siphon off oil and water or to plug the well have been successful.

The next try is to cut off the damaged pipe and put a small cap over it to draw the oil up a pipe to a ship for containment until the well can be sealed. The only way to seal a well is to relieve the pressure with relief wells and use one to cement the well shut. Instead of top kill, they use bottom kill, drilling mud injected into the well to keep the oil down while they pour concrete and seal it. The oil’s upward pressure is relieved by the other relief wells. It will take as few as 90 days to drill 2 relief wells. It may take several more tries than two to get to the exact target of that blown out well.

If a major hurricane hits before the well is sealed and a good deal of the oil is cleaned up, oil will be dispersed and drawn up into the storm waters. It will not only rain water, it will rain water mixed with oil everywhere that storm goes throughout the country.

Eleven people were killed in the explosion and fire. BP will at least face manslaughter charges for those deaths if found criminally responsible for the incident. BP will also face penalties from:

* the Clean Water Act
* the Oil Pollution Act of 1990
* the Migratory Bird Treat Act
* the Endangered Species Act

The explosion and fire seem to be the direct result of trying to hurry the procedure to cap the well for later use. BP allegedly ordered Deepwater Horizon workers to slow and stop the flow of drilling mud while they began pouring concrete through the pipe to seal the well.

The problem with cutting this procedural corner when sealing a well is that methane and natural gas can bubble up through the pipe when drilling mud pressure is relieved before concrete seals the well. Methane and natural gas are extremely flammable. When this happens, the gases almost always cause an explosion, fire and loss of a rig. When the burning rig finally collapsed and the blowout preventer failed, oil began spilling a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico waters at an alarming rate.

Numbers of barrels of oil per day spilling varies widely depending on who you ask. An average number is 12,000 barrels per day. How much oil is on the surface and how much is in plumes under the water is unknown. Oil has many components from light gases to heavy tars, so there are most certainly plumes of heavier components floating at various depths. Tar balls are washing up on beaches in the Florida Keys. (See following video ~1 min, I believe the scientists):

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Oil on the surface of the Gulf water has moved into marsh grasses and onto barrier islands. Countless wildlife are being coated with oil and many have died. Many more will die before the oil can be cleaned up.

We really don’t have good ways of cleaning up massive oil spills. Don’t believe me? Revisit Prince William Sound in Alaska over 20 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. If you dig down into the sand along the sound, you will find a lot of oil and tar. The big differences are climate, mud and bacteria content of the water and mud available. The climate in Alaska doesn’t lend itself well to active biodegradation.

Here is a link to a set of photos of the wildlife toll.

As of noon on May 28, the Deepwater Horizon response team has recorded the following deaths among marine life:

* Birds: 444
* Sea Turtles: 222
* Mammals, including dolphins: 24

When wetlands are coated in oil, the grasses die and the silt and sand wash out with the tide. Louisiana loses 25-50 square miles of land each year to erosion, subsidence, and a complete lack of natural rebuilding from Mississippi River annual flooding. When something happens to kill the marsh grasses and damage the wetlands, land loss happens much faster. We need to rebuild the wetlands mechanically or technologically since we have taken away the natural process that builds those wetlands.

Fortunately, the Atchafalaya River is rebuilding wetlands as it flows into the Gulf, but that basin is west of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet and the area of the state that protects New Orleans from hurricanes.

In 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were responsible for the loss of about 100 square miles of wetlands within a 4 week period, on top of the normal 25-50 square mile annual land loss.

This is yet another kick in the teeth of a vulnerable area of the U.S. Does America really care to save Louisiana and her economy? Does America care to save New Orleans and her unique culture? If what has happened down here happened in New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, or Washington D.C., you can bet the response would have been a lot better and the recovery would have been complete by now. An oil spill wouldn’t happen because there is a drilling ban off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Rachel Maddow sums up the issue extremely clearly here:

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The ultimate question: is off shore oil drilling safe? Not presently. Can it be made safe enough to have acceptable risks? Probably, but it’s only a drop in the bucket. The amount of oil we get from our own sources is a small amount of our total supply.

We need to break our addiction to oil, move to intermediate fuel sources (like vegetable oils and natural gas), and get to clean, renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power. We have to power our cars with electricity and organic fuels until we develop the technology to move to electric cars, or better yet, public transportation systems that are clean and reliable.

We in Louisiana are getting pretty discouraged with the disregard for our state’s environment that has brought all these disasters about. This is a very long-term problem, over 50 years of environmental abuse and neglect. The disasters are still severely affecting our economy and will for years or even decades to come. We want to get this well plugged, the oil cleaned up, and finish our recovery from recent hurricanes. We’ll do it. We’re a tough and resilient people. Our climate is warm and the mud is a great surface for oil-eating bacteria. The oil here will likely get cleaned up and biodegraded more quickly than in Alaska.

But we need America’s help in caring about our environment by going on an oil diet and ultimately to stop using oil so we can stop drilling off our shores. And we need to stop buying foreign oil that jeopardizes our national security. The time is now to end our oil addiction.

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